Franco

Before Franco had arrived in Tetuán, on 18 July, the destroyer Churruca and two merchant steamers, the Cabo Espartel and the Lázaro and a ferry boat had managed to get 220 men to Cádiz. However, within a matter of hours the crew of the Churruca, like those of many other Spanish naval vessels, mutinied against their rebel officers. On 19 July, the gunboat Dato and another ferry got a further 170 to Algeciras. In the following days, only a few more troops were able to cross in Moroccan lateen-rigged feluccas (faluchos).32 These men were to have a crucial impact on the success of the rising in Cádiz, Algeciras and La Línea. Within hours of arriving in Tetuán, Franco had discussed with his cousin Pacón and Colonel Yagüe the urgent problem of getting the Legion across the Straits of Gibraltar. The Moroccan Army was effectively immobilized. However, Franco did have two major strokes of luck in this regard. The first was the sympathy for his cause of the authorities on the Rock who refused facilities for the Republican fleet. The second was that the tall, incorruptible General Alfredo Kindelán, the founder of the Spanish Air Force and a prominent monarchist conspirator, happened to be in Cádiz as Mola’s liaison with senior naval officers. In the confusion, and with his contact with Mola broken, Kindelán linked up with the troops recently arrived from Morocco. From Algeciras, he spoke by telephone with Franco who made him head of his Air Force.33 Kindelán was to be a useful asset in organizing the crossing of the Straits.

Cut off by sea from mainland Spain, Franco, advised by Kindelán, began to toy with the then revolutionary idea of getting his Army across the Straits by air and to seek a way of breaking through the blockade by sea.34 The few aircraft available at Tetuán had been damaged by the sabotage efforts of Major de la Puente Bahamonde. Those units and others at Seville were soon repaired and in service. A few Legionarios able to cross the Straits by air landed at Tablada Aerodrome at Seville and helped consolidate Queipo de Llano’s hold on the city.35 Thereafter, from dawn to late in the evening each day, a constant shuttle was maintained by three Fokker F.VIIb3m trimotor transports and one Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat. Each aircraft did four trips per day; the Fokkers carrying sixteen to twenty soldiers and equipment every time, the Dornier able to carry only twelve and having to land in Algeciras Bay. From 25 July, the original four aircraft were joined by a Douglas DC-2 capable of carrying twenty-five men and, from the end of the month, by another Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat.36

The airlift was as yet far too slow. Ironically, the main worry of Franco and his cousin was that Mola might get to Madrid before them. At one point, Franco commented ‘in September, I’ll be back in the Canary Islands, happy and contented, after obtaining a rapid triumph over Communism’.37 Even before German and Italian assistance arrived, Franco was fortunate that Kindelán, the energetic Major Julio García de Cáceres and the Air Force pilots who had joined the uprising worked miracles, both repairing the flying boats which had been out of action and putting eight aged Breguet XIX biplane light bombers and two Nieuport 52 fighters at his disposal. These would provide the escorts whose harassment of the Republican navy would sow panic among the inexperienced left-wing crews when Franco decided to risk sea crossings.38 Franco recognized the importance of the contribution that was being made by Kindelán, by naming him on 18 August, General Jefe del Aire.39

Even before the early limited airlift was properly under way, Franco was seeking a way of breaking through the sea blockade. On the evening of 20 July, he called a meeting of his staff, attended by Yagüe, Beigbeder, Saenz de Buruaga and Kindelán, as well as naval and Air Force officers. Assured by Kindelán that the aircraft available could deal with any hostile vessels, Franco decided to send a troop convoy by sea from Ceuta at the earliest opportunity. He overruled strong expressions of doubt, particularly from Yagüe and the naval officers present, who were concerned at the threat posed by the Republican navy. Franco, however, convinced as always of the importance of moral factors in deciding battles, believed that the Republican crews, without trained officers to navigate, oversee the engine rooms or direct the guns, would present little danger. He acknowledged the validity of the objections, but simply brushed them aside. ‘I have to get across and I will get across’. It would be one of the few times that Franco the cautious and meticulous planner would take an audacious risk. He decided against a night crossing because his one major advantage, the Republican naval crews’ fear of air attack would be neutralized. The precise date of the convoy would be left until the Nationalists had better air cover and more intelligence of Republican fleet movements.40 It would eventually take place on 5 August.

