The Spanish Civil War (63 page)

The Germans in Spain continued to number 7,000. All were paid only by Berlin.

On the last day of 1936, the American consul-general in Barcelona estimated that 20,000 foreign volunteers for the republic had arrived by rail from France since October, 4,000 having passed through Barcelona and Albacete between Christmas and New Year’s Eve,
⁵
while in Moscow, on 1 January 1937, seventeen Russian pilots were named ‘heroes of the Soviet Union’ for ‘difficult government tasks’—
that is, for Spanish service.
¹
Thus war was carrying more and more men into Spain from all sides.

The first organized group of ninety-six Americans to volunteer for republican Spain left New York on 26 December.
²
It was an offence under American law for an American to enter the army of another state. But that did not apply to Americans who volunteered abroad; only to those who were recruited on American soil. From 11 January, US passports were normally marked ‘Not valid for Spain’.
³
That made little difference since, from Paris onwards, the volunteers could be looked after by the Brigades’ organization. In fact, no prosecutions were ever made of US citizens volunteering for the republic.

The American ‘moral embargo’ on the sale of war material to Spain had been generally effective although some US material reached Spain through Mexico. On 28 December, Robert Cuse (really Kuze), a nationalized Latvian of the so-called Vimalert Company of Jersey City (probably an employee of the Russian government), applied for a licence to ship $2,775,000 worth of aeroplanes, aircraft engines and other parts to the Spanish government.
⁴
The state department had to grant the licence, but regretted that an American firm had insisted on
its legal rights against the government’s policy. Rightly fearing that the US customs might quickly act to prevent shipment at all, Cuse began immediately to load his cargo onto the Spanish merchant ship
Mar Cantábrico.
The President, meantime, arranged that Senator Pittman and Representative McReynolds should introduce resolutions to ban shipments of arms to Spain into the two Houses of Congress when they reassembled on 6 January.
¹

On that day, in the Senate, only Senator Nye opposed the resolution. He argued that the embargo was unfair, since it harmed the republic more than it did the nationalists. Several members of the Lower House also criticized it. But the Senate passed the new law by 81 to 0 and the House of Representatives by 406 to 1. The dissentient, Representative Bernard, declared the act to be sham neutrality, since its effect was ‘to choke off democratic Spain from its legitimate international rights at a time when it was being assailed by the fascist hordes’.
²
A technical error in the Senate, however, prevented the resolution from becoming law until the 8th, and, on the 7th, the
Mar Cantábrico,
though with only part of Cuse’s cargo, left New York in haste.

This was not the end of the adventure. Two American pilots, Bert Acosta and Gordon Berry, who had flown for the republic in the autumn at the high fees then offered, claimed that they were owed $1,200 for their services. They persuaded the coastguard to serve a writ on the captain of the
Mar Cantábrico
in Long Island Sound.
³
But the writ turned out to apply only to the property of Prieto. So, accompanied by a coastguard cutter and aeroplane as far as the three-mile limit (in case the arms embargo should become law quicker than was expected), the
Mar Cantábrico
set off for Vera Cruz in Mexico, where she picked up a further cargo and sailed for Spain. Although then disguised as a British ship, the vessel was captured by the nationalist
cruiser
Canarias
in the Bay of Biscay and the material on board commandeered. The Spaniards among the crew and five Mexican passengers were executed.
¹

Franco announced that, over the Embargo Act, President Roosevelt had behaved like a ‘true gentleman’. Germany also praised the Act. American communists protested, as did many liberal intellectuals in the United States. The Act did not cover oil. The President was begged by liberals to declare that, because of the presence of so many foreign troops in Spain, a state of war existed. Therefore, the liberals urged, the Neutrality Act of 1935 should be made to apply—so preventing any export of war material to Germany and Italy. Roosevelt was persuaded by Cordell Hull that such a declaration might actually increase the likelihood of general war. He, therefore, actually refrained from this step.
²
Some American equipment did reach Spain, however, through both Germany and Russia; for example, the T-26 tank had a 40-millimetre gun on it which was, to begin with, made in the US and sold to Russia.
³
Cuse’s open challenge to the US government also made things difficult for others in North America (such as the republican ambassador to Mexico, Félix Gordón Ordás) to find arms in the US more secretly.
⁴

