The international response to the Spanish Civil War included many non-Spaniards participating in combat and advisory positions. The governments of Italy, Germany and, to a lesser extent, Portugal contributed money, munitions, manpower and support to the Nationalist forces, led by Francisco Franco. Some nations that declared neutrality favored the nationalists indirectly. The governments of the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, Mexico, aided the Republicans, also called Loyalists, of the Second Spanish Republic. The aid came even after all the European powers had signed a Non-Intervention Agreement in 1936. Although individual sympathy for the plight of the Spanish Republic was widespread in the liberal democracies, pacifism and the fear of a second world war prevented them from selling or giving arms. However, Nationalist pleas were answered within days by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Tens of thousands of individual foreign volunteers travelled to Spain to fight, the majority for the Republican side.
International non-intervention
Non-intervention had been proposed in a joint diplomatic initiative by the governments of France and the United Kingdom, which responded to antiwar sentiment. France was also worried that sympathisers of the Nationalists would cause a civil war in France. Non-intervention was part of a policy aimed at preventing a proxy war and the escalation of the war into a second world war.
On 3 August 1936, Charles de Chambrun presented the French government's non-intervention plan, and Galeazzo Ciano promised to study it. The British, however, immediately accepted the plan in principle. The next day, it was put to Germany by André François-Poncet. The German position was that such a declaration was not needed. A similar approach was made to the Soviet Union. On 6 August, Ciano confirmed Italian support in principle. The Soviet government similarly agreed in principle if Portugal was included and Germany and Italy stopped aid immediately. On 7 August, France unilaterally declared its non-intervention. Draft declarations had been put to German and Italian governments. Such a declaration had already been accepted by the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union and required renouncing all traffic in war matériel, direct or indirect. Portuguese Foreign Minister Armindo MonteiroSee also :pt:Armindo Rodrigues de Sttau Monteiro was also asked to accept but held his hand. On 9 August, French exports were suspended. Portugal accepted the pact on 13 August unless its border was threatened by the war.
On 15 August, the United Kingdom banned exports of war materiel to Spain. Italy agreed to the pact and signing on 21 August. That there was a surprising reversal of views has been put down to the growing belief that countries could not or indeed would not abide by the agreement anyway. On 24 August, Germany signed. The Soviet Union was keen not to be left out, and on 23 August, it agreed to the Non-Intervention Agreement, which was followed by a decree from Joseph Stalin banning exports of war matérial to Spain, thereby bringing the Soviets into line with the Western powers.
Non-Intervention Committee
It was then that the Non-Intervention Committee was created to uphold the agreement, but the double dealing of both the Soviet Union and Germany had already become apparent. The ostensible purpose of the committee was to prevent personnel and matériel reaching the warring parties, as with the Non-Intervention Agreement. The committee first met in London on 9 September 1936.Involved were Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia. It was chaired by the British W. S. Morrison. France was represented by Charles Corbin, Italy by Dino Grandi and the Soviet Union by Ivan Maisky. Germany was represented by Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Portugal, whose presence had been a Soviet requirement, was not represented. The second meeting took place on 14 September. It established a subcommittee to be attended by representatives of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, Sweden and the United Kingdom to deal with the day-to-day running of non-intervention. Among them, however, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy dominated, perhaps worryingly so, Soviet non-military aid was revived but not military aid.
Meanwhile, the 1936 meeting of the League of Nations began. There, Anthony Eden convinced Monteiro to have Portugal join the Non-Intervention Committee. Álvarez del Vayo spoke out against the Non-Intervention Agreement and claimed that it put the rebel Nationalists on the same footing as the Republican government. The Earl of Plymouth replaced Morrison as the British representative. The Conservative member often adjourned meetings to the benefit of the Italians and Germans, and the committee was accused of having an anti-Soviet bias.
On 12 November, plans to post observers to Spanish frontiers and ports to prevent breaches of the agreement were ratified. France and the United Kingdom became divided on whether to recognise Franco's forces as a belligerent, as the British wanted, or to fail to do, as the French wanted. That was subsumed by the news that the Italian and German governments had recognised the Nationalists as the true government of Spain. The League of Nations condemned intervention, urged its council's members to support non-intervention and commended mediation. It then closed discussion on Spain and left it to the committee. A mediation plan, however, was soon dropped.
The Soviets met the request to ban volunteers on 27 December, followed by Portugal on 5 January and Germany and Italy on 7 January. On 20 January, Italy put a moratorium on volunteers since it believed that supplies to the Nationalists were now sufficient. Non-intervention would have left both sides with the possibility of defeat, which Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union in particular were keen to avoid.
