Franco and the Axis Stigma

Also by David Wingeate Pike:

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LES FRANÇAIS ET LA GUERRE D’ESPAGNE

LATIN AMERICA IN NIXON’S SECOND TERM (editor)

JOURS DE GLOIRE, JOURS DE HONTE

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IN THE SERVICE OF STALIN

SPANIARDS IN THE HOLOCAUST

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ESPAÑOLES EN EL HOLOCAUSTO

MAUTHAUSEN, L’ENFER NAZI EN AUTRICHE

BETRIFFT: KZ Mauthausen, was die Archive erzählen

Franco and the Axis StigmaDavid Wingeate Pike

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Contemporary History and Politics, The American University of Paris Director of Research, American Graduate School of International Relations andDiplomacy

© David Wingeate Pike 2008

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First published 2008 byPALGRAVE MACMILLANHoundmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010Companies and representatives throughout the world

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pike, David Wingeate.Franco and the Axis stigma / David Wingeate Pike.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. World War, 1939–1945––Diplomatic history. 2. Neutrality––Spain.3. Spain––Foreign relations––Germany. 4. Germany––Foreignrelations––Spain. 5. Spain––Foreign relations––1939–1975.6. Germany––Foreign relations––1933–1945. 7. Franco, Francisco,1892–1975. I. Title.

D754.S6P55 2008940.53’2546––dc22

2008011232

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 117 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

ISBN 978-1-349-30089-1 ISBN 978-0-230-20544-4 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230205444

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-20289-4

to Charlène Quintane-Capdeville

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Contents

Introduction viii

1. The Civil War and France: Unsettled Accounts(1936–1939) 1

2. From Franco’s Victory to the Fall of France(1 April 1939–15 June 1940) 11

3. Vichy France and Britain’s Battle for Its Life( June–September 1940) 27

4. Hitler’s Quandary: South-West or East?(September 1940–June 1941) 39

5. From Barbarossa to Pearl Harbor(22 June–7 December 1941) 56

6. The War in the Mediterranean( January–November 1942) 70

7. Fortunes Reversed: Operation Torch and Italian Capitulation(November 1942–September 1943) 84

8. The Tightening of the Allied Vice: Its Effect on Spain(September 1943–June 1944) 97

9. From D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge( June–December 1944) 106

10. The Death of Hope ( January–May 1945) 113

Epilogue: Duplicity Rewarded (1945–1953) 133

Appendices 147

Notes 150

Bibliography 189

Index 203

vii

Introduction

To exactly what degree was Franco implicated in the Axis cause? Franco’sresponse, constantly repeated by his apologists, was that the SecondWorld War consisted of three separate conflicts. Firstly, a war betweenthe Axis and the Western democracies in which the role of Spain wasone of strict neutrality. Secondly, a war between the Axis and the SovietUnion in which Spain acted as a non-belligerent, sending a lone divisionas a token of the anti-communist stand of Catholic Spain. Thirdly, a warbetween Japan and the Western democracies in which Spain, having nointerests or influence in the region, maintained, once again, a perfectneutrality.

To begin with the first period, Spain was confronted with theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact. As the head of Catholic Spain, and as a self-professed neutralist, Franco had certain responsibilities. First, as a Catholic,to denounce Germany for signing any form of partnership with atheistRussia. Second, again as a Catholic, to rally to the defence of CatholicPoland in its struggle to resist the joint forces of pagan Germany andgodless Russia. Third, as a neutralist, to show an absolute neutrality inthe struggle between Nazi Germany and the Western democracies.In this first period, then, when Germany’s struggle against the SovietUnion was not yet engaged, we would not expect to find Spain tiltingthe balance in favour of the Axis. But that, in fact, is what we find. A very large part of Spain’s assistance to Dönitz in the supplying of hisU-boats in Spanish ports is provided precisely in that period when thestruggle against Communism was not engaged, or more precisely, in theperiod when Communism was not the enemy but the ally, and whenStalin is giving all the aid he can to Hitler in the hope of just keepinghim happy and away.1

In the second period Franco turns to non-belligerency, albeit claimingthe right to a tilt out of gratitude for services received and for a holycause. He offers Hitler the Blue Division. A single Spanish division mightnot count for much alongside 27 Romanian and 13 Hungarian divisions,but it is welcome nonetheless as a symbol of all Europe standing up todefend Western civilisation against the godless horde.

