World War II in the Basque Country

Approximately half a million Republicans and civilians fled to France for their lives in Spain, but possibly up to 150,000 of them were Basques, an extraordinary proportion in the overall account.

They were confined next to Bayonne, while the French government set about constructing internment camps at the feet of the northern Pyrenees aimed at sheltering the civilians and Republicans fleeing from the Basque front, as well as Catalonia, stranded in Roussillon.

[5] The rest of the French Basque Country up to Bearn (Soule and eastern Lower Navarre) was part of Vichy France until 1942, when the "free zone" was occupied by Germany.

During the initial Nazi occupation, across the border in Spain, Donostia became a tranquil retreat for German army officers, who would spend generously in the area, impoverished after the civil war.

Petain showed a sympathy towards traditional and regional features, which provided fertile grounds to re-launch a Regionalist movement represented by the Eskualerristes and the journal Aintzina ('forward') magazine, some of whose members defended an overt separatist approach.

In the western Pyrenees, especially the Labourd and Lower Navarre, resistance took the form of help for the Jews and downed Allied pilots to cross the border south to the theoretically neutral Spain, with the Basque clergy (e.g. Father Pierre Laffite) and the mugalariak (local smugglers) standing out in that pursuit.

The active Basques evacuated on the final stage of the northern front in the Spanish Civil War joined the Allied forces and played a critical role in the Pointe de Grave battle with their Gernika Battalion (Gironde).

[11] The next day, the plane crashed on the Beach of La Concha, at San Sebastián, Spain and Degrelle,[12] who had amongst other injuries sustained a broken leg, was hospitalized and detained.