Memorial of the children of Spanish immigrants to Plaine Saint Denis, France, who fought in the Civil War and the French Resistance.

The Spanish anti-Fascist prisoners at Mauthausen deploy a banner to salute the allies.

After their defeat, several hundred thousand Republican veterans and civilians were exiled to France where they were interned by the French Republic in concentration camps in southern France, such as Camp Gurs. To improve their conditions, many joined the French Foreign Legion at the start of the war, making up a sizeable proportion of it. Some sixty thousand joined the French Resistance, mostly as guerrillas while also continuing the fight against Francisco Franco. Several thousand more joined the Free French Forces, against the Axis Powers. Many units of General Leclerc's Second French Division had large Spanish contingents. The 9th Armoured Company, was formed almost entirely by battle-hardened Spanish veterans and was the first allied military unit to enter Paris upon its liberation in August, 1944.

On the Eastern Front, Spanish, formerly pro-Republican, Communist leaders and child evacuees from Communist families were received by the Soviet Union. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, many joined the Red Army, such as General Enrique Líster.

Individual Spaniards, such as the double-agent Juan Pujol (alias Garbo), worked for the Allied cause.

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Resources & trade

Despite lacking cash, oil and other supplies, Francoist Spain was able to supply some essentials to Germany. There were a series of secret war-time trade agreements between the two countries.

The principle resource was wolfram (or tungsten) ore from German-owned mines in Spain. Wolfram was essential to Germany for its advanced precision engineering and therefore for armament production. Despite Allied attempts to buy all available supplies, which rocketed in price, and diplomatic efforts to influence Spain, supplies to Germany continued until August 1944. Payment for wolfram was effectively set against the Spanish debt to Germany. Other minerals included iron ore, zinc, lead and mercury.

Spain also acted as a conduit for goods from South America, for example, industrial diamonds and platinum.

After the war, evidence was found of significant gold transactions between Germany and Spain, ceasing only in May 1945. It was believed that these were derived from Nazi looting of occupied lands, but attempts by the Allies to obtain control of the gold and return it were largely frustrated.

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Espionage and sabotage

As long as Spain permitted it, the Abwehr, the German intelligence organisation, was able to operate in Spain and Spanish Morocco, often with cooperation of the Nationalist government officials of Franco-Spain.

Gibraltar's installations were a prime target for sabotage, using sympathetic anti-British Spanish workers. One such attack occurred in June 1943, when a bomb caused a fire and explosions in the dockyard. The British were generally more successful after this and managed to use turned agents and sympathetic anti-Fascist Spaniards to uncover subsequent attacks. A total of 43 sabotage attempts were prevented in this way. In January 1944, two Spanish workers, convicted of attempted sabotage, were hanged.

The Abwehr also maintained observation posts along both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar, reporting on shipping movements.

A German agent in Cádiz was the target of a successful Allied disinformation operation prior to the invasion of Sicily in 1943.

In early 1944, the situation changed. The Allies were clearly gaining the advantage over Germany and one double agent had provided enough information for Britain to make a detailed protest to the Spanish government. As a result, the Spanish government declared its "strict neutrality". The Abwehr operation in southern Spain was consequently closed down.

The international station of Canfranc.

The rail station of Canfranc was the conduct for the smuggling of people and information from Vichy France to the British consulate in San Sebastián. The nearer border station of Irún could not be used as it bordered occupied France.

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Jews and other refugees

During the war, Spain became an unlikely haven for several thousand Jews. They were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but also Sephardic Jews from Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. Trudy Alexy refers to the "absurdity" and "paradox of refugees fleeing the Nazis' Final Solution to seek asylum in a country where no Jews had been allowed to live openly as Jews for over four centuries." ^[4]

Spain had exercised protection over Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire and a decree of the Primo de Rivera government, in the 1920s, eased their acquisition of Spanish citizenship. Throughout World War II, Spanish diplomats of the Franco government, as well as diplomats from Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and the Vatican, extended their protection to Eastern European Jews, especially in Hungary.

