Translation: ‘The three great defensive military leaders of peace and civilisation’
(Confusingly, while some sources say that the Spanish Civil War started on July 17, 1936, others put it a day later. The reason for this is that the fascist rebellion started in Spanish Morocco on the 17th, and then spread to the Spanish mainland on the 18th, hence the discrepancy. Either way, it’s a good time to discuss the rise of fascism in Spain.)
The Spanish Civil War can be interpreted as another precursor to Operation Barbarossa and even as evidence that World War II really started on October 1935 or September 1931. It was not an invasion, but the Spanish fascists were supported by foreign powers, most notably Fascist Italy, the Estado Novo, and the Third Reich. There is a lot to say about it, but for simplicity’s sake I would like to focus on the Third Reich today. Quoting The Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco Spain, 1936–1945:
On 21 July 1936, Johannes E.F. Bernhardt, a German citizen resident in Tetuán, […] took the presumptuous step of offering his assistance to General Francisco Franco, one of the leaders of the Spanish rebellion against the Spanish government in Madrid.
[…]
In the areas where it was successful, it was soon led by a directorate of three generals, with General Franco in control of Spain’s North African possessions and the Canaries, General Queipo de Llano in charge of the insurgents in Andalucia, and General Emilio Mola in northern Spain.
Though Bernhardt’s decision seemed almost insolent considering the nonentity he was, it became the initial step towards [the Third Reich’s] intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Tetuán turned out to be Bernhardt’s spring board for becoming one of the most influential Germans in Franco Spain during the civil war and the Second World War.
Unsurprisingly, Bernhardt was a bourgeois Fascist:
His past, however, did not augur well for his future career. In the 1920s, Bernhardt had experienced his ups and downs as a businessman. In fact, by the end of 1929 his career had reached rock bottom when his company in Hamburg collapsed and he was faced with several warrants for his arrest. He therefore decided to leave Germany and seek his fortune abroad, more precisely, in Spanish Morocco.
Once there, he immediately found employment in the small company H&O Wilmer. Sucesores de H. Tönnies in Larache. As sales director he contributed significantly to the expansion of the company, first to Tetuán where it eventually moved its headquarters — and then to other locations in the protectorate.
Gradually, the company widened its activities from its original export–import business and it came to act as a trade representative of several German companies, notably in the technical and scientific field. Close contacts with civilian and military authorities were established to promote and sell German products.
At first the Third Reich hesitated to expend its resources on a European conflict, especially for a country with friendly links to Britain and France, but that was soon to change:
The arch‐conservative Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, shared Hitler’s concern about the danger of the spread of communism and admitted as much with reference to the Spanish Civil War in December 1936:
‘In the Spanish conflict Germany had predominantly the negative goal of not permitting the Iberian Peninsula to come under Bolshevist domination, which would involve the danger of its spreading to the rest of Western Europe.’
This is almost identical to the claim that neoimperialists used to justify the invasion of Vietnam.
After listening to Bernhardt and Langenheim, Hess concluded that only Hitler himself could decide on such an important issue. Consequently, he rang up Hitler, who was attending the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. Hitler agreed to see both envoys and invited them to join him at Bayreuth. Citing an interview with Bernhardt, Abendroth emphasizes that, on the evening of 25 July, Hitler received Franco’s two [Reich] envoys in the presence of only one other person.
This person, Dr. Kraneck, an AO official, was apparently completely ignored by Hitler. Evidently, Hitler’s crucial decision to help Franco was already taken when he invited Hermann Göring, General von Blomberg and Captain Coupette, commander of the Naval Shipping Administration Section of the Oberkommando der Marine (OKM), to join him and his guests.
Göring and von Blomberg were both initially reluctant to provide Franco with any help. When Hitler then emphasized his decision in favour of Franco’s request, both duly changed their minds.
Under the code name Unternehmen Feuerzauber the organization of a support operation was immediately set into motion. Admiral Lindau and General Erhard Milch were ordered to join Hitler in Bayreuth and arrived on the morning of 26 July.
After Lindau had been put in charge of the preparations for the transport operation, he left Hamburg on the same day. Back at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM), Milch put General Helmuth Wilberg in charge of setting up Sonderstab W which was to be responsible for the organization of the whole supply operation. The [Third Reich’s] intervention in Spain had commenced.