In the third period, Franco was being unduly modest in saying thatSpain had little national interest in South-east Asia. The Philippines,and Philippine Catholicism, were important considerations. During the

viii

Civil War, most Spaniards in the Philippines had taken a clearly pro-nationalist stance. When it came to the Japanese treatment of theirsubject Europeans, however, we find no distinction made betweenSpaniards and the rest. There was a distinction, however, between theacceptance, and even the welcome, that Spain showed the Japanese con-querors in their subjugation of the Philippines and the fierce protestsexpressed in 1945 as the Pacific War turned around.

The most visible and most dramatic contribution that Franco made tothe Axis was the sending of the Blue Division. Franco’s Axis stigma,however, does not rest primarily on this contribution, or on any othersingle contribution (submarine refuelling, deliveries of wolfram andpyrites) but rather on the myriad of little incidents, words of encour-agement and terms of abuse that reveal where Franco’s sympathies lay.Not, therefore, what he decided to do, in the circumstances, but whathe would have liked to do if the circumstances had been different andSpain was not exhausted and dependent upon certain Western supplies.Franco’s refusal to join Hitler was dictated to him by forces outside hiscontrol. The Allied power to distrain the Spanish economy, as DonaldDetwiler has pointed out, was like a loosened tourniquet which couldbe twisted tight on a moment’s notice, putting the British and Americansin a position to choke off the arteries of the Spanish economy almost atwill.2 Such was its economic and military weakness that Paul Prestonestimates that Spain could not have waged war ‘for more than a fewdays’.3

For a long period after 1945, the argument against Franco’s collusionwith the Axis rested on the assumption that Franco was deceivingthe Axis powers by seeming to comply with their wishes while, in fact,he was playing for time. Supporters of this argument naturally belittledthe value of correspondence exchanged between Franco and the Axisleaders, insisting that, on Franco’s side, it was insincere. This gave wayin time to a study of the so-called chaqueteo [turning of the coat]. Yes,ran the argument, Franco was pro-Axis in the early or middle rounds ofthe war, but he turned his coat. What this book intends to show is thatthere never was a time when Franco turned his coat. That is why Francowas the only major leader never to withdraw his diplomatic representa-tion from Vichy as long as there was a Vichy, and the only head of stateof a major country to send condolences on the death of Marshal Pétain.As for his judgment, the British ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare summed itup: ‘This was the man who at every critical moment of the war had pub-licly insulted the Allies ... . No public man within this generation hadproved himself so continuously wrong about the course of the war.’4

Introduction ix

Franco’s relations with Vichy, and his earlier relations with the FrenchThird Republic in its final two years, form an important appendage toany study of Franco’s pre-war and wartime relations with Nazi Germany.France was Spain’s only powerful neighbour, and Franco’s imperialambitions took primary aim at the French North African possessions.The relations between Franco and the Third Republic are not wellknown outside of France, and much of the material on France presentedhere is hitherto generally unknown. As for Pétain, he and Franco maynot have liked one another but they were certainly linked, not only bythe North African question but by their common concern about theResistance in France. Beyond that, Franco was deeply interested in thepost-war fate of the Vichy leaders.

