by Hugh Thomas
Negrín and Giral, his foreign minister, visited Paris.5 There Blum had been defeated, to be succeeded as Prime Minister by Chautemps, the radical socialist. Blum, however, was vice-premier and Delbos still at the foreign ministry. The two Spaniards set out to try to persuade this government to end non-intervention. Russian help to the republicans, they said, had been reduced, firstly because of the nationalist blockade in the Mediterranean, secondly because of the closing of the French frontier, and thirdly, from the start of July, because of the war between China and Japan, in which Stalin had decided to help the former. The idea that, by buying arms from the democracies, he could detach himself from Russia and from the communists naturally played its part in Negrín’s mind.
The republican position had been rendered worse still by the Portuguese abandonment of control, until the naval patrol was restored. Britain and France, after Germany and Italy had left the naval patrol, offered to carry out all of it themselves, with neutral observers on board their ships. Grandi and Ribbentrop alleged that that would be excessively partial. They proposed that belligerent rights, including the right of search on the high seas, should be granted to both Spanish parties, as a substitute for naval patrol.1 This favoured the nationalists. So far from it being acceptable to the French, Chautemps and Delbos were considering following Portugal’s example, and abolishing all frontier control. Negrín and Giral thought that was a good second-best to an end to non-intervention. But the French reliance on the British prevented this. The French ministers realized that any breach with Britain would merely help Italy. The tragic actor in the drama remained Léon Blum: ‘je n’en vis plus,’ he would murmur, appalled, to his friends in the Second International, such as Nenni or de Brouckère.2
The nationalists, meantime, sent a note to all foreign powers, threatening that those countries (England and France, for example) who did not agree to grant belligerent rights ‘should not be surprised’ if Spain were henceforward economically closed to them.
The British and French governments were laboriously patching up again the elaborate fabric of non-intervention. The Non-Intervention Board estimated that forty-two ships escaped inspection between its start in April and the end of July. Nor was the air route covered. The control board could not prevent the dispatch of military supplies in ships flying a Spanish or a non-European flag. German, Italian, and Russian material continued to flow into Spain, the German ships flying a Panamanian flag; a fact overlooked by the Non-Intervention Committee.
The nationalist debt to Germany had attained 150 million reichsmarks. For what purpose? Certainly simplifying the question, Hitler announced, in a speech at Würzburg on 27 June, that he supported Franco in order to gain possession of Spanish iron ore. In 1937, Germany was to import 1,620,000 tons of iron from Spain, 956,000 tons of pyrites, 2,000 tons of other minerals. During July, the Germans, because of the crisis over Brunete, were able to elicit from the nationalists some economic concessions.1 In a document signed by Jordana and Faupel on 12 July, the Spaniards promised that they would conclude with Germany their first general trade agreement, would tell Germany of any economic negotiations with any other country, and give most-favoured-nation treatment to Germany.2 This was supplemented by a declaration, on 15 July, that both countries would help each other over the exchange of raw materials, food, and manufactured goods.3 On the 16th, Spain agreed to pay its debts for war material in reichsmarks, with 4 per cent annual interest. As guarantee of the debt, raw materials would be sent to Germany, who would participate in Spanish reconstruction.4 The monopoly companies HISMA-ROWAK, still directed by Johannes Bernhardt, would continue to control German-Spanish economic relations. The German foreign ministry did not like the arrangement but they knew of the prestige which Bernhardt enjoyed in Nazi party circles.
