Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

Holidaying in Berchtesgaden in mid-July, Hitler told Goebbels that ‘the next Party Rally will again be against the Bolsheviks’.⁴⁷ A few days later in Bayreuth, where as usual he was attending the Wagner Festival, he warned two of his most ardent English devotees, the good-looking daughters of the British aristocrat Lord Redesdale, Unity Valkyrie Mitford (who said that sitting next to Hitler was ‘like sitting beside the sun’)⁴⁸ and her sister Diana (divorced from a member of the wealthy Guinness family and on the verge of marrying — in a ceremony attended by Hitler and Goebbels — the leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley), of the ‘Jewish and Bolshevik danger’.

⁴⁹ By this time, events in Spain were also focusing Hitler’s attention on the threat of Bolshevism. Until then, he had scarcely given a thought to Spain. But on the evening of 25 July, following a performance of Siegfried conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, his decision — against the advice of the Foreign Office — to send aid to General Franco committed Germany to involvement in what was rapidly to turn into the Spanish Civil War.⁵⁰

The refusal of the Spanish Right to accept the narrow victory of the left-wing Popular Front in the elections of February 1936 had left Spain teetering on the brink of civil war. During late spring and early summer, horror stories of terroristic outrages, political murders, violent attacks on clergy, and burning churches had started to pour out of a country rapidly descending into political chaos. Europe was alarmed. For the Spanish Right, there was little difficulty in portraying it as the work of Marxist revolutionaries and evoking the image of a country on the verge of Communist takeover.⁵¹ Between May and July, army plans for a coup took shape.⁵² On 17 July army garrisons in Spanish Morocco rose against the elected government. The Commander-in-Chief of the army in Morocco, General Francisco Franco, put himself next morning at the head of the rebellion. But a mutiny of sailors loyal to the Republic denied him the transport facilities he needed to get his army to the mainland, most of which remained in Republican hands. The few planes he was able to lay hands upon did not amount to much in terms of an airlift.

⁵³ In these unpropitious circumstances, Franco turned to Mussolini and Hitler. It took over a week to overcome Mussolini’s initial refusal to help the Spanish rebels. Hitler was persuaded within a matter of hours. Ideological and strategic considerations — the likelihood of Bolshevism triumphing on the Iberian peninsula — were uppermost in his mind. But the potential for gaining access to urgently needed raw materials for the rearmament programme — an aspect emphasized by Göring — also appears to have played its part in the decision.⁵⁴

Good luck was on Franco’s side in his approach to Germany to send transport planes. His initial request for German aid had been coolly received by the Foreign Office. He decided to make a direct appeal to Hitler. A German businessman, Johannes Bernhardt, the head of an export firm which had close dealings with the Spanish army in Morocco and a member of the Nazi Party Foreign Organization (the Auslandsorganisation, or AO), had offered his help in mediation to Franco. As late as 22 July, Franco had not had a plane at his disposal capable of reaching Germany. But the following day a Lufthansa Junkers Ju-52/3m mail plane, sequestered by the rebels in Las Palmas amid German protests, arrived in Morocco, carrying the rebel General Orgaz. Franco now took up Bernhardt’s offer of help. Carrying a written request from Franco to Hitler — and in all probability a similar one to Göring⁵⁵

 — Bernhardt flew to Berlin, accompanied by the sixty-year-old branch leader of the AO in Tetuán, Adolf Langenheim, arriving on the evening of 24 July at Tempelhof aerodrome.⁵⁶

Meanwhile, the German Foreign Office had been increasingly worried about the deteriorating situation in Spain. A number of attacks on German citizens by Communists and anarchists led to two warships being dispatched into Spanish coastal waters. Concern grew that a victory of the government forces would pave the way for a Communist takeover. The prospect of Bolshevik dominance also in the south-west of Europe — compounding the victory of the left-wing Popular Front in France earlier in the year — seemed a real one.⁵⁷ Even so, the Foreign Office thought direct involvement in Spain too risky. Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the head of the AO, who had advanced the case of Franco’s emissaries, was told in no uncertain terms to take the matter no further.⁵⁸ Ignoring the warning, however, Bohle telephoned Rudolf Heß, Deputy Head of the Party, who immediately arranged for the emissaries to fly in his personal plane to meet him in Thuringia. After a two-hour discussion, Heß rang Hitler. A meeting with the Führer was fixed for the evening of the following day, 25 July, in Bayreuth.⁵⁹