Spain and the Great Powers in the Twentieth Century

Much has been made of the role the Nazi regime supposedly played in the preparations for the uprising or pronunciamiento that took place on 17/18 July 1936.4 The final verdict, however, has to be that it was much ado about very little. It has been clearly demonstrated that, until the outbreak of the conflict, Spain rarely figured in Hitlers speeches and publications. Moreover, there is no indication that he intended to get involved in rightwing subversive activities in the country. Convincing evidence implicating the Nazi regime in the preparatory activities of the rebels has not emerged. This is not to say that contacts between individual Germans and the conspirators did not exist. However, such contacts are not sufficient evidence to indicate some sinister involvement of the Nazi regime.

From the Spanish side, the decisive contact had not been the various emissaries to Rome but Franco, who, in persuading Luccardi and De Rossi that he controlled the rebel forces and that he was going to win, secured Mussolinis early support for himself. Of equal importance for the Duce were the reports from his diplomats in Paris and Moscow. After the point of no return, all the feedback from London reinforced the assumption that the British would do nothing to impede Italian help for Franco. Even as the first Italian aircraft were on their way to Morocco, the Italian chargé daffaires in London, Leonardo Vitetti, reported on the widespread sympathy to be found within the highest reaches of the Conservative Party for the Spanish rebels and for Italian Fascism. Vitettis conclusions derived from conversations with Conservative MPs, Captain David Margesson, the Conservative Leader of the House, with senior Tories at the Carlton Club and with representatives of the Rothermere press. Tory Members of Parliament told him of their conviction that the events in Spain were the direct consequence of subversive Soviet propaganda and of their anxiety to see the Spanish left crushed. The right-wing Leo Amery, who had been First Lord of the Admiralty in the early 1920s, had told him that the Spanish war raised the problem of the defence of Europe against the threat of bolshevism. Ciano was delighted and encouraged further contacts. Vitetti reported that British support for French proposals for non-intervention was based entirely on the belief that it was a useful device for preventing French help to the Spanish Republic.

The localized Spanish conflict did not need to become the catalyst for the European war, which broke out subsequently for other reasons. Nevertheless, although this policy cauterized the worst effects of the Spanish conflict on the European scenario, it could not avoid at least three serious consequences that would later be of enormous importance: the final crystallization of the Italo-German Axis; a crippling division within the Franco-British entente; and the growing inclination of the Soviet Union towards a policy of expectant isolationism. Indeed, the war in Spain had repeatedly shown the practical incompatibility between the Franco-British policy of appeasement and the Soviet policy of collective security. The former required absolute support for the policy of non-intervention, while the latter implied a defence of the Republican cause. Everything seemed to indicate that the Republic would not be the only victim of this tragic incompatibility and the resulting failure of the creation of a broad diplomatic and military front against the expansionism of the Axis powers.

There is no doubt that the international context essentially determined, directly and crucially, both the course of the war in Spain and its final outcome. Without the consistent military, diplomatic and financial support given by Hitler and Mussolini, it is highly unlikely that the side led by Franco would have been able to achieve such an absolute and unconditional victory. Without the suffocating embargo imposed by the non-intervention policy and the inhibition of the Western powers, with its serious effect on military capacity and moral strength, it is highly unlikely that the Republic would have suffered an internal collapse and a military defeat of such proportions.

During March, in violation of his Munich commitments, Hitler occupied what remained of Czechoslovakian territory under the astonished and powerless gaze of France and Britain; a month later, Italy annexed Albania, clearly violating her guarantees to Britain over the status quo in the Mediterranean; in themeantime, the Soviet Union had withdrawn into distrustful isolationism, sizing up the possibility of an alternative to the Franco-British entente through a non-aggression pact with Germany. In this sense, one simple chronological fact is very revealing: scarcely five months after the end of the Civil War in Spain, the European war broke out, an event which had been so laboriously avoided (or rather, postponed) by the collective nonintervention policy.

The resolution of the Czech crisis in September 1938 with the Munich Agreement destroyed Republican expectations because it clearly indicated that if the Western powers did not struggle for Czechoslovakia, they would not do so for Spain. This gloomy international horizon radically accelerated the political disintegration of the Republic, accentuating the latent confrontation between those supporting a continuation of the resistance and those enticed by the possibility of negotiating surrender with Franco and with the support of the Western powers. This situation enabled the triumphant Francoist advance on Catalonia, initiated in December 1938, and led to the complete collapse of Republican military
resistance. Towards the end of March 1939, following brief scenes of internal struggle within the governments own ranks, Francos troops occupied all Spain without encountering resistance and thus ended the Civil War with total and unconditional victory.