These good relations were a contrast with those between the nationalists and the Italians. The Italian commanders still wanted to use their troops in a decisive action where they could win ‘a great triumph’. Danzi, the fascist director in Spain, apparently spent 240,000 pesetas a month on propaganda for the legionaries. But, said Faupel, everyone really knew that the battle of Bilbao had been decided by German fliers and anti-aircraft batteries, not by the Italian forces on the ground. Franco himself had recently described the history of Italian troops in Spain as a ‘tragedy’.5
Back in London, the deadlock in the Non-Intervention Committee seemed complete. On 9 July, the Dutch ambassador proposed that Britain should try and reconcile the opposing points of view.1 After consulting the cabinet, Lord Plymouth accepted the task. On 14 July, he sent to the committee a British ‘compromise plan for control of non-intervention’. Naval patrol would be replaced by observers at Spanish ports. There would also be observers on ships. On land, the control system would be restored. Belligerent rights at sea should be granted when ‘substantial progress’ had been made in withdrawal of volunteers. Germany accepted the plan ‘as a basis for discussion’.2 Delbos was angry. Britain, he complained, was now midway between France and Italy, instead of cooperating with France.3 Azaña emerged from his lonely eminence to denounce the plan, as helping Franco. Belligerent rights, he said, could only favour the nationalists, and a partial withdrawal of volunteers would enable Franco to dispense with the inefficient Italians; the republic might have to give up invaluable members of the International Brigade. Count Grandi, however, succeeded in evading any real consideration of the British plan. He demanded that the points in it be discussed in numerical order. Thus belligerent rights which, by hasty drafting, had been placed prior to volunteers, would have been discussed first. Maisky wanted to talk of volunteers first. On the 26th, Britain asked for other governments’ views in writing. Léger in Paris complained that the British ‘were prepared to accept anything rather than have a showdown’.4
Eden, who was still Foreign Secretary under Chamberlain, had begun by welcoming the new Prime Minister’s interest in foreign affairs, for Baldwin had been bored by the subject. Eden had also thought Chamberlain agreed with him before he was Premier. Nevertheless, under Chamberlain, the British government were to seek the appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini more vigorously than they had done under Baldwin. The change of emphasis was seen in the olive branch sent in the form of a private letter suggesting ‘talks’ from Chamberlain to Mussolini on 29 July.1 Mussolini was anxious to secure British recognition of his conquest of Abyssinia. Spain, for Chamberlain, was a troublesome complication which should, if possible, be forgotten. This now seemed possible. Even Eden told Delbos that he hoped Franco would win, since he thought that he could reach agreement for an eventual German and Italian withdrawal.2 On 6 August, Maisky asked point-blank in the Non-Intervention Sub-Committee if Germany and Italy would agree to the withdrawal of all volunteers on the two sides in Spain. He received only a vague answer.3 During the rest of August, there was only one non-intervention meeting. This was on the 27th, when it was concluded that the naval patrol did not justify its expense and that, therefore, the British idea for observers at ports should be substituted for it.4
But there were new alarms. The flow of material to the republic from Marseilles, through the Straits of Gibraltar as well as direct from Russia, seemed formidable. Nationalist agents in Bucharest, Algiers and Gibraltar, as well as in Berlin and Rome (in collaboration with Germany and Italy), were worried.5 Rumours of the extent of Russian aid to the republic caused Franco to send his brother Nicolás to Rome and to ask the Italian fleet to strike against Russian, Spanish republican, and other vessels in the Mediterranean.6 Mussolini agreed. He would not use surface vessels, but submarines, ‘which would raise a Spanish flag if they had to surface’.7 (Mussolini had the largest submarine fleet in the world at that time: 83 submarines to the French 76 and British 57.)1 As a result, Russian, British, French, and other neutral ships, as well as Spanish vessels, were soon attacked in the Mediterranean by Italian submarines and by Italian aircraft operating from Majorca. A British, a French, and an Italian merchant ship were bombed on 6 August
