Winston Churchill doesn't want to leave anything to chance. Spring 1940. Adolf Hitler's armies occupy Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and advance on France. On June 10, when the fall of Paris is sensed, Benito Mussolini abandons his non-belligerence. Italy enters the Second World War to support Nazi Germany and open a new war front in the Mediterranean and North Africa. During April and May, the British war cabinet – a small council of ministers – has prepared measures to deal with the situation.
Francisco Franco considers following in the fascist's footsteps and shows his sympathy to Mussolini by letter, as well as to the German embassy in Madrid. The Spanish dictator secretly offers Germany and Italy all kinds of logistical support. But Spain, which emerged from the Civil War, does not have the military capacity to participate in World War II, and the British Royal Navy also controls its supply of oil and food.
On June 12, Franco abandons “strict neutrality” and declares himself “non-belligerent,” following the Italian pattern. The dictator moves between the intention of obtaining some gain – Gibraltar – from the British to avoid entering the conflict and the possibility of satisfying his expansionist desires, in addition to war and food aid through an alliance with the Axis powers.
The British government makes declarations of good intentions regarding Spain, but is nervous. Values the preventive occupation of the Canary Islands, the Azores and Cape Verde. On June 18, Edward Bridges, Churchill's cabinet secretary, drafts a secret report addressed to members of the government unknown until today. La Vanguardia has located it in the national archives of Scotland, a branch of the British national archives, under the heading 'Action in the event of war with Spain - War Cabinet: coordination of departmental action, 1940-1941'.
Just as they have done for Italy, says Bridges, “it is desirable that similar preparations be made in the event of a war with Spain.” He considers that the Italian precedent makes a meeting “superfluous” and asks for two things. All ministries have to send him the actions to be taken if the Foreign Office considers that in 24 hours Franco will declare war on the British Empire. And also the list of department heads who will have to be telephoned to get them started.
The next day at 9 in the morning he has them all. Seven pages. The Admiralty proposes giving instructions so that British and Allied ships do not call at Spanish ports and these ships are removed from the Bay of Gibraltar. The Ministry of Aviation does not propose any particular action. The Colonial Office requests instructions on the need to intern or repatriate Spaniards who are in the British colonies.
The Ministry of Maritime Transport states that about 200,000 tons of iron and pyrites leave each month from northern Spain, Huelva and the Protectorate in Morocco in 40 ships, of which a dozen are usually in Spanish ports at the same time. It is recommended that these be ready to set sail. The department of postal and telegraphic censorship proposes to stop communications with Spain and retain private and commercial communications for review for one day. And that the mail be treated the same as is done with the cases of Germany and Italy.
The Department of the Interior, the Home Office, proposes to intern Spanish citizens between 16 and 70 years old and those who are known to be “Falangists”. The Ministry of Food wants to stop purchases and revoke import licenses and prevent two shipments of Greek cereals from reaching Spain, to address the food emergency in the country. The Border Department wants to block ships going to Spain and seize the exports or sink the shipments and consider the trafficking of goods as smuggling. In harmony, the Ministry of War Economy wants to ask the United States government and other countries, such as Egypt, to prevent supplies from reaching Spain, including Tangier, and to stop air transport. Also that the granting of credits be stopped. The India Office proposes to arrest all Spaniards, except missionaries and priests.
The Scotsman Walter Elliot, assistant secretary and soon director of public relations at the War Office, wrote a secret letter on the 20th with a small stapled and sealed envelope containing a secret code. The letter tells the war cabinet how the chosen person from each department will be notified of the start of the operation and the veracity of the call will be guaranteed. “This is (name of caller) from the Foreign Office speaking of…”. And then he will say the code word that the envelope contains: complicity. Elliot warns that the code only needs to be known by the people involved in the operation and once read, it must be returned in a sealed envelope. The British national archives have exceptionally allowed this newspaper access to the contents of the envelope.
Attached, Elliot has a list of twenty names who will have to be called, from the Admiralty, the Treasury, the Ministries of Air, Food, Security, War Economy, Information, the Department of Petroleum and the offices Colonial, Indian and Scottish, among others. This new located documentation completes the vast research work that the professor at the University of Extremadura, Enrique Moradiellos, carried out on Spanish-British relations during this period and that he published in 2005 as Franco versus Churchill. Spain and Great Britain in World War II (1939-1945).
Franco does not take the step and the operation remains hibernated. Churchill, however, convinces American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to interrupt the oil supply in Spain and make his position of strength clear. Also during the summer of 1940, the British cabinet limited the granting of navicerts – a certificate that certifies the harmless nature of naval cargo – and intensified a naval blockade to control merchandise traffic on the Peninsula. For all these reasons, in August, without losing hope of negotiating an alliance with the Axis, Franco had to negotiate with the British to relax the blockade.
On October 23, 1940, Franco and Hitler met in Hendaye. All the Führer gets is the signing of a secret aid protocol in exchange for a post-war division of territories, but not the immediate entry of Spain into the war. On February 12, 1941, Franco will meet with Mussolini in Bordighera. He will confess that the shortage of wheat, fuel and the railway problem prevent him from entering the war. Soon Spain has no choice but to ask for new loans from the British.
At the end of April 1941, Churchill fears that Hitler wants to act, like Napoleon, in two opposite scenarios, in Russia and Spain. The prime minister is once again considering occupying the Canary Islands. On the 28th, the assistant secretary of the war cabinet, Elon Pelly Donaldson, passes a new secret circular to the British government to coordinate the action of the departments in the event that “Germany occupies or takes control of Spain (or Portugal)”. The order is to maintain the actions proposed a year ago. The key word to start the operation, complicity, remains.
In mid-May, however, Franco remodeled his government. The pro-German Ramón Serrano Suñer loses weight and Luis Carrero Blanco gains. The British breathe and Churchill postpones Operation Puma, the occupation of the Canary Islands. The start of the German invasion of the USSR, on June 22, and the sending of the Blue Division to fight the communists once again put the British war cabinet on guard. Even on September 17, 1941, the code and operation were maintained.
The Home Office also replaces its previous proposal with that of preventing access to the Spanish embassy to people who do not appear on the diplomatic lists and arresting them and members of the consulates at home. The Department of Borders and the Ministry of War Economy are, on this occasion, those who most expand the proposed actions to block the arrival and departure of lambs from Spain and its African islands and possessions. “Spain must be treated as an enemy”, “ship crews must not be allowed to disembark and cargo must be taken, navicerts must not be granted”, “the credits of the Bank of Spain must not be renewed”. England". It is also proposed to ask the Swiss government to take charge of British interests in Spain. And also obtain guarantees that the Spanish government “will not use poisonous gas.”
As December 1941 begins, with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the consequent entry of the United States into World War II, the global situation changes. Franco maintains the hope of becoming part of the Axis and continues to help his powers under his control, but the combined British and American pressure prevents him from taking the step. The key word, complicity, will be kept in a secret drawer, until today.
