‘THE MEDITERRANEAN, THE NAVAL STRATEGIES OF THE MAJOR POWERS, AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, 1936-1939 ‘WILLARD C. FRANK In the 1930s the mediterranean was the crossroads of the world, linking con- tinents and oceans, conflicting European and restive colonial peoples. In this com- plex sea the paths of the major powers crossed as they reached to realms beyond, while their naval bases encroached on each other's domains. The geography was itself fraught with potential conflict, even as the lure of destiny made war for sucvi- val the strongest currency of the era. Within the region's complexities and tensions erupted civil wat in Spain, whose salient strategic position and weakened condi- tion both drew in the competing powers and affected their political and strategic calculations. The compounded stresses of geography, great-power politics, and the Spanish Civil War tested the European system to the maximum. By early 1936, the unlikely coalition laboriously being forged by a weakened France to contain the explosive dynamics of Nazi Germany ~ including wary Bri- tain, Fascist Italy, quarreling Eastern European states, and the unstable Soviet Union. — had cracked under the weight of its contradictions and the hostilities occasioned by the Ethiopian crisis. Newly isolated, Italy found a possible ally in the dangerous but welcoming Germany, but yet kept its lines open to France and Bricain, Britain, frightened of Germany but suspicious of France, remained unaligned as it sought to make accommodations with potential enemies. Hitler took advantage of Euro- pean disunity to remilitarize the Rhineland, driving Belgium into neutrality. Meanw- hile, militarist Japan loomed in the Far East, In this unstable world of complex and extensive but uncertain interests and challenges, clarity, coherence, and decision in strategic direction eluded naval plan- ners. Italy's Mussolini dreamed of forging a new Roman Empire, but pursued chan- ging and contradictory instincts on how to chart his way among the other powers and in what direction to expand. Italy held a fairly strong defensive position in the Alps and the Central Mediterranean ®, but was militarily and economically ‘weak and dependent on maritime trade from beyond the Mediterranean. Italian ambition sharply clashed against the interests of stronger France and Britain, who- se navies controlled the Western and Eastern basins, yet Italy did not relish facing even one major enemy alone, and certainly not for a protracted war. Further, I lian naval leaders, despite a coherent fleet, lacked confidence in confronting Bi tish fighting spirie and cradicion©®, Italian admirals remained strategically adrif.160 [WILLARD ©. FRANK, while military means lagged behind expansionist ends, hoping to put off che day of reckoning until massive new construction might better undergitd imperial aspi- rations 4), France, facing the threatening behemoth of Nazi Germany in the northeast, developed a strategy of a long defensive war of attrition, for which reinforcement and supply from French North and West Africa, by Adantic or Mediterranean routes, were critical. General Gamelin hoped to restore strategic maneuver to outflank Ger- ‘many to the south and east via Italy and eastern allies. By June 1936 the Italian link in this scheme, which looked so promising just a year before, had been thrown into serious doubt by the Ethiopian and Rhineland crises, the coming into power in France of the anti-Fascist Popular Front, traditional Franco-Italian naval rival- ry, and Mussolini's ambitions. Thus by mid-1936 France faced a second danger in the Mediterranean. The French navy held an edge over the Italian, but a likely stalemate on the Corsica-Sardinia-Sicily line blocked Gamelin’s eastern strategy by sea as by land. The navy, in any case, focused on convoy protection, especially in the Atlantic. Furcher, as dangers multiplied, so dependence on uneeliable Britain deepened , France, therefore, also found itself in political and strategic quandaries. In 1936, Britain, cautiously unaligned, indulged Hitler and Mussolini to pro- vide security in Europe, while the fleet faced the Far East. British leaders viewed the Japanese Navy as their greatest maritime threat and were prepared to abandon the Mediterranean, Britain’s principal but most vulnerable artery, in order to send the bulk of the fleet co Singapore. Given che priority assigned Far Eastern over Mediterranean threats and with the state of British disarmament in 1936, there seemed no other remedy, despite the slowness of the Cape route and the likely ad- verse effect on British influence in Egypt and the Near Eastern mandates. Yet Eu- -ropean storm clouds began to raise che specter of a three-frone