The Dark Valley by Piers Brendon

Author:Piers Brendon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307428370
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

XVI

FRANCO’S VICTORY

THE governments in London, Paris and Washington saw the defence of Madrid in a very different light, and they were determined not to become embroiled in war on account of Spain. Their cautious, calculating attitude towards the Iberian struggle contrasts strikingly with the bold idealism of those whose spirits, as Louis MacNeice wrote, found “their frontier on the Spanish front.”1 The democracies did not accept Radio Madrid’s claim that the Spanish capital was “the universal frontier that separates liberty and slavery.”2 Instead they reckoned that the opposing forces stood for different forms of tyranny. Of course Baldwin’s followers tended to be Francisco Franco–phile—much was made in Britain of the General’s “praiseworthy golf handicap”3—whereas Blum’s supported the Spanish Popular Front. Most British Conservatives, although less extreme than the French Right, regarded the civil war as a matter of “Rebel versus Rabble.”4 But both governments, who wanted to protect their large Spanish commercial interests, feared that a Republican victory would turn Spain Red. As anxious to contain Communism as to contain war, they embraced neutrality.

Roosevelt, who seemed to think that Franco was fighting Bolsheviks in order to establish a “liberal”5 regime and who sought to win the Catholic vote at home, took the same line. More, he pandered to American isolationists by refusing to join the non-intervention pact. He even, in due course, refused to admit Basque refugee children, who were exceptionally well treated in Russia. Hoping to prevent the conflict from spreading and conscious that two-thirds of Americans were indifferent to Spain, Roosevelt simply imposed an embargo on arms sales, first moral, later legal. Franco said that FDR had behaved as a “true gentleman.”6 For, like the non-intervention accord itself, the embargo applied only to munitions. It did not stop the Nationalists obtaining raw materials and manufactured goods (such as Ford trucks) from the USA. In particular Shell-Standard provided nearly all their oil on credit, contributing to Franco’s “ultimate victory.”7

Needless to say, non-intervention failed to prevent the Republic from falling under the sway of the Communists. Rather it assisted the process. This was because the Soviet Union was the only power prepared to sell it the military aid which Germany and Italy were bestowing on Franco. There was a pleasing symbolism about the non-intervention flag, to be flown by all ships in the international force supervising the operation (or, rather, non-operation) of the scheme: two black balls on a white background.

Appropriately, too, the non-intervention committee, representing 27 nations, met in London where it was sustained above all by the British, masters of the art of hypocrisy. While Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin intervened ever more blatantly, slippery diplomats papered over the international cracks. As Winston Churchill concluded, they were engaged in “an elaborate system of official humbug.”8 Yet, like most other people in Britain and elsewhere, Churchill initially supported non-intervention. It seemed a useful myth. It concealed the clandestine support Britain was giving the Nationalists: in Gibraltar, for example, the Royal Navy provided supplies and other assistance while the Gordon Highlanders nearly drowned one of Franco’s airmen in whisky when “toasting a quick victory.

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