Hitler And Spain by Robert H. Whealey;

Author:Robert H. Whealey; [Whealey, Robert H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813182759
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Conclusions

This book has examined three basic questions. First, what role did Adolf Hitler play in bringing Francisco Franco to power in Spain? Second and third, during the years of the Spanish upheaval, what gains did the Führer make in the European balance of power generally and in Franco’s Spain specifically? In the decisive years of 1936-1939, Hitler made his Spanish decisions in four interrelated areas: political, military, ideological, and economic. This book has traced the paths of development in those areas.

The failed coup d’etat of July 1936 turned into a long campaign to reconquer Spain, the consequences of which were to eliminate most of the social reforms made by the Second Spanish Republic from 1931 to 1933. When the civil war broke out, Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler began pursuing parallel policies toward Spain—their goals being to weaken the influence of the French and, secondarily, the British in that troubled country. The two Axis powers sent Franco organized and effective military aid that outweighed the intervention of other Great Powers. In fact, European liberals were reluctant to act at all, so the Spanish Republicans sought the aid of Soviet military advisors and weapons. Internationally, during 1937, Mussolini took the lead over Hitler, both on the Spanish front and throughout the Mediterranean, in opposing the Soviet Union and France. Hitler welcomed the Duce’s imperalist concentration on the southwest, because that meant Austria by 1938 was free for the Führer’s taking. The Spanish crisis also helped divert France, Britain, and the USSR in the fall of 1938 from uniting to defend Czechoslovakia against German territorial demands.

The Spanish front seemed to some European military observers to have been bogged down in stalemate during the two years from November 1936 to November 1938. In fact, Franco’s troops, city by city, village by village—from Málaga to Bilbao to Vinaroz on the Mediterranean—gradually reconquered Spain from the Left. From the international perspective, Franco won his war in eight decisive stages: (1) the bringing in of Italian and German air transport in July 1936 to help Franco’s forces cross the Straits of Gibraltar; (2) the capture of Badajoz on August 14, linking up Franco’s troops with those of General Emilio Mola from the north and thereby securing a friendly border with Portugal; (3) Mola’s victory at Irún on September 4, sealing off one unfriendly frontier with France; (4) the Nationalist navy’s coming to dominate the Straits of Gibraltar in late September and, with the aid of Italian forces, capturing Mallorca in the Balearic Islands; (5) the conquest of the Basque capital of Bilbao in June 1937, which provided El Caudillo with a major industrial base; (6) the decision of Georges Bonnet, the French foreign minister, in June 1938 to seal off the Pyrenees against further substantial clandestine aid by French leftists to the Spanish Republicans; (7) the joint decision in September 1938, on the eve of the Munich Conference, by Juan Negrín, the Republican prime minister, and Stalin to withdraw the International Brigades; and (8) the international

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