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More than twenty years ago, an article by John R. Hubbard, 'How Franco Financed His War' was published in The Journal of Modern History.' In it, he described the sources and amounts of foreign aid supplied to Generalissimo Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and showed, for the first time, how much foreign war material Franco received from the Axis Powers on credit, without which he might well have lost the civil war. Hubbard, however, had no access to certain Nationalist documents which have only recently become available, and so did not realize the extent to which the Franco regime purchased war materials from abroad. Apart from German and Italian supplies, the Generalissimo also bought from sources in the United States, Great Britain, Switzerland and other democratic countries. Records in the Archivo Hist6rico Nacional, Madrid, newly and perhaps inadvertently released, tell the story. Without foreign aid, neither the Nationalists nor their Republican opponents could have sustained the fighting for very long. Both Spanish armies needed weapons, aircraft, oil and other imported supplies paid for by cash, credit or barter. 'Cash' in international economics means either gold or foreign exchange in a hard currency like dollars or pounds sterling. The Spanish Republicans controlled most of Spain's gold from the beginning. But Franco's rebels acquired foreign exchange from current exports, from profits and dividends on foreign investments owned by wealthy Nationalist partisans, and from repatriated earnings of Spaniards working overseas.
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