France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (52 page)

On the British side there is no trace of a Western plan of sorts in the memoirs of Eden, Halifax, Nicolson, Duff Cooper, Oliver Harvey, Vansittart, Strang, etc. Nor does it appear in the
Documents on British Foreign Policy
. The British hoped, in vain, for a treaty replacing Locarno and a rapprochement with Italy prompting the “gentleman’s agreement” of January 2, 1937, that Delbos had approved of in advance.

Then there was France. For a time its relations with England were good. There was obvious sympathy on the part of Blum and Delbos toward Baldwin and Eden, which was reciprocated.
⁹⁶
Things were to change completely in June 1937 once Chamberlain took over from Baldwin and Chautemps replaced Blum. Ties of this kind did not exist with the United States. When Georges Bonnet was appointed ambassador to Washington (January 16, 1937), Bullitt wrote to Roosevelt: “I don’t think you’ll like him. He is extremely intelligent and competent on economic and financial matters but he’s not a man of character. You may remember that he led the French delegation to the London economic conference where he led the attacks against you.”
⁹⁷

Had the French government accepted the Mönick plan? Neither the meeting Delbos had with German Ambassador Welczeck on December 23,
⁹⁸
nor that of François-Poncet with Schacht on December 31
⁹⁹
appeared to go beyond some vague economic projects. The Spanish civil war was the main topic of discussion. The meetings between Sir Frederick Leith-Ross and Schacht on February 2, 1937, involved the colonies and not economic plans.
¹⁰⁰
Due to Eden’s visit to Paris on January 20, where he was to have dinner at Léon Blum’s home with Delbos, Massigli prepared a note entitled
Elements for a discussion with Mr. Eden
. Most of it deals with events in Spain and the impossible Locarno negotiation. On December 19 Eden had publicly stated that Great Britain would support France and Belgium in the event of aggression and Delbos had immediately asserted that the reverse was also true. The most interesting part of Massigli’s text was entitled
Germany and Europe
. The key sentence read, “A political solution cannot be separated from an economic solution.” Germany, however, had to provide some reassurance as to the goals it was pursuing.
¹⁰¹
There were rumors that the two men discussed large international financial companies but Eden fails to mention anything of the sort in his memoirs.

5.

1937: A C
OLORLESS
Y
EAR

It turned out to be one of the most inactive years in the history of French diplomacy. Yvon Delbos made every possible effort to ensure success of the non-intervention policy, practically a dead issue since October 1936. It was not just a huge effort amounting to nothing but also an endless and useless attempt to prevent others from taking action.

Public opinion was also affected. Following the hot summer of 1936, the great hopes and disputes as well as a few achievements in internal politics, the crisis began once again. The men were exhausted and the Popular Front lost its luster; faith was slipping away. Diplomats were watching events intently and a description of what the government knew could be made, if that were our purpose. But no action whatsoever was taken.

French public opinion was ardently moved by the civil war in Spain, further exacerbating the divisions that existed among the French people. While enjoying the comforts of peace daily for three years that seemed guaranteed by the shield of non-intervention, the French public followed that horrible contest blow by blow.
¹⁰²

It should first be noted that besides the communists, a minority of socialists and a very small group of radical “young turks,” including Pierre Cot, Pierre Mendès-France, and Jean Zay, a very large majority of French opinion was obviously pleased with non-intervention. The “interventionists” consequently took a very visible position. Paul Langevin, Jean-Richard Bloch and André Chamson assembled a number of intellectuals in the Franco-Spanish Committee. The Communist Party was the only major organization opposing the blockade.
L’Humanité
condemned the “so-called neutrality” that “caused the massacre of our Spanish brothers”
¹⁰³
on a daily basis. When the Comintern set up a fund managed by Thorez and Togliatti, then created the International Brigades and appointed French communist André Marty as their leader—an assignment he would fulfill with extreme brutality
¹⁰⁴
—the breach between socialists and communists widened even further. Léon Blum defended his policies in an important speech on September 6 at the Luna Park. Maurice Thorez gave a rebuttal causing relations between the two parties to become strained while Franco-Soviet relations suffered even further. France disapproved of the flap by the Soviet delegate at the London Committee on October 24 and worried about the letter where Stalin promised help to “Spanish revolutionary
masses.” Robert Coulondre, the new French ambassador, expressed his concern regarding the “ideological push” that would draw France into “internal divisions and isolation abroad.”
¹⁰⁵
According to Jacques Fauvet, 10,000 Frenchmen were to fight in the International Brigades almost all of them communists; 3,000 of them were killed.
¹⁰⁶