war, for which Brit ‘was totally unprepared. Therefore, Britain became increasingly dependent on France, which British leaders were very loathe to admit”. Germany, in the early stages of rearmament, began to think beyond defensive strategies. By 1936 German naval scracegy against prime adversary France cente- red on disrupting Atlantic and Mediterranean communications, including by a new generation of U-boats ®), This strategic direction, clear and coherent, served until 1945. In this fluid situation exploded he Spanish Civil War in July 1936, just as the League of Nations abandoned sanctions over Ethiopia and the concentrated British naval power in Alexandria was dispersing to return to peacetime routine. ‘Tension in the Mediterranean quickly shifted from East to West. ‘The strategic geography of Spain had long absorbed the attention of naval scaffs and writers. Iberia divided French naval forces. Bases in the Peninsula, Spanish Morocco, the Balearics, and the Canaries were poised to interdict French Mediter- ranean and Adantic strategic routes and the heavily-travelled Adantic-Mediterranean passage. Thus it was in the interest of the other powers to maintain a weak and“THE MEDITERRANEAN, THE NAVAL STRATEGIES OF THE MAJOR POWERS 16 compliant Spain, of to find ways to extend or defend their interests by taking ad- vantage of Spain’s geographic position. The Spanish war therefore became a magnet that drew in all the European powers. Hitler and Mussolini early and separately came to the political and milica- ry aid of General Franco's Nationalist rebels co gain leverage in a Francoist Spain, ourflank France, and defeat Bolshevism, With the failure of a quick success against the Popular Front Spanish Republic and driven by their ambitions, Mussolini esca- laced Italian intervention co gain the military victory and to position himself for the breakout of Italian power into the Atlantic world. Hitler, on the other hand, restricted his aid while encouraging Mussolini, in order to promote a major clash there among other powers as a diversion from his rearmament and ambitions in Central Europe. Mussolini, who fancied himself as being so politically ascute that he could manipulate Hitler, thus played into Hitler's hands as Italy weakened itself in a seemingly endless war in Spain. Léon Blum of France at first despatched aid to a kindred Popular Front in Madrid, but backed off a commitment for feex of domestic polarization and diplomatic isolation from Britain. The Soviet Union then took up the slack to ship military aid to the Spanish Republic to prevent a Fascist victory, bolster French will, and form an anti-Fascist political front. The effect was to protract the Spanish war for two and a half years, while Europe slid ever more steeply toward war, Politically Italy and Germany cooperated closely over Spanish issues, forging the Axis and contributing to the polarization of Europe. Yet in Spain they fought separate parallel wars that mitrored their strategic and operational proclivities and exposed their lack of operational integration. The Axis aeto-naval war concentrated on the control of maritime communi- cations. Italy firmly transformed Mallorca in the Balearics into a major operating base for war on Soviet and Spanish Republican shipping, just as Mussolini wished to use it in a war against France, athwart whose Mediterranean strategic routes the Balearics lay ', Both Italy and Germany utilized clandestine submarine wat- fare against shipping, Icaly periodically from November 1936 until February 1938, and Getmany in November and December 1936. Neither paid the least attention to the traditional law of capture at sea enshrined in the Submarine Protocol that they had just signed. Italian submarines operating from Italian, and later Spanish, bases preyed upon shipping in the western Mediterranean, the Sicilian Channel, and the Aegean, much as they anticipated doing in a major war '. New German U-boats of the VIIA type slipped into the Mediterranean, waged war along Spanish sea lanes and off its Mediterranean ports, and returned to Germany without disco- very of refueling, just as the type had been designed to do against French commu- nications in these very waters 9, Even after Germany abandoned secret submarine warfare in December 1936 as being too politically risky, U-boats continued to make constant cruises to Spanish seas, from which they were ready to operate ei- ther against the Spanish Republic or, in the case of a European conflict, against162 [WILLARD €. FRANK. France and Britain. Three such U-boats stood ready for war in Spanish waters du- ting the tense days of the Czech crisis in September 1938. Throughout the Spa- nish war, U-boats were supported by German supply ships in Spanish