The Withdrawal of Foreign Volunteers (1937–1938)

Abstract

Now we return from Geneva and the League to London and the Non-intervention Committee in order to take up once again the story of the lengthy negotiations that were in progress there. We had reached the point (in Chapter VII) where the NIC had almost broken down in the mid-summer of 1937 because of the attacks on German and Italian warships. The chief problem facing the London Committee after the ban on volunteers was agreed to in February, 1937, was the removal of all the foreign volunteers who were already fighting with the Nationalist or Republican armies. The possibility of foreign troops fighting in Spain had not been envisaged in the original non-intervention agreement which only put an embargo on the sale of arms, ammunition, aeroplanes, tanks and other implements of war to either of the contending sides. Now, however, the additional and far more serious problem of foreign troops fighting on Spanish soil could not be ignored.

“The entire negotiation in the committee has something unreal about it, since all participants see through the game of the other side but only seldom express this openly.... The non-intervention policy is so unstable and is such an artificial creation that everyone fears to cause its collapse by a clear ‘no’ and then have to bear the responsibility. Therefore unpleasant proposals are talked to death instead of rejected¹).”