Fernando Harmon

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Fernando Harmon: Gunsmuggler

Fernando Harmon, Gunsmuggler and master politician, passed away last week in Madrid. He left behind over thirty children, most illiagaimte, and a legacy of international socialism that changed the world.

Little is known of his early life; even the very fact of his nationalism is unclear, although Spanish popular belief claims that he was born in the Basque countries in 1890. His father, a criminal in an international criminal syndicate (if we can trust Harmon’s word on this matter) gave him a proper, although unrecorded education, and an altogether different introduction to a criminal life. Evidence appears to support the fact that his farther introduced him to many of the criminals in the capitals of the world, forging an organisation that held, great, if secret, influence in the west. Harmon Senior saw only one path for crime: Gun smuggling. Many groups, such as the polish underground, the Chinese, the colonial nationalists and the Russian communists had a vast need for arms and the Harmon family could supply. When he was twenty, in 1911, Harmon was sent by his father to Russia to arrange terms with the latter, who in their turn made strenuous efforts to convert him. Harmon claimed to have met Stalin, the later dictator, while in Russia and divined his future from his eyes, but Stalin was to deny this rumour in 1940 and it has never been proven.

The Harmon family’s operations in America, supplying illegal arms to a miners union, was broken up in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of war, and the Harmon’s had to flee back to their native Spain. The outbreak of war, however, left their legitimate industries (limited arms factories) with plenty of work and their willingness to supply anyone led to them taking advantage of Spain’s neutrality and shipping arms to the Germans in 1918. It was during this time that Harmon developed a fascination with Tanks and he would later spend time and effort in developing his own tanks.

The end of war brought two disasters to the Harmon family. The first was the death of Harmon Senior in the influenza epidemic of 1919. The second was the British confiscation of most of the Harmon factories within British territory, after discovering that the Harmons’ had assisted Germany. Harmon junior returned to Spain again and, while travelling through the nation, saw the suffering of the Spanish people, and then converted to a form of socialism.

Despite sending money, limited supplies and exerting quiet influence, Harmon took very little overt part in the establishment of the Spanish republic and the struggle for power, as he expected that the republicans would provoke a civil war and he wanted to be ready for that war when it came. We only have scanty records of his actions, but he clearly spent them gathering and building supplies and recruiting ex-officers from the First World War to lead cadres of Spanish fighters. Harmon would then, in 1935, forge the beginnings of an alliance with the Spanish communists and slowly insert himself into a position of power. His attempts to prepare a second army caused dissidence and he found himself marginalised until the coup attempt in 1936. Harmon’s brigades proved themselves in some of the early battles and Harmon was able to manipulate that into a position on the provisional government – as treasurer and minister of supply.

Harmon began a program to obtain arms for the republic by any means necessary. Despite the western embargo on arms supplies (which did not stop the Germans and Italians from supplying Franco), Harmon was able to smuggle in considerable quantities of guns and ammo, and volunteers to use them. Harmon also made his famous break with the Spanish communists at this point, as some of them (Harmon claimed they acted on orders from Moscow) attempted to send most of the Spanish gold reserve to Moscow and the USSR. The Spanish communists lost most of their influence, although one of them was able (there is some evidence that Harmon suggested this) convinced Stalin to send arms on a vague promise of repayment in some unspecified. Most of those arms were old and next to useless, but Harmon accepted them anyway. Beggers can’t be choosy about their food.

Harmon was not a military genius by any measure. His real skill lay in organising, which he was able to do, and in the only campaign he conducted personally (the 1939 campaign against the communists) his supplies were much better than his opponents and he played a careful game with them before crushing them, as he was often out-manovered at a tactical level. He was, however, able to both select men from many nations to train Spanish warriors, able to choose the correct weapons to equip them with and his knowledge of the underworld became a crucial assert. In the period 1936-37, he launched a number of schemes to kill Franco and his command staff, attempts which finally succeeded in 1937, causing the republicans to collapse.

Ironically, the end of the republican movement did not mean the end of the civil war. Acting on orders from Moscow, the communists attempted to seize power and they were brutally suppressed in 1939, after a two-month long campaign. Knowing that Stalin was involved in the coup attempt, Harmon publicised the details (causing a world-wide red scare) and claimed that Spain was an alternate focus for the world’s communist movement. The polarising of the communist movement that would result tended to weaken the ideals of the movement and it effectively vanished in 1956.

The end of the Spanish civil war brought new uncertainties to Europe. Hitler’s rearmerant plans were disrupted by the failure of the nationalists to a) win and b) pay. Mussolini’s supplies that he sent fell into the hands of the republicans and were added to their arsenals. Germany suffered a economic collapse in 1939 and the threat of war receded for four years. Stalin was blamed for the crisis by many other nations and was stabbed in the back by a coalition of soviet army officers in 1944.

Having defeated the communists, Harmon was the undisputed ruler of Spain. He confiscated the property of the nobles (many of whom had fled to London) and divided the land out amongst the peasants, while crushing the power of the church. He set up a loose federal structure, closely modelled on the USA, which gave a high degree of autonomy to the provinces, while reserving international affairs and defence to the central government.

Ironically, Harmon would provoke the communist civil war that destroyed the Soviet Union in 1945. The relivation of Stalin’s cold-blooded attempts to control Spain and provoke a major war in the west caused mass anti-communist agitation in many nations and led to a cordon being placed on the USSR by the revitalised league of nations. As Japan and Poland saw possibilities for territorial gain, the USSR system, already weakened by the death of Stalin, collapsed into civil war. The creation of the Polish and Japanese client states caused the disintegration of the USSR into a small collection of warring states.

Harmon died in office in his third term of European President, which he had created when he talked Europe into joint action. The addition of the British white dominions and the progress in India towards dominion status has given the EU a worldwide tinge.