Well, just as a thought, and an attempt to illustrate the political impractiabilites with your suggestion here (as far as an impartial convention), Switzerland had no ties with economic matters concerning members of the Reich, or with refugees? I am NOT accusing Switzerland of anything, I am merely pointing out how your choice of neutral countries will be precieved in 2003, or in history, or in the context of this debate.Neutral nations, as I said. Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Turkey were neutral and they remained sovereign in 1945.
Or Spain? The Germans weren't there in Spain? There weren't German aircraft there, and a German military presence? Prior to WWII? Ever read Hemingway?
Here is from Skalman, on possibly Russian aircraft in the Spanish Civil War, and I post this on both German Luftwaffe fighters, the German Heinkel He51 and, at that time, the new Messerschmitt Bf109, on proving "grounds", under combat.
http://www.skalman.nu/spanish/air-polikarpov.htmOn the Polikarpov I-153 in Spain
by James B. Haycraft
Did the Soviet Polikarpov I-153 biplane fighter see action in Spain in the waning months of the civil war, joining over 250 other different types of aircraft that served in that bloodiest of conflicts? Although hardly of major historical import, the question has nevertheless been raised and debated by aviation researchers and historians on more than one occasion since the end of the war in 1939. Based primarily on the publication of illustrations depicting this aircraft in supposedly authentic Republican markings, along with mention of its use in Spain in various articles and books, the supposition's validity has been in doubt due to a lack of suitable photo and text documentation.
With the publication of Volume 1 of Justo Miranda's and Paula Mercado's exemplary work on Spanish civil war aircraft, AVIACION MUNDIAL EN ESPANA 1936-1939, the question has been raised once again. (1) Published in 1985 and subtitled "Aviones Americanos y Rusos," this first volume of a planned 7 volume series, devotes 6 pages to the I-153 "Chaika," with 3 pages of drawings in 1/72 scale, showing various details of the aircraft, plus a 3-view tone drawing illustrating the craft in a Republican color scheme.
Inspired by an illustration attributed to a Keith Ward, supposedly published in the bulletin of the AAHS, which was, in turn, based on information supplied by another AAHS member, Clark Macomber, the authors believe that Ward would have required at least two photographs to supply sufficient detail on which to base the illustration and its color scheme. (2) Without doubting the existence of such photos, they nevertheless feel the scheme is an unlikely one and the code number on the rudder inappropriate for a Republican aircraft in 1938. (3) Despite their reservations, the husband and wife team of Miranda and Mercado believes that it was possible for the I-153 (or its pre-production prototypes) to have been in Spain during the final months of 1938, briefly engaging in combat before returning to the Soviet Union.
The question of the I-153's role in the civil war may have first arisen in 1961 when William Green, the well-known British aviation historian, affirmed its presence in Spanish skies in Volume 3 of his series, WAR PLANES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, although later published articles on Polikarpov fighters (in 1971 and 1980) by the same author omitted any such statement. Whether this was a deliberate omission based on the author's subsequent inability to find suitable documentary evidence or a simple oversight, it did little to lay the matter to rest and speculation has continued regarding the use of this third variation of the I-15 "Chato," which had been in Spain since October of 1936, when Russian personnel and equipment, including the more modern I-16, began to arrive in sizeable quantities. The Spanish aviation historian, Salvador Rello, also claimed that the I-153 was in Spain in the final months of the war, with the total number not exceeding 10 aircraft. (4) More recently, French author Herbert Leonard, in his little volume on Polikarpov fighters, mentions a "handful" of I-153s, when summing up the total of Polikarpov fighters sent to Spain during those fateful years. (5)
Over 380 I-15 "Chatos" were used by the FARE (Fuerza Aerea de la Republica Española) during the civil war, comprising the major part of the republic's fighter force. The initial evaluation of its combat performance revealed, that despite a creditable performance against Nationalist fighter aircraft, such as the Italian Fiat CR32 and the German Heinkel He51, it still lacked sufficient speed and altitude performance to do much more than cope with such competition. Athough possessing excellent maneuverability, the I-15 frequently came off second best, especially when pitted against the new Messerschmitt Bf109 that began to arrive in Spain in the spring of 1937. Its mediocre combat performance against the new German monoplane was viewed with dismay in the Soviet Union, where performance appraisals and critiques were carried out on a continuing basis as action reports from Soviet fighter commanders in Spain were received and evaluated. (6)
[...]