While a majority of the French public accepted the comfortable “neutrality,” they were divided into pro-Franco and pro-Republican factions.
¹⁰⁷
It may be stated that with very rare exceptions the socialists and radical socialists were in theory favorable to a loyalist victory. Their attitude was similar to the British Labourites who overwhelmingly supported non-intervention but were favorable to the republicans.

The position of the French right wing was less clear. German and Italian support to Franco with funds, weapons and “volunteers” (which Mussolini admitted, while Hitler provided fewer of them skillfully camouflaged—the famous air force Condor Legion), should have led all French nationalists to fear: 1) the establishment of an enemy on France’s southern border; 2) the creation of German and Italian bases threatening communications to French North Africa; 3) the development of resources in Spain, principally iron ore mining by the “Axis,” created in October and then named by Mussolini on November 1.

Ideology, however, got the upper hand. Anti-communism, exacerbated by the success of the Popular Front, turned to an anti-Soviet attitude. The right was taking a stand against “the Reds.” Franco was viewed as a defender of society. Jacques Bardoux, president of the Republican Federation of the Massif Central and also a member of the Institut, was heading the most virulent campaign. In several pamphlets—
Les Soviets contre la France
(1936),
Le chaos espagnol, Eviterons-nous la contagion?
(1937),
Staline contre l’Europe: les preuves du complot communiste
(1937)—and many articles the same author accused a sort of “underground orchestrator” who was, among other things, setting up a communist insurrection in Morocco.
¹⁰⁸

The entire traditional right wing then followed suit. This was the case of every large newspaper in Paris and in the provinces, the large circulation weeklies and
Candide
and
Gringoire
in particular; the major cultural journals like
La Revue des Deux Mondes
or
La Revue de Paris
; and the Academy. The business dailies were complaining about the anti-Franco stance of the Popular Front, which could wipe out all French interests. The Catholic right was frightened by the anti-clerical attitude of the Republicans and the fact that the church in Spain supported Franco. He was viewed as leading a real
crusade against atheism, the killing of priests, and the ransacking of the churches. Paul Claudel was Franco’s greatest advocate.

The far right went to even greater extremes, especially
L’Action Française
and Jacques Doriot’s PPF. Nationalist Spain viewed Charles Maurras as a great man. Colonel de la Rocque’s
Parti Social Français
, which reached the height of its influence at the end of 1936, was much more discreet. It aimed at a rapprochement with the Franco forces to turn them into “our friends of tomorrow.”
¹⁰⁹
At the PSF, as in the daily
Le Temps
, one could detect “an under estimation of the threat the dictatorships represented.”
¹¹⁰

The Catholic right was to give rise to the two minorities refusing to view Franco as a savior. The massacres carried out on August 14, 1936, by the Franco forces when they took Badajoz showed that cruelty existed on both sides. The most famous Catholic novelist François Mauriac wrote a vengeful article in
Le Figaro
on August 18, calling it “a soiled victory.” Other Catholics of various tendencies like Jacques Maritain, a scholar of Saint Thomas Aquinas; the Dominican weekly
Sept
; Emmanuel Mounier, founder of
Esprit
; novelist Georges Bernanos and above all some Christian-Democrats—Georges Bidault in the daily
L’Aube
was the first one to take this line—attempted to separate the Church from Franco. Others were against the rebels while some supported the Basques, a Catholic population loyal to the Republic that was promising them autonomy.

