The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (80 page)

Emil Shteingold, the Latvian International Brigader, described the largest, Saint-Cyprien, where up to 90,000 men were herded. ‘Imagine a gloomy sandy spit of land with no vegetation, which was about two kilometres long, and about 400–500 metres wide. It was washed by the Mediterranean Sea on one side and ended up in a swamp on the other. This area was fenced by barbed wire and divided into square corrals. Machine-guns were placed along the perimeter of the camp. A latrine was erected on the beach, which consisted of a long log fixed on piles, under which the tide flowed back and forth. This was how we were welcomed by republican France with its socialist government. As a sign of gratitude for this warm welcome, we decided to call the latrine area “The Daladier Boulevard”…The sand looked dry, but it was only dry on the surface. We had to sleep out on it in groups of five to ten men. Some of the greatcoats and blankets we put underneath, and with other coats and blankets we covered ourselves. It was not a good idea to turn from one side to another, as the wet side would freeze in the cold wind, and this could lead to pneumonia…Wounded and sick men were brought here, too. The mortality was very high, it reached 100 people every day.’
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The other camps in the south were fairly similar and new ones opened up. In April, Basques, aviators and International Brigaders were transferred to Gurs. Barcare`s was slightly better, because the people sent there had indicated their willingness to be repatriated to Spain. The much smaller Bram, near Carcassone, was one of the very few good ones. It even had a sanatorium of 80 beds. In an attempt to improve the wretched conditions in the large camps, the French authorities tried to move some of their inmates to the initial sorting camps of Arles and Prats de Mollo in the mountains, but they had to stop the practice because too many died literally of cold.
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The camp of Vernet-les-Bains, situated between Saverdun and Foix, was a punishment camp from the First World War cut off from the outside world. About 50 hectares in area, and divided into three sections all surrounded by barbed-wire fences, it held those republicans the French authorities considered ‘a danger to public safety’, among them the survivors of the 26th Division, the old Durruti column and 150 International Brigaders segregated in a sector known as the ‘leper colony’. Under the Vichy government the camp passed to the Germans, who rebuilt it according to their own concentration camp guidelines. Yet Arthur Koestler wrote that ‘from a point of view of food, installations and hygiene, Vernet was worse than a Nazi concentration camp’.
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In such conditions it was predictable that many thousands of refugees should have died. Suspected male political activists in other camps were transferred to the Templar castle of Collioure and women militants to the camp of Rieucros.

The French authorities had never prepared for such an influx, but even when the scale of the human disaster was apparent, they were very slow and reluctant to move. This was not entirely surprising since the cost of looking after so many refugees rose to seven million francs a day. The right-wing press constantly attacked Daladier’s government for having allowed in so many left-wingers and
Candide
complained about feeding them.
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The French authorities encouraged refugees to return to Spain and surrender themselves to the nationalists. Only those with relations in France and who were prepared to sign a form that they would never ask for state aid were allowed out of the camps. The alternatives, apart from returning to Spain, were re-emigration to the New World or any other country that would accept them; or to ‘volunteer’ for the French Foreign Legion or the labour battalions, which were being used on improving fortifications and other projects as the threat of war increased.
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By the end of 1939 between 140,000 and 180,000 had decided to go back to Spain and take their chances.
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Some 300,000 chose exile in France, in other European countries or in Latin America. The Mexican government of President Lázaro Cárdenas had already welcomed children evacuated from the republican zone. Thousands more of all ages were to follow in different waves, including José Giral and General Miaja. Some went to Chile, then under a popular front government, others to Dominica and then on to Venezuela and Cuba. Argentina allowed in only 2,500, giving priority to Basques. In Europe Belgium took 5,000, but Britain restricted immigration to only a few hundred. The Soviet Union took no more than 3,000 and most of those were senior members of the Spanish Communist Party. Of the 50,000 to 60,000 who stayed in France, most were enrolled in Companies of Foreign Workers, a semi-militarized organization, which put them to work in the mines, war industry or in agriculture.
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Republican leaders seldom suffered the same rigours and frustrations of the ordinary exiles. Azaña, badly stricken with heart disease, died at Montauban on 4 November 1940. Juan Negrín and Indalecio Prieto, the former friends who had become bitter enemies, continued their struggle in France. Although Negrín had summoned a meeting of the permanent delegation of the Cortes in Paris on 31 March 1939, Prieto organized another on 27 July to dissolve formally the government of the Republic, but Negrín refused to accept the vote.

