volunteers, served on the Eastern Front, and around 4,500 died. Joseph Stalin's desire to retaliate against Franco by making an Allied invasion of Spain the first order of business at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, was not supported by Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill. War weary and unwilling to continue the conflict, Truman and Churchill persuaded Stalin to settle instead for a full trade embargo against Spain. 372 members of the Blue Division, the Blue Legion, or volunteers of the Spanische-Freiwilligen Kompanie der SS 101, were taken prisoner by the victorious Red Army; 286 of these men were kept in captivity until 2 April 1954, when they returned to Spain aboard the ship Semiramis, supplied by the International Red Cross. Spanish volunteers in Allied service After their defeat in the Spanish Civil War, large numbers of Republican veterans and civilians went into exile in France; the French Republic interned them in refugee camps, such as Camp Gurs in southern France. To improve their conditions, many joined the French Foreign Legion at the start of World War II, making up a sizeable proportion of it. Around sixty thousand joined the French Resistance, mostly as guerrillas, with some also continuing the fight against Francisco Franco. Several thousand more joined the Free French Forces and fought against the Axis Powers. Some sources have claimed that as many as 2,000 served in General Leclerc's Second French Division, many of them from the former Durruti Column. The 9th Armoured Company comprised almost entirely battle-hardened Spanish veterans; it became the first Allied military unit to enter Paris upon its liberation in August, 1944, where it met up with Spanish Maquis fighting alongside French resistance fighters. Furthermore, 1,000 Spanish Republicans served in the 13th Half-brigade of the French Foreign Legion. In Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union received former Communist Spanish leaders and child evacuees from Republican families. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, many, such as communist General Enrique Líster, joined the Red Army. According to Beevor, 700 Spanish Republicans served in the Red Army and another 700 operated as partisans behind the German lines. Individual Spaniards, such as the double-agent Juan Pujol García (code name GARBO), also worked for the Allied cause. Bribes by MI6 According to a 2008 book, Winston Churchill authorised millions of dollars in bribes to Spanish generals in an effort to influence General Franco against entering the war