Ultimately, the conversion of the rising into a long drawn-out war of attrition was to favour Franco’s political position and the establishment of a personal dictatorship. At first, however, Franco’s isolation in Africa left the political leadership of the coup in the hands of Mola. Nevertheless, although Franco’s every thought may have been on winning the war, he still took for granted that he was the leading rebel once Sanjurjo was dead, informing both the Germans and the Italians of this. His ambitions were, however, pre-empted by events in the north.

On 19 July, having made his declaration of martial law in Pamplona, Mola had sketched out an amplified version of his earlier document on the military directory and its corporative policies.41 On 23 July, he set up a seven-man Junta de Defensa Nacional in Burgos under the nominal presidency of General Cabanellas, the most senior Major-General in the Nationalist camp after the death of Sanjurjo. It consisted of Generals Mola, Miguel Ponte, Fidel Dávila and Andrés Saliquet and two colonels from the general staff, Federico Montaner and Fernando Moreno Calderón. Mola also sought some civilian input from the Renovación Española group.42 Having been a deputy for Jaén in Lerroux’s Radical Party between 1933 and 1935, Cabanellas was regarded by his fellow members as dangerously liberal. His elevation to preside the Junta reflected not simply his seniority but Mola’s anxiety to get him away from active command in Zaragoza. Mola himself had visited Zaragoza on 21 July and had been appalled to find Cabanellas exercising restraint in crushing opposition to the rising and contemplating using ex-members of the Radical Party to create a municipal government.43 On 24 July, the Junta named Franco head of its forces on the southern front. On 1 August, Captain Francisco Moreno Fernández, was named Admiral in command of the section of the navy which had not remained loyal to the Republic, and was added to the Junta.44

Only on 3 August, after his first units had crossed the Straits would Franco be added to the Junta de Burgos along with Queipo de Llano and Orgaz. The functions of the Junta were extremely vague. Indeed, the powers of Cabanellas were no more than symbolic. Queipo quickly established de facto a kind of vice-royal fief in Seville from which he would eventually govern most of the south.45 There was potential friction between Queipo and Franco. Queipo loathed Franco personally and Franco distrusted Queipo as one of the generals who had betrayed the monarchy in 1931. In addition, there was a more immediate source of tension. Queipo wanted to use the troops being sent from Africa for a major campaign to spread out from the Seville-Huelva-Cádiz triangle which he controlled. He was eager to conquer all of Andalusia, the central and eastern hinterland of which was experiencing a process of revolutionary collectivisation.46 Franco simply ignored Queipo’s aspirations.

In order to resolve the immediate difficulties over transporting the Moroccan Army across the Straits, Franco had turned to fellow rightists abroad for help. On 19 July, the Dragon Rapide had set off for Lisbon and then Marseille, en route back to London. Aboard the aircraft, Luis Bolín carried the paper scribbled by Franco authorizing him to negotiate the purchase of aircraft and other supplies. Bolín left the Dragon Rapide at Marseille and continued on to Rome by train.47 Franco’s early efforts to gain foreign assistance were ultimately successful but they involved several days of frantic effort and frustration. Moreover, it was to be his own efforts, rather than those of Bolín or the monarchist emissaries sent by Mola, which would secure Italian aid since Mussolini was highly suspicious of Spanish rightists eternally announcing that their revolution was about to start.48

While Bolín was still travelling, Franco spoke on 20 July to the Italian military attaché in Tangier, Major Giuseppe Luccardi and asked for his help in obtaining transport aircraft. Luccardi telegraphed military intelligence in Rome, where there was grave doubt about the wisdom of helping the Spanish rebels, doubts shared to the full by Mussolini.49 On 21 July, Franco spoke again to Major Luccardi, stressing the desperate difficulties that he faced in getting his troops across the Straits. Luccardi was sufficiently impressed to put Franco in touch with the Italian Minister Plenipotentiary in Tangier, Pier Filippo de Rossi del Lion Nero. Franco convinced him on 22 July to send a telegram to Rome requesting twelve bombers or civilian transport aircraft. Mussolini simply scribbled ‘NO’ in blue pencil at the bottom of the telegram. On a desperate follow-up telegram, the Duce wrote only ‘FILE’.50 Meanwhile, Bolín had arrived in Rome on 21 July. At first, he and the Marqués de Viana, armed with a letter of presentation from the exiled Alfonso XIII, were received enthusiastically by the new Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano. Fresh from his long conversation with Franco in Casablanca in the early hours of 19 July, Bolín assured Ciano that, with Sanjurjo dead, Franco would be undisputed leader of the rising. Despite Ciano’s initial sympathy, after consulting Mussolini, he turned Bolín away.51 However, Ciano had been sufficiently intrigued by De Rossi’s telegram to request further assessments from Tangier of the seriousness of Franco’s bid for power.52