On 5 January, Portugal, and on 7 January, Germany and Italy, answered the Anglo-French proposal on volunteers. (Russia had replied in the affirmative on 27 December.) The German note apparently was drafted by Hitler. What was the point of bypassing the Non-Intervention Committee? Was it not unfair to make such a proposal now, when the republican side was so well supplied with foreign volunteers? But Germany would cooperate, provided that the plan was effectively controlled.
⁵
Eden, therefore, proposed to the British cabinet that they should offer the services of the Navy to supervise harbours round the Spanish coast, and be given rights to search. Baldwin,
who before the discussion had approved Eden’s idea, gave him no support; Hoare, First Lord of the Admiralty, criticized Eden, saying, ‘We are getting to a point when, as a nation, we are trying to stop General Franco from winning’. He made ‘every kind of technical argument’ to invalidate Eden’s plan: the Spanish coast was too long; too many ships would be needed; and the naval reserve would have to be called up. Other ministers took the same position, and the cabinet only gave authority for Eden to go ahead with an international, not a British, non-intervention plan. What Eden described as ‘a truncated proposal’, along these lines, was dispatched on 10 January.
¹
Thus a good chance of a real non-intervention control was lost. From a paper circulated to the cabinet on 8 January, it became evident that Eden had come to see that ‘The character of the future government of Spain has now become less important to the peace of Europe than that the dictators should not be victorious’.
²

Germany, having seemed to be leaving the affairs of Spain to Italy, suddenly took provocatory action. The German vessel
Palos
had been released after its seizure by the navy of the republic on 27 December, but one Spaniard on board was retained, along with a cargo of celluloid and telephones, on the ground that it was war material. Germany’s demand for the release of the man and the material was not accepted. Neurath agreed to threaten ‘sterner measures’ if the demand were not immediately complied with. When it was not, three republican merchant ships were captured and two of them handed over to the nationalists. The idea of a bombardment of a port was kept for future use.

Another crisis followed. The French government heard, on 7 January, that three hundred Germans had landed in Spanish Morocco. The head of the Quai d’Orsay, Alexis Léger, reminded Welczeck, the German ambassador in Paris, of the Franco-Spanish Moroccan Agreement of 1912, forbidding the fortification of either Spanish or French Morocco against each other. Welczeck denied that there could be German troops in Spanish Morocco. The French press, meantime, became excited. The head of the Foreign Office in London, Vansittart,
pledged British support to France if the reports should prove correct. The next day, French troops concentrated along the border of Spanish Morocco. Faupel reported to Neurath that there was a German unit in Melilla—a Spanish possession to which the Moroccan agreement did not apply—but nowhere else. Hitler, meantime, summoned François-Poncet and told him that Germany had no territorial ambitions in Spanish territory. The statement was given to the press, and the crisis died down. Colonel Beigbeder, now acting high commissioner in Morocco (in Orgaz’s absence), told the French consul at Tetuán that, in fact, the Italians, not the Germans, ‘were trying, under every pretext, to establish themselves in Spanish Morocco: they offered in profusion all that one could desire … he had refused’. He also said that, while some Germans had passed through Morocco, there were none there permanently, and none would be.
¹
Beigbeder was an honest man and the French believed him. The incident thus passed into history as one more war scare, easily created and easily damped, in the chain of anxiety which destroyed the nerves of France between 1918 and 1939.
²

