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Defending the Rock
Two months before he shot himself, Adolf Hitler saw where it had all gone wrong. By failing to seize Gibraltar in the summer of 1940, he lost the war.
The Rock of Gibraltar, a pillar of British sea-power since 1704, looked formidable but was extraordinarily vulnerable. Though menaced on all sides by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Vichy France and Francoist Spain, every day Gibraltar had to let thousands of people cross its frontier to work. Among them came spies and saboteurs, eager to blow up its 25 miles of secret tunnels. In 1942, Gibraltar became US General Eisenhower’s HQ for the invasion of North Africa, the campaign that led to Allied victory in the Mediterranean.
Nicholas Rankin’s revelatory new book, whose cast of characters includes Haile Selassie, Anthony Burgess and General Sikorski, sets Gibraltar in the wider context of the struggle against fascism, from Abyssinia through the Spanish Civil War. It also chronicles the end of empire and the rise to independence of the Gibraltarian people.
The Rock of Gibraltar, a pillar of British sea-power since 1704, looked formidable but was extraordinarily vulnerable. Though menaced on all sides by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Vichy France and Francoist Spain, every day Gibraltar had to let thousands of people cross its frontier to work. Among them came spies and saboteurs, eager to blow up its 25 miles of secret tunnels. In 1942, Gibraltar became US General Eisenhower’s HQ for the invasion of North Africa, the campaign that led to Allied victory in the Mediterranean.
Nicholas Rankin’s revelatory new book, whose cast of characters includes Haile Selassie, Anthony Burgess and General Sikorski, sets Gibraltar in the wider context of the struggle against fascism, from Abyssinia through the Spanish Civil War. It also chronicles the end of empire and the rise to independence of the Gibraltarian people.
416 pages, Paperback
First published September 7, 2017
17 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Rankin
13 books18 followersNicholas Rankin (b. 1950) is an English writer and broadcaster. He was born in Yorkshire, but grew up in Kenya. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He has lived and worked in Bolivia and Catalonia, Spain.
He worked for the BBC World Service for 20 years. He was Chief Producer, Arts, at the BBC World Service, when his eight-part series on ecology and evolution, A Green History of the Planet, won two UN awards.
He currently works as a freelance writer and broadcaster and lives in London with his wife, the novelist Maggie Gee. He has one daughter, Rosa.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.
He worked for the BBC World Service for 20 years. He was Chief Producer, Arts, at the BBC World Service, when his eight-part series on ecology and evolution, A Green History of the Planet, won two UN awards.
He currently works as a freelance writer and broadcaster and lives in London with his wife, the novelist Maggie Gee. He has one daughter, Rosa.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 7, 2021
Very well written, and provides wider context to put Gibraltar into perspective, but it felt like a bit of a slog at times.
April 21, 2021
‘History was not inevitable, predictable and logically deducible. It was alive at every moment, contingent on chance and human character. History is read backwards, with hindsight, but is lived forwards, in ignorance.” - Trevor-Roper
Following the fall of France, Britain held onto a tiny outcrop on the Iberian Peninsula – the Rock of Gibraltar. Britain’s possession of Gibraltar was an anachronistic colonial relic of the War of Spanish Succession in1702, formalised in the Treaties of Utrect in 1713-14. To the Spanish Caudillo, Franco, it was Spain’s “duty and mission” to recapture el Peñon de Gibraltar. To the Italian Duce, Mussolini, Britain’s control of the Rock, along with another relic of British colonialism, control of Egypt and the Suez Canal, were the prison bars to what the Italians considered Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean.
Yet despite Gibraltar’s vulnerability to an attack by Falangist Spain, and Nazi Germany, and being menaced by Vichy France and Fascist Italy, Gibraltar remained a British stronghold throughout World War 2.
In this thoroughly researched book, Rankin illuminates the role Gibraltar played in this war. Refreshingly he brings perspectives from each of the primary and potential protagonists: Spain, Germany, France, and Italy as well as Britain, the United States and the Gibraltarians themselves.
When war broke out in September1939, Gibraltar was practically undefended, and Britain’s efforts to reinforce it were slow, reflecting its general unpreparedness for war and its many and varied competing requirements for men and munitions. Britain’s position became more vulnerable when, after a period of non-belligerency, Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940. Just two days later, Spain declared it was a ‘non-belligerent’ and on 14 June occupied the international zone of Tangiers in Morocco. Was this a signal that Spain was about to join the Axis? Mussolini had told Franco “In the new reorganisation of the Mediterranean which will result from the war, Gibraltar will be returned to Spain.” Quoting Anthony Quayle, then a second lieutenant in the British Royal Artillery, Rankin highlights that, ringed by heavy Spanish artillery, Gibraltar was as “impregnable as a poached egg. … The Spanish could have walked in with a troop of Boy Scouts.”