Another right-wing group that did not support Nationalist Spain included all those who feared the German threat. They felt that a much stronger policy towards Franco was required. “Frenchmen Beware! The Germans are at the gates of the Pyrénées” headlined
Le Petit Démocrate
, the official daily of the Popular Democratic Party. Some top newswriters like Pertinax and Émile Buré followed that position as well as Georges Mandel, himself on very friendly terms with Buré who, since buying
L’Ami du Peuple
in October 1936, was orchestrating a campaign to resist German influence.
¹¹¹
Henri de Kérillis joined them as well. But
L’Ami du Peuple
lasted for only three months. Buré’s paper
L’Ordre
had a readership of 10,000 while
L’Aube
had 12,000.
Sept
(which was ordered to shut down by the Catholic Church in August 1937) had 55,000 readers.
¹¹²
This was trifling compared to the “anti-red” and pro-Franco right wing.

Léon Blum’s dilemma then became quite clear. Had he followed his inclinations and opened the border, dissent among the French people would rise up. By keeping the border closed, he drew on the advantage of satisfying a majority of French opinion still deeply affected by the “pacifist
depression.” But he knew that the latter course favored Franco and in the long run was not a good outcome for France; he also knew that it would widen the breach between socialists and communists that had been so difficult to mend and consequently had weakened the Popular Front. He naturally tended to choose the easiest course of action, which was non-intervention. Blum would unsuccessfully attempt to reduce the advantages of this course for Franco and would at times take the rather underhanded device of closing his eyes to some clandestine passage of arms and ordnance through the Pyrénées-Orientales. Delbos followed the same policy but with a kind of happy determination. He felt comfortable with “non-intervention.” Vincent Auriol, Pierre Cot and Jules Moch were in charge of a very modest undertaking that could be called “official smuggling.”
¹¹³

It would serve no purpose in this book to recount the debates in and around the London Committee. As early as October everyone could sense that its usefulness was rather minimal. It is more useful to examine the various attempts to reach some kind of result.

By the close of 1936 French policy was attempting to mediate between the two sides. As Delbos told Corbin on November 26, France could no longer take “only a wait-and-see and non-intervention position.” His suggestion was a diplomatic initiative by both the French and British governments toward Berlin, Rome, and Lisbon on one side and Moscow on the other. The objective would be to get them involved in a collective mediation to reach an armistice followed by “a free national consultation” in Spain.
¹¹⁴

Eden agreed to the idea with some misgivings.
¹¹⁵
The Franco-British initiative took place at the beginning of December and yielded no results.
¹¹⁶
Von Neurath was “skeptical”
¹¹⁷
as were the U.S. Department of State,
¹¹⁸
Portugal,
¹¹⁹
and Italy.
¹²⁰
The British constitutional crisis, ending in the abdication of Edward VIII and the accession of George VI to the throne, distracted British policy from any significant foreign policy initiative for some time.

During the month of December 1936 another issue became a cause for worry, that of the volunteers. They came from Italy in military units. In October 1937 Mussolini admitted sending some 40,000 Italians.
¹²¹
Facing those well-armed troops on the other side were the International Brigades, not amounting to much. However, they did worry Delbos and Eden because they provided a justification for Italy and Germany. “The declaration of non-intervention was only an excuse.”
¹²²

The idea then took hold that proclaiming non-intervention was useless if there were no “control.” This turned out to be impossible within Spanish territory. Why not establish it within the neighboring countries, in a few ports and at sea? Delbos launched the idea in mid-December and the discussions would follow for months on end
¹²³
regarding controls and volunteers. The USSR, Germany and Italy immediately stated that they would only take action on the volunteers once controls were in place.
¹²⁴
This was a clever position allowing for the acceleration of reinforcements that could easily be extended during the entire time it took to negotiate the controls. France and Britain, on the contrary, felt that “the most pressing and important problem concerned the volunteers.”
¹²⁵
Delbos therefore imparted new and unrelenting instructions to the French diplomats involved but always to no avail.