Word: gibraltars
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...most trying experience since his painful vigil at Gibraltar during the early hours of the African invasion. At such times the carefully controlled Eisenhower temper bends under the strain; he hates uncertainty. All he could do now was to pace around headquarters, scribble memos to himself, a set habit at such times. One of his self-memos could stand as a masterpiece of military understatement: "Now I'd like a few reports." He doodled with his pencil, barked at his aides...
...that our foreign policy toward Spain is best expressed by drawing comical or even rude caricatures of General Franco, but I think there is more than that." Specifically: Spain might have wrecked Allied plans for the North African invasion. As many as 600 invasion planes at one time crowded Gibraltar's airfield within range of Spanish guns; a great fleet of Allied shipping rested in Spanish waters, under Spanish guns. But the Spaniards did not interfere. If they had, "the Strait of Gibraltar would have been closed, and all access to the Mediterranean would have been cut off from...
Defensively, but with no marked awareness of a slight contradiction, Churchill added: "If in some directions they have taken an indulgent view of German U-boats ... or have continued active exportations to Germany, they made amends ... at Gibraltar...
Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden reported to the House of Commons last week that at long last Franco's Government had kicked Germans and Japanese out of their listening posts in Tangier, across from Britain's busy Gibraltar, overlooking the Mediterranean gateway. The Axis consulates, Madrid said, had been "closed and sealed." Franco recently agreed to cut his country's shipment of wolfram (for steel alloys) to Germany. But he may ship as much as ever to Spain's little Iberian neighbor Portugal, which still supplies wolfram and other essential materials to Germany...
...Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle Jr., who recently talked with the Beaver in London) has tentatively agreed to let Britain have exclusive rights between the home island and the Crown Colonies (Hong Kong, Straits Settlements, Gibraltar, etc.). At least, the Beaver said so last week...