The confrontation became increasingly bitter when Prieto and the permanent delegation set up the JARE, the Council for Aid to Spanish Republicans.
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Prieto demanded that Negrín hand over control of the valuables and currency which the republican government held in Europe and North America, among them the famous ‘treasure’ of the yacht Vita. Negrín had allocated this to his own organization, the SERE, the Service of Evacuation for Spanish Republicans. The treasure–jewels, bonds and other valuables worth some $300 million–came from the confiscations ordered against nationalist supporters by the People’s Tribunal of Civil Responsibilities. It was stored on the
Vita
, which had been Alfonso XIII’s private yacht and was guarded by a detachment of Negrín’s
carabineros
.

The
Vita
sailed from le Havre for Mexico and reached Veracruz a few days earlier than expected. As a result, Dr José Puche, a confidant of Negrín’s, was not at the dockside to take charge of the contents. Enrique Puente, the commander of the
carabineros
, telephoned Prieto to ask him what he should do and Prieto seized the whole consignment with the approval of President Cárdenas. The treasure was taken to Mexico City under the control of the JARE, and thus Prieto made off with it from under the noses of Negrín and the communists.

Yet even after this blow, Negrín and his associates never exactly found themselves in a state of poverty. He personally controlled a trust made up of funds confiscated under his government and was able to buy a large country house near London where he lived until 1945, providing lodgings there for up to a dozen republican politicians. Other leaders were not nearly so fortunate. Once France was occupied by German troops in the summer of 1940, General Franco asked Marshal Pétain to extradite 3,617 republican leaders. The Vichy regime agreed to very few, but it did hand over to the Gestapo seven leaders, including the president of the Generalitat, Lluis Companys; Joan Peiró, the former anarchist minister; Francisco Cruz Salido and Julian Zugazagoitia. These four were executed, the other three sentenced to life imprisonment. Largo Caballero was captured by the Gestapo and, after being interrogated in Berlin, was sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. He was barely alive at the liberation in 1945 and died soon afterwards.

Foreign communists in France followed Comintern orders and were obliged to remain silent when the Nazi–Soviet pact was signed in August. Those left in Spain tried to set up underground organizations, but the Franquist secret police managed to smash one network after another, usually as the result of extracting names under torture.

The Second World War was to put Franco’s statecraft to its greatest challenge. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Franco issued a decree imposing ‘the strictest neutrality on Spanish subjects’. Yet two months later, on 31 October, he summoned the Junta de Defensa Nacional to announce that he had decided on an ambitious plan to rearm the forces and increase the army to 150 divisions through conscription. This would mean a target of two million men under arms. He ordered the general staff to prepare to close the Straits of Gibraltar by concentrating artillery on the coast there. He also wanted them to reinforce the army in Morocco in readiness to invade the much larger French zone. The navy was to prepare a blockade of French maritime traffic in the Mediterranean, including their North African ports and to interrupt British shipping, if necessary by blockading the Portuguese coast as well.
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Spanish coasts and territorial waters were put at the disposal of the German Kriegsmarine, which apart from its base in Cádiz, was to resupply 21 submarines from Vigo. Tankers and supply ships would come and go replenishing the U-boats. Italian ships and submarines, watching the Straits of Gibraltar, routinely used Spanish territorial waters, both on the Mediterranean and Atlantic sides.
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In April 1940 Mussolini decided to enter the war on the German side. On 12 June, during the Fall of France, Franco changed from neutrality to a state of ‘non-belligerency’. Forty-eight hours later he ordered the occupation of Tangier. That same day, in a meeting with the German ambassador von Stohrer, he passed a message to Hitler expressing his desire to enter the war if the Führer had need of him. In mid July he sent General Vigón to see Hitler and Ribbentrop, then at the Chaâteau de Acoz in Belgium, to communicate his desire to enter the war on the side of the Axis. He wanted to negotiate the conditions. As well as arms, fuel, ammunition and food, he wanted in compensation: ‘Morocco, Oran, the Sahara as far as the twentieth parallel, and the coastal zone of Guinea as far as the Niger delta’.
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The Nazis, stupefied at the price Franco put on entering the war, showed little enthusiasm, but a few days later Hitler sent a message via Richthofen that he should prepare to collaborate in an imminent operation against Gibraltar, which would coincide with Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain. Richthofen and Vigón met to co-ordinate plans of attack, but on 31 July Sealion was suspended because Admiral Raeder warned the Führer that the Kriegsmarine could not guarantee success.

