Franco. Paul Preston
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