Just over a week later, France had fallen. When Britain’s ambassador met with Generalísimo Franco on 22 June 1940, Franco had asked “Why don’t you end the war now? You can never win it. All that will happen if the war is allowed to continue, will be the destruction of European civilisation”.
To deter Italy and Vichy France, Britain sent a fleet, Force H under Admiral James Somerville, to reinforce Gibraltar. Its first task was to sink the fleet of its erstwhile ally moored at Mers el-Kébir in Algeria, in Vichy French North Africa. Undertaken at the insistence of Churchill and despite the protestations of Admiral Dudley North, Admiral Somerville and his senior officers, Operation Catapult killed almost 1300 French sailors, “an act of sheer treachery which was as injudicious as it was unnecessary”. Vichy France’s reaction, as Rankin notes, was to break off diplomatic relations, make a few half-hearted bombing raids on Gibraltar, but not actually declare war. More could have been done to explore why the Vichy French response was so timid.
With Franco boasting that “two million warriors” were ready to revive Spain’s glorious imperial past and take “command of Gibraltar”, German’s accelerated the military planning for Unternehmen Felix, an assault on Gibraltar and the political engagement with France and Spain, but it came to nothing. One of Hitler’s aides noted “We thought getting Franco’s consent for the attack on Gibraltar would be a matter of one afternoon ... but it wasn’t.”
Britain became desperate. Rankin highlights that to keep Spain out of the war, and out of Gibraltar, Hoare obtained US$10 million ($190m today) to bribe leading Spanish politicians and military including the Minister of War and the Caudillo’s brother, Nicolás Franco. The deputy head of the Foreign Office told the Spanish ambassador’ that were Spain to stay neutral, at the end of the war all Spanish aspirations could be discussed, including the restoration of Gibraltar.’ But as Churchill noted in rejecting this proposition, “If we win, discussions would not be fruitful; and if we lose, they would not be necessary”.
Despite Franco’s bellicose rhetoric and Hitler’s badgering, Franco faltered, and by early 1941, German’s attention had turned eastward, from the Mediterranean to the Soviet Union. This is also the point where Rankin’s narrative takes a turn and becomes alternatively, distracted, tedious and prurient.
Rankin’s comments on China’s attempts to become a global naval power should at best be in a footnote and are a distraction from the main narrative. His observation on German tourists placing towels on lounge chairs as a metaphor for Germany’s colonial ambitions on encountering British and French expansion is clichéd and cringeworthy (p23).
Although Rankin cover the Spanish-enabled clandestine operations against British forces in Gibraltar, and its role in 1942 as the hub of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in Vichy French North Africa, heavier editing of the second half of this book would have resulted in a far crisper and more engaging narrative.
Despite the detailed research, there are still a number of anomalous factual errors, which detract from any history.
The beaches at Dunkirk are of course they are on the west of the town and not the east. (p185). US marines occupied Iceland in July 1941 not July 1940, after the Anglo-Canadian invasion of May 1940. And it was over dinner in the evening of 10 May, and not on 11 May as Rankin notes that the Spanish Foreign Minister, Juan Beigbeder informed Hoare that French warships would be passing through the Straits of Gibraltar (p285). However, while disappointing, they do not really detract from an otherwise well researched analysis of an area of the war that is not well covered.
At the end of the war, Göring lamented that ‘Hitler’s gravest mistake was the failure “to march through Spain, with or without Franco’s assent, [to] capture Gibraltar and spill into Africa. This could have very easily been done and it would have altered the whole course of the war.” Rankin’s informative book enables the reader to draw their own conclusion on the validity of this claim.
Following the fall of France, Britain held onto a tiny outcrop on the Iberian Peninsula – the Rock of Gibraltar. Britain’s possession of Gibraltar was an anachronistic colonial relic of the War of Spanish Succession in1702, formalised in the Treaties of Utrect in 1713-14. To the Spanish Caudillo, Franco, it was Spain’s “duty and mission” to recapture el Peñon de Gibraltar. To the Italian Duce, Mussolini, Britain’s control of the Rock, along with another relic of British colonialism, control of Egypt and the Suez Canal, were the prison bars to what the Italians considered Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean.
Yet despite Gibraltar’s vulnerability to an attack by Falangist Spain, and Nazi Germany, and being menaced by Vichy France and Fascist Italy, Gibraltar remained a British stronghold throughout World War 2.
