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Goda on Collado Seidel, "Zufluchtsstätte"Carlos Collado Seidel, "Zufluchtsstätte für Nationalsozialisten?Spanien, die Alliierten und die Behandlung deutscher Agenten 1944-1947," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43 (1995): 131-157.Reviewed by Norman J.W. Goda(originally published by H-German on 18 January 1996)Since the unlikely survival of Francisco Franco's regime through theSecond World War, historians have puzzled over the extent to which theFranco government had collaborated with Adolf Hitler's Germany. In the1960s, books by Donald Detwiler and Charles Burdick argued that Spain,exhausted from its own fratricidal conflict, tried to keep as muchpolitical and military distance as it could from Germany's war,particularly when Berlin developed an interest in Gibraltar in the fall of1940. With increased access to Spanish archives, however, the picture hasbecome clearer. Recent works by Javier Tussell, Paul Preston, and othersall show that Franco held, if not a strong trust for Berlin, then definiteterritorial and political aims that he hoped to realize should the Germanswin the war. To these ends, he was even willing to have Spain become abelligerent. The article under review by Carlos Collado Seidel fits intothis context. It questions the extent to which the Spanish governmenttolerated the presence of German agents on Spanish soil during the war,and the extent to which the Franco government offered asylum to Nazisafter the war ended. The article relies almost exclusively on the filesof the Spanish Foreign Ministry. The author's conclusion is that theFranco government followed a winding path between Allied pressure torepatriate German officials and its own definition of Spanish interestsand honor. A clear policy of sympathy for Nazism itself did not exist inMadrid, but neither did a policy which actively sought to expel Germannationals from Spanish soil.Spain and its Moroccan protectorate, as Collado Seidel states, were ofgreat importance to Germany during the war. Spanish territory straddledthe entrance to the western Mediterranean, while Spain itself providedvital materials such as wolfram and iron ore. Thus Berlin aimed for alarge German presence in Spain, Spanish Morocco, and in theSpanish-occupied zone of Tangier. At the end of 1941 there were 7,500Germans in Spanish territory, and by 1945 there were at least 12,000, manyof whom performed covert activities for the German government. TheAbwehr alone might have had a network of up to 2,500 agents. Accordingto Collado Seidel, German agents (but not British ones) received a wideberth from Spanish officials, who would not harass them even if they wereuncovered. The Allies complained loudly and often to Madrid about theseviolations of Spanish non-belligerence, and the British helpfully providedlists of agents complete with priority ratings. Yet little happened inpractice, and since the Allies feared a Nazi resurgence in Spain afterGermany's surrender, they continued to insist on deportation after thewar. These attempts, too, brought little in return, and the Allies gave upon the issue in the course of 1947.Collado Seidel skillfully shows that Spanish non-compliance with Allieddemands sprang not so much from fundamental sympathy with NationalSocialism, but rather from lack of commitment to Allied concerns. In thefirst place, Franco never understood how important the issue was to theAllies. The Spanish Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, hoped to show at leasttoken compliance when in May 1944, in return for continued American fueldeliveries, Madrid agreed, among other things, to deport German agents andto close the German General Consulate in Tangier, a rats' nest ofespionage activity. Yet the Foreign Ministry ran into stiff resistancefrom other agencies, particularly the Spanish military, police, andintelligence services. The Tangier Consulate was officially closed andsome Germans were indeed detained, though in very comfortable conditions. But Germans with contacts routinely used them to remain in the country.Some were protected because they had provided valuable services in theSpanish Civil War; some because they had business or social contacts withimportant Spanish officials; some because they were providing valuableintelligence to the Spanish government on its own internal enemies; andsome were protected simply as a matter of Spain's pride as a sovereignnation.Examples of these trends both during and after the war are abundant. LocalSpanish authorities, for example, protected German agents in Tangier andSpanish Morocco so that from the spring of 1943 to the spring of 1944, amere fourteen Germans were forced to leave Morocco due to Allied pressure. The High Commissioner in Tetuan himself pointed out to the ForeignMinistry that he could hardly be expected to expel "his" Germans from theprotectorate. After the war, the same problems persisted. In September1946, the Foreign Ministry had to defer in the case of Germany's ex-NavalAttache, Alfred Menzell, who had Franco's confidante Admiral Luis CarreroBlanco as his advocate. Carrero complained that his German friend hadprovided key assistance in "our war," and that besides, Spanish honor wasvery much at stake in cases such as these. The few Allied repatriationships that left Bilbao in 1945 and 1946 thus carried very few Germans whomthe Allies had considered a high priority. The remainder had eitherdisappeared with local help, or had been spoken for by important Spanishofficials. Thus more Germans prioritized for deportation by the Alliesremained in Spain than left, and by the time the last ship sailed,slightly more than a hundred such Germans had been repatriated. TheAllies allowed the issue to drop in 1947, having become more concernedwith the Soviets than with a resurgence of Nazism in Spain.It is difficult to critique a work-in-progress, but since Collado Seidelis currently working on a larger study concerning Allied policies towardNazis in Spain from 1942 to 1952, some suggestions may be helpful. Theauthor is to be commended for sifting through the Spanish Foreign Ministryfiles on this topic. It is a difficult group of papers which can befrustrating to follow at times. The use of Spanish military records andthose of the High Commissariat in Spanish Morocco would have been of greatuse for this study, but remain difficult to access under current Spanishrules. Most noteworthy, however, is that Collado Seidel does not seem tohave consulted any German records. Though the records of Germanintelligence agencies are indeed sketchy concerning activities in Spanishterritory during the war, the files of the German Foreign Ministry, theGerman Embassy in Madrid and the German Consulate in Tetuan provide neededperspective. For instance, I am not convinced that the Spanish governmentwas as pleased to accept German activities in its territories as ColladoSeidel suggests, especially since both Madrid and Berlin had their eyesset on French Morocco from the summer of 1940 onward. Madrid madenoticeable complaints to Berlin about violations of Spanish sovereignty,and the German Consulate in Tetuan complained to Berlin from late 1940onward about Spanish obstacles to German espionage and propagandaactivities. The German records also show that Madrid only allowed Berlinto open a General Consulate in Tangier in 1941 after considerable pressurefrom Joachim von Ribbentrop himself. The Spaniards were thus likelypleased to have closed it three years later. Collado Seidel seems not tohave yet consulted the wealth of secondary work now available on Spanishwartime policy either. This leads him to make occasionally misleadingcomments, such as one which states that Franco himself sympathized withthe fundamental ideas of National Socialism. Hopefully, these issues willbe addressed, but in the meantime, this is a very useful article whichstudents of German-Spanish relations, the Franco regime, and Allieddenazification policies would do well to consult.Norman J.W. Goda, University of Maine at Presque IsleCopyright © 1996 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may becopied in whole or in part, with proper attribution, as long as thecopying is not-for-profit "fair use" for research, commentary, study, orteaching. For other permission, please contact H-Net@uicvm.uic.edu. |
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