by Hugh Thomas
These appeals were the culmination of several generations of ambiguity in the feelings of Spaniards towards the outside world. Was Europe to be emulated, or kept at a distance? If the first, should the inspiration be martial Germany or peaceful England? Unamuno thought that to ‘japonize’ Spain would ruin all chances of national revival. Such ‘Africanism’ endeared Unamuno to the Right, which had looked on all reformers as frenchified (afrancesado) since 1808. But no one was consistent. Those who accused socialists of being ‘anti-Spanish’ spent the summers in Biarritz. If Catholics saw an international plot in freemasonry, freemasons were equally justified in believing that those loyal to the church of Rome were concerned in as great a conspiracy directed by the Pope. The middle classes of Spain had, of course, commercial connections with other countries. The famous International Telegraph and Telephone Company owned the Spanish telephone system.1 Other American interests (totalling $80 million) were General Motors, Ford, Firestone Rubber, and some cotton stocks.2
The British Río Tinto Company had extensive holdings in copper and pyrites, while the Tarsis Company of Glasgow also had large holdings in Spanish copper. The Armstrong Company owned a third of Spanish cork. The waterworks of Seville were also British-owned. Britain, the largest foreign investor, held about £40 million ($194 million) invested in Spain, out of a total of £200 million ($970 million) foreign capital in all.3
The French controlled the lead mines at Peñarroya and San Plato, and had built the railways. Their total investment was about £28 million ($135 million). The Belgians also had large holdings in Spanish timber, tramways, and railways, and in the coal mines of Asturias. A Canadian company had organized the distribution of electricity in Catalonia. These, the most important of many foreign investments, were extensive interests in a country as little developed as Spain.
The US, Germany, Britain and France provided respectively 34, 28, 22 and 12 per cent of Spanish imports and Britain, Germany, France and the US took 43, 26, 12 and 10 per cent of her exports. Spanish iron ore had been a standard item in the British iron and steel industry for many years—57 per cent of Spanish production went to Britain in 1935—and ore for Britain occupied most of the Spanish merchant marine. Then the Falange, for all its nationalism, was certainly no more representative of the Spanish tradition than, say, the anarchists; and, while there was an increase in Russian propaganda in Spain before the civil war, there was also much information about Nazi Germany. The Nazi party had a following of some 600 among the German colony in Spain, which numbered about 13,000.1 The Spanish section of the German Labour Front had over fifty branches. German tourist offices and bookshops proliferated during the months before the civil war, though the Nazis were chiefly active in checking the behaviour of German officials and diplomats. When so many ‘solutions’ to Spain’s troubles were being canvassed, the example of Nazi Germany, the disciplined enemy of decadent France, naturally exercised a powerful influence over the imaginations of young Spanish middle-class people; while several monarchist officers had good memories of relations with Germany in the 1920s.
In a broad sense, the Spanish Civil War was the consequence of the working of general European ideas upon Spain. Each of the leading political ideas of Europe since the sixteenth century has been received with enthusiasm by one group of Spaniards and opposed by another, without any desire for compromise being shown by either side: the universalist roman Catholicism of the Habsburgs, the absolutism of the Bourbons, French revolutionary liberalism, romantic separatism, socialism, anarchism, communism, and fascism. It was inevitable, therefore, that the war which began in 1936 should become a European crisis. As in the war of the Spanish Succession, the War of Independence, and during the First Carlist War, the prestige, the wealth and, in some instances, the people of the rest of Europe became, during 1936, intimately connected with the Spanish conflict. General European ideas had brought Spaniards to the pitch of war. European powers became entangled in the war at the Spaniards’ request. The same great powers were then responsible for much of its course, above all for assisting one side or the other when they seemed to be losing. Throughout the civil war, the alternate repugnance and attraction which the rest of Europe has always had for Spain, and Spain for the rest of Europe, was reflected in the international implications of the fighting.1
On the night of 19 July, José Giral, the new Prime Minister of the republic, sent a telegram, en clair, to the Prime Minister of France: ‘Surprised by a dangerous military coup. Beg of you to help us immediately with arms and aeroplanes. Fraternally yours Giral.’2 The fact that Giral sought to communicate direct with his French colleague is explained by the comradely signature. For it seemed certain that Léon Blum, the new socialist French Prime Minister, would be more sympathetic to an appeal for help than the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Juan de Cárdenas, a diplomat of the old school.3 (The latter’s replacement by the Left Republican politician Álvaro de Albornoz had already been announced.)
