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

Four days later the French chargé d’affaires in London recommended an international committee of control ‘to supervise the agreement and consider further action’. Eden, however, decided to announce that Britain would apply an arms embargo without waiting for other powers to respond. This in effect meant denying arms to the recognized government and often ignoring those going to the rebels, for the British government refused to acknowledge the proof of German and Italian intervention. On the other hand, there were instances of the British being even-handed. For example, it appears from a German foreign ministry report that the British embassy in Portugal put heavy pressure on the Portuguese authorities to prevent the German vessel Usuramo from unloading ‘a “certain” cargo’ (probably ammunition) and the ship had to sail away to unload elsewhere.¹⁰ And later Franco complained to the German ambassador that Britain had put heavy pressure on Portugal not to recognize his regime.¹¹ Baldwin’s government nevertheless told the Labour opposition that any active expression of sympathy with the republican government of Spain would at that time be against the interests of Great Britain and therefore unpatriotic.

The policy of appeasement was not Neville Chamberlain’s invention. Its roots lay in a fear of bolshevism. The general strike of 1926 and the depression made the possibility of revolution a very real concern to conservative politicians. As a result, they had mixed feelings towards the German and Italian regimes which had crushed the communists and the socialists in their own countries. Much of the electorate also held anti-militarist sentiments after the First World War and feelings of guilt about the Allies’ humiliation of Germany at the Treaty of Versailles.¹² The British population, moreover, knew little of events abroad. As the British minister in Berlin, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, wrote later, the country ‘could not be expected to take an enlightened view of the situation when the government had done nothing to inform it’.¹³

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Eden was to handle the situation virtually on his own. Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister, was ill when the war began and then became preoccupied by the Abdication crisis. ‘I hope’, he told Eden, ‘that you will try not to trouble me too much with foreign affairs just now.’ Eden was hardly an impartial observer of the conflict. He is supposed to have told the French foreign minister, Delbos, that England preferred a rebel victory to a republican victory. He professed an admiration for the self-proclaimed fascist Calvo Sotelo, who had been murdered. He abhorred the killings in republican territory, while failing to comment on nationalist atrocities. From his diplomatic staff on the spot he received emotive descriptions of the killings in the capital and Barcelona. The ambassador, Sir Henry Chilton, was a blatant admirer of the nationalists and preferred to stay in Hendaye rather than return to Madrid. The government also listened to Royal Navy officers who supported the rebels. The naval base of Gibraltar had been flooded with pro-nationalist refugees, among whom journalists of the British press searched diligently for ‘first-hand’ accounts of atrocities. Franco’s admission at the end of July that he was prepared to shoot half of Spain was virtually ignored.

Franco’s new press officer, Luis Bolín, had, before the rising, organized a discreet but effective anti-republican campaign in London as correspondent of the monarchist newspaper ABC. He claimed, with justification, that he had ‘developed a not inconsiderable degree of influence in appropriate circles’. His most important ally was the Duke of Alba, who also had the English dukedom of Berwick and was addressed as ‘cousin’ by Churchill. In these circles Alba, with his affection for English institutions, typified the civilized Spaniard. His quiet conversations in White’s club were infinitely more influential on government policy than mass rallies or demonstrations. But then anyone speaking up for the Spanish republican government in such surroundings would have provoked the kind of horrified reaction caricatured in a Bateman cartoon.