Jorma Multanen helped monitor non-intervention in Spanish Civil War
By Tommi Nieminen
In the spring of 1937 Jorma Multanen was a penniless student of law living in Puistola in Helsinki. He was also a second lieutenant in the military reserve and was looking for well-paid summer work. He knew of an opening as the doorman of a restaurant. Not a bad job, although it was not very well paid.
The previous summer Civil War had broken out in Spain between the fascists of General Francisco Franco and the reds on the Republican side. There were fears that it would spread to the rest of Europe, and negotiations were started under the leadership of France and Britain to block the sale of armaments to Spain. An International Council of Non-Intervention was set up, which hired about 700 men from around Europe to inspect cargos going into Spain. Thirty nine monitors were chosen from Finland.
Multanen spoke no foreign languages, and knew little about the situation in Spain. He also did not have a clear impression of what a monitoring officer was expected to do.
“I had read in the papers that Germany and Italy were helping Franco, and France and the Soviet Union helped the reds.”
That was good enough. Multanen was hired to serve as a naval monitoring officer for the Non-Intervention Council. When he left in May 1937 from Turku Harbour toward Lisbon, he had 15 pounds in his pocket.
“I didn’t even know where the Strait of Gibraltar was located. Or I knew that it is somewhere between Europe and Africa. I had no idea of what I was supposed to do in the war. I imagined that I would be on magnificent British warships.
This was 73 years ago. On Monday, Multanen turns 97. He is probably the last surviving officer of the Non-Intervention Council. He is also quite certainly the spring’s oldest first-time author - at least in Finland - as his book on his experiences as a Finn in the Spanish Civil War was published on Monday.
Multanen made a total of 21 visits to Spanish seaports. The task was to inspect cargo vessels arriving in Spain from other parts of Europe or from North Africa. He would board the ship already in the port of departure - in places like Marseilles, Gibraltar, or Dover. He would then check the ship’s documents, and its cargo to the extent that one man is capable of doing.
If the papers said that the ship contained tinned food, then that is what the cargo needed to be, and not rifles, poison gas, or grenades for either side in the conflict. Also banned were foreign volunteers.
When he arrived in Spain, Multanen would hoist a pennant on the mast with two large black balls on a white field as a sign that a monitoring officer was on board. He still has the black ball pennant in his home.
In Spanish ports Multanen took shelter in hundreds of aerial bombardments, as Germany and Italy, who supported the fascists, were eager to practice aerial warfare in the conflict. The most dangerous inspection trip was in early 1938 on a British vessel, the Bramhill, which sailed into the port of Barcelona. Bombs targetted four tanker vessels in the harbour, and the Bramhill probably could have burned in the melee if the oil tanks had been hit.
“The chief officer on the Bramhill asked me which side I was on. I said, ‘Franco’s, of course’”, Multanen recalls. “The members of the crew were shocked. I explained to them that in Finland we have a permanent enemy on the other side of the border, and that we have unpatriotic people who support communism.”
Multanen was then, and still is, an admirer of General Franco - in spite of the fact that as an officer of the Non-Intervention Council he had to be strictly neutral. “I made sure that I did my job the same way on all of the ships.
For Multanen, Franco was the saviour of European civilisation. His view of 20th century military history goes approximately like this: without the victory of Franco’s fascists in Spain, Stalin’s Soviet forces would have been able to take over parts of Western Europe from Spain, and the whole continent would have been in danger of being overrun by the communists. On the other hand, Franco also helped prevent Hitler’s world conquest by not entering into a full alliance with the Axis powers.
“Franco was the world’s wisest, most successful, and most resourceful statesman”, Multanen declares.
However, lest anyone get the wrong impression, Multanen is no rabid fascist in his neighbourhood. It would be more accurate to say that he is a sworn opponent of communism, who has taken part in two wars against the Soviet Union.
Quite a few Finnish adventurers took part in the Spanish Civil War. There were 72 Finns from Finland fighting on the red side, as well as 78 American Finns, 73 Canadian Finns, and two Finns from the Soviet Union. Fourteen Finns fought with the fascists. It was a sad war for the Finns as well, as nearly one in three of them died.
only two of them are alive today - American Finns Matti Mattson, 93, and Jules Päiviö, 92, who fought with the Republicans.
Multanen recalls meeting a Republican by the name of Mikkola from a village on the Karelian Isthmus.
“He was on the side of the reds. I even gave him a cigarette. I asked where he got his money. He said ‘we take the money of the dead’. He died later himself.”
Multanen kept a meticulous diary the whole time. He has a surprisingly good recall of details of the war. For instance, he remembers that the harbours on the red side were always dark. “You couldn’t buy anything there, except from the black market, where you could get anything. The finest chocolate and cigars were available, but you needed huge amounts of money for that.”
The officers were paid well - 450 pounds a month, in addition to room and board. There were risks involved. When Multanen got stuck for two weeks in the Port of Tarragona, he counted a total of 44 aerial bombardments. Other dangerous seaports included Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante and Almeria.
“I am by no means a very courageous man. I avoid violence. When the planes came I could do nothing but press my self down as low as possible against the deck of the ship”, Multanen says.
A total of 14 of the maritime monitoring officers died in the Spanish Civil War. The Finns got through with only minor injuries.
“We had compensation fees similar to those of a butcher”, Multanen recalls. “If you lost one eye, you got 500 pounds. For two, you got a thousand. Legs and arms were also 500 apiece. It was quite far from today’s insurance estimates.”
The work was luxury when the officers were outside the Spanish military harbours. The officers would dress in fancy civilian clothes, eat at the ships’ captain’s table, and would get the best cabins on board.
In Marseilles Multanen took a local woman to see Samson et Dalila at the opera. He took a road trip with “a lady in a mink coat” in the Pyrenees in her Citroën. Another time in Marseilles, he took another local woman to see The Marriage of Figaro.
The food and drink served at the captain’s tables was good. Accordiing to Multanen, the crew included many “drunken and slurring bumblers, intoxicated officers and sailors. There was singing, minor fighting, and accordion and harmonica music”.
The supervision exercised by the Non-Intervention Council was also somewhat confused. Multanen says openly that it was a “sham”. Spain’s borders leaked like a sieve. Rifles, grenades, gas, and soldiers flowed especially from Italy, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
“We had no means to monitor”, Multanen says. “The Italians were the worst. They brought weapons to Spain on Red Cross hospital ships.”
Multanen never found any illegal cargo on any of the ships that he inspected, but he cannot be sure that there would not have been at least something in the holds of some of the ships. However, one man does not easily go through every nook and cranny of a large freighter.
In April 1939 the Republicans surrendered to Franco’s forces. A total of about 500,000 people had been killed as a result of the war. The 36-year dictatorship of Franco began in Spain. The rest of Europe got a boost for the Second World War, which began in September 1939.
Multanen had returned to Finland in April 1939. In the summer he was called up for service in the Navy. The Winter War was a few months away, and soon after that, the Continuation War ensued.
In Finland’s own wars Multanen was more of an observer on board ships, than at the front line. He was made an officer on an icebreaker.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.3.2010
TOMMI NIEMINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
tommi.nieminen@hs.fi
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 Jorma Multanen helped monitor non-intervention in Spanish Civil War
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