On 23 October, 1940, two dictators at the very height of their powers met at a railway station on the French-Spanish frontier. Each wanted something from the other: for Hitler, at least, it didn’t go well.
“Meet Franco again?” asked Hitler. “I would rather have three teeth extracted!”
Let’s remind ourselves of the context in which the two Fascists met. In 1940, both men were riding high.
Franco was the caudillo of Spain (Fascist dictators insisted on fancy words which meant ‘leader’: Hitler was the Führer, Mussolini the Duce, and Franco the Caudillo).
Between July 1936 and April 1939, he had waged a civil war which had destroyed the Spanish economy and killed hundreds of thousands of the people.
Many of Spain’s cities were, eighteen months later, still in ruins. But Franco was securely in power.
Against the advice of his generals, Hitler had chosen to unleash an aggressive war in September 1939.
The surface reason for attacking his neighbours was to undo the peace deal of 1918, which he claimed was unfair to Germany. In reality, he had fantasies of ruling the whole of Europe.
The war had gone spectacularly well for Hitler, up to this point. Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and various other nations had fallen to German force very rapidly.
Best of all (for Hitler), Germany’s traditional enemy France had been overrun in a matter of weeks. This war business was easy.
Only Britain still remained unconquered. Hence the meeting at Hendaye.
Hitler wanted two things from Franco. Spanish Jews should be rounded up. And something had to be done about Gibraltar.
The Holocaust had not yet got into full stride, but Hitler had never made any secret about his attitude towards ‘Jewry’, and the ultimate fate of Europe’s Jews under Nazism wasn’t hard to imagine.
READ MORE: ON THIS DAY: When Spain’s dictator Franco met Adolph Hitler
In an age when warships were powered by steam, even the most formidable vessels had to return to port frequently to take on coal for their furnaces. As long as Gibraltar was free, the Royal Navy could control the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the English Channel.
But Franco was well-known for his stubbornness. He was broadly in sympathy with Hitler, but here was a chance to drive a hard bargain. If Spain was to join the Fascist Axis, Hitler must hand over weapons, petrol and food in vast quantities.
Spain had severe shortages in these areas.
Furthermore, Franco demanded African colonies. Germany must guarantee that Morocco and half of Algeria would become Spanish immediately. The French protectorate of Cameroon must also be handed over.
The two dictators negotiated for seven hours. Franco refused to give ground on any of his demands.
Vichy France was a problem for Hitler. He didn’t have enough troops to occupy the whole French mainland, so he had split France in two: Germany now held the north-western part, nearest Britain, and allowed French Fascists to run the rest, from the small town of Vichy.
The problem was, the French were highly sensitive about the defeat they’d just suffered at Hitler’s hands. The Führer knew that he needed all his resources to fight Britain (he was also planning an attack on the USSR).
If he started dishing out France’s colonies to Spain, he would almost certainly provoke uprisings all over France. Uprisings which he couldn’t quell.
It was ‘no deal’.
This was a turning-point in world history.
Up to now Hitler had been astonishingly successful.
However, as the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper has pointed out, before the Fall of France in 1940, the German dictator had listened to his generals and his politicians.
After France proved so easy to defeat, Hitler had started believing in his own genius.
The whole thing started to unravel when Hitler stopped taking advice.
From this point on, he made mistake after mistake, and no-one in his court (it wasn’t a government – it was a royal court) dared to question him. Of course, it all ended in the squalor of a bunker in Berlin, in the spring of 1945.
Franco has two claims to fame. Unlike Hitler (or Saddam Hussein, or Gaddafi), he died peacefully in his own bed. And he was the last man to defy the Führer to his face!
Click here to read more Spain News from The Olive Press.