Page 178 - Il Mediterraneo quale elemento del Potere Marittimo - Atti 16-18 settembre 1996

164 \'qJLLARD C. FRANK

When war come, exhausted Spain remained a non-belligerent while Franco
worried about a possible French invasion. Yet, Admiral Canaris boasted of gai-
ning a Spanish promise of the use of Spanish Atlantic and Mediterranean ports
24
by German warships < >. Further, Franco did allow German U-boats secredy co
operate from Vigo, while ltalian deceptive forces operated in Algeciras Bay. Pre-
war plans to occupy strategie sites in Spain as opporrunity beckoned or enemy ac-
tion dictated 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 ltalian 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

(l) This, and similar characcerizations, derive from numerous sources.
(2) See, for example, Giuseppe Fioravanzo, "Geografia e strategia", Rivista Marittima 90
(March 1956), 282-291; Raoul Castex, Théories stralegiques, vol. 3 (Paris, 1931), 151-155.
(3) Chief of scaffBadoglio reported that che navy "lacks an aggressive sense". Lucio Ceva
Le forze armale (Turin, 1981), 609. See also German comments in Documents on German Foreign
Policy {hereafter DGFP}, ser. D, vol. 6 (Washingcon, 1956), 1125.
(4) For ltalian naval programs, see Fortunato Minniti, "Il problema degli armamenti nel-
la preparazione militare italiana dall935 al1943", Storia contemporanea 9, (February 1978), 41-50.
41
(5) Nicole)ordan, The Cut-Price War on che Peripheries: The French Generai Staff, che
Rhineland, and Czechoslovakia", in Paths lo \\'lar: New Essays on lhe Origins of the Second World
War, ed. Robert Boyce and Esmonde M. Robertson (New York, 1989), 128-166.
(6) Philippe Masson, "Le Redressement de la Marine française pendant l'Entre-deux-
guerres", in Les Armées espagno/es et fran;aises: Modernisation et réforme enlre /es deux Guerres Mondia-
Jes, ed.Jean-Pierre Étienvre (Madrid; 1989), 149-162; and "La marine française de la crise de
mars 1936", in La France et I'A/Iemagne, 1932-1936 (Paris, 1980), 333-337.
(7) See especially N.H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, vol. l Rearmament Policy (London, 1976),
332-335, 375-380, 409-420, 607-611.
(8) See Michael Salewski, Die deutsche Seekriegsleitung, 1935-1945, vol. l (Frankfurt am Main,
1970), 20-33; and Erich Raeder, "Vorlaufige Kampfanweisungen f. d. Kriegsmarine", 27 May
1936, summarized in Robert Harold Buchanan, "The Era of Erich Raeder, 1894-1943" (un-
pub. Ph.D .. diss., Univ. of Colorado, 1980), 227-228.
(9) See extensive commentary through che l920s and 1930s in such journals as Moniteur
de la Flotte, Le Yacht, Revue des Deux Mondes, RiviJta Marittima, Nuova Antologia, Echi e Commenti,
Na11al and Military Record, Rmi journal, Marine Runds,:hau, and Rwista Generai de Marina.
(10) I have treaced che motives of che powers in Spain in "The Spanish Civil War and
che Coming of che Second World War'', The lnternational History Review 9 (August 1987), 3 75-400.