Diplomatic Coup for Franco
MOWRER, RICHARD SCOTT
DIPLOMATIC COUP FOR FRANCO Eisenhower decision to crowd meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister into his tight London schedule perplexes European diplomatic community By Richard Scott...
...The book, Reivindicaciones de Espana (Spain's Claims), listed Spanish claims to various territories, including British-held Gibraltar, in anticipation of the day when the Axis would win the war and divide the spoils...
...He had been designated by Franco as his Ambassador to the Court of St...
...But since those days Spain's Foreign Minister has changed his outlook a lot...
...The Franco regime has never formally repudiated its former association with Nazi Germany, nor has it felt the need to do so...
...What is printed is a statement of a Foreign Office spokesman in London to the effect that "obviously we have no objection and are looking forward to welcoming the Spanish Foreign Minister to this country...
...and Mike Mansfield (D.-Mon...
...With the current Spanish Ambassador in Washington, Jose Maria de Areilza, he co-authored a book hailing the "new order" under Hitler and referring to Britain and France as "decadent democracies...
...For Spain, the Castiella-Eisen-hower meeting added up to one of the neatest diplomatic coups ever accomplished by the Franco regime...
...If the Spanish Foreign Minister has changed quite a lot since the war years, the regime's ideology basically has not...
...But the press, which is controlled by the State and dutifully reflects its views, regularly omits news that would tend to divulge to the Spaniards some of the worst aspects of Nazi-ism...
...Last month it was played up again when Senators Styles Bridges (R.-N.H...
...It is true that there is little lamenting, at least in public, of the Axis defeat...
...James, but the British wouldn't have him...
...What is omitted is the spokesman's opening statement: "It is true we were not consulted...
...For in 1951 Foreign Minister Castiella was persona non grata in Britain...
...There is no problem affecting Spanish-American relations so serious or urgent that it required discussion at such a high level...
...The most recent example of this was in connection with Vice President Nixon's trip to Warsaw last month...
...The papers here described the Poles' big welcome and Nixon's visit to the rebuilt Warsaw cathedral...
...And the fact that the meeting is taking place in London makes it even better...
...In fact it is a matter of pride with Franco supporters that it's the rest of the Western world that's come around, without the Franco regime having had to deviate from its authoritarian ideology...
...Meanwhile, the fact that the British government was not consulted before the United States invited Spain to join the meeting with Eisenhower was omitted from the newspapers here...
...Possibly another reason the British Government refused to have Castiella as Spanish Ambassador was that he had been a soldier in the ranks of the Blue Division, a Spanish unit which fought alongside Hitler's Wehrmacht on the Eastern front, and was a recipient of the German Iron Cross...
...and a number of Representatives praised in Congress Spain's role in World War II...
...signed the bases-for-aid agreement with Spain...
...Why this should have been perplexes foreign diplomats here...
...DIPLOMATIC COUP FOR FRANCO Eisenhower decision to crowd meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister into his tight London schedule perplexes European diplomatic community By Richard Scott Mowrer MADRID A RAISING OF DIPLOMATIC eyebrows, and not a little admiration, has been caused here by the ability of Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Foreign Minister to get himself invited to London to see President Eisenhower...
...The book, published in 1941, was awarded the National Prize for Literature...
...This theme was played up in 1953 when the U.S...
...He has worked hard and successfully to improve his country's relations with Western democracies...
...The rebuff stemmed from Castiel-la's record as an out-and-out supporter of the Axis during World War II...
...It is presumed that the State Department's acquiescence to the idea stems from established American policy to encourage the Franco regime's endeavors to attain international respectability and ungrudging acceptance as a member of the free world...
...But none mentioned the fact that he laid a wreath on the Ghetto memorial to the thousands of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, that he visited the ruins of a prison which the Nazis used for poison gas experiments on humans or that he visited the Pamiri cemetery where victims of mass executions by the Nazis are buried...
...Despite the fact that the President's European schedule was tight and that some of the NATO countries' representatives who would have liked to meet the President privately were unable to do so, Spanish Foreign Minister Fernando Maria Castiella was among the favored few who talked with Eisenhower last week...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 32
