Sanctions on Spain

The U.S. State Department, on military advice, decided that the time had come to stop buying Francisco Franco's favors. Cordell Hull had just demonstrated that even the Best Neighbor's patience has limits: 1) by refusing to recognize Bolivia's Axis-tainted new regime; 2) by recalling socialite Ambassador Pierre Boal: 3) and by helping Britain force an Argentine break with the Axis (see p. 34). Now he shut off tight the shipments of Caribbean oil which the tubby Spanish dictator must have to run his industries. Britain joined in the sanctions. Russia, annoyed by "some portion" of the Spanish Blue Division still fighting against her on the German front, had urged them.

The U.S. has been letting pro-Axis Franco have oil, the Department had explained, so that it could stay in the market for Spanish raw materials which would otherwise go to Germany : notably wolfram (a tungsten ore used for cutting tools as well as for armor-piercing steel), iron, manganese. But last fortnight the Department heard that Franco had increased the Nazi buying power (and funds for spies and saboteurs in Spain and Africa) by extending a $40,000,000 credit.

Should Franco fail within a reasonable time to shut off his exports to Germany, to drive out Nazi spies, to release Italian war and merchant ships interned in Spanish harbors, and to withdraw his troops from the Russian front, the U.S. and Britain can get tougher yet by cutting off supplies of grain, meat, cotton and coal.

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