harbors, just as they secretly would be supplied and repaired in Vigo for war missions in 1940-4209, In addition, Italian air and rapid surface forces bombarded Spanish ports, ‘engaged in sustained reconnaissance operations, and preyed on shipping along Me- ditertanean routes, especially in the Sicilian Channel and off the Tunisian coast. German pocket battleships and other surface warships spent extended sojourns in Spanish waters where they were refueled and reprovisioned by prepositioned sup- ply ships. Their crews, acclimated to long cruises in distant waters, became more prepared for extended commerce war. The pocket battleship Deutichland, for example, ‘was poised in Spanish waters during the 1938 Czech crisis to slip into the fastness of the Atlantic should war come'!®, Spanish Civil War conditions masked problems that remained unrecognized. Italian and German submarine operations were not as effective as naval leaders had expected, but they blamed restrictive cules of engagement rather than defective torpedoes and tactics, which came to plague them again in the Second World ‘War, Italo-German division of naval responsibility by zones or hours of ope- ations, as also with the extent of ait-naval cooperation, seemed sufficient for the circumstances of the Spanish War, and nothing was done to achieve closer opera- tional cooperation when the far-greater challenge of the Second World War disclo- sed their ineffectiveness. French and British political and naval cooperation grew ever closer in the Spa- nish war from evacuation efforts early in the war, through anti-contraband patrols starting in April 1937, and culminating in the Nyon anti-submarine patrols, which successfully kept “pirate” Italian submarines at bay, beginning in September 1937. After years of constant British rebuff whenever French military leaders artempted to secure British cooperation in coordinating strategies, this naval cooperation was 2 welcome sign and presaged the strategic coordination to which Britain finally agreed in 193918), The Spanish Civil War complicated the strategic equations of the maritime powers. To strategic planners, it seemed highly probable that Francoist Spain, which all correctly assumed would win the Civil War, would either join the Axis as a belligerent, allow Axis forces to operate from Spanish bases, or find its strategic sites quickly occupied by the enemy. Spain and the Western Mediterranean, there- fore, prominently figured in their calculations. Mussolini, major player in the Spanish war and disdaining the perceived flabbiness of French and British will, announced to the Fascist Grand Council in February 1939 his design to smash the French and British “bars” and “guards” that blocked his way out of his Mediterranean “prison” and into the oceanic world. This required all che strategic advantage he could assemble, including retaining“THE MEDITERRANEAN, THE NAVAL STRATEGIES OF THE MAJOR POWERS. 163 or securing Spanish bases, which Mussolini assured Goering in April that he would do. France, Goering warned, would quickly occupy the Balearics if Italy did not. ‘Two months later, Admiral Raeder also prodded Admiral Cavagnari in the same terms, Yer, in the end Mussolini, despite his boasts, resisted the pressures to force on his Spanish allies Italian strategic positions for a European war. German war planners, too, coveted Spanish bases for German submarines and surface raiders, The influential Heye Memorandum of 25 October 1938 expressed the ‘decisive advantage” Italian and Spanish bases would present for German com- merce war, It would be best for these states to be active belligerents, but even a neutral Spain might “‘make a secret agreement officially co provide Germany with a wartime base” @, This came to pass in the secret German submarine use of Vigo in the coming war. French strategic planners for good reason took the threat of a hostile use of Spanish bases very seriously, for.that would greatly imperil both the Adantic and ‘Mediterranean strategic routes and virtually prevent the concentration of the Adantic and Mediterranean squadrons. Periodic scares of Germans occupying Spanish Mo- rocco or of an Italian invasion of Menorca kept French nerves on edge and minds alert”, The Mediterranean had to remain a cop strategic priority, but uncertainty about Spain produced a corresponding uncertainty in French strategic direction in the Mediterranean. In the event of a three-front war with Spain as an enemy, French forces could harass Spanish coasts while che main fleec fought Ialy for the command of the Western basin, or, alternatively, land in the Balearics, Spanish ‘Morocco, and the Canaries, while remaining on the defensive on land fronts and along the Corsica-Sardinia line, If