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Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Moffat)
The Spanish Ambassador called this morning and left with me the attached note45 which he requested me to bring to the attention of Mr. Hull and Mr. Welles.
He reiterated his thesis that the application of our neutrality law which allowed Germany and Italy to buy munitions while loyalist Spain was excluded was unfair and much to be deplored.
He said that he came across constant evidences of a feeling in this country that loyalist resistance was about over and that it was just a question of time before Franco succeeded in winning a complete victory. This view was entirely erroneous. He had been in telephonic communication yesterday with Barcelona and had been immensely gratified at the information given him and the renewed tone of confidence.
The Ambassador then developed a little further the theory he had previously expounded to Mr. Welles that, irrespective of what might happen in the war, Spain’s troubles were far from over and that the next stage would be a “war of liberation”. He thought that the Italians would withdraw as indicated or, at the worst, could be gotten rid of very easily. The Italians’ strength lay not in arms but in diplomacy. The real difficulty as he forsaw it would be getting rid of the Germans. In counter-distinction to the Italians, the Germans had made themselves pretty popular with groups in Spain. The professional and military men had even before the Great War looked up to the Germans as masters of their trade and as having raised the position of the military to the highest status within a State. What the Ambassador feared was that there would be no nucleus anxious to take the lead in expelling them from Spain. They had meanwhile fortified the mountains behind Gibraltar and at Ceuta, thus controlling the Straits. They had in the last few months made two submarine bases at Vigo and Corunna. They had made two or three airplane bases along the north coast. As never before, they were in a position to threaten the flank of Britain’s communications. For two hundred years the remark of Louis XIV that the Pyrenees no longer existed held true, but henceforth, unless the Germans were driven from the country France would have to fortify her third land frontier. [Page 180] Quite apart from the Army, the elements of the extreme right were sympathetic with what Germany was doing in the way of organized government and hence would agree with the military in not forcing their retirement. Even the technical men, miners, factory managers, et cetera, looked up to the Germans.
The Ambassador concluded by saying that our eyes were so concentrated on the Italian that we were overlooking the more dangerous of the two “invasions” of Spain.
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