Mason Jones (Reporter)
SECRET files released this week reveal that MI6 spent almost €155 million bribing Spanish officials to stay out of the second world war.
The documents disclose how Britain’s ambassador in Madrid warned London that unless top Spanish military officials were paid off, there was a real chance that Spain could abandon its neutrality status
and join forces with Nazi Germany.
The ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, demanded an initial €1 million from the Foreign Office in June 1940 with the note: “I personally urge authority be granted without delay, and that if you have doubts, the Prime Minister be consulted.”
“Yes indeed,” responded Churchill in red ink to Hoare’s telegram.
At least $10 million, the equivalent of around €155 million in today’s value, was spent on Spanish agents during the second world war, according to the documents.
These agents went on to influence dictator Franco’s opinion about joining the conflict.
While his politics lent naturally towards Hitler – and he supplied the Axis steel and other products – he was persuaded to stay neutral.
Wiki “According to a 2008 book, Winston Churchill authorised millions of dollars in bribes to Spanish generals in an effort to influence General Franco against entering the war on the side of Germany.”
Blackmail and extortion is just one more count on the docket of war crimes committed by Franco, but please change the headline. Spain wasn’t out of that war. Rather, Spain had been in that anti-fascist war for four long years before Britain entered it. Thousands of Spanish soldiers and civilians, died at the hands of Franco’s axis-financed death squads before, during, and after, the official duration of WWII.
It was a waste of money. According all the news, Franco never thought of entering in the war.
rubbish? franco was too much his own man,and anyway its documented that he always said that hitler would lose any war with g.b. as they will be backed by the u.s.a. in the end.
The brown envelope.Nothing changes in Spain