The debate over the chaqueteo continued for some time and the fluc-tuations in Franco’s foreign policy gave rise to several interpretations.François Piétri, Vichy’s ambassador to Madrid, identified three stagesin that policy: from the Bordeaux Armistice up to July 1942, non-belligerency; between July 1942 and February 1944, absolute neutrality;and from February 1944, support of the Allies.5 Jules Stavnik saw fourphases: the first, from 12 August 1939 to l7 October 1940, while thePlaza de Santa Cruz was directed by Colonel Juan Beigbeder, marked thestart of German pressure on Spain; the second, from 18 October 1940 to3 September 1942, under the ministry of Ramón Serrano Súñer, was thepolicy of appeasement; the third, from 4 September 1942 to 4 August 1944,was the policy of subtle disengagement conducted by the AnglophileCount Jordana up to the day of his death; and the fourth, from 12 August1944 to 20 July 1945, under José Félix de Lequerica, was characterisedby the break in diplomatic relations with Japan on 15 April 1945, fol-lowing the massacre of Spanish nationals in the Philippines.6 This for-mula needed to include the earlier period up to 10 August 1939, duringwhich the Plaza de Santa Cruz was under Count Jordana’s first admin-istration. Like his predecessor Sangróniz and his successor Beigbeder,Jordana was too much of a conservative monarchist to satisfy thedemands of the Falange. Also overlooked was the period betweenOctober 1941 and November 1943 of ‘moral [read active] belligerency’,during which Franco’s troops were actually engaged in combat on theRussian front.

The period covering the initial policy of neutrality dates, in spite ofPiétri and Stavnik, from 4 September 1939 up to 12 June 1940 only.7 Eventhere, German documents show that Spain was colluding with Germanyas early as May 1940. A meeting of the general staff of the Luftwaffe washeld in Berlin on 4 May, to which the Spanish minister of aviation,

x Introduction

Major General Fernando Barrón y Ortiz, was invited. Colonel Kramer,the German air attaché in Madrid, reported to ReichsmarschallGoering that ‘at least one [German] submarine had been provisioned[in a Spanish port] to the knowledge of the Spanish Government. TheSpaniards permitted German weather-reconnaissance planes to flywith Spanish insignia, and the radio station at La Coruña was workingfor the Luftwaffe.’8

Once the policy of non-belligerency was announced (12 June 1940),we enter the world of supposed mystery and bluff in which Franco isdoing just enough to prevent Hitler from losing patience and invadingSpain. Franco’s apologist José María Doussinague wrote that ‘all ofSpain’s attention was focused on giving Germany the fullest assuranceof her friendship, so that Germany could at no point reproach us foranything. Her great victories were played up in the press and on theradio ... while her representatives received the most lavish treatment.’9

According to this formula, then, Franco was merely bluffing every timehe launched a tirade against the Allies.

The British ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare, on the other hand, wrote ofhis conviction (after listening to several of Franco’s speeches) that theCaudillo ‘not only understood what he was saying but was speakingwith the set purpose of ingratiating himself with Hitler’. As for hismotives, Hoare suggested that they were a mix of three ingredients: a desire to smooth the path that led to the Axis; a hope of escape bothfrom being drawn into the wolf pack and being devoured by it; and a determination to show his own people that he was, no less than theFührer and the Duce, a freewheeling dictator who could say whateverhe liked.10 It was, Hoare added, the growing hostility of the Spanishpeople to war, even in June 1940 when the risk seemed smallest, thatmade the Caudillo hesitate.11 Stavnik, on the other hand, by selectingonly the second ingredient in Hoare’s mixture,12 proposed that Francowanted to avoid Spain’s entry into the war, and that this desire wasprompted by his secret pro-Allied sentiments. Stavnik even ascribed theopposite viewpoint to the so-called ‘black legend’, and suggested thatthe decisive operations of the Second World War, such as the landingsin North Africa, would have been more difficult had it not been for thecomportment of Franco.13

What remains to be seen, however, are the true feelings behind thiscomportment. Did the tirades against the Allies, for example, and thepaeans to Nazi Germany in Franco’s controlled press end long beforethe war’s end, or did they continue to the very close? Piétri made the bestcase for Franco by arguing that the first step of Spanish diplomacy in

