My BLOG “SPANISH HISTORY AND INTRIGUING BRTISH PRACTICE” (DECEMBER 6) remarked on how Simon Sebag Montefiorii gave us a history of Spanish Catholic atrocities over many bloody centuries, including the career of the tyrant General Franco.
He mentioned the support of Mussolini and Hitler who helped when Franco’s revolt was underway, but omitted mention pf the kick-start given to the mutineer by British Intelligence officers.
My BLOG mentioned two of those officers.
There is a lot in Wikipedia on the career of Major Hugh Pollard
I will quote a snippet about others involved in their stunt –
“During lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand, Douglas Francis Jerrold, the Conservative Roman Catholic Editor of THE ENGLISH REVIEW (and also a British Intelligence officer) met with Luis Bolin……(later Franco’s senior press officer). They conceived a plan to move General Franco from
the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco….Bolin suggested he find two blondes and a trusted pilot to make the party look like tourists”
Franco’s coup was conceived in London by British Intelligence agents – not Italian or German fascists.
At the time Benito Mussolini was a Knight of the Bath, having been dubbed by Britain;s King George V in the early 1920s.
His newspaper was bankrolled by British Intelligence in 1915 because he had broken from the Socialists and advocated Italy’s entry into the Great War on the side of Britain and France. The Italians did so 6 years before Mussolini seized power
When Mussolini attacked France in 1940, Mussolini was stripped of his Knighthood. But he was greaty admired by conservatives, throughout the world including Winston Churchill, and Fine Gael in Ireland for two decades.
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