"I will not be the Napoleon to his Joseph"
- Adolf Hitler, on Francisco Franco, autumn of 1941
Excerpt from A World at Arms, by Gerald Weinberg
...Immediately upon Franco’s declaration of war against the USSR, Churchill gave the go ahead for ‘Operation Puma,’ the occupation of the Spanish Canary Islands. The war ministry had long maintained plans for such an amphibious operation, fearful that otherwise the Canaries would serve as a base for the German interdiction of Transatlantic shipping.
Franco appears to have had great faith in the ability of the Canaries garrison to resist invasion at least long enough to bloody the British and establish the formidability of Spanish military. It was a faith that was not entirely unjustified, as over the course of the last year the islands’ paltry garrison had almost doubled in size to more than 20,000 men, and the shore batteries had been augmented with new 152.4mm guns.
Churchill and the war ministry, in particular First Sea Lord Dudley Pound, had been less than optimistic about Operation Puma. The Royal Navy insisted it could spare nothing for the invasion, engaged as it was against the German U-boat fleets and supplying British troops in North Africa.
But on 4 August, Puma commenced. A British strike force centered around the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal, augmented by three cruisers and six destroyers, along with the minesweeper
Marte, sailed for Gran Canaria. 8,000 men, a mixture of Royal Marines and regular troops, were detailed for the invasion, significantly fewer than the 10,000 men that the War Ministry had insisted were necessary for success, and barely a third the size of the Canaries garrison.
But both Franco and the British had severely overestimated the morale of the Canary troops. The British expedition came within sight of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the night of 5 August, and a squadron of Hurricane fighters from the
Royal Ark attacked Spanish positions on shore. After a bombardment by the HMS
Dragon, the Royal Marines staged a landing.
The Spaniards put up a feeble resistance for only a few hours, and by dawn Captain General Ricardo Serrador Santés had surrendered his command. About 230 Spaniards died in the assault, mostly by bombing. The British lost eight, two to friendly fire, and one drowned.
The loss of the Canaries was a heavy blow, not only in material terms, for the British had now secured another Atlantic base for use in their naval war against the Germans, but also a psychological one. The Canaries held a special place in the mythology of Franco’s regime, for it had been from Tenerife that Franco had flown in the summer of 1936, to take command of the Moroccan colonial troops that had ultimately won him the civil war. Franco took the opportunity to sack Vigón from his position as Chief of Staff, though the Canaries disaster was hardly his fault. He was replaced with Major General Juan Yagüe, whose pro-Nazi views were well known, and who had made a name for himself as a bold and daring commander during the civil war. Yagüe and Franco had butted heads often in recent years, but now his politics had become convenient, and prior disagreements were forgotten.
In Berlin, Hitler was furious. He referred to Franco as an “idiot general,” and seethed that he had entered the war at just the wrong time, when the Wehrmacht was entirely engaged battling the Red Army in the east, and could hardly spare men or materiel for the capture of Gibraltar. Nevertheless, in early August, the Führer discussed Operation Felix with Jodl, who told him that if the Kiev-Leningrad line was reached by mid-September, some forces could be detached for action in Spain.
Franco, on the other hand, was not disposed to wait. The Caudillo was determined to demonstrate that, even if a junior partner, Spain could hold her own in battle. Gibraltar had to fall, but the glory had to go to Spanish arms, not German...
Excerpt from Spain in Flames: 1936 - 1944, by E.R Hooton
…Over the course of 1940 and the first months of 1941, the British had feverishly built up the Gibraltar garrison in anticipation of an attack, whether German, Spanish, Italian, Vichy, or any combination thereof. By 1939, the 2nd Kings and the 2nd Somerset Light Infantry had been posted to the ‘rock,’ and by the summer of 1941 alone these had been augmented by the 4th Devonshire and the 4th Black Watch, bringing the total strength to four infantry battalions, along with the 3rd Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery, which disposed of the three Batteries with 8 x 9.2-inch guns, 7 x 6-inch guns, and 6 x twin 6-pounders. There were also two AA regiments, the HQ 10th and the 82nd Heavy. The garrison maintained 16 x 3.7 inch guns, 6 x 6-pounders, 7 x 6 inch guns, 8 x 9.2 inch guns, and 8 x 40mm Bofors guns. [1]
The Spanish 22nd Division, along with the 16th Mountain Regiment, were to spearhead the assault, under military governor of Algeciras Agustîn Muñoz Grandes, a decorated veteran of the civil war. Muñoz Grandes had reported to Franco and Yagüe that he expected he could take the rock within the space of an afternoon, and all of the men concerned were eager to wipe away the shame of the Canaries and restore a long-separated and ‘integral’ part of the Fatherland to Spain. Across the country, falangist radicals daubed walls with the slogan, ‘¡Gibraltar Español!’ and crowds in Madrid, Salamanca, Barcelona, Seville, and the other great cities of Spain were whipped into a nationalistic frenzy by regime agitators, chanting ‘¡Inglaterra, muérete!’
