FSB Author Article
Hitler and Franco
By C.J.
Sansom,
Author of Winter in Madrid: A Novel
The issue of the relationship between
Spain's General Franco and Hitler has been a controversial one for
many years. The "conservative" view is that Franco's
dealings with the German dictator were pragmatic, based on what was
best for Spain, and that he skilfully kept Spain neutral during the
Second World War. The "left" view is that Franco was
far closer to Hitler, admired him greatly, and would have come into
the war on Hitler's side had the terms been right.
The links
between Franco and Hitler began on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil
War. In July 1936, following the election of a left-wing government,
a group of rightist army officers launched a coup. However, it
failed, many officers remaining loyal to the Republic. The insurgents
were left in control of little over a third of Spain, and none of the
industrial cities. Spain?s colony in northern Morocco now became
crucial. The Moroccan colonial forces were the only serious
military force in Spain. Commanded by Franco, they were cut off from
the mainland, for the small Spanish navy was on the government
side.
Franco immediately sent an urgent request for help with
air transport to Hitler. The German dictator sent
transport planes to ferry Spain's Moroccan army over the Straits of
Gibraltar, where it consolidated power in southern Spain and began to
march on Madrid. Without the Moroccan forces the insurgents would
have been much weaker position and the coup might even have been
beaten. For Hitler the decision marked his first foreign
adventure.
Three years of bloody civil war followed in which
both Hitler and Mussolini provided substantial aid, both equipment
and fighting men, to Franco. The elected government, denied aid
from France or England, turned the only power that would help them,
the Soviet Union. Stalin provided the Republic with major
military aid, while his "advisers" established many of the
features of his rule of terror in Russia. But in the end, in April
1939, the Republic was defeated.
Why did Hitler aid Franco?
It was partly geopolitics; he hoped for the establishment of another
authoritarian, right-wing regime on the border of his great enemy,
France. But he also used Spain as a testing-ground for German
military forces, and particularly his air force, which in 1937 bombed
Guernica -- the first time a European city was flattened by area
bombing.
Franco now proceeded to establish his regime
throughout Spain. He presided over a coalition of forces; the army,
many of whose senior officers harked back to the old monarchist
regime, the Catholic Church, and the fascist Falange party. There
were tensions between the Falange and the monarchists, but initially
the Falange was in the ascendant.
Franco's victory came as
tensions were growing in Europe -- the outbreak of the Second World
War was months away. At this point Spain and Germany were very close.
German forces were given pride of place at Franco's victory march in
Madrid in the summer. Franco himself at this point greatly admired
Hitler. He kept a photograph of the Fuhrer, together with
Mussolini and the Pope, on his desk. German advisers were prominent
in the army, the police, and the press. Heinrich Himmler visited
Spain and even he was surprised by the violence towards opponents of
the Franco regime.
In September 1939 the Second World War
began. Initially Spain, like Italy, stayed neutral. Then in June 1940
came Hitler's crushing, and unexpected, victory over France. Britain
was left alone and, it seemed, on the verge of defeat. At this point
Mussolini declared war, hoping to be in at the kill and profit from
the peace treaty. Franco had similar ideas, but did not go so
far.
Spain was declared to be "non-belligerent" rather than
neutral, and Franco took the opportunity to invade and annex Tangier
in Morocco, previously under international control. He also wrote to
Hitler expressing, in roundabout terms, a wish to join in Fascism's
victory. Franco had dreams of picking up French Morocco and parts of
Algeria in a peace treaty. But it at this stage Hitler was not
interested; he knew that Spain, devastated by civil war, could
provide little military help and believed he did not need it.
By
autumn 1940, however, the situation had turned 180 degrees. Hitler's
air force had been defeated in the Battle of Britain, and Britain was
clearly far from finished. There was a crucial factor here for Spain;
the powerful British Navy. Britain used its ships to blockade Spanish
ports and limit the amount of essential material, especially fuel,
allowed in. The US followed its lead in limiting exports to Franco.
Franco was the son of a naval officer; he knew the power of the
British Navy and that a total blockade in the event of war might tip
Spain, already the on the breadline, into revolt. Hitler, however,
now wanted Franco in the war so that he could seize Gibraltar.
The
two dictators met on the border between Spain and France, in October
1940. Hitler urged Franco to enter the war; Franco said that he
would, but in return demanded French colonial territory and a huge
amount of supplies to make up for a full British blockade. Hitler
needed to keep the Vichy regime in France friendly and did not want
to give away part of the French empire. Also he was in no position to
meet Franco's huge demands for supplies of food and fuel. Hitler left
the meeting with only vague and insubstantial commitments from
Franco, and said that rather than go through such a negotiation again
he would rather have three teeth pulled.
It seems to me that
the question of supplies was crucial; Franco knew he needed these if
he declared war. He may not have realized that Germany too had
limited fuel supplies or that in the territories Hitler had
conquered, even agriculturally rich countries like France, food
production was already crashing into a nosedive. Another
consideration making him cautious was that many monarchists were
pro-English; Britain gave substantial bribes to senior monarchists to
oppose Spain entering the war.
That was the end of any
prospect of Spain coming in on Hitler's side. However Franco not
only supported Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941, but organized
thousands of volunteers to serve on the Eastern front. But by
late 1942, with Russia resisting strongly and the US in the war, it
was clear Germany was going to lose. Franco now moved, in
characteristically crablike way, to a diplomatic position where he
saw "two wars" -- a crusade against Russian communism,
which he supported, and Germany's war with the democratic powers
where his neutrality became increasingly pro-Allied. But this
was pragmatism, not a position of principle. When Anglo-US forces
invaded French North Africa in "Operation Torch" Spain
offered no opposition and may have assisted the Allies with
intelligence.
In 1944, as the Allies invaded occupied Europe
Franco, with breathtaking nerve, wrote to Churchill offering to help
the victorious democratic powers in the future struggle against
communism. Churchill, who in the early years of the war had
considered overthrowing Franco, took the bait and argued, against
many senior Americans, that the Franco regime should be left in
place. That is what happened. The pictures of Hitler and
Mussolini disappeared from Franco's desk, and although the controlled
Spanish press mourned Hitler's death in 1945, Spain aligned itself
with the West during the cold war, and remained under Franco's
authoritarian rule for the next thirty years. The Falange
remained an important part of the regime until its end, although as
the years passed its significance waned.
A related issue,
which has caused debate over the years, is Franco's attitude to the
Holocaust. Like Mussolini?s, Franco's Fascism did not have
anti-Semitism as an important part of its ideology. However,
during the Civil War and in the years of Hitler's ascendancy -- to
1942 -- Franco like Mussolini adopted a vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric
to please the Nazis. In practice however Jews fleeing from occupied
France were allowed to cross Spain to Portuguese ports, although they
were fleeced on the way. Franco also intervened to give asylum to
Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain, who lived in Greece and would
otherwise have been murdered by the Nazis. Franco's Fascism saw Spain
as a "nation" rather than a race. However, anyone who
opposed the Spanish regime, especially in its early years, faced a
fate as brutal as anyone who resisted the Nazis in
Europe.
Copyright ©2009 C.J.
Sansom, author of Winter in Madrid:
A Novel
Author
Bio
C. J. Sansom, author of Winter
in Madrid: A Novel, was a lawyer but
now writes full time. He holds a Ph.D. in history and is the author
of Dissolution, Dark Fire, and Sovereign in the
Matthew Shardlake series. Winter in Madrid was a major
bestseller in England and is being published in twelve countries.
Sansom lives in Brighton, England.