The Fascist bourgeoisie founded two important companies in Spain in late July 1936 (HISMA) and in Berlin in early October 1936 (ROWAK) to handle the Third Reich’s supply operations for the Spanish fascists and the economic relationship more generally between the German and Spanish fascists. Since businesses loathe competition (especially in serious situations such as wartime), the Third Reich privileged these two businesses greatly:
In any case of transaction, HISMA/ROWAK was certain to receive a handsome financial reward for its involvement. Small wonder, therefore, that the organization was keen to defend its near‐monopolistic position. Near‐monopolistic because, curiously enough, it allowed one private entrepreneur to enjoy his own little share of the trade between Germany and Nationalist Spain.
The concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is the necessary consequence of capitalism, and concerning the hands in this case:
As sole owner of J. Veltjens. Waffen und Munition Veltjens would remain the only German private individual involved in the sale and supply of arms to the Nationalists, though from late 1936 onwards in conjunction with his new partner, a Lithuanian by the name of Henry Aschpurvis.
In early 1937, their joint transport company, Hansegesellschaft Aschpurvis & Veltjens, expanded its role in the provision of arms to Nationalist Spain with the acquisition of Mathias Rohde & Jörgens, the Hamburg shipping company which had been employed in the first transports of war material to Franco.
Now, to illustrate the valuable resources that the Third Reich sent to the Spanish fascists:
In October 1936 Hitler took a crucial decision for the further development of the Spanish Civil War and increased [the Third Reich’s] military presence by sending a substantial military force, the Condor Legion, to Spain. […] Franco had to accept the establishment of the Legion in order to receive more [Reich] aid.
The first transport of troops left Stettin on 7 November. By 18 November, 92 planes and more than 3,800 troops as well as tanks, anti‐aircraft guns and signal equipment had already been transported to Spain. General Hugo Sperrle was appointed first commander of the legion.
Warlimont, on the other hand, was immediately released from his post in Spain and called back to [the Third Reich]. [Reich] troops already in Spain were integrated into the Condor Legion. Although the Legion was led by a [Reich] commander, it was subordinated to Franco’s military command. Its maximum strength at any time during the civil war never exceeded more than around 5,600 men.
Before receiving aid from a few anticommunist dictatorships, the Spanish fascists were underequipped. Quoting The Other Side of the Hill, pages 98–9:
“Our main help to Franco was in machines, aircraft and tanks. At the start he had nothing beyond a few obsolete machines. The first batch of German tanks arrived in September, followed by a larger batch in October. They were the Krupp Mark I.
[…]
“By a carefully organized dilution of the German personnel I was soon able to train a large number of Spanish tank‐crews. I found the Spanish quick to learn — though also quick to forget. By 1938 I had four tank battalions under my command — each of three companies, with fifteen tanks in a company. Four of the companies were equipped with Russian tanks. I also had thirty anti‐tank companies, with six 37 mm. guns apiece.
From Robert H. Whealy’s Hitler and Spain: the Nazi role in the Spanish Civil War:
In addition to foreign trade and capital, numbers of foreign technical personnel help determine economic influence from abroad upon a relatively underdeveloped country. In one sense the most important foreigners living in Spain were the Germans, because they formed the largest group of employed aliens.
It is true that fewer Germans than Portuguese lived in Spain, and that total salaries and positions of Germans were lower than the French, the British, and the Americans; yet a much larger proportion of the resident Germans were employed.
Eight thousand of the total twelve to fifteen thousand Germans living in Spain before the civil war resided in Barcelona, and about 260 German‐owned or German‐operated firms located their headquarters in the Catalan capital.
[…]
[The Third Reich] sent at least 593 aircraft, and possibly as many as 708. In February 1939, the total Nationalist air strength had reached 491 planes, which included 126 German‐manned and 192 Italian‐manned craft. Spanish personnel piloted 173 planes, about two‐thirds of them Italian and one‐third German.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Other events that happened today (July 18):
1887: Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling, infamous Axis collaborator, was born.
1889: Marquis Kōichi Kido, Imperial statesman, was born.
1899: Ernst Scheller, Fascist mayor, was born.
1925: Adolf Schicklgruber published Mein Kampf, which laid out his plans to annihilate Bolshevism and specifically the U.S.S.R. Coincidentally, Friedrich Zimmermann, NSDAP member and lieutenant, was born.
1942: During the Beisfjord massacre in Norway, fifteen Norwegian paramilitary guards helped members of the SS to massacre 288 political prisoners from Yugoslavia. Coincidentally, the Axis tested the Messerschmitt Me 262 using its jet engines for the first time.
1944: Hideki Tōjō resigned as Prime Minister of Imperial Japan because of numerous setbacks in the war effort.
1948: Herman Gregorius Gummerus, a founder of the fascist ‘Patriotic People’s Movement’ (IKL), bit the dust.
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