The Spanish plan was to begin with an artillery bombardment, to be immediately followed by an assault across the arfield by the II/3 Battalion, which would in fact be a diversion, fixing the British defenders to allow for an amphibious landing in Gibraltar Harbour by the I/3 battalion, and another at Europa Point by III/3. Finally, the 1st and 2nd battalions from the 16th Mountain Regiment were to scale the sheer rock cliffs on the western face of the peninsula. The British would be squeezed between these two pincers, and forced to surrender.
On 25 August, Muñoz Grandes issued his official demand for surrender to Mason-MacFarlane. The British commander icily declined, with the comment that “that is not what I was sent here to do.”
Before combat operations even began, the Battle of Gibraltar began to devolve into a fiasco for the Spaniards.
The evening of the 25th, Captain G.L Galloway of the Royal Engineers, stationed near the customs house at the northwestern corner of the peninsula, sighted a small fishing skiff approaching the island. It held a single occupant. When the skiff was not deterred by shouted warnings, the 4th Devons opened fire. Nevertheless, they missed their quarry, and the ‘captain’ of the little boat stumbled ashore with his hands in the air. Galloway later recalled, “he cried, ‘Comrades! Comrades! No shoot! No shoot! ¡Viva England! ¡Viva la República!’ He was summarily taken prisoner, and brought to Mason-Mac. It developed that the young sergeant hated Franco, because his brother had been arrested in 1939 and was still in prison.” The deserter told all that he knew of the Spanish plan, and Mason-MacFarlane ascertained that he could be trusted because “he seemed too simple a sort” to be lying.
The next evening, the attack commenced, and immediately things began to go wrong.
The artillery barrage, carried out mostly by old 75mm guns from the civil war, and one 88mm German piece, failed to smash the garrison as expected, thanks to the thorough tunneling operations of the previous months, the extent of which Muñoz Grandes had failed to appreciate.
Two of the boats meant to carry the assault forces to Gibraltar Harbor, crashed into each other upon launch. One was irreparably damaged, and sank within minutes, drowning nearly a hundred Spanish soldiers from the III/3 Battalion. The bulk of the men managed to reach the detached mole, where they were met by withering machine gun fire from A Company of the Black Watch. A Spanish veteran recalled playing dead in the ‘red water,’ while the corpses of his comrades bobbed around him. The south mole was stormed by soldiers from the I/3 Battalion, who engaged the Black Watch hand to hand.
Meanwhile, the 16th Regiment on the other side of the peninsula was doing little better. When the 1st Battalion landed at Sandy Bay, not only was it stymied by the moat network the Royal Engineers had dug there, but also by their own artillery, when misdirected fire from the mainland fell among the Spaniards, killing dozens.
The frontal assault over the North Front Airfield fared even worse, with the II/3 Battalion suffering nearly 70% casualties in the teeth of the British defenses, in particular the six-pounder guns sighted on the neutral zone.
By the morning of the 30th, Muñoz Grandes was forced to admit the operation had been a failure. He withdrew what men he could from the beaches, leaving almost 560 wounded and otherwise incapacitated to be taken prisoner.
He reluctantly reported the terrible news to Franco and Yagüe, and insisted that he needed more men.
In Germany, Hitler nearly went mad with rage. He had expressly asked Franco to await the arrival of German troops before any attempt was made against Gibraltar, and now, just as he had done with Mussolini, he was going to have to haul the Generalissimo’s chestnuts out of the fire.
With the Battle of Kiev still raging, and Army Group North advancing on Leningrad, ‘Operation Felix’ was dusted off and reworked for the present moment. Two regiments, the 13th and 94th from the 4th Mountain Division were pulled out of the line in Ukraine, to be rested and refitted for deployment to Spain. Also seconded for the operation was Infantry Regiment "Großdeutschland," as well as the "Der Führer" Regiment of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” under Otto Kumm, with one tank company attached, and a smattering of signals, sapper, and artillery battalions.