While he was still evaluating the information coming in from Tangier, Ciano received on 25 July a more prestigious delegation sent by General Mola. Unaware of Franco’s efforts to secure Italian assistance, Mola had called a meeting in Burgos on 22 July with six important monarchists.* Mola outlined the need for foreign help and it was decided that José Ignacio Escobar, the aristocratic owner of La Época, would go to Berlin and Antonio Goicoechea, who had signed a pact with Mussolini in March 1934, would lead a delegation to Rome. When Goicoechea’s group spoke to Ciano they revealed that Mola was more concerned with rifle cartridges than with aeroplanes.53 Mola’s plea for ammunition seemed small-scale in comparison with Franco’s ambitious appeal. Mussolini was by this time beginning to get interested in the Spanish situation as a consequence of the news that the French were about to aid the Republic.54 Accordingly, in response more to Franco’s personal efforts with the Italian authorities in Tangier than to the efforts of monarchists in Rome, Ciano finally responded to Franco’s request for aircraft on 28 July with twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.81 Pipistrello bombers.55

The bombers were despatched from the Sardinian capital Cagliari in the early hours of the morning of 30 July. As a result of unexpectedly strong headwinds, three ran out of fuel, one crashing into the sea, one crashing while attempting an emergency landing at Oujda near the Algerian border and a third landing safely in the French zone of Morocco where it was impounded.56 On 30 July, Franco was informed that the remaining nine had landed at the aerodrome of Nador. However, they were grounded for the next five days until a tanker of high-octane fuel for their Alfa Romeo engines was sent from Cagliari. Since there were insufficient Spaniards able to fly them, the Italian pilots enrolled in the Spanish Foreign Legion.57 German aircraft also soon began to arrive and the operation for getting the troops of the Moroccan Army across the Straits intensified.

The history of the negotiations for Italian aid shows Franco seizing the initiative and pursuing it with dogged determination. It also shows that Mussolini and Ciano unequivocally placed their bets on Franco rather than on Mola. The exchange of telegrams between Ciano and De Rossi refers to the ‘Francoist’ rebellion and to ‘Franco’s movement’.58 In Germany too, Franco’s contacts prospered more. In fact, Mola had substantial prior connections but his various emissaries got entangled in the web of low level bureaucracy in Berlin. In contrast, Franco had the good fortune to secure the backing of energetic Nazis resident in Morocco who had good party contacts through the Auslandorganisation. Moreover, as it had with the Italians, his command of the most powerful section of the Spanish Army weighed heavily with the Germans.59

Franco’s first efforts to get German help were unambitious. Among his staff in Tetuán, the person with the best German contacts was Beigbeder. Accordingly, on 22 July, Franco and Beigbeder asked the German consulate at Tetuán to send a telegram to General Erich Kühlental, the German military attaché to both France and Spain, an admirer of Franco who was based in Paris. The telegram requested that he arrange for ten troop-transport planes with German crews to be sent to Spanish Morocco and ended ‘The contract will be signed afterwards. Very urgent! On the word of General Franco and Spain’. This modest telegram was incapable of instigating the sort of official help that Franco needed. It received a cool reception when it reached Berlin in the early hours of the morning of 23 July.60 However, almost immediately after its despatch, Franco had decided to make a direct appeal to Hitler.

On 21 July, the day before sending the telegram to Kühlental, Franco had been approached by a German businessman resident in Morocco, Johannes Eberhard Franz Bernhardt, who was an active Nazi Party member and friend of Mola, Yagüe, Beigbeder and other Africanistas. Bernhardt was to be the key to decisive German assistance. Uneasy about the telegram to Kühlental, Franco decided later in the day on 22 July to use Bernhardt to make a formal approach to the Third Reich for transport aircraft. Bernhardt informed the Ortsgruppenleiter of the Nazi Party in Morocco, another resident Nazi businessman, Adolf Langenheim.61 Langenheim reluctantly agreed to go to Germany with Bernhardt, and Captain Francisco Arranz, staff chief of Franco’s minuscule Air Forces.62 The plan was facilitated by the arrival in Tetuán on 23 July of a Lufthansa Junkers Ju-52/3m mail plane which, on Franco’s orders, Orgaz had requisitioned in Las Palmas on 20 July. The Bernhardt mission was a bold initiative by Franco which would make him the beneficiary of German assistance and constitute a giant step on his path to absolute power.