In this thoroughly researched book, Rankin illuminates the role Gibraltar played in this war. Refreshingly he brings perspectives from each of the primary and potential protagonists: Spain, Germany, France, and Italy as well as Britain, the United States and the Gibraltarians themselves.
When war broke out in September1939, Gibraltar was practically undefended, and Britain’s efforts to reinforce it were slow, reflecting its general unpreparedness for war and its many and varied competing requirements for men and munitions. Britain’s position became more vulnerable when, after a period of non-belligerency, Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940. Just two days later, Spain declared it was a ‘non-belligerent’ and on 14 June occupied the international zone of Tangiers in Morocco. Was this a signal that Spain was about to join the Axis? Mussolini had told Franco “In the new reorganisation of the Mediterranean which will result from the war, Gibraltar will be returned to Spain.” Quoting Anthony Quayle, then a second lieutenant in the British Royal Artillery, Rankin highlights that, ringed by heavy Spanish artillery, Gibraltar was as “impregnable as a poached egg. … The Spanish could have walked in with a troop of Boy Scouts.”
Just over a week later, France had fallen. When Britain’s ambassador met with Generalísimo Franco on 22 June 1940, Franco had asked “Why don’t you end the war now? You can never win it. All that will happen if the war is allowed to continue, will be the destruction of European civilisation”.
To deter Italy and Vichy France, Britain sent a fleet, Force H under Admiral James Somerville, to reinforce Gibraltar. Its first task was to sink the fleet of its erstwhile ally moored at Mers el-Kébir in Algeria, in Vichy French North Africa. Undertaken at the insistence of Churchill and despite the protestations of Admiral Dudley North, Admiral Somerville and his senior officers, Operation Catapult killed almost 1300 French sailors, “an act of sheer treachery which was as injudicious as it was unnecessary”. Vichy France’s reaction, as Rankin notes, was to break off diplomatic relations, make a few half-hearted bombing raids on Gibraltar, but not actually declare war. More could have been done to explore why the Vichy French response was so timid.
With Franco boasting that “two million warriors” were ready to revive Spain’s glorious imperial past and take “command of Gibraltar”, German’s accelerated the military planning for Unternehmen Felix, an assault on Gibraltar and the political engagement with France and Spain, but it came to nothing. One of Hitler’s aides noted “We thought getting Franco’s consent for the attack on Gibraltar would be a matter of one afternoon ... but it wasn’t.”
Britain became desperate. Rankin highlights that to keep Spain out of the war, and out of Gibraltar, Hoare obtained US$10 million ($190m today) to bribe leading Spanish politicians and military including the Minister of War and the Caudillo’s brother, Nicolás Franco. The deputy head of the Foreign Office told the Spanish ambassador’ that were Spain to stay neutral, at the end of the war all Spanish aspirations could be discussed, including the restoration of Gibraltar.’ But as Churchill noted in rejecting this proposition, “If we win, discussions would not be fruitful; and if we lose, they would not be necessary”.
Despite Franco’s bellicose rhetoric and Hitler’s badgering, Franco faltered, and by early 1941, German’s attention had turned eastward, from the Mediterranean to the Soviet Union. This is also the point where Rankin’s narrative takes a turn and becomes alternatively, distracted, tedious and prurient.
Rankin’s comments on China’s attempts to become a global naval power should at best be in a footnote and are a distraction from the main narrative. His observation on German tourists placing towels on lounge chairs as a metaphor for Germany’s colonial ambitions on encountering British and French expansion is clichéd and cringeworthy (p23).
Although Rankin cover the Spanish-enabled clandestine operations against British forces in Gibraltar, and its role in 1942 as the hub of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in Vichy French North Africa, heavier editing of the second half of this book would have resulted in a far crisper and more engaging narrative.
Despite the detailed research, there are still a number of anomalous factual errors, which detract from any history.
The beaches at Dunkirk are of course they are on the west of the town and not the east. (p185). US marines occupied Iceland in July 1941 not July 1940, after the Anglo-Canadian invasion of May 1940. And it was over dinner in the evening of 10 May, and not on 11 May as Rankin notes that the Spanish Foreign Minister, Juan Beigbeder informed Hoare that French warships would be passing through the Straits of Gibraltar (p285). However, while disappointing, they do not really detract from an otherwise well researched analysis of an area of the war that is not well covered.
At the end of the war, Göring lamented that ‘Hitler’s gravest mistake was the failure “to march through Spain, with or without Franco’s assent, [to] capture Gibraltar and spill into Africa. This could have very easily been done and it would have altered the whole course of the war.” Rankin’s informative book enables the reader to draw their own conclusion on the validity of this claim.