Léon Blum, that passionate and sensitive Frenchman, had been Prime Minister of France only since 5 June, at the head of a ministry of socialists and radicals which enjoyed the support of the communists. Like the Spanish government, it had been formed as a result of a Popular Front electoral alliance. Though pacifist by inclination and anxious to proceed with the redress of social problems at home, Blum and his colleagues knew that the predicament of the Spanish republic was important to France. For, at this time, in Paris, Lyon, and in all the cities of France, there were many street clashes between Left and Right, between the socialists or communists and fascist groups, such as La Croix du Feu and L’Action Française. Blum’s sympathy for the republic was buttressed by strategic calculations, since a nationalist Spain would presumably be hostile to France. When, therefore, Blum received Giral’s telegram, on the morning of 20 July, he summoned the foreign secretary, Yvon Delbos, and Edouard Daladier, his war minister. Both these men were radicals. Although they might have been supposed likely to sympathize less with the Spanish republic than the socialist members of the cabinet, they immediately agreed to help Giral.
Meantime, late on 19 July, Luis Bolín, on behalf of General Franco, still in the Dragon Rapide, and still piloted by the Englishman Captain Bebb, flew to Biarritz and then on to Rome to make a formal request to the Italian government for twelve bombers, three fighters, and a certain number of bombs. This request by Franco was counter-signed by Sanjurjo in Lisbon.1 At the same time, a nationalist communiqué proudly announced that ‘the interests of Spain are not alone at stake as our trumpet-call sounds across the Straits of Gibraltar’;2 while the British authorities in Gibraltar placed at the disposal of General Kindelán, the most senior air-force officer to side with the rebels, telephone lines upon which he and his friends could speak direct to Berlin and to Rome in subsequent weeks.3
On 21 July, the first reaction to the Spanish crisis also apparently occurred in Moscow. A joint meeting was held of the secretariats of the Comintern and Profintern (the body set up to coordinate communist activity in western trade unions). There was support for the idea of aid to the republic, and a new meeting was arranged for 26 July.4
The reaction of Stalin towards the outbreak of the Spanish war (whatever part the Spanish communists had played before) was dictated by the question of how it would affect the current needs of Russian foreign policy. If, as in the case of China in 1926, communist opportunities would have to be sacrificed, then sacrificed they would be: the aims of communism could not be different from those of Russia. Fear of war had caused Stalin to emerge from his isolation of the late 1920s to enter the League of Nations in 1934, and to conclude the pact with France in 1935. Litvinov, the Soviet foreign minister, had spoken eloquently in the League for collective security.1 A nationalist victory in the civil war in Spain would mean that France would be surrounded on three sides by potentially hostile countries. That would make it easier for Germany to attack Russia without fearing French attacks in her rear. For that reason alone, Stalin had a strong interes
t in the prevention of a nationalist victory.
The Spanish war also afforded to the Spanish communist party, with its discipline, its skill at propaganda, and its prestige deriving from its connection with Russia, great opportunities, but at that time no one could foresee quite how powerful that party would grow. At the same time, overweening communist behaviour would alarm Britain and France. For that reason Stalin did not send orders to the Spanish communist party and his chief agents there, Codovilla and Stepanov, to make full use of every opportunity to gain control of the Spanish republic. He also hesitated about sending arms to Spain.2 He was then about to embark upon a new stage of the purge of the old bolsheviks. That perhaps caused the Russian dictator to listen with unusual attention to the leaders of the Comintern at this time. Dimitrov, Togliatti and Marty, to take only three of the most important international communists then in Moscow, must have had their own feelings as to what should be the communist reaction to the war in Spain. They could point out how, while Stalin delayed, Trotsky was already naming him ‘liquidator and traitor of the Spanish revolution, abettor of Hitler and Mussolini’. With crablike caution, therefore, Stalin apparently reached one decision about Spain: he would not permit the republic to lose, even though he would not necessarily help it to win. The continuance of the war would keep him free to act in any way. It might even make possible a world war in which France, Britain, Germany, and Italy would destroy themselves, with Russia, the arbiter, staying outside.1 Thus the Russian government would