When the party arrived in Germany on 24 July, Hitler was staying at Villa Wahnfried, the Wagner residence, while attending the annual Wagnerian festival in Bayreuth. The delegation was rebuffed by Foreign Ministry officials in Berlin fearful of the international repercussions of granting aid to the Spanish military rebels. However, they were welcomed by Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the head of the Auslandorganisation who enabled them to travel on to Bavaria and provided a link with Rudolf Hess which in turn gained them access to the Führer.63 Hitler received Franco’s emissaries on the evening of 25 July on his return from a performance of Siegfried conducted by Wilhelm Fürtwängler. They brought a terse letter from Franco requesting rifles, fighter and transport planes and anti-aircraft guns. Hitler’s initial reaction to the letter was doubtful but in the course of a two hour monologue he worked himself into a frenzy of enthusiasm, although noting the Spanish insurgents’ lack of funds, he exclaimed, ‘That’s no way to start a war’. However, after an interminable harangue about the Bolshevik threat, he made his decision. He immediately called his Ministers of War and Aviation, Werner von Blomberg and Hermann Göring, and informed them of his readiness to launch what was to be called Unternehmen Feuerzauber (Operation Magic Fire) and to give Franco twenty aircraft rather than the ten requested. The choice of name for the operation suggests that the Führer was still under the influence of the ‘Magic Fire’ music which accompanies Siegfried’s heroic passage through the flames to liberate Brünnhilde. Göring, after initially expressing doubts about the risks, became an enthusiastic supporter of the idea.64

Ribbentrop’s immediate thought was that the Reich should keep out of Spanish affairs for fear of complications with Britain. Hitler, however, stuck to his decision because of his opposition to Communism.65 The Führer was determined that the operation would remain totally secret and suggested that a private company be set up to organize the aid and the subsequent Spanish payments. This was to be implemented in the form of a barter system based on two companies, HISMA and ROWAK.* Although not the motivating factor, the contribution of Spanish minerals to Germany’s rearmament programme was soon a crucial element in relations between Franco and Germany.66

It has been suggested that Hitler also consulted Admiral Canaris, the enigmatic head of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. The dapper Canaris knew Spain well, having spent time there as a secret agent during the First World War, and spoke fluent Spanish. It is unlikely that he was at Bayreuth during the Bernhardt visit, but it is certainly true that once Hitler decided to aid Franco, Canaris would be the link between them, much to the irritation of Göring. He was regularly sent to Spain to resolve problems and in the process established a relationship with Franco.67 Canaris quickly began to oversee German aid to Spain, from 4 August liaising with the recently promoted General Mario Roatta, the flamboyant head of Italian military intelligence. They agreed at the end of the month that Italian and German assistance would be channelled exclusively to Franco.68

Despite Mola’s endeavours, Franco had emerged as the man with international backing.69 The differences between their approaches to the Germans were significant. Franco’s emissaries had direct links with the Nazi Party, arrived with credible documentation and relatively ambitious requests. Mola’s envoy, José Ignacio Escobar, had neither papers nor specific demands other than for rifle cartridges. He had to seek out old contacts within the conservative German diplomatic corps which was hostile to any adventurism in Spain. On the basis of the information before the German authorities, Franco was clearly the leading rebel general, confident and ambitious, while Mola seemed unprofessional and lacking vision.70 Franco’s own aspirations glimmered through his mendacious statement to Langenheim that he presided over a directorate consisting of himself, Mola and Queipo de Llano.71

Hitler’s decision to send twenty bombers to Franco helped turn a coup d’état going wrong into a bloody and prolonged civil war, although it is clear that Franco would eventually have got his men across the Straits without German aid. Ten of the Junkers Ju-52/3m, together with the armaments and military fittings of all twenty, embarked by sea from Hamburg for Cádiz on 31 July and arrived on 11 August. The other ten, disguised as civilian transport aircraft, flew directly to Spanish Morocco between 29 July and 9 August. All were accompanied by spare parts and technicians.72 On 29 July, a delighted Franco telegrammed Mola ‘today the first transport aircraft arrives. They will go on arriving at the rate of two per day until we have twenty. I am also expecting six fighters and twenty machine guns.’ The telegram ended on a triumphant note, ‘We have the upper hand (Somos los amos). ¡Viva España!’. All arrived but one, which blew off course and landed in Republican territory.73