http://www.janus.umd.edu/Feb2002/spanis ... om/07.htmlBoth Germany and Italy maintained an official position of "non-intervention," however. Indeed, most of Europe desired to stay out of the conflict altogether. Wary of being dragged into another protracted war like World War I, Britain and France, despite sympathizing with the Republicans, took the lead in establishing a Non-Intervention Agreement that was eventually signed by 17 countries including Germany and Italy. To the democracies, "War was seen as a mindless and unnecessary stampede to destruction," according to historian Willard Frank.12 Britain and France hoped to discourage German and Italian participation in the conflict through non-intervention, which entailed prohibiting arms sales to either Republicans or Nationalists, although one could still trade non-militarily with either. Britain and France favored such a policy despite the fact that it soon became obvious that Germany and Italy were practicing anything but non-intervention in Spain. Still, neither Britain nor France called the dictatorships' bluff, with ominous consequences for the future. Thousands of people from all over Europe (including Germany) did volunteer in the so-called "International Brigades" which fought for the Republicans during the war. These people often claimed to have a sense of duty to fight a war against injustice, and many in fact were Communists.13 Although their impact was decisive in defeating the Italians at Guadalajara in 1937 and in preventing Republican collapse for several years, their presence was no match for the combined German and Italian military and economic aid to the Republicans.14
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12. Willard C. Frank, "The Spanish Civil War and the Coming of the Second World War." The International History Reviews, Volume 9, no. 3 (August 1987): 373.
13. Buchanan, 122-123.
14. Whealey, Hitler and Spain, 57.
Another view of Franco's neutrality, and I assume Scott Smith SPAM:
I am not sure I would say Spain is "neutral" but you may make, as you have, your own claims, especially with your choices of countries that would make a post WWII judgment "fair" (my term).
Carlos Collado Seidel, "Zufluchtsstätte für Nationalsozialisten? Spanien, die Alliierten und die Behandlung deutscher Agenten 1944-1947," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43 (1995): 131-157.
Reviewed by Norman J.W. Goda
(originally published by H-German on 18 January 1996)
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Since the unlikely survival of Francisco Franco's regime through the Second World War, historians have puzzled over the extent to which the Franco government had collaborated with Adolf Hitler's Germany. In the 1960s, books by Donald Detwiler and Charles Burdick argued that Spain, exhausted from its own fratricidal conflict, tried to keep as much political and military distance as it could from Germany's war, particularly when Berlin developed an interest in Gibraltar in the fall of 1940. With increased access to Spanish archives, however, the picture has become clearer. Recent works by Javier Tussell, Paul Preston, and others all show that Franco held, if not a strong trust for Berlin, then definite territorial and political aims that he hoped to realize should the Germans win the war. To these ends, he was even willing to have Spain become a belligerent. The article under review by Carlos Collado Seidel fits into this context. It questions the extent to which the Spanish government tolerated the presence of German agents on Spanish soil during the war, and the extent to which the Franco government offered asylum to Nazis after the war ended. The article relies almost exclusively on the files of the Spanish Foreign Ministry. The author's conclusion is that the Franco government followed a winding path between Allied pressure to repatriate German officials and its own definition of Spanish interests and honor. A clear policy of sympathy for Nazism itself did not exist in Madrid, but neither did a policy which actively sought to expel German nationals from Spanish soil.
Spain and its Moroccan protectorate, as Collado Seidel states, were of great importance to Germany during the war. Spanish territory straddled the entrance to the western Mediterranean, while Spain itself provided vital materials such as wolfram and iron ore. Thus Berlin aimed for a large German presence in Spain, Spanish Morocco, and in the Spanish-occupied zone of Tangier. At the end of 1941 there were 7,500 Germans in Spanish territory, and by 1945 there were at least 12,000, many of whom performed covert activities for the German government. The Abwehr alone might have had a network of up to 2,500 agents. According to Collado Seidel, German agents (but not British ones) received a wide berth from Spanish officials, who would not harass them even if they were uncovered. The Allies complained loudly and often to Madrid about these violations of Spanish non-belligerence, and the British helpfully provided lists of agents complete with priority ratings. Yet little happened in practice, and since the Allies feared a Nazi resurgence in Spain after Germany's surrender, they continued to insist on deportation after the war. These attempts, too, brought little in return, and the Allies gave up on the issue in the course of 1947.
Collado Seidel skillfully shows that Spanish non-compliance with Allied demands sprang not so much from fundamental sympathy with National Socialism, but rather from lack of commitment to Allied concerns. In the first place, Franco never understood how important the issue was to the Allies. The Spanish Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, hoped to show at least token compliance when in May 1944, in return for continued American fuel deliveries, Madrid agreed, among other things, to deport German agents and to close the German General Consulate in Tangier, a rats' nest of espionage activity. Yet the Foreign Ministry ran into stiff resistance from other agencies, particularly the Spanish military, police, and intelligence services. The Tangier Consulate was officially closed and some Germans were indeed detained, though in very comfortable conditions. But Germans with contacts routinely used them to remain in the country. Some were protected because they had provided valuable services in the Spanish Civil War; some because they had business or social contacts with important Spanish officials; some because they were providing valuable intelligence to the Spanish government on its own internal enemies; and some were protected simply as a matter of Spain's pride as a sovereign nation.