Introduction xi

favour of the Allies went as far back as July 1942.14 Guy Hermet datedthe chaqueteo only from 1 October,15 Dante Puzzo from 3 October,16

and Pierre Vilar from 26 November, when Count Jordana visitedLisbon.17 Meanwhile in August 1942, Franco had recreated the Cortes,but the importance of this ‘democratic’ action is reduced when oneremembers that even Hitler had maintained some form of Reichstag.Serrano Súñer himself denies in his memoirs that his resignation, on 2 September 1942, marked the transition. He was removed, he says,for purely domestic reasons, including his extramarital relationships towhich Doña Carmen de Franco was passionately opposed. Súñer pointsout, accurately, that the Axis at that time had not yet suffered a defeat(other than the Battle of Britain), that both El Alamein and Stalingradwere ahead, that the situation for the Allies worldwide had never lookedworse and that the entire Spanish Cabinet was still convinced of a finalvictory of the Axis.18

This statement by Serrano Súñer, showing that not even his resig-nation marked the transition in Spain’s policy, is supported by othertestimony. The return to the foreign ministry of the supposedlyAnglophile Count Jordana might seem to presage an abrupt change inFranco’s policy, but the facts are there to show that Jordana collabo-rated equally with the Axis cause. Even his visit to Lisbon, which forVilar signalled the moment of the chaqueteo, did not mark the change,for it was under the cloak of this visit that Hitler signed a secret agree-ment with Hitler, under which Germany would defend Spain and itspossessions against any Allied incursion.19 At the moment that Francosigned this agreement, the British had just taken possession, on8 October 1942, of two air bases in the Azores, in accordance with anAnglo-Portuguese agreement. This agreement naturally exposedPortugal to the risk of reprisal on the part of the Axis. Douglas Wheelerhas shown, by his research in the Portuguese archives, that Salazargenuinely feared such reprisals, and clauses were added to the AzoresAgreement under which Britain would come to Portugal’s support inthe event that Portugal was invaded by Spain, or by German forcesoperating through Spain. Using the American archives, CharlesHalstead shows that Jordana gave significant help, even after that, tothe Axis cause.

Instead of searching for the key to any chaqueteo, this book faces upto the fact that there never was a time when Franco abandoned hisadmiration for the Axis cause. In its closing chapter, it asks whetherFranco, even in 1945, was still hedging his bets. Was it always with

xii Introduction

Franco a question of a bet? Was it similar to the pari [wager] of Pascal,with a new formulation:

— If I wager on Hitler’s victory and he loses, I will be at the mercy ofhis democratic enemies, whose ideology I despise but whoseconcept of compassion and hatred of Communism will work inmy favour.

— If I wager against his victory and he loses, I have lost nothing butgained nothing.

— If I wager on his victory and he wins, my gain surely cannot bedenied.

— If I wager against his victory and he wins, my loss is infinite.

In this re-examination of where Franco really stood, two obviousopportunities are brought into play. The first are the German archives,the second Franco’s press. In researching the German records, there aretwo obvious targets. The Blue Division received wide praise in Spainduring the war, at least at the time it marched off and in its earlyengagements on the Russian front, but how did the Wehrmacht reporton its performance? The state of relations between the German highcommand and the Blue Division has already been addressed to someextent by Raymond Proctor, who has pointed out, alongside theDivision’s exploits in the field, some problems in its military disci-pline.20 What the Wehrmacht documents show is a breakdown of disci-pline so extreme that, by 1943, not only the division’s corpscommander but even its army and army-group superiors were alerted tothe situation and eager to prevent the Blue Division from taking uppositions in their field of operations.

A second area of research in unexamined documents is moreimportant and more fruitful: the records of the German navy regardingthe supply of its submarines in Spanish ports. The threat from the U-boats was more agonising to Churchill than any other danger hefaced. Hitler always gave preference to U-boats over capital ships andhe made this clear on 30 January 1943, when Dönitz was made headof the Kriegsmarine and his superior Raeder was shunted off to serveinnocuously as inspector of the fleet. Fortunately, the German navalrecords remain almost intact. Although Hitler ordered the destructionof all records, and the Luftwaffe records were almost totally destroyed,Dönitz ordered the Kriegsmarine not to destroy the navy records on thegrounds that the navy had done no wrong and had nothing to hide.

