The Allies Submit the List of 104 to Spain

The Allies Submit the List of 104 to Spain was an October 1947 demand for Spanish cooperation in locating and surrendering 104 people linked to Nazi activity and collaboration. Its delivery made visible a conflict that had already lasted more than two years: the Allies sought the return of people wanted for serious crimes, while the Franco regime used delay, nationality claims, and official pretexts to shelter them. The list was not merely a catalogue of suspects; it became a test of whether the victors’ demands for accountability could overcome Spain’s determination to protect those living under its jurisdiction.

Background and Delivery

In October 1947, the Allied Control Council in Spain submitted the list to the government in Madrid. It consisted of eleven typewritten pages in English and was addressed to Alberto Martín-Artajo, Spain’s foreign minister. The delivery followed repeated Allied requests, made over more than two years, for Spain to help locate and hand over hundreds of people connected with Nazi activities in the country. Similar requests concerned prominent collaborators from occupied countries, many accused of crimes against humanity and believed, or known, to be living comfortably in Spain.

The list represented the most developed form of those Allied claims. Its 104 people were described as “odious Germans”: people who had actively contributed to Hitler’s project and could not plausibly hide their responsibility behind obedience to superiors. They were citizens of the Third Reich with outstanding cases before German courts. Yet the Spanish government treated their presence not simply as a matter of legal obligation, but as a diplomatic problem to manage. The eventual submission therefore brought a protracted dispute into a single document, with each name carrying a demand the regime could either honor or evade.

Spain’s Evasion

By late 1947 the international environment had shifted in Franco’s favor. Only two years after Hitler’s defeat, Cold War hostility toward the Soviet Union and fear of renewed conflict with Stalin had altered the political landscape. The narrative presents this anti-Soviet climate as the explanation for Spain’s repeated diplomatic maneuvering before the victorious powers. Martín-Artajo knew that earlier Spanish responses to Allied claims had been slow even when circumstances were less favorable to Franco; the new list met the same pattern.

Martín-Artajo let time pass until the Allied Council’s patience was exhausted. When he finally had to meet its representatives, he produced a collection of documents, letters, and certificates they had not previously seen. The government’s replies varied from person to person: some could not be surrendered because they had supposedly been Spanish citizens for years; one had received nationality for assistance to the Nationalist Army when the Condor Legion came to Spain; another was said to be missing; another was described as unknown to the authorities. Other claims invoked a strategic company, a cardinal’s protection, or a potential dispute with the Vatican. These were presented as administrative and diplomatic obstacles, but together they formed a method for making extradition fail one case at a time.

The response also turned identity paperwork into an instrument of protection. In the wider account of postwar Spain, the regime repeatedly relied on retroactive Spanish nationality combined with authentic documents issued under false identities. Such papers could convert a fugitive into an official citizen and make the state’s refusal to surrender him appear legally settled. The list challenged that system by naming people and connecting them to their pasts; the regime answered by placing documents between the names and the consequences they might otherwise face.

Clarita Stauffer and the Named Fugitives

Only one woman appeared among the 104: Clarita Stauffer. The list supplied her correct address, 14 Calle Galileo, Madrid, and identified her as a principal organizer of a secret aid association. It alleged that she was deeply involved in supplying false documents and finding employment for Germans, as well as in other activities. It further stated that, near the end of the war, she had received a special authorization from the German embassy to obtain Spanish nationality expressly so that she could continue her activities after the defeat.

That description connected the diplomatic document to the escape network operating in Madrid. In the summer of 1945, Stauffer had reorganized her home at Galileo 14: rooms were adapted for an office, a new telephone line installed, secretaries hired, and wardrobes filled with men’s clothes in a range of sizes. The house began receiving thin, exhausted visitors who were given food and new clothing and then returned to the office to complete further arrangements. The list’s allegations of false documentation and employment therefore corresponded to an established pattern of practical assistance, not simply a charge of sympathy with Germany.

Several other names linked the list to the political, commercial, and intelligence structures described in the book. Johannes Bernhardt, whose whereabouts were unknown, was identified as an SS general and president of SOFINDUS, a German state institution, and was held responsible for secretly supplying German troops encircled on France’s western coast during and after liberation. Albert Horst Fuldner, whose name was incorrectly transcribed on the list, was described as an SD member sent from Germany to organize clandestine activity after the defeat. He was listed as residing at 33 Calle Modesto Lafuente in Madrid, though he was in Tarrasa near Barcelona when the document was delivered. Eberhard Messerschmidt, a former assistant to the German embassy’s naval attaché who had worked for German Naval Intelligence, was listed at Calle Fuenfría in Cercedilla.

The book stresses the contrast between the precision of some identifying details and the errors or gaps in the record: an address could be correct, a name misspelled, and a listed whereabouts already out of date. Yet the documentary imperfections did not lessen the political force of the demand. The officials named were people the Allies believed should be found and surrendered; the Spanish government’s answers, rather than uncertainty in the list, determined whether that demand would have consequences.

Consequences and Significance

The immediate result was not a wave of arrests or extraditions. The narrative states that none of the people named experienced the slightest anxiety in response to this final, definitive demand. That calm is the measure of the list’s limited coercive power: the Allies could assemble names, addresses, and allegations, but the Spanish state controlled access to its territory, its nationality records, and the people sought.

The contrast with Franco’s surrender of Pierre Laval in July 1945 clarifies the limits of Spanish cooperation. Under pressure from French authorities and wary of offending the victors, Franco handed Laval over; Laval was tried for treason, sentenced to death, and shot in October. The account presents that decision as the beginning and end of cooperation with Allied justice. In contrast, Franco refused to hand over Léon Degrelle despite sustained Belgian demands, ultimately protecting him with Spanish nationality in 1954. Degrelle then operated officially as the Spanish citizen José León Ramírez Reina, founded a construction company, and benefited from public contracts. The machinery of nationality and false identity that shielded him was part of a broader practice used for other Nazis seeking Spain as a permanent refuge or a stop on the way elsewhere.

The list thus records a collision between international justice and Cold War realpolitik. It gathered the Allies’ claims into a concrete document, but did not compel Spain to act on them. As the anti-Soviet priorities of the postwar order improved Franco’s diplomatic position, the regime could answer a demand for accountability with papers, delays, and protected identities. Its failure was not that the 104 names remained unknown; it was that knowing who was being sheltered did not make the shelter open.