The whole Kampfgruppe was under the command of General Ludwig Kübler, and departed the Eastern Front on September 7th. Kampfgruppe Kübler reached the Pyrenees on the 12th, and crossed into Spain the same day.
Meanwhile, Muñoz Grandes made a second effort to smash Gibraltar. He did this against his better judgment, but at the insistence of Franco, who was desperate that Gibraltar be seen as a Spanish victory, and not a German one. Over the past week, the Spanish complement at Gibraltar had been strengthened by the arrival of the 21st Division from Seville and some Algeciras regiments, adding another 10,000-odd men to his forces. With this fresh infusion of troops Muñoz Grandes decided to dispense with complex maneuvering and amphibious landings, and decided instead on a full frontal push over the airfield, overwhelming the British by sheer weight of numbers. The second assault was preceded by an aerial bombardment, carried out by old German Junkers and Heinkels, which failed to penetrate the heavy shell of ‘the Rock.’ The attack over the airfield again fell short, despite the support of three old Soviet T-26 tanks and one German Panzer Mk.I. The men were cut apart by Vickers machine guns and the artillery of the ‘Princess Caroline’ battery. The Mk.I and one of the T-26 tanks were destroyed by shellfire. For three grueling days, the Spaniard struggled to advance through the ‘dragon’s teeth’ and barbed wire ahead of the airfield, all while British artillery and machine gun fire rained on their heads. A particularly terrible blow was suffered by the 7th Regiment from Algeciras, which suffered nearly 80% casualties. On the 2nd of September, Muñoz Grande went to the front line, hoping to inspire his men by personal example. He stood up in front of the stunned soldiers, waving his cap and crying “¡Arriba España!” He was prompt shot in the left arm, shattering his elbow and permanently crippling him.
By September 4th, the Spaniards had lost more than 4,000 killed and wounded, against 382 on the British side, bringing their total losses in two weeks of battle to nearly 8,000. From his hospital bed, Muñoz Grandes ordered another withdrawal.
Out of 10,000 men under Mason-Macfarlane, some 1,000 had become casualties by September 6th, but morale remained high. Mason-MacFarlane organized impromptu stage shows for the troops, with the aid of Lieutenant Anthony Quayle of the Second Artillery, an actor in civilian life. They ranged from apolitical slapstick comedy routines to numbers lampooning their enemies, including a skit wherein a nervous Franco fretted that Hitler was ‘stepping out on him’ with Mussolini.
In Britain, the newspapers thrilled to the ordeal of ‘brave little Gibraltar,’ stoutly resisting in the face of overwhelming odds. A Punch cartoon depicted a tiny, dwarfish General Fanco struggling to lift a massive rock labeled, ‘Gibraltar.’ A disgusted-looking Adolf Hitler observes from the other end of the panel. “Adolf!” Franco squeals. “Help!”
In the still-neutral United States, Louis B. Mayer of MGM was said to be shopping around for a screenplay based on the ‘Gibraltar epic.’
Even in Spain itself, people sniggered that it was taking Franco as long to capture Gibraltar as it took Hitler to capture France.
On the 9th of September, Muñoz Grandes, who refused to relinquish command despite having lost an arm, made one final effort to crack Gibraltar before the Germans arrived. Again, the ‘rock’ was deluged by artillery and warplanes. Massive coastal pieces were brought in from Málaga, Cadíz, and Algeciras to join in the barrage. It lasted nearly four hours, the British defenders ensconced in their dark network of tunnels and bunkers while the Spanish ordnance “hammered down on [their] heads like God’s right fist,” as Lt. Quayle later put it. By the time the storm of fire ended, most everything above ground on Gibraltar had been ruined. Major Robin-Thompson recalled that, “everything was reduced to cinders and ash. The governor’s house, the old ‘Moorish castle,’ the gardens. Everything.”
The onslaught was followed by yet another attack into the British defenses. This time, Muñoz Grandes’ men managed to break the British lines, and they surged past the airfield, reaching Forbes Quarry by the afternoon of the 10th. The British surged forward to repel them with desperate rifle volleys, bayonet thrusts, and even hand to hand combat.
The fighting lasted the better part of four days, until Muñoz Grandes was forced to order yet another retreat on the evening of the 13th. This time the losses on both sides were about equal, some 2,000 killed, wounded, or captured. But this number weighed far heavier on the British, reduced now to some 6,500 effectives, than for the Spaniards, whose numbers were augmented yet again by the arrivals of the 51st and 62nd Mountain Regiments, from Gerona and Tarragona.