Spain could be kept neutral and Britain were anally, France could mount a major offensive against Italy, including landings on Sardinia and Sicily to reopen Mediterranean routes, or remove shipping from the ‘Western Mediterranean while combined British and French forces landed at Salo- nika to link up with Eastern allies. Spain thus greatly reduced the chance of imple- menting Gamelin’s and Darlan's preferred strategic direction in the Mediterranean toward the East 2 Of course, any French macitime offensive in the Eastern Mediterranean would require the close cooperation of Britain. From early in the Spanish Civil War, France sought close political and military ties with Britain to check attempts of Italy and Germany to take advantage of the Spanish problem to weaken French and British security. Britain, with the eyes of its admirals set on Japan and its statesmen labo- ring not to antagonize the dictators, rebuffed every French overcure, Rather, Bri- tain relied for security in the Western Mediterranean on Italian promises to cespect the status quo, Only in 1939 did Britain awake to the necessity of joint resistance. Anglo-French military staffs finally developed an embryonic coalition strategy, in which, barring an attack by Japan, che Mediterranean would be the theater of the first allied offensive. Yer strategic direction in che Mediterranean remained uncer- tain, the plan calling for an invasion of Spanish Morocco if Spain were involved ®,164 [WILLARD ©. FRANK. ‘When war come, exhausted Spain remained a non-belligerent while Franco worried about possible French invasion. Yet, Admical Canaris boasted of gai- ning 2 Spanish promise of the use of Spanish Atlantic and Mediterranean ports by German warships @4, Further, Franco did allow German U-boats secretly to operate from Vigo, while Italian deceptive forces operated in Algeciras Bay. Pre- ‘war plans to occupy strategic sites in Spain as opportunity beckoned or enemy ac- tion diccated were never realized. However, geography, great-power politics, and the Spanish cauldron produced an explosive mixture Throughout the Spanish War and into the Second World War. In che years before the collapse of France and the Italian entry into war in 1940, Mussolini withstood pressures to present Fran- ‘ce with a casus belli in Spain, and so a European war did not begin in the Mediter- ranean as Hitler had hoped. NOTES (Q) This, and similar characterizations, derive from numerous sources. 2) See, for example, Giuseppe Fioravanzo, “Geografia ¢ stratesia”, Rivita Marittima 90 (March 1956), 282-291; Raoul Castex, Théris strategigues, vol. 3 (Paris, 1931), 151-155. (3) Chief of seaff Badoglio reported that the navy “lacks an aggressive sense”. Lucio Ceva Le fore armate (Turin, 1981), 609. See also German comments in Dacuments on German Foreign Policy {hereafter DGFP}, ser. D, vol. 6 (Washingeon, 1956), 1125. (A) For lalian naval programs, see Forcunato Minnii, "Il problems degli armamenci nel 4a prepacazione militar italiana dal 1935 al 1943", Storia contemporanea 9, (February 1978), 41-50. (6) Nicole Jordan, “The CurPrice War on the Peripheries: The French General Sua, che Rhineland, and Czechoslovakia”, in Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins ofthe Scond World Wer, ed. Robert Boyce and Esmonde M, Robertson (New York, 1988), 128-166. (©) Philippe Masson, “Le Redressement de la Marine francaise pendant I'Entre-deux- aguerces, in Les Armies espagnols ut frangaier: Moderation et rforme entre le dee Guerris Mondia- des, ed. Jean-Pierre Ecienvre (Madtid, 1989), 149-162; and “La marine francaise de la crise de mars 1936", in La France et Allemagne, 1932-1936 (Paris, 1980), 333-337. (D) See especially N.H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, vol. 1 Rearmament Puicy (London, 1976), 332.335, 375-380, 409-420, 607-611 (6) See Michael Salewslci, Die deutsche Seeriglitung, 1935-1945, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), 20:33: and Brich Raeder, "Vorldufige Kampfanweisungen fd, Kriegsmarine”, 27 May 1936, summarized in Robert Harold Buchanen, “The Era of Erich Raeder, 1894-1943” ¢un- pub. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Colorado, 1980), 227-228, (9) See extensive commentary through the 1920s and 1930s in such journals as Monieur de la Flot, Le Yacht, Revue des Deux Mendes, Rivita Maritiima, Nucoa Antloga, Ecbi ¢ Comment, Naval and Military Record, Rasi Journal, Marine Runduwhan, and Revista General de Marina. (10) I have treated the motives of the powers in Spain in ““The Spanish Civil War and the Coming of the Second World War", The International History Review 9 (August 1987), 375-400.