In the first years of the war, "Laws regulating their admittance were written and mostly ignored."^[5] Once the tide of war began to turn, and Count Francisco de Jordana y Sousa succeeded Franco's brother-in-law Serrano Súñer as Spain's foreign minister, Spanish diplomacy became "more sympathetic to Jews", although Franco himself "never said anything" about this.^[6] Around that same time, a contingent of Spanish doctors traveling in Poland were fully informed of the Nazi extermination plans by the Gauleiter Frankel of Warsaw, who was under the misimpression that they would share his views about the matter; when they came home, they passed the story to Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco, who told Franco.^[7]

Diplomats discussed the possibility of Spain as a route to a containment camp for Jewish refugees near Casablanca, but it came to naught due to lack of Free French and British support.^[8] Nonetheless, control of the Spanish border with France relaxed somewhat at this time, ^[9] and thousands of Jews managed to cross into Spain (many by smugglers' routes). Almost all of these survived the war.^[10] The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee operated openly in Barcelona.^[11]

Shortly afterwards, Spain began giving citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania; many Ashkenazic Jews also managed to be included, as did some gentiles. The Spanish head of mission in Budapest, Ángel Sanz Briz, may have saved thousands of Ashkenazim in Hungary by granting them Spanish citizenship, placing them in safe houses, and teaching them minimal Spanish so they could pretend to be Sephardim, at least to someone who did not know Spanish. The Spanish diplomatic corps was performing a balancing act: Alexy conjectures that the number of Jews they took in was limited by how much German hostility they were willing to engender.^[12]

Toward the war's end, Sanz Briz had to flee Budapest, leaving these Jews open to arrest and deportation. An Italian diplomat, Giorgio Perlasca, who was himself living under Spanish protection, used forged documents to persuade the Hungarian authorities that he was the new Spanish Ambassador. As such, he continued Spanish protection of Hungarian Jews until the Red Army arrived. ^[13]

Although Spain effectively undertook more to help Jews escape deportation to the concentration camps than many neutral (Switzerland, Turkey) and Allied countries did,^[14][15] there has been debate about Spain's wartime attitude towards refugees. Francoist Spain, despite its aversion to Zionism and "Judeo"-Freemasonry, does not appear to have shared the rabid anti-Semitic ideology promoted by the Nazis. Certainly, about 25,000 to 35,000 refugees, mainly Jews, were allowed to transit through Spain to Portugal and beyond. About 5,000 Jews in occupied Europe benefitted from Spanish protection.^{[citation needed]}

This agreed, however, while some historians argue that these facts demonstrate a humane attitude of Franco's regime, others point out that Spain only permitted transit and did not wish to increase its own small Jewish population. Refusal to admit refugees would also have further damaged its fragile relations with the Allies.^{[citation needed]} After the war, Franco's regime was quite hospitable to those who had been responsible for the deportation of the Jews, notably Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs (May 1942 – February 1944) under the Vichy Régime in France. ^[16]

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References

1. ^ (Italian) Quotation of Mussolini, Album di una vita by Mario Cervi at the Bordighera site. Accessed online 18 October 2006.
2. ^ Serrano Suñer, tragedia personal y fascismo político, Javier Tusell, El País, 2 September 2003: "Serrano ante él [Hitler] llegó a sugerir que el Rosellón debia ser español, por catalán, y que Portugal no tenía sentido como unidad política independiente."
3. ^ El último de los de Franco, Santiago Pérez Díaz, El País 7 September 2003
4. ^ Trudy Alexy, The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot, Simon and Schuster, 1993. ISBN 0-671-77816-1. p. 74.
5. ^ Alexy, p. 77.
6. ^ Alexy, p. 77.
7. ^ Alexy, p. 164–165.
8. ^ Alexy, p. 77–78.
9. ^ Alexy, p. 165.
10. ^ Alexy, p. 79, passim.
11. ^ Alexy, p. 154–155, passim.
12. ^ Alexy, p. 165 et. seq.
13. ^ Giorgio Perlasca. The International Raoul Wallenberg foundation. Retrieved on 2006-07-21.
14. ^ Giorgio Perlasca. The International Raoul Wallenberg foundation. Retrieved on 2006-07-21.
15. ^ Franco & the Jews. Hitler: Stopped by Franco. Retrieved on 2006-07-21.
16. ^ Nicholas Fraser, "Toujours Vichy: a reckoning with disgrace", Harper's, October 2006, p. 86–94. The relevant statement about Spain sheltering him is on page 91.

• The Struggle for Europe, Chester Wilmott
• Defeat in the West, Milton Shulman

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See also

• Spanish Maquis

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External links

• 1939-1945: The Spanish Resistance in France
• Fuhrer directive No 18 re Operation Felix
• Operation Felix: Assault on Gibraltar
• The Blue Division
• Excerpt from Christian Leitz, "Spain and Holocaust"
• British Government MI5 page on Gibraltar
• Website detailing trade connections
• Libro Memorial. Españoles deportados a los campos nazis (1940-1945), Benito Bermejo and Sandra Checa, Ministerio de Cultura de España, 2006. Re-published in Portable Document Format.
• Los vascos y la II Guerra Mundial, Mikel Rodríguez, Euskonews & Media 301.