With this fresh reinforcement of mountain troops, it appeared Muñoz Grandes was contemplating another attempt on the eastern cliff faces, even with the Germans only two days away.
As for the British, dwindling as their number was, they still found the time and good cheer to taunt their foe. Few if any of the men in the Gibraltar garrison were politically committed leftists, but the Spanish Civil War had occupied Britain’s newspapers for nearly three full years not so long ago. So the men of the Black Watch knew just how to push their foe’s buttons when they made up a massive banner and draped it over the northern face of the bomb-shattered Victoria Sports Center, directly facing the Spanish lines. The banner read “¡NO PASARÁN!”
Excerpt from A Nation Tormented: Terror, Famine, and Slaughter in Twentieth Century Spain by Paul Preston
….Conditions in many parts of the country, especially the rural and underdeveloped south, but including even the capital of Madrid, had verged on famine since the end of the civil war. The regime blamed this on the damage caused by the war, which in turn was of course blamed on the ‘reds.’ But in fact, the crisis was largely the fault of Franco’s policies. Arbitrary tariffs drove up prices far beyond what ordinary Spaniards could afford, while more than doubling the profits of industrial and agricultural magnates close to Franco, such as the Altos Hornos de Vizcaya steel company.
Housing was unaffordable, with tens of thousands of workers and their families crammed into filthy shantytowns around the outskirts of Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona. In these slums, where waste was disposed of in the streets, diseases like tuberculosis long in abeyance came roaring back, claiming tens of thousands per year.
The dictatorship’s clumsy efforts to increase wheat yield, including by the reduction of profitable cash crops which might have provided much-needed infusions of cash into Spain’s coffers, and the creation of a state monopoly (the ‘Servicio Nacional de Trigo) on wheat, had little impact and often had the opposite of the intended effect. Probably 200,000 people a year, perhaps more, died of starvation and preventable diseases brought on by malnutrition.
But with the end of British trade, and the implementation of the Royal Navy blockade, Spain spiraled into full blown economic catastrophe. In the summer of 1941 alone, Spain imported more than 70,000 metric tons of petroleum products, almost entirely from Britain and the increasingly Allied-friendly United States. As soon as Spain entered the war, this line of supply was shut off. Trucks, aircraft, and even private motorcars across the country ground to a halt. Rolling blackouts afflicted Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville. Franco’s ministers warned him that this year’s harvest might be affected by as much as 20%, and this without taking into account the shortfall of several hundred thousands’ worth of tons of wheat itself, of which Canada had been a major supplier.
Franco had gambled on a very near-term German victory over Soviet Russia and Great Britain, probably within weeks, upon which Spain would be amply supplied by the ‘new Europe’ under Nazi guidance. He remarked to Serrano Suñer that “we will get our wheat from the Ukraine.” As for liquid fuels, Spain asked Germany for an outrageous 500,000 tons, something which the Führer was in no position to grant, even if he had been disposed.
But as 1941 went on, and it became clear that the Wehrmacht had failed to defeat the Red Army, the regime realized it was entering a period of serious crisis. Bread was strictly rationed from August. In September, as the fight for Gibraltar thundered on, Minister of Agriculture Joaquín Benjumea warned the Generalissimo that more than 100,000 Spaniards might starve to death by the summer of 1942. For this observation, Benjumea was sacked and replaced with the more pliant, and utterly incompetent, Miguel Primo de Rivera, brother of the martyred Falangist chief.
In December of 1941, two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entry into the war, Franco issued a decree establishing the death penalty for black marketeers and ‘hoarders of grain.’
In Andalusia and Estremadura, which had long been the poorest regions of Spain, conditions were not far removed from those which prevailed in the Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and ‘33. On New Year’s day, 1942, diarist Miguel Ramírez wrote of his ‘encounter’ with a derelict in an alley. “At first I think he is sleeping, and then I see he is dead. His shirt is torn. His ribs can be seen clearly through the rents, with the skin pulled tight over them. He is the fifth I have seen this week. I almost wanted to toss his pitiful corpse a few pesetas.” That January, a wag was shot in Badajoz for responding to a FET delegate’s cries of ‘Franco, Franco, Franco!’ with ‘Hambre, Hambre, Hambre!’ (‘Hunger, Hunger, Hunger!’)...
[1]
taken mostly from here
