On 27 February, the Cabinet of Ministers in France decided to close the border with Spain from 1 March for international security reasons. It caused a breakdown in the Spanish-French trade agreement as well as stopping passenger and postal transport.
After the Second World War, a question about what the Allies thought of Spain and the Franco regime became a burning issue. On 12 December 1945, French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault handed diplomatic notes to the American and British ambassadors with a proposal to break off diplomatic relations with Spain. The problem was that the French were not popular with the USSR because Moscow had no diplomatic relations with Madrid at all. Nevertheless, this could be the first significant action undertaken by the Allies without the participation of the USSR.
On 19 December in Washington, the US Assistant Secretary of State James Clement Dunn told Spanish Ambassador Juan Francisco de Cardenas that the United States "might have to break off relations with Spain". London agreed that any action against Franco should be undertaken jointly, but the views were underscored by fears that if the Republicans won in Spain, the left would seize power, and this would again lead to civil war.
In the USSR, the attitude towards the Franco regime was extremely negative. Spanish soldiers took part in the war on the side of Hitler. Soviet people couldn’t forget the Spanish “Blue Division” that took such an active part during the destruction and robbery in Tsarskoe Selo and participated in the blockade of Leningrad, and massacres of civilians.
At the first session of the UN General Assembly, the situation in Spain was considered separately. Andrei Gromyko, the USSR delegate, said: “It would be a mistake to think that a military victory over fascism removes from the agenda the question of any further struggle to eliminate completely still-existing centres of fascism. This struggle to uproot the remains of fascism cannot be separated from the work of our organisation".
However, there was no agreement on the issue raised by France. An important question remained unsolved: one of the "ratlines" of the fascist organisation ODESSA, that allowed Nazi war criminals to escape justice and retribution, passed through the border with Spain. France showed political commitment by blocking the border but failed to reach an agreement on account of the diplomatic break with the Franco regime by the Allies.
Source: Pravda, 1 March 1946