But Morocco was playing a strange part in the civil war. Moroccan troops guarded General Franco, perhaps 50,000 Moroccan volunteers had been inspired, or cajoled, by Beigbeder to support the rising, yet negotiations had been begun between the republic and Moroccan nationalist leaders to bargain the independence of the protectorate in return for an end of their help for Franco. Before 18 July 1936, a ‘committee of Moroccan nationalist action’ had sent a delegation to warn Madrid of what was being planned by officers in the Army of Africa; but the government of Casares Quiroga neglected this, with every other warning.
³
After the rising, the same committee said that it would help to ‘save democracy in Spain’, providing that the republic would proclaim her support for the independence of Morocco from both France and Spain. Other demands were made such as that Spain should give arms to the nationalists and that France should embark on all necessary reforms in the sultanate. Abdel Kjalak Torres, leader of the reformist party, came to Barcelona in the autumn of 1936 to confirm the alliance. The Catalans were interested, but Largo Caballero
rejected the idea, for fear of making matters difficult for Blum.
¹
For Herriot, the French minister of the colonies, ‘threatened terrible acts, if the republic were to give its support for such an enterprise which, in his opinion, was an act of madness’. Largo Caballero then merely offered 40 million pesetas to Abdel Kjalak Torres’s committee to make propaganda for Spanish democracy, undertaking ‘to behave well’ in Morocco when they won. The Moroccans rejected this idea, but maintained relations with the Catalans.

Later, however, the republican government did take steps to try and stir up Morocco against Franco. For example, on 19 February 1937, they proposed to Britain and France concessions in Morocco favourable to both countries (perhaps an assignment of all Spanish Morocco to France) if they would change their minds over non-intervention.
²
Later still, Carlos Baráibar, by then Largo’s under-secretary of state for war, would simply offer the Moroccans money to start a rebellion against Franco: they refused.
³

On 14 January, the head of the German foreign ministry, Weizsäcker, was telling a member of Ribbentrop’s private information service that ‘the Spanish adventure is to be abandoned. It is only a question of drawing Germany out of the affair gracefully,’ he added.
⁴
Yet Göring admitted the same day that Germany would never tolerate ‘a Red Spain’.
⁵

Amid these conflicting attitudes, Göring, Mussolini, and Ciano met on 20 January, in Rome. They agreed that, now that Franco was ‘amply supplied’, Germany and Italy could support the Anglo-French plan to prevent volunteers entering Spain. The last military aid should be dispatched by 31 January. They also agreed that the civil war should under no circumstances be allowed to lead to world war. Schmidt, interpreter for Göring at this meeting, observed that both Germans and Italians spoke of their forces in Spain as if they were genuine volunteers—even to each other.
⁶
Weizsäcker noted: ‘Germany’s goal, as well
as Italy’s, is in the first instance a negative one. We do not want a communist Spain.’
¹

Russian aid was also aimed at preventing republican defeat. The intervention of forces large enough to ensure victory for either side in 1937 would have risked a general European war. Nobody desired such a war as a result of the conflict in Spain.

In fact, the Non-Intervention Committee was soon to achieve its own first real victory. On 28 January, General Faupel in Salamanca was told by the German foreign ministry that Germany desired ‘as effective a control as possible to cut off Spain from supplies after it is established’.
²
This was soon agreed. There would be international observers on the non-Spanish side of Spanish frontiers, and on the ships of the non-intervention countries going to Spain. There would also be warships patrolling Spanish waters. Ribbentrop was instructed not to make air control a condition of acceptance of the control plan—for fear of ruining the prospects of agreement.
³
Grandi, too, was told by Ciano to be ‘positive’, since Italian shipments to Spain had ceased.
⁴
The stumbling-block was Portugal, who refused, for reasons of ‘sovereignty’, to accept international observers on her side of the Spanish frontier. Russia then said that she wished to participate in the naval patrol. She was offered an area off north Spain. Maisky suggested the east coast. That idea was rejected by Germany and Italy (who had been allocated that zone) since they did not desire the Russian navy in the Mediterranean. Portugal agreed to accept on her territory a number of British observers attached to the British Embassy in Lisbon, who would not be recognized as ‘international controllers’, and Russia, who anyway had very few ships to spare, agreed in the end not to insist on participating in the naval control. Perhaps she was persuaded to this conciliatory action by the capture just off Barcelona by nationalists of a large cargo from Odessa in the old transatlantic liner, the
Marqués de Comillas.
The booty was enormous.