near Algiers. On 7 August, a Greek ship was bombed. On the 11th, the 13th, and the 15th, ships of the republic were torpedoed. The British tanker Caporal was attacked on 10 August. On 11 August, the republican tanker Campeador was sunk south of Malta by two Italian destroyers: surface ships were used several times. On the 12th, a Danish cargo boat was sunk: the head of the Foreign Office, Vansittart complained to the Italian chargé, Guido Crolla, saying he knew ‘for a fact that those aeroplanes were based on Palma’.2 A Spanish merchant ship, the Ciudad de Cádiz, was sunk leaving the Dardanelles on 14 August, and another, the Armuro, was sunk on the 19th. On 26 August, a British ship was bombed off Barcelona. On 29 August, a Spanish steamer was shelled by a submarine off the French coast. A French passenger steamer reported that she was chased by a submarine into the Dardanelles. On the 30th, the Russian merchantman Tuniyaev was sunk at Algiers, on its way to Port Said. On 31 August, a submarine attacked the British destroyer Havock. On 1 September, the Russian steamer Blagaev was sunk by a submarine off Skyros. On 2 September, the British tanker Woodford was sunk near Valencia. ‘Three torpedoings and one prize,’ Ciano remarked in his diary on that day, ‘but international opinion is getting very worked up, particularly in England, as the result of the attack on the Havock. It was the Iride,’ the Italian foreign secretary admitted—though only to himself.3
The nationalists, who had had no submarines at the start of the war, now had two, sold to them by Italy. A number of other Italian vessels had been made available to the nationalist command, as ‘legionary’ submarines; while some other Italian submarines were acting on their own, Italian, orders. The Tuniyaev had thus been sunk by a ‘legionary’. The Iride was, however, under Italian orders.1 The British cabinet was still loath to take action: it was represented that the dispatch of British naval vessels to the Mediterranean would provide Italy with more targets.2 Many British merchantmen were, as the cabinet knew, secretly carrying arms as well as food to Spain; and their motives were commercial as a rule, not idealistic. The freedom of the seas was one thing; the freedom of Jack Billmeir, the Newcastle shipping millionaire, to make a fortune another. But British imports of mineral ore from Spain were still considerable, and could not be done without.
Eden eventually persuaded the cabinet to send more destroyers to the Mediterranean. Chamberlain also agreed to Delbos’s suggestion for a conference of ‘interested powers’. On 6 September, all states with Mediterranean frontiers, except Spain, together with Germany and Russia, were invited by Britain and France to a conference, on the 10th. This was to be held at Nyon, on the Lake of Geneva, where it was not proposed to hold it for fear of angering Italy, who associated the city of Calvin with the League’s condemnation of her Abyssinian expedition. ‘The full orchestra,’ Ciano now noted, ‘the theme: Piracy in the Mediterranean. Guilty—the fascists. The Duce is very calm.’ García Conde, the Spanish nationalist ambassador in Rome, brought Ciano a message from Franco saying that, if the blockade lasted throughout September, it would be decisive. ‘True’, Ciano admitted, but he nevertheless ordered Admiral Cavagnari to suspend it, until further orders.3
The Russian chargé in Rome, Helfand, accused Italian submarines of sinking the merchant ships Tuniyaev and Blagaev. He claimed irrefutable evidence of Italian guilt—‘from intercepted telegrams, I expect’, wrote Ciano airily, doubtless recalling the use which he himself made of that source of information.4 Ciano disclaimed responsibility and disputed the right of Russia to make such a judgement. Both Italy and Germany proposed that the Non-Intervention Committee, rather than a special conference, should handle the matter. But Eden and Delbos pressed on with their arrangements. Churchill and Lloyd George, from the south of France, wrote to Eden that now was ‘the moment to rally Italy to her international duty’.1
The conference followed, with Italy and Germany absent. It was successful. First, Delbos and Eden proposed that the Mediterranean should be patrolled by warships of all the riparian states, with Russia (and Italy) allotted the eastern Mediterranean. But the smaller countries had no warships to spare for this task, and did not wish to risk war. So it was decided that the British and French fleets should patrol the Mediterranean west of Malta and attack any suspicious submarine. This was decided on the first day of the conference. The agreement was signed on the 14th.2 Mussolini was furious, and Litvinov spoke of his pleasure at an international agreement ‘with very considerable backing’. Churchill wrote to Eden that the agreement had shown the possibility of British and French cooperation. Further arrangements, between naval experts, were planned to consider attacks by aircraft. Ciano sent a note requesting ‘parity of duties’ for Italy with all the other states of Nyon. The wits in the Café Bavaria at Geneva suggested that the ‘unknown statesman’—Mussolini—should erect a monument to the ‘unknown submarine’ in Rome. On 17 September, the Nyon conference’s naval experts gave to the naval patrol the same power against aircraft that they had already against submarines. Warships which attacked neutral ships would be counter-attacked by the patrolling navies, regardless of whether they were in Spanish territorial waters. On the 18th, the French and British chargés in Rome gave Ciano the texts of the Nyon Agreements, and asked for an interpretation of his request for ‘parity’. They thus made possible the return to friendly relations with Italy which Chamberlain desired.
