Blaskowitz and Wehrmacht officers in Andorra, spring 1943

Alan Ward examines why a large contingent of German officers, led by General Johannes Blaskowitz, was present at Pas de la Casa and Sant Joan de Caselles in the spring of 1943, and his conclusions are unsettling.

Ward cites a passage from Joseph Goebbels’s diary — “The rubbish of the small states that still exist in Europe today must be liquidated very quickly. That must be the aim of our struggle: to create a united Europe” — to frame the possible implications for European microstates such as Andorra had the Axis prevailed. He stresses that this is a counterfactual consideration: the Nazis did not win the war, but it is reasonable to ask what might have happened.

Blaskowitz was not a minor officer. In 1943 he commanded Army Group D and was responsible for all German forces stationed in southwest France. Ward notes that it is not only striking that German soldiers entered neutral Andorran territory, but that the highest-ranking officer in the area did so. He does not assert that Blaskowitz and his staff intended to occupy Andorra, but argues that senior military commanders would have wanted to inspect all parts of the territory under their operational purview, especially areas where they might later need to act.

Ward proposes a cautious hypothesis: the visit could have combined rest with reconnaissance. A firsthand view of Andorra would have been useful if military action became necessary. He emphasizes this is speculative but finds it a plausible explanation for the unusually large presence of German caps in Andorra captured by the photographs.

Those photographs, exhumed months earlier by researcher Marc Pantebre, provide firm evidence that German military personnel were in Andorra — a chapter that had until now been largely anecdotal. Ward believes the officer on the right in one image is Blaskowitz, citing a notable resemblance in facial features (nose and prominent jaw) and the Iron Cross worn at the collar, an award Blaskowitz held. He also considers the professional quality of the photos compatible with a visit staged, at least in part, for propaganda outlets such as Signal and Wehrmacht.

Any documentary trail that might clarify the episode was damaged: relevant records were lost to fires in 1945. Ward lays out these arguments in his paper La Wehrmacht a Andorra: apunt sobre un incident curiós, which surveys the handful of surviving graphic documents — barely half a dozen — that record visits by Nazi soldiers during the Second World War.

The paper was one of the presentations at the 21st Trobades Culturals Pirinenques, held on 19 October 2024 in Olot under the theme “Conflicts in the Pyrenees.” A volume collecting around forty of the conference’s papers will be presented on 10 December and includes contributions on topics ranging from Hannibal’s crossing of the Pyrenees to studies of Andorra’s role in different historical conflicts, among them works by Jordi Pasques, Oriol Olesti, Domènec Bascompte, David Mas, Meritxell Mateu and Claude Benet. Ward’s cautious reconstruction invites renewed attention to a little-known wartime episode and the broader strategic questions it raises about small neutral territories during large-scale conflicts.