Committee for Non-Interference in the Affairs of Spain

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The Committee for Non-Interference in the Affairs of Spain was a transnational committee convened by French President Albert Lebrun during the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, which tried to prevent the major European powers from intervening in the civil war. The committee, which included representatives from France, England , the German Reich , the Soviet Union , Italy and 22 other countries, met for the first time in London on September 9, 1936 . He was part of the appeasement policy towards Hitler and Mussolini .

The aim of the Non-Interference Committee was to prevent war by having all major nations oppose it. Furthermore, western states wanted to prevent many volunteers from joining the international brigades . However, the Soviet Union under Stalin , which supplied arms to parts of republican Spain , also sat on the non-interference committee. The German Reich , under Adolf Hitler , and Italy, under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini , also belonged to the committee, although Germany, with the Condor Legion (which bombed the Basque city ​​of Guernica, among others ), was actively involved in the Spanish civil war, and Italy, with which Corpo Truppe Volontarie also sent troops to support Franquism .

At the time of the first meeting, German and Italian planes were already bombing Madrid. With their policy of non-interference, Franco's seizure of power was at least consciously accepted by the European powers. Six weeks after this meeting, on October 28, 1936, Soviet tanks and planes intervened for the first time in the fighting for Madrid.

The non-interference committee met persistently, without results and without success. A year after the beginning of the Spanish civil war, a plan for international control of the conflict was presented, and after a further sixteen months, Léon Blum discussed in his newspaper Le Populaire the question of whether the plan should be applied.

On October 28, 1936, the Soviet ambassador Ivan Mikhailovich Maiski , who was also a representative on the non-interference committee , declared in London that his country was no more bound by the agreement than Germany, Italy and Portugal. Furthermore, on November 27, 1936, the Italian ambassador in Paris remarked to his American colleague Bullitt that Italy would continue to support Franco even if Russia abandons the republic, because Franco's forces are not sufficient to conquer all of Spain.

The non-interference committee weakened the republican struggles against Franquism. Under pressure from the committee, the international brigades were withdrawn in September 1938. The Condor Legion and the Corpo Truppe Volontarie remained in Spain; this amounted to a death blow.

At its thirtieth session on May 19, 1939, the committee found that hostilities had ended and the civil war was over. He found that he had nothing to do and broke up.

literature

  • Pierre Broué , Émile Témime : Revolution and War in Spain. History of the Spanish Civil War ("La révolution et la guerre d'Espagne"). 5th edition Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1987, ISBN 3-518-27718-9 , pp. 407-423.
  • Walther L. Bernecker: War in Spain. 1936-1939 . Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-89678-047-6 , pp. 47-115.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Antony Beevor : The Spanish Civil War , C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-570-00924-6 .
  2. ^ A b Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft.at: Hans Hautmann: Spanien 1936 , No. 1/2006
  3. ↑ der Freitag.de: Rudolf Walter: "Soviet Spain " and "Advokaten Republik " , in: Friday , July 13, 2001
  4. ↑ a b reminder.at: Peter Ladstätter: 70 Years of the Spanish Civil War
  5. ^ Antony Beevor: The Spanish Civil War , ISBN 978-3-442-15492-0 , 2nd edition, p. 224.
  6. ^ Hugh Thomas : The Spanish Civil War , Verlag Ullstein, Berlin West 1962, p. 268.
  7. ↑ infopartisan.net: Hans Christian Kirsch: Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 , trend online newspaper, 7 / 8-06