TIME Magazine May 22nd 1939

[PKeating]

I came across this TIME piece whilst checking figures for the Italian presence in Spain and thought it merited a thread of its own for the historians here. It's quite a revealing article.

FAREWELL

Monday, May. 22, 1939

All the time that Benito Mussolini's tens of thousands of soldiers were swaggering around the Spanish landscape during the recent civil war, Adolf Hitler's men modestly stayed in the background, playing a less conspicuous but no less effective role. II Duce sent not only airmen but infantrymen to help Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquer the stubborn Spanish Republicans. Spectacularly he took over the strategic island of Majorca as a bombing base, bombastically he bragged about the brave exploits of his legionnaires.

The F?hrer, on the other hand, ordered his aviators to try out a few of their latest tricks over Loyalist cities, but spared Germans the tedious life of the trenches. His fine-looking, neatly dressed, clean-shaven, well-behaved warriors were mostly staff officers, expert airplane technicians, artilIerymen and anti-aircraft gunners who stayed back of the lines and kept pretty much to themselves. There were probably never more than 10,000 of them in Spain at one time, but for two years they performed a service which neither Spaniards nor Italians were educated to do.

Last week Generalissimo Francisco Franco held at Barajas Field, some eight miles from Madrid, a final review for the German, Italian and Spanish airmen who fought on his side in the war. Wearing the blue-grey uniform of the Spanish Air Force, flanked by his usual mounted Moorish guards, El Caudillo took the salute from 1,500 Italians of the Littorio Legion, 5,000 Germans of the Condor Legion, 3,500 Spaniards. To 15 German and eight Italian aviators he awarded the Spanish military medal. In a speech characterized by Latin expansiveness, the Generalissimo predicted that Spain's present air strength will be "multiplied a hundred times in the future," added that "it must be prepared on a moment's notice to lift its wings to rebuild the empire and make Spain great."

The Italians will not leave at least until after the big victory parade in Madrid, many times postponed, now tentatively scheduled for May 19. The Condor Legion is expected shortly to return home by way of Vigo. But neither's going means the end of either German or Italian participation in Spanish affairs, and the fact that the Germans are leaving first does not indicate that they are abandoning Spain to their Italian partners.

When the last word is written on the Spanish war, it may well be recorded, in fact, that while the Italians made the bigger splash, the Germans got more out of it. Following the Condor Legion to Spain were German Gestapo agents, builders, contractors, businessmen. Spanish Morocco and the Basque country with their iron, became spheres of German commercial interests. Furthermore, in a future war, the Germans may be able to use the guns they have placed on Spanish territory near British-held Gibraltar, the five submarine bases they have helped build at Pasajes, El Ferrol, Villagarcia, Huelva and Malaga, the modern airports reputedly constructed near the French border.

PK

[Riley1965]

That's a VERY interesting article!!! Thanks for sharing it!!!

Doc

[Scott]

Thanks for sharing it PK. Very informative and prophetic...

Scott

[PKeating]

A pleasure, gents. I was checking the url in order to post it here - click here to access the TIME article - and realised that I had only quoted the first page! Here's the second part:

Meanwhile, while El Caudillo publicly attended victory parades here & there throughout Spain, he was privately attending to internal troubles: > The struggle between monarchists and fascists reappeared, and the royalists received a setback when Minister of Education Pedro Sainz Rodriguez, an ardent monarchist, was dismissed from his post. He was also deprived of his membership in Spain's only political party and of his seat in the national council of the party. Evidently Senor Sainz had urged restoration of the monarchy too emphatically.

In Paris it was learned that the Franco Government sought a reconstruction loan of $100,000,000 from a group of bankers (headed by Mendelssohn & Co. of Amsterdam) largely dominated by Jewish influences. The bankers' answer was to propose an economic survey of Spain. They suggested it be made by onetime Premier Paul van Zeeland of Belgium. Paris financiers added other conditions: that Spain renounce partnership with Germany and Italy, declare neutrality in any forthcoming war.

The $200,000,000 in Spanish gold held in France since the start of the war caused trouble between Spain and France. Jose Felix Lequerica, Spanish Ambassador to France, demanded that France return the gold according to an agreement reached between French Senator Leon Berard and Spanish Foreign Minister Count Francisco de Jordana before French recognition of the Franco Government. French Premier Daladier demanded that Spain first take back all of the 400,000 Spanish refugees on French soil who want to go back, and pay for the support of the rest. Upshot was that Senor Lequerica threatened to return to Burgos for good. Premier Daladier's Government did not seem to care much.

I wonder if the Spanish ever got their $200m in gold back from the French...or if the Germans purloined it when they entered Paris in June 1940! It is a pity the TIME website doesn't credit the author of the article but, then again, it was rare until comparitively recently for journalists and correspondents to be accorded name bylines so maybe his name is lost. It's a pretty robust commentary, though!

PK

[PKeating]

Here's another good one, probably by the same writer. The best bit is the final paragraph, mentioning Neville Chamberlain: click here.

Most embarrassed by these disclosures was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who has said many times that he took Il Duce's word for it that Italian help to Generalissimo Franco would be reduced, not increased. Three months ago a token withdrawal of 10,000 Italian troops from Spain took place. On that showing Mr. Chamberlain implemented an Anglo-Italian treaty. Although Dictator Mussolini was expected to demand of the Prime Minister at Rome next week (see p. 21) that Britain grant belligerent rights to Rebel Spain, from London last week came hints that Mr. Chamberlain, for his part, would plead with Il Duce at least to stop boasting about Italy's part in the Spanish Civil War.

Chamberlain seems to have been rather prone to taking dictators' words at face value...

PK

[Ed_Haynes]

Quite interesting, especially given Time's overall wartime and pre-war editorial policies. Thanks.

[PKeating]

Ah yes! The "ADOLPH HITLER MAN OF THE YEAR" cover of January 2nd 1939: the vanishing Hitler cover.

When I was features editor of a certain men's magazine, I interviewed Leni Riefenstahl for an article dealing mainly with her cinematic work. In the end, we naturally discussed the Hitlerzeit. She brought it up. Anyway, I also asked other people for side comments, including Helmut Newton, Mick Jagger and various others. The point was made by Riefenstahl that her work for the German government was done before the mainstream demonisation of Hitler. I referred to the TIME cover and Hitler's acclamation as 1938's TIME Man of the Year.

Some snotgobbler from TIME or the holding company publishing the magazine got in touch with our publishers, whining about how being nominated as a TIME Man of the Year did not necessarily mean that the recipient of the title was a good person or that TIME approved of them. The missive was duly passed down to us. When we finally stopped rolling about on the floor laughing like the hyenas we horrible journalists are, we sent TIME a tart response saying that the contents of their letter had been noted and asking them, for the record, when we could expect to see Ossama Bin Laden on the cover of TIME as Man of the Year.

That was the last we heard about it from TIME...

To be fair, the 1939 article did suggest that Hitler posed something of a threat to peace and stability. But he was a regular TIME coverboy from 1931 onwards. TIME only seem to have woken up after Kristallnacht. So, yes, it was quite surprising to find these two articles in TIME's archives. One can only presume that they were written by some Sacred Monster of a contributor whom the editors and their lickspittles were careful not to offend. Mind you, the writer isn't uncomplimentary about Hitler. He sticks it to the Latins.

PK

Edited April 25, 2007 by PKeating