Control plan Observers were posted to Spanish ports and borders, and both Ribbentrop and Grandi were told to agree to the plan, significant shipments already having taken place. Portugal would not accept observers but agreed to personnel attached to the British embassy in Lisbon. Zones of patrol were assigned to each of the four nations, and an International Board was set up to administer the scheme. There were assurances by Italy that it would not end non-intervention.
In May, the committee noted two attacks on the patrol's ships by Republican aircraft. It iterated calls for the withdrawal of volunteers from Spain, condemned the bombing of open towns and showed approval of humanitarian work. Germany and Italy stated that they would withdraw from the committee and from the patrols without guarantees of no further attacks. Early June saw the return of Germany and Italy to the committee and the patrols. Attacks on the German cruiser Leipzig on 15 and 18 June made Germany and Italy once again withdraw from patrols but not from the committee. That prompted the Portuguese government to remove British observers on the Spanish-Portuguese border. The United Kingdom and France offered to replace Germany and Italy, which, however, believed that they would be too partial. Germany and Italy requested for land controls to be kept and for belligerent rights to be given to the Nationalists to allow rights of search to be used by both the Republicans and the Nationalists to replace naval patrols. A British plan suggested naval patrols to be replaced by observers in ports and ships, with land control measures being resumed. Belligerent rights would not be granted until substantial progress was made on the volunteer withdrawal.
That culminated in a period during 1937 during which all of the powers were prepared to give up on non-intervention. By the end of July, the committee was in deadlock, and the aims of a successful outcome to the Spanish Civil War was looking unlikely for the Republic. Unrestricted Italian submarine warfare began on 12 August. The British Admiralty believed that a significant control effort was the best solution to attacks on British shipping. The committee decided that naval patrols did not justify the expense and would be replaced with observers at ports.
The Conference of Nyon was arranged by the British for all parties with a Mediterranean coastline, despite appeals by Italy and Germany for the committee to handle piracy and the other issues that the conference was to discuss. It decided for French and British fleets to patrol the areas of sea west of Malta and to attack any suspicious submarines. Also, warships that attacked neutral shipping would be attacked. Eden claimed that non-intervention had stopped a European war. The League of Nations reported on the Spanish situation by noting the "failure of non-intervention". On 6 November, the plan to recognise the Nationalists as belligerents, once significant progress had been made, was finally accepted. The Nationalists accepted on 20 November and the Republicans on 1 December. On 27 June, Maisky agreed to send two commissions to Spain to enumerate foreign volunteer forces and to bring about their withdrawal. The Nationalists, wishing to prevent the fall of the sympathetic British government, led by Neville Chamberlain, were seen to accept the plan.
National non-intervention United Kingdom and France
The United Kingdom officially proclaimed its neutrality in the conflict in 1936, and British foreign policy in Europe attempted to prevent the outbreak of a wider war through appeasing Germany and Italy. The Third National Government and Fourth National Government both believed that the Republicans were the puppets of far-left socialist and communist factions in Spain and accordingly adopted a policy of benevolent neutrality towards the Nationalists, which included covertly refusing to provide both direct and indirect help towards the Republic. Britain's ambassador to Spain, Sir Henry Chilton, was a strong admirer of the Nationalists and made several efforts to support their cause. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, while publicly maintaining the official policy of non-intervention, privately expressed his preference for a Nationalist victory. Eden also stated that his government "preferred a Rebel victory to a Republican victory".
The British government had long viewed the Republic as politically unstable and worried about Manuel Azaña's ability to prevent a takeover by far-left political factions. The Labour Party was strongly for the Republicans, but was heavily outnumbered by Conservative Party in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.Alpert (1998) p.65 notes that rank-and-file members of the Labour Party may have been opposed to helping the Republic. The Labour Party eventually rejected non-intervention in October 1937. The Trades Union Congress was split since it had a strong anticommunist faction. British public opinion was divided on the conflict, with a clear majority demanding another major war be avoided. A large segment of the British public was strongly anticommunist, and so tended to prefer a Nationalist victory. Such pro-Nationalist sentiments were reinforced by right-wing media outlets such as the Daily Mail, which published atrocity propaganda about the Red Terror. However, such accounts exaggerated the scale of Republican atrocities and offended their readership, which was still sensitive to such accounts due to Rape of Belgium during World War I.