The same day, Negrín was before the League of Nations Assembly requesting that its political committee examine Spain. As usual, only Litvinov and Mexico supported the republic. Eden claimed that non-intervention had stopped a European war: echoing Baldwin a year before, he compared non-intervention to a leaky dam, ‘better than no dam at all’.1 Negrín wished France to send 400 or 500 officers or NCOs to help the republic and asked for that.2 He also talked with Eden, who said that British public opinion did not want Franco to win. The cabinet, he said, was divided. Chamberlain was afraid of communism and the government were unable to take a strong line against Germany until rearmament was complete.3 Italy meantime was invited to send experts to Paris to ‘adjust’ the Nyon Agreement in accordance with Italian wishes. Ciano, therefore, felt that he had achieved a triumph. On 27 September, the British, French and Italians began naval talks in Paris. Italy was allotted a patrol zone between the Balearic Islands and Sardinia, and in the Tyrrhenian Sea. This enabled Italy to continue sending supplies to Majorca without fear of being watched. Also on the 27th, the League’s political committee did take up the question of Spain. Álvarez del Vayo spoke with eloquent bitterness at the news of Italian reinforcements to General Franco. Walter Elliott, the politician who was the British representative, persuaded the committee to omit any denunciation of Germany and Italy from the resolution to be put forward. But that document did refer to the ‘failure of non-intervention’, to the consideration of ending it (unless agreement could be reached on the withdrawal of volunteers) and to the ‘existence of veritable foreign army corps on Spanish soil’. However much the British might dislike such candour they could hardly object. For Mussolini, even while the resolution was being discussed, was publicly mourning the deaths of thousands of Italians on Spanish soil, during his visit to Germany—where he was impressed by the signs which he had seen of German preparedness for war. Privately, the Duce told Hitler that, Nyon or not, he would continue torpedoing. He boasted that he had already sunk nearly 200,000 tons of ships.4 These remarks gave an ironic quality to the apparently successful end, on 30 September, of the naval talks in Paris, Italy now being included in the Nyon patrol.
It was hard now to represent the Nyon conference as exactly a triumph of ‘strength’. Notes were prepared in the Foreign Office and in the Quai d’Orsay to invite the ‘pirate now turned policeman’ (as Ciano boasted himself to be)1 to general talks on Spain. This was put to Ciano on 2 October. The same day, the carefully drafted resolution of the League was passed. Álvarez del Vayo only agreed to the vagueness of the phrase ‘in the near future’ on the understanding that Britain and France needed ten days to see if Italy would reply amicably to the
ir invitation. But Franco now wanted more, and not fewer, ‘volunteers’. The Italian troops had proved their usefulness in the campaigns in the north. But he did want General Bastico recalled, because of his subordinate’s impertinence during the Santander campaign in going so far as to negotiate with the Basques.
Franco was at the time preoccupied with the case of Harold Dahl, a former US air force pilot, who had enlisted in the republican air force. He had been forced to bail out over nationalist territory. A court-martial there sentenced Dahl, and two Russian pilots, to death for ‘rebellion’. The US government had to exert itself, and an American colonel who had fought in Morocco by Franco’s side telegraphed to his ex-comrade in arms to appeal for clemency. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.2