The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [91]
In reality, Franco had desperately wanted to get into the war. The war machine the Germans and Italians had shown him stretched his military imagination to its limits. At the outset of World War II, it did not even occur to him that other nations might possess the military power not only to stop but to defeat the Germans. Certain of German victory, he hoped for a share of the war booty. He was especially interested in gaining more of Morocco at France’s expense. But the Germans thought that he was an ineffective general and that his army was poorly equipped and backward. After the Civil War, the Spanish economy having collapsed, hunger and unemployment were widespread, and the Germans reasoned that if Spain were an ally, Germany would have to feed its people, arm them, train them, even, as the Germans had done in the Civil War, fight for them. Hitler repeatedly spurned Franco’s offers.
The two met on October 23, 1940, at the train station in Hendaye, which is about 100 yards from the border, the St. Jacques Bridge over the Bidasoa. The meeting resembled a comic encounter from Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator, which was made the same year. Hitler and the German command were kept waiting, stiffly pacing in the train station. Franco’s slow chugging train arrived, depending on whose version is believed, either eight minutes or one hour late. There were rumors of an attempt on Franco’s life by grenade-throwing Spanish anarchists. No such attack took place, though a plot may have existed. Franco, mortified at being late, fumed and ranted, threatening to fire the officer responsible for his travel arrangements, but recovered in time to step down on the Hendaye platform, tears of joy glistening in his eyes. The Caudillo, as Hitler addressed Franco, was evidently overcome at the moment of meeting the man he addressed as the Führer.
Franco made his case for entering the war. Hitler talked of his war problems. Franco talked of his supply needs to ready for war. The two conversations rarely intersected. Hitler began to grow irritated. Franco, to show a knowledge of war strategy, suggested, as an aide had told him, that once England was defeated, the British would still fight on from Canada. The Führer did not find this an interesting point and, hopping to his feet, announced with notable agitation that it would be pointless to continue the conversation.
From this meeting, Franco let it be widely known in Spain that he, their Caudillo, had held off the Nazis at Hendaye, that they had come threatening to take over Spain, and he had masterfully negotiated Spanish neutrality. According to Franco, Hitler had said, “I am the master of Europe and, as I have 200 divisions at my orders, there is no alternative but to obey.”
There is no record of this remark, and German records show that Hitler and his divisions wished to stay far away from Spain. Hitler’s only known comment on leaving the Hendaye meeting was “Mit diesem Kerl ist nichts zu machen,” You can’t do anything with this character. Later, he said to Mussolini of his meeting with Franco, “I would rather have three or four teeth pulled, than go through that again.” Curiously, another time, on the subject of the Hendaye meeting, the Führer muttered something to an adjutant about “Jesuit swine.”
It was one of many times that Franco was saved by luck. Had he succeeded in persuading Hitler to let him join the Nazi war effort, Spain would have been overrun by the Allies in 1945 as the Basques had hoped. But as it was, Spain was a neutral country, albeit one that supplied raw material and armaments to the German war effort. The Wehrmacht fought with Spanish-made cartridges, rifle barrels, engines, uniforms,