Hitler’s attention soon started to turn towards his ultimate ambition, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Offering Spain as a bastion for the Axis in the Atlantic, Franco wrote to Mussolini on 15 August, asking him to intercede with Hitler to persuade him to agree to his conditions so that Spain could enter the war ‘at the favourable moment’. But Hitler did not want to give Franco power over the western Mediterranean, since the sea was to be maintained as the preserve of Italy.
¹⁴

Hitler decided to have a private meeting with Franco on 23 October at Hendaye on the French frontier. Unfortunately, Franco was travelling by the Spanish railway system and arrived late, which deeply irritated the Nazi leader. Hitler again refused to give in to Franco’s claims over the French empire in North Africa. He was due to see Marshal Pétain the following day and wanted to consolidate the Vichy regime’s collaboration. In the end a protocol was drawn up stating that Franco would enter the war when requested, that Gibraltar would be given to Spain and vague affirmations were made about compensating him with some undefined African territories at a later date.

In December Hitler sent Canaris to see Franco to tell him that the Wehrmacht was preparing a force of fifteen divisions to seize Gibraltar in Operation Felix. Franco expressed his concern that the British would reply by attacking the Canary Islands and demanded guarantees. Hitler was furious when he heard of Franco’s ‘treason’ to the agreement made in Hendaye. On 6 February 1941 Hitler sent Franco another letter, polite but imperative. This crossed with a memorandum from Franco asking for so much artillery, spare parts, signals equipment, trucks, locomotives and wagons, that German civil servants considered the list beyond the capacity of Germany.
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Hitler then wrote to Mussolini asking him to arrange things with Franco, thinking that the ‘Latin charlatans’ would understand each other.

Mussolini had a meeting with Franco on 12 February in the Villa Margherita at Bordighera. Serrano Suñer, now minister for foreign affairs, was also present. Franco said that he was afraid of entering the war too late and complained that the Germans were so slow giving him the weapons that he needed. Mussolini told Hitler of the results of the meeting and recommended that Franco should not be pushed any further. It is certainly possible that Mussolini did not want Franco as a rival in the Mediterranean.
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On their return to Madrid Serrano Suñer, who had recently met Hitler and had held five meetings with Ribbentrop, felt himself to be the man of the moment. But he failed to realize how much he was hated by the Spanish generals and by the ‘old shirts’ of the Falange. In recent months the British secret service had been paying large bribes to the more monarchist and religious generals to encourage them to oppose Franco and his brother-in-law. From the middle of 1940 to the end of 1941 some thirty generals between them had received $13 million and continued to be given more. Aranda alone was given $2 million in 1942. The financial arrangements were made by the great smuggler, Juan March, who had now allied himself with the British.
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General Vigón had a private interview with the Caudillo in which he warned him of the deep resentment of generals at the enormous power which Serrano Suñer had accumulated, and added that rumours were running around Spain saying that it was his brother-in-law who controlled everything.