Despite the consequent intensification of the Nationalist air-lift, there was considerable exaggeration in Hitler’s much-quoted remark of 1942 that ‘Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junkers Ju-52. It is this aircraft that the Spanish revolution has to thank for its victory.’74 The Ju-52 was only one part, albeit a crucial one, of the airlift. What is equally remarkable at this stage of the military rebellion is Franco’s unquenchable optimism which not only kept up morale among his own men but also consolidated his authority with his fellow rebels elsewhere in Spain. In Burgos, Mola was in despair at the delay in getting the Army of Africa to the mainland. He telegrammed Franco on 25 July that he was contemplating a retreat behind the line of the river Duero after his initial attack on Madrid had been repulsed. With characteristic firmness and optimism, Franco replied: ‘Stand firm, victory certain’.75

On 1 August, Franco again telegrammed Mola: ‘we will ensure the successful passage of the convoy, crucial to the advance’.76 On 2 August, accompanied by Pacón, Franco flew to Seville to galvanize the preparations being made by Colonel Martín Moreno for the march on Madrid which was to begin that day.77 He could see that, even with the Italian and German transport aircraft, the airlift was far too slow. His plan for a convoy to break the blockade had been scheduled for 2 and then 3 August but cancelled. So, on returning to Morocco on 3 August, Franco held a meeting of his staff to fix a new date for the flotilla to make its dash across the Straits. Franco insisted that the troop convoy go by sea from Ceuta at dawn on 5 August despite concerns about the risks expressed by Yagüe and the naval officers. Convinced that the Republican crews were ineffective, Franco side-stepped the objections.78 He knew too that the Republican navy would be inhibited by the presence of German warships which were patrolling the Moroccan coasts.79 Accordingly, he sent another reassuring telegram to Mola on 4 August.80

On the morning of 5 August, air attacks were launched on the Republican ships in the Straits and the convoy set out but was forced back by thick fog. Meanwhile, Franco telephoned Kindelán in Algeciras and asked him to request the British authorities at Gibraltar to refuse access to the port to the Republican destroyer, Lepanto. This request was met and the Republican ship was allowed only to let off its dead and wounded before being obliged to leave Gibraltar. The convoy of ferry boats and naval vessels with three thousand men again set forth in the late afternoon, watched by Franco from the nearby hill of El Hacho. Air cover was provided by the two Dornier flying boats, the Savoia-81 bombers and the six Breguet fighters. The Republican vessels in the vicinity, incapable of manoeuvring to avoid air attack, made little effort to impede their passage. The success of the so-called ‘victory convoy’ brought the number of soldiers transported across the Straits to eight thousand together with large quantities of equipment and ammunition.81

The convoy’s success was a devastating propaganda blow to the Republic. The news that the ruthless Army of Africa was on the way depressed Republican spirits as much as it boosted those in the Nationalist zone. By 6 August, there were troop-ships regularly crossing the Straits under Italian air cover. The Germans also sent six Heinkel He-51 fighters and ninety-five volunteer pilots and mechanics from the Luftwaffe. Within a week, the rebels were receiving regular supplies of ammunition and armaments from both Hitler and Mussolini. The airlift was the first such operation of its kind on such a scale and constituted a strategic innovation which redounded to the prestige of General Franco. Between July and October 1936, 868 flights were to carry nearly fourteen thousand men, 44 artillery pieces and 500 tons of equipment.82

At this time, Mola made a significant error in the internal power stakes. On 1 August, heir to the Spanish throne, the tall and good-natured Don Juan de Borbón, the third son of Alfonso XIII, arrived in Burgos in a chauffeur-driven Bentley.* Anxious to fight on the Nationalist side, he had left his home in Cannes on 31 July, despite the fact that on that day his wife Doña María de Mercedes was giving birth to a daughter. Mola ordered the Civil Guard to ensure that he left Spain immediately. The fact that he did so abruptly and without consultation with his fellow generals revealed both Mola’s lack of subtlety and his anti-monarchist sentiments. The incident contributed to deeply monarchist officers transferring their long-term political loyalty to Franco.83 In contrast, when Franco later took a similar step, preventing Don Juan volunteering to serve on the battleship Baleares, he was careful to pass off his action as an effort to guarantee that the heir to the throne should be ‘King of all Spaniards’ and not be compromised by having fought on one side in the war.84