‘THE MEDITERRANEAN, THE NAVAL STRATEGIES OF THE MAJOR POWERS 165 (LD Franco Bargoni, L'inpegne naval italiano durante la Guerra Civile Spagnola (1936-1939) (Rome, 1922), 57-65, 87-97, 193-195; Josep Massor i Muntaner, La guerra civil a Malleca (Mone. secrat, 1976), 233-302. (12) Bargoni, L'impegno navale italiano, 131-144, 195-210, 280-294, 303-317, 330-343; ““Relazione sul contributo dei sommergibil lle O.M.S.”, 11 May 1937; “Rapporto sullativitt ei sommergibili dal 5 agosto 1937 al 12 seteembre 1937 XV"; "Rapporto sulla missioneeffer- ‘uata in qualita di ufficiale di collegamento tra la Missione Navale Italiana e I'Alko Comando delle forze nazionali spagnuole", 24 September 1937-20 February 1938, cartelle 3098, 3068, 2874, Ufficio Storico della Marine Militere (hereafter USMM], Rome. (13) See my “German Clandestine Submarine Warfare in che Spanish Civil War , 1936", in New lnerpresations in Naval History: Selected Paper rom she Ninth Naval History Symposia, ed. William R. Roberts and Jack Sweetman (Annapolis, 1991), 107-123. The relevant documents are in “Ursula: Zusammenarbeit zwischen der deutschen und der italienischen Marine bez lich der Tatigkeie der Uncerseeboore an der spanischen Mittelmeerkisten”, 2 November-21 December 1936, RM 20/899, Bundesarchiv-Militirarchiv, Freiburg i Br. [hereafter BAMA]. (14) “Der Binsaez der deutschen Kriegsschiffe im Spanischen Birgerkriege, 1936 bis 1938/39", RM 20/1495, BA-MA. (15) Charles B. Burdick, ‘Moro’: The Resupply of German Submarines in Spain, 1939-1942", Canal European History 3 (September 1970), 256-284. (16) Bargoni, L’impegno navale italiane, 185-186, 294-303; “Der Binsarz dee deutschen Kriegsschiffe”, RM 20/1495, BA-MA. (17) The extensive failuces of Italian torpedo runs are ceported ia “Relazione sul contri buto dei sommergibili ale O.M.S.”; and “Rapporti operazioni sommergibili”, August September 1937, c. 3098, 2841, USMM, German commanders reported the same in “Ursula, RM 20/899, BAMA. See also Cajus Bekker {pseud. of Hans Dieter Berenbrek], Hitler's Naval War (Garden City, 1974), 119-138; and Eberhard Réssler, Die Torpedos der deutschen U-bote: Enwickang, Her- sllang und Eigenschafien der deutchen Marine-Torpeds (Herford, 1984), 55-82. (18) See my “International Efforcs at Sea to Contain the Spanish Civil War, 1936-193 in Maintien dela paix de 1815 & anjourdbui: Callogue de la Commission internationale d’itoriemilt re (Québec, 1995), 184-197. (19) On the Iealian covering ofthe Balearics and Spanish bases, sce Mussolini-Ribbencrop talks, 6 November 1937, in Galeazz0 Ciano, Ciano's Diplomatic Papers (London, 1948), 144-145; ‘Maustolini’s design co “march to che ocean" in Gerhard Schreiber, Revisionimus und Weltmacht- streben: Marinefibrang und deuschitalienische Besiebuagen, 1919-1944 (Stuttgart, 1978), 151-152; ‘Mussolini-Goering talks, 16 April 1939, DGFP, D, 6: 261; Raeder-Cavagnari talks, 20-21 June 1939, Ibid,, 1121-1127, and I decementi diplomatic italiani (hereafter DDI, 8th ser., vol. 13 (Rome, 1953), 430-444; Erwin Jaenecke, “Erianerungen aus dem spanischen Biirgerkrieg”, 2 April 1946, pp. 3-4, German Air Force Monograph Project G/W/Ib, USAF Historical Re- search Center, Maxwell Air Force Base; “Rapporto di Missione del Contrammiraglio Ferrer", 3 October 1936-22 November 1938, c. 2930, USMM; and Dino Grandi, I! mio pacse: Ricordi ansebiografci Bologna, 1985), 421-426. The closest approximation to 2 true Iralian naval wat plan is DG10/A2 of November 1938. See Ufficio Storico delle Marina Militare, La marina ita- liana nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale, vol. 21: L'organiszazione della marina durante il confit, Giuseppe Fioravanzo (Rome, 1972), 1: 316-320. (20) Heye Denkschrift in Salewski, Die deutsche Sebricgsletung, 3:43-44; Schreiber, Revsioni- mus und Wellmachitreben, 145-146.166 {WILLARD €. PRANK. 1) Sce for example, a Moroccan scare of January 1937 in Dacuments diplomatiques fras- sais, 1932-1939, 2d ser., vol. 4 (Paris, 1967), 417; and a Balearics scare of October 1937 in Dacuments on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 2A sex., vol. 19 (London, 1982), 382. (22) See war plan studies 49 EMG-SE of 5 June 1937, 78 EMG-SE of 16 July 1937, 82 EMG-SE of 29 July 1937, and 149 EMG-SE of 24 November 1937, 1 BB? 207, 170, Service Historique de ia Marine, Vincennes; and René Sabatier de Lachadentde, La Marine francaise cl la guerre civile d'Espagne, 1936-1939 (Vincennes, 1993), 87-95, 177-181, 305-309, 335-338, 351-352, (23) Les conversations france-brixaniquesdEtar-Major (1935-1939), ed. M. A, Rewsser((Pars), 1968), 236-239; Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 1: 409-431, 627-641, 653-680; Stephen Roskill, Neval Policy between tbe Wars, vol. 2: The period of Reluctant Rearmament, 1930-1939 (London, 1976), 416-485. (24) Lais co Cavagnari, 22 July 1939, DDI, 8th, 12: 485-486.