support the agitation for aid to Spain, for the time being only in food and raw materials, and ensure that Russian factory workers made a ‘contribution’. The Comintern representatives in Spain would be reinforced. The able, courteous, educated and ruthless leader of the Italian communist party in exile, Togliatti, for some time previously director of Spanish and Italian affairs in the Comintern, thus soon went to Spain, using the name ‘Alfredo’, as director of tactics of the Spanish communist party.2 The Livornese communist Ettore Quaglierini occupied himself with the publications of the Spanish communist party and helped their fellow countryman, Vidali (‘Carlos’), with the projection of the Fifth Regiment as a model of military efficiency. One more communist international leader was the Hungarian Ernö Gerö, ‘Pedro’ or ‘Gueré’, who became responsible for the guidance of the communists in Catalonia.3 The Bulgarian Stepanov and Codovilla, the two Comintern representatives who had been in Spain for some years, remained.4 The combination of a swiftly growing party and an inexperienced leadership gave special importance to the international functionaries. Men like Stepanov strutted across the stage of Spanish revolutionary history as if they were gods, disdainful of Spaniards, breathing mystery and power, but actually cynical, fearful of Stalin, and bureaucratic. Stepanov himself, protected by a staff of secretaries such as ‘Angelita’, a ‘real demon, beautiful but cold and cruel’, and ‘Carmen the Fat’, a Russian who became head of the cadre section of the united youth, established a virtual tyranny over the central committee of the party.1
The western European propaganda section of the Comintern, under its brilliant German communist chief, Willi Muenzenberg, also became active in its headquarters in Paris in linking the cause of the Spanish republic with its general anti-fascist crusade.2 The Spanish war was indeed a godsend to agitators for the Popular Front and the anti-fascist, hence pro-Soviet, cause. ‘A notre secours, à votre secours,’ pleaded Romain Rolland, the French novelist whose activities expressed the short-lived alliance between literature, pacifism and friendship with Russia, ‘au secours de l’Espagne!’3
While these matters were being haltingly mooted in Moscow and Paris, Franco’s agent, the journalist Bolín, reached Rome, on 21 July. The next day, he and the Marqués de Viana, a monarchist (who had just come from ex-King Alfonso in Vienna), saw Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister. Some years later, Ciano told Hitler that the Spaniards said that twelve transport aircraft would enable Franco to win the war in a few days.4
With Franco’s first emissaries, Ciano was enthusiastic, but Mussolini had to be consulted. It was not clear to the Duce what connection Franco had with the monarchist plotters to whom he, Mussolini, had pledged help in 1934.5 Nor apparently did Franco know of that arrangement. It was not until Mola sent the monarchist Goicoechea, the leading figure in the events of 1934, to Rome on 24 July, that the Italians agreed to listen seriously to the Spanish rebels.1 But, also on 22 July, Franco made his first approach to Germany for help. On his behalf, Colonel Beigbeder, an ex-military attaché in Berlin, who had installed himself in the department of native affairs at Tetuán, sent a ‘very urgent request’ to General Kuhlenthal, German military attaché in Paris, accredited also to Madrid, for ‘ten transport aircraft, with maximum seating capacity’, to be purchased through German private firms and brought by German pilots to Spanish Morocco.2 These were needed to supplement the old Breguets in getting the Army of Africa across the Straits. (Beigbeder was aware of past German links with Spain in matters of arms supply. He and Kuhlenthal had travelled in Morocco in 1935 and Kuhlenthal had known Franco since the days of the revolution in Asturias.)
The same day, a nationalist air force officer, Captain Francisco Arranz, accompanied by Adolf Langenheim, head of the Nazi party in Tetuán, and Johannes Bernhardt, a Nazi businessman of Prussian origin, met Franco and, the next day, set off with a private letter from that general (‘infantile’ in style, according to Bernhardt) to Hitler to support Beigbeder’s request. They travelled in a Junkers requisitioned from the Lufthansa at Las Palmas.3 Bernhardt, an ex–sugar merchant from Hamburg, ruined in 1929, had come to Morocco to seek a new life. In Tetuán, he was first employed by a company which sold kitchen stoves and other equipment to the Spanish garrison. He had in this way made friends in the officers’ mess. Both he and Langenheim saw the possibilities of personal advantage, as well as German influence, in the sale of war material to the rebels.4 A deeply romantic German who had fought on the Eastern front in the First World War, Bernhardt was looking for a new outlet; a few months before he had contemplated going to Argentina.