February 2, 2025
Has some interesting information but, on the whole, disappointing.
Rankin makes out like Gibraltar was a major outpost during the Second World War. It was not. After having read Roy and Lesley Adkins' Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege In British History about an actual siege of Gibraltar, Rankin's book is basically just another book about the home front.
Here is a clue. In Rankin's book, there are several different governors of Gibraltar. In the Adkinses' book, there is only one.
Another clue: Rankin has a whole chapter about this troublemaker conscript in the Education Corps called Burgess, who fancies himself a) having a "hard war", and b) being a writer. No. Rankin's Burgess did not have a "hard war." He never had to face anything like the Long Range Desert Group had to face on Leros. The evidence of this is that this Burgess clown survived the war to defecate out volumes of mindless drivel after being stationed in Gibraltar, while Jake Easonsmith did not survive Leros.
The book is very thinly endnoted, and mostly with secondary sources.
What is more, Rankin overinflates the actual significance of Franco by only discussing what Franco did during the Civil War and during World War II. Reading Rankin, one would think that Franco was some evil machinating genius and all-powerful dictator. In reality, Franco 1) soiled his drawers whenever he heard the name "deGaulle," hence why he first turned over Laval, then expelled the OAS from Spain, 2) took in thousands of pied-noir refugees in 1962 after deGaulle surrendered Algeria to the terrorists (including some who had fought as Republicans during the Civil War), 3) allowed an openly gay man (Truman Capote) and his lover to live in Spain in the 1950s, and 4) allowed Colonel David Hackworth to enter Spain in the 1970s after Hack had publicly dissed Westmoreland and had to skeddadle before Westy tried to railroad him on trumped up charges. But one would never know this if one read Rankin and Paul Preston who think that Franco of the 1930s and 1940s was a good predictor of Franco in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Rankin is a fan of Ian Fleming and it shows. This book is as sloppy as Ian Fleming's Casino Royale with its laughably bad caricature of SMERSH as some League of Assassins still operating in the 1950s, which Vadim Birstein has shown to be utterly risible.
Rankin makes out like Gibraltar was a major outpost during the Second World War. It was not. After having read Roy and Lesley Adkins' Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege In British History about an actual siege of Gibraltar, Rankin's book is basically just another book about the home front.
Here is a clue. In Rankin's book, there are several different governors of Gibraltar. In the Adkinses' book, there is only one.
Another clue: Rankin has a whole chapter about this troublemaker conscript in the Education Corps called Burgess, who fancies himself a) having a "hard war", and b) being a writer. No. Rankin's Burgess did not have a "hard war." He never had to face anything like the Long Range Desert Group had to face on Leros. The evidence of this is that this Burgess clown survived the war to defecate out volumes of mindless drivel after being stationed in Gibraltar, while Jake Easonsmith did not survive Leros.
The book is very thinly endnoted, and mostly with secondary sources.
What is more, Rankin overinflates the actual significance of Franco by only discussing what Franco did during the Civil War and during World War II. Reading Rankin, one would think that Franco was some evil machinating genius and all-powerful dictator. In reality, Franco 1) soiled his drawers whenever he heard the name "deGaulle," hence why he first turned over Laval, then expelled the OAS from Spain, 2) took in thousands of pied-noir refugees in 1962 after deGaulle surrendered Algeria to the terrorists (including some who had fought as Republicans during the Civil War), 3) allowed an openly gay man (Truman Capote) and his lover to live in Spain in the 1950s, and 4) allowed Colonel David Hackworth to enter Spain in the 1970s after Hack had publicly dissed Westmoreland and had to skeddadle before Westy tried to railroad him on trumped up charges. But one would never know this if one read Rankin and Paul Preston who think that Franco of the 1930s and 1940s was a good predictor of Franco in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Rankin is a fan of Ian Fleming and it shows. This book is as sloppy as Ian Fleming's Casino Royale with its laughably bad caricature of SMERSH as some League of Assassins still operating in the 1950s, which Vadim Birstein has shown to be utterly risible.
September 4, 2024
This is an incredible and indepth account about Gibraltar. The first half has an independent background to the Spanish war and the depot Franco, then halfway through it then gets to grip with the Second World War and then touches on its last military involvement with the Navy going
to the aid of the Falkland islands. As mentioned this is an incredibly detailed account of the little British outpost, it did at times feel a bit of a slog but I'm glad I stayed the course.
to the aid of the Falkland islands. As mentioned this is an incredibly detailed account of the little British outpost, it did at times feel a bit of a slog but I'm glad I stayed the course.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews