the last book I ever read (Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, excerpt eight)

from Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 by Adam Hochschild:

Something also not legally considered armaments were trucks. Those used by Franco’s army were largely American—some 12,000 of them, purchased from General Motors, Studebaker, and Ford. (GM did Franco a huge favor by taking its payment in Nationalist pesetas, which could not be exported from Spain during the war and would have value only if Franco won.) Firestone Tires similarly sold its products to the Generalissimo’s military. An advertisement in Spain declared, “Victory smiles on the best. The glorious Nationalist army always wins on the field of battle. Firestone Tires has had its nineteenth consecutive victory in the Indianapolis 500.”

US law did, however, say that such supposedly nonmilitary products going to a country at war could not be shipped on American vessels. And here, it appeared, there was hope of cutting Franco’s oil lifeline from Texaco, for customs agents discovered that Torkild Rieber’s tankers were evading this provision of the law. The Texaco ships would leave the company’s pipeline terminal in Texas with cargo manifests showing them destined for Antwerp, Rotterdam, or Amsterdam. Only at sea would their captains open sealed instructions redirecting them to ports in Nationalist Spain.

In addition to ordering these manifests falsified, Rieber was violating another part of the law: he was extending credit to a government at war. Nominally, that credit was for 90 days from the date the oil was shipped—itself startlingly lenient terms for the oil business. The real terms were more generous yet. As Rieber’s friend the Nationalist oil official Álvarez Alonso later explained, “We paid what we could when we could, and the debt went well over the established limit.” In effect, Rieber was serving as Franco’s banker.

When FBI agents questioned him about the violations in the spring of 1937, Rieber turned on his deep-voiced sea captain’s charm and played the role of a nonpolitical businessman, explaining that he was sure the Nationalists “would be victorious and he did not want to lose the Spaniards’ business which amounted to from $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 per year.” The FBI apparently did not realize that Rieber’s company was also acting as Franco’s purchasing agent, when the Nationalists needed goods not in Texaco’s inventory. Only decades later, as we shall see, would archives reveal other extraordinary favors the oil company did for Franco.