Examples of these trends both during and after the war are abundant. Local Spanish authorities, for example, protected German agents in Tangier and Spanish Morocco so that from the spring of 1943 to the spring of 1944, a mere fourteen Germans were forced to leave Morocco due to Allied pressure. The High Commissioner in Tetuan himself pointed out to the Foreign Ministry that he could hardly be expected to expel "his" Germans from the protectorate. After the war, the same problems persisted. In September 1946, the Foreign Ministry had to defer in the case of Germany's ex-Naval Attache, Alfred Menzell, who had Franco's confidante Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco as his advocate. Carrero complained that his German friend had provided key assistance in "our war," and that besides, Spanish honor was very much at stake in cases such as these. The few Allied repatriation ships that left Bilbao in 1945 and 1946 thus carried very few Germans whom the Allies had considered a high priority. The remainder had either disappeared with local help, or had been spoken for by important Spanish officials. Thus more Germans prioritized for deportation by the Allies remained in Spain than left, and by the time the last ship sailed, slightly more than a hundred such Germans had been repatriated. The Allies allowed the issue to drop in 1947, having become more concerned with the Soviets than with a resurgence of Nazism in Spain.
It is difficult to critique a work-in-progress, but since Collado Seidel is currently working on a larger study concerning Allied policies toward Nazis in Spain from 1942 to 1952, some suggestions may be helpful. The author is to be commended for sifting through the Spanish Foreign Ministry files on this topic. It is a difficult group of papers which can be frustrating to follow at times. The use of Spanish military records and those of the High Commissariat in Spanish Morocco would have been of great use for this study, but remain difficult to access under current Spanish rules. Most noteworthy, however, is that Collado Seidel does not seem to have consulted any German records. Though the records of German intelligence agencies are indeed sketchy concerning activities in Spanish territory during the war, the files of the German Foreign Ministry, the German Embassy in Madrid and the German Consulate in Tetuan provide needed perspective. For instance, I am not convinced that the Spanish government was as pleased to accept German activities in its territories as Collado Seidel suggests, especially since both Madrid and Berlin had their eyes set on French Morocco from the summer of 1940 onward. Madrid made noticeable complaints to Berlin about violations of Spanish sovereignty, and the German Consulate in Tetuan complained to Berlin from late 1940 onward about Spanish obstacles to German espionage and propaganda activities. The German records also show that Madrid only allowed Berlin to open a General Consulate in Tangier in 1941 after considerable pressure from Joachim von Ribbentrop himself. The Spaniards were thus likely pleased to have closed it three years later. Collado Seidel seems not to have yet consulted the wealth of secondary work now available on Spanish wartime policy either. This leads him to make occasionally misleading comments, such as one which states that Franco himself sympathized with the fundamental ideas of National Socialism. Hopefully, these issues will be addressed, but in the meantime, this is a very useful article which students of German-Spanish relations, the Franco regime, and Allied denazification policies would do well to consult.
Norman J.W. Goda, University of Maine at Presque Isle
Copyright © 1996 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied in whole or in part, with proper attribution, as long as the copying is not-for-profit "fair use" for research, commentary, study, or teaching. For other permission, please contact [email protected].
I don't wish to argue either about Switzerland or Spain, but merely to point out that two of your choices would result in historical review that would allow for the very same controversy you so decry today; that the "judges" of WWII, from nations, were inherently prejudiced, and conducted a "show" trial.
And why not?
The Swiss survived because Nazi Germany tolerated their existence and possibly their banking system, possibly, again, and would allow the Swiss to be neutral for their own reasons. Certainly, it would not have been overly difficult for the German Army to overrun Switzerland, given even the terrain, mobility, etc. Likewise, there were German military forces in the Spanish Civil War, and a testing ground for their newest aircraft and tactics.
With my hypothetical answers to your hypothetical solution to an impartial trial that you want to adhere to "international agreements" while "international law" is, apparently a joke, how would your solution stop the criticism of an "IMT"?
It wouldn't. You would hear today, that the "neutral nations" were those allowed to survive during Nazi Germany's overrunning Europe, possibly because of secret banking, and that ruling government of another was in power because of victorious military intervention of two of the major combatants.
Despite all of this, you must make the case that the IMT was so blantantly unfair.
As I have stated before, for those who are such vehement critics of Nuremberg, I'd like to see that same fine reasoning pointed to the actions of Nazi Germany's legal system and trials.
Regards,
Mark