Introduction xiii

(Nüremberg showed that to be a serious miscalculation.) The Germannavy records were subsequently classified and bound in volumes by theBritish admiralty and, in 1963, they were returned to the FederalRepublic of Germany. These archives, available in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, bear the cover ‘Admiralty RecordOffice, captured Enemy Documents’ and bear the item numbers andpage numbers of the Admiralty.

The second source of primary information for this book is the Spanishpress. It is in the nature of a totalitarian state—as Spain was between1939 and 1945—that its press, totally controlled, serves as mirror to theregime, allowing us a glimpse into its inner thoughts that might welldiffer from what its diplomatic statements claim. In examining thispress, emphasis has been given to those half-dozen critical moments inthe unfolding of the conflict. The reader may be surprised to find littledifference in viewpoint or intensity of argument between the Falangepress led by Arriba, the monarchist press led by ABC, the military pressled by Alcázar and the Catholic press led by Ya. It might even be saidthat they vie with one another in their praise of Hitler’s triumphs, theiradulation of Franco’s speeches, and their dismay over Hitler’s adversi-ties. Here it should be remembered that Spain’s Ley de la Prensa [presslaw] of 22 April 1938, introduced by Ramón Serrano Súñer, was basedon the Italian model that not only ended the independence of the pressbut set out to fuse all right-wing ideologies (Catholic, monarchist, tra-ditionalist, Falangist) into a single voice. That voice, as the Americanambassador put it, sounded remarkably German, and for cause. Fromthe time that Hans Lazar arrived in Burgos in September 1938 to setup his office in the German embassy—and to head the Spanish office ofTransocean, the Nazi propaganda machine controlled by Paul KarlSchmidt in the Wilhelmstrasse—vast quantities of propaganda, not onlyfrom Berlin but also later from Tokyo, were poured into the Spanishnews agency known as EFE which then provided food to the entireSpanish press. It was fitting that the Spanish agency, having no life of its own, should take the name of EFE whose acronym stood fornothing.

The question asked so many times about the press—whether it accu-rately represents public opinion—can be asked again in the case ofFranco’s press. It is reasonable to reply that any newspaper’s editorialposition is as much the product of its readers’ views as it is the formulatorof their views. An interesting comment on Spanish public opinion wasmade on French television in 1994 when José Luis de Vilallonga,21 whohad fought for Franco in the Civil War and remained in his camp

xiv Introduction

throughout the world war, was asked about public opinion during thatperiod. He replied that 80 per cent of Spaniards were Germanophiles. Hewas then asked to what extent this large majority believed that Hitlerwould win the war. He replied that ‘up to the last moment they believedin the victory of Germany’, at which point his French interviewerremarked, ‘Unlike Vichy.’ ‘Spaniards remained Germanophile,’ concludedVilallonga, ‘there were only a few thousand Anglophiles.’22

Franco’s apologists are today a shrinking race, but they do not give upeasily in their attempts to deny the evidence. It is hoped that the newrevelations contained in this book will lift the debate to a higher level.

In compiling this book, I wish to express my thanks to the followingpersons and institutions. In Germany, to Manfred Kehrig and KlausMeyer of the Bundesarchiv–Militärarchiv, and Oberst Dr Rohde of theMilitärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, both in Freiburg-im-Breisgau;in France, to certain personnel in the Bibliothèque de DocumentationInternationale Contemporaine and the Bibliotheque Nationale; in Spain,to all the personnel encountered in the Biblioteca Nacional; and inEngland, and in a class of his own, to Paul Preston, Professor ofInternational History at the London School of Economics. Finally, toCarol Lynn Tjernell, Gergana Hristova, and Irina Massovets, for theirvaluable help in the research and preparation of this work.

David Wingeate PikeParis, 21 September 2007

Introduction xv

Figure 1 Spanish Foreign Minister Serrano Súñer, Franco and Mussolini convene inBordighera, 12 February 1941.Source: Roger Viollet/Getty Images. Photographer: LAPI/Contributor.

Figure 2 Madrid, Palacio de Oriente, 20 February 1941. The Japanese AmbassadorYakichiro Suma presents his credentials to the Chief of State, Francisco Franco.Source: EFE. Photographer: Miguel Cortés.

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