In Paris, the skeptical but still loyal Spanish ambassador, Cárdenas, meanwhile visited Léon Blum and, on behalf of Giral, made a request for 20 Potez bombers, 50 light Hotchkiss machine-guns, 8 Schneider 155 millimetre howitzers with munitions, 1,000 Lebel rifles, 250,000 machine-gun bullets, a million cartridges, and 20,000 bombs. Since the French arms industries had been nationalized, the purchase would need the approval of the French cabinet. To the surprise of Cárdenas, Blum agreed.1 Now, almost at the same time, a telephone call was received in the Quai d’Orsay from Corbin, the French ambassador in London. Personally of the Right, Corbin was a faithful interpreter of English wishes. The British government, he said, was alarmed about the French reaction to the Spanish crisis. A meeting had previously been arranged in London for 23 and 24 July between the British, French, and Belgian foreign ministers to discuss a possible approach to Hitler and Mussolini for a new five-power treaty of collective security. Baldwin now wanted Blum to accompany his foreign secretary, Delbos, to England in order to discuss Spain. On the advice of Alexis Léger, the Martiniquais secretary-general of the Quai d’Orsay (later known as the Nobel prize-winning poet St John Perse, author of Anabasis), Blum agreed.2 Léger’s nightmare was that Baldwin’s Britain might turn away from a left-wing France to join Germany.3 At much the same time, Cárdenas, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, resigned (because of his nationalist sympathies) leaving two air-force officers, Ismael Warleta and Juan Aboal, to conduct the details of the arms transaction, until Fernando de los Ríos, the socialist professor and ex-minister, arrived from Geneva to take charge from them.4
On 23 July, the conference in London began in the morning. Blum arrived in time for luncheon. In the hall of Claridge’s Hotel, Eden asked: ‘Are you going to send arms to the Spanish republic?’ ‘Yes,’ said Blum. ‘It is your affair,’ Eden replied, ‘but I ask you one thing. Be prudent.’1
Now this advice by Eden reflected the desire
for peace felt by the British at this time. The leader of the opposition, Clement Attlee, might have voiced the sympathies of the Labour party for their Spanish comrades, when, on 20 July, he pledged ‘all practicable support’; and the English middle and upper classes might favour the nationalists; but no politician in England thought that the country should involve herself on one side or another in the conflict. The question was, what kind of neutrality should be observed. The Labour party at first believed that neutrality meant that the republic should be allowed to purchase arms, from Britain as from elsewhere. Here they were in disagreement with Conservative critics of the government, such as Winston Churchill, who, though opposed to Germany and Italy as much as the opposition, did not immediately see that the Spanish conflict had any significance for Britain. Churchill himself was aghast by the revolutionary character of the republic, and wrote to Corbin to protest against French aid to the republic, and to urge ‘an absolutely rigid neutrality’.2 Eden at the foreign office attempted to secure this policy, both for Britain and for France, though Eden hated dictatorial governments. The supposition of the British was that the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in February, and the Italian conquest of Abyssinia, had satiated the dictators, who could now be induced to help to create a new European order. In this design, the outbreak of ‘the Spanish crisis’ was, above all, an unwelcome interruption. Baldwin’s instructions to Eden had been ‘on no account, French or other, must he bring us into the fight on the side of the Russians’.1 Eden’s only move, in fact, had been to order British warships to Spanish ports to protect British lives.2 He had also received the Spanish ambassador, López Oliván, and told him that there would be no ban on the export of civil aircraft to Spain and that, though a request for military material would have to receive a special licence, it would ‘certainly be considered’.3 The same day, 28 July, Eden told the British cabinet that the ‘ordinary procedure’ would be followed if either the Spanish government, or the rebels, wanted to buy arms; ‘of course there was no question of intervention’.4 Meantime, the first aircraft sold privately by British Airways to a representative of Franco, a certain Señor Delgado, of the Ibarrola Oil Company of Ceuta, had gone ahead: four Fokker passenger planes, at £38,000. But the French refused to let these leave Bordeaux when they stopped there to refuel.5 On 31 July, however, the British government introduced a unilateral ban on arms shipments to Spain.