The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

At the end of July the Italians began a random campaign of maritime attacks from Majorca, with ‘Legionary’ submarines and bombers. In August alone they sank 200,000 tons of shipping bound for republican Spain, including eight British and eighteen other neutral merchantmen. On 23 August Ciano made notes of a visit from the British chargé d’affaires in Rome: ‘Ingram made a friendly démarche about the torpedo attacks in the Mediterranean. I replied quite brazenly. He went away almost satisfied.’⁶ On 31 July the Italian submarine Iride fired torpedoes at the British destroyer HMS Havock north of Alicante. On 3 September Ciano wrote, ‘Full orchestra–France, Russia, Britain. The theme–piracy in the Mediterranean. Guilty–the fascists. The Duce is very calm. He looks in the direction of London and he doesn’t believe that the English want a collision with us.’⁷ It was not surprising that Mussolini made such an assumption. Lord Perth, the British ambassador, was later described (perhaps optimistically) by Ciano as ‘a genuine convert’, a man who had ‘come to understand and even to love fascism’. In any case Chamberlain, ignoring Eden’s advice, wrote to Mussolini directly in the friendliest terms, thinking he could woo him away from Hitler. Meanwhile, he had instructed Perth to start working towards a treaty of friendship with Mussolini. He was also to use as a personal envoy his sister-in-law, Lady Chamberlain, who proudly wore fascist badges and insignia.

There were the beginnings of a small group in the Conservative Party and its supporters who were sensitive to the dangers of Chamberlain’s policy. Harold Nicolson, who was one of them, agreed with Duff Cooper that ‘the second German war began in July 1936, when the Germans started with their intervention in Spain’. He went on to say that ‘the propertied classes in this country with their insane pro-Franco business have placed us in a very dangerous position’.⁸ The only area where the Conservative government was prepared to display a semblance of firmness was in the Mediterranean, the sea lane to the Empire. Its main concern was that Axis bases should not exist on Spanish territory once the civil war was over.

On 22 June Eden argued in the wake of the Leipzig incident that ‘submarines of the patrol powers in Spanish waters (including the western Mediterranean) should not proceed submerged, and that the Spanish parties should be informed that they must follow this procedure’.⁹ The patrol powers would then be justified in attacking any submarines under the surface. This proposal was blocked by the Italians with German support as ‘pointless’. Their ‘Legionary’ submarines would have been the most at risk. The French, no doubt using Eden’s proposal, called a conference at Nyon on the shore of Lake Geneva to discuss the situation in the Mediterranean, but Italy and Germany refused to attend. The Nazi government claimed that the Leipzig incident had still not been resolved, and the Italians protested at the Soviet Union’s direct accusation of continued submarine attacks. The British and French governments ‘regretted this decision’, adding that they would keep the Axis powers informed of what happened.

Neurath warned Ciano that British naval intelligence had intercepted signals traffic between Italian submarines. Knowing there was little to fear, Ciano replied that they would be more careful in future. The Nyon conference decided with remarkable speed that any submerged submarines located near a torpedoing incident would be attacked by the naval forces of the signatories.¹⁰ Nothing, however, was said of air or surface attacks. That had to be added later at the League of Nations in Geneva. The British then proceeded to make such large provisos in an attempt to persuade the Italians to join the agreement that the whole exercise was rendered virtually worthless. Mussolini boasted to Hitler that he would carry on with his ‘torpedoing operations’.

On 16 September Negrín took part in the League of Nations debate over events in the Mediterranean. He demanded an end to the farce, but his words had no effect. He continued to argue that maintaining the fiction of non-intervention was tantamount to assisting the war and demanded that the aggression of Germany and Italy be officially recognized. Only the Mexican and Soviet governments supported him.