Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II

Among the many controversies which still exist about WW2,the relations between Hitler and Franco have not,so far, been analyzed in depth.The book authored by Stanley Payne has one purpose:to address this question.Indeed,many articles and book touched this topic but there has not been any synthesis in this respect. Payne concludes that Hitler's attitude toward Spain was ambivalent.Despite the fact that the he had a high respect for Spanish valor,he was generaly ignorant of the country,pontificating that "in the Spanish people there is a mixture of Gothic,Frankish and Moorish blood", the native Celtic-Iberian population being presumably nonexistent.Isabella,the Catholic queen was,in his view,the greatest harlot in history and opined that had Islam conquered Spain forever,humanity would have gained only benefits from this fact.One must also remember that Hitler regarded the Spaniards as the only Latins "willing to fight". The special relationship between Hitler and Franco and their countries developed as a result of the Spanish Civil War.Spanish public figures hoped that Germany would be the source which would help modernize and industrialize Spain.This relationship sagged somewhat between the end of the Civil War and the fall of France.Franco thought,after France's defeat,that Hitler had actually won the war,however he constantly refused to make any concessions to the Nazi dictator.The famous-and only-meeting between the two in Ocober,1940 produced a commitment by Spain to enter the war as Hitler's ally,but this never happened mainly because Frnco was always suspicious of Hitler.Another reason was that Churchill played an important role in making sure that Spain remain neutral.This he had achieved by successfully bribing officers in Spain through a notorious Mallorcan dealer,Juan March.To be more precise,13 million dollars were paid in bribes to various Spanish recipients during the whole war. Payne offers the reader a panoramic description about the "Blue Division" which Frnco sent to Russia to aid the Germans.In addition,two very good and extensive chapters are devoted to Spain and its attitude toward the Jews and Jewish refugees.By the spring of 1942,thousands of Jewish refugees were allowed into Spain ,albeit the light anti-semitic atmosphere which was part of the Spanish mentality. What finally emerges from this splendid study is Franco's supposed endorsement of Hitler's policies and his efforts to adhere to his 1940 agreements with the German dictator.The economic pressure that Britain and the US put on Franco's regime has finally convinced him to abandon Hitler. This is a fascinating and an extremely informative book,supported by an excellent analysis of the events mentioned written by a master historian.

What the average American knows about the Second World War as fought in Europe wouldn't fill a chapter in a Dr Seuss book. What most know is that we beat big, bad Hitler and his evil Nazis and made the world safe for??? Well, that's a good question as most could not tell you what the world was made safe for. We're told that it was for "democracy", but subsequent events have put the lie to that. Since WWII ended, the world has seen mass murder on a scale that makes Hitler's efforts in that regard seem pitifully half-hearted. That doesn't minimize what Hitler did of course, but the slogan "never again" has rung fairly hollow in the last 65 years. The story of the relationship between Hitler and the putatively fascist Spanish leader, Francisco Franco, is one that is not well known but needs to be studied in order to help give people a more complete picture of events that shaped the war's outcome. In this rather slim volume, author Stanley G. Payne paints a picture of a Spain that is economically prostrate after its civil war and of a Franco, despite being sympathetic to the Nazi cause, who artfully manages to resist Nazi blandishments to join the Axis powers in carving up Europe and the African colonies of Britain and France. I am not going to recount the story, but it is very interesting to see how Franco was able to maintain a delicate balance between domestic political considerations and the demands of a foreign policy that was officially non-belligerent, but tilted heavily toward the Axis. Franco, if anything, proved to be a canny survivor as he ever so gradually began a tilt toward the Allies as it became increasingly clear that Germany was going to lose the war. There are a lot of "what ifs" mulled in the book that are interesting and even sobering to consider. What if Hitler would have shed his sentimentality and brushed Mussolini aside to take charge of Mediterranean policy? What if he had taken Suez as Franco urged? Would the Arab world then have joined him? What if he'd brushed Franco aside and occupied Spain and Gibraltar himself? What would the British have done in the Canaries had Franco seized Gibraltar? What if Stalin had made the separate peace with Hitler he once considered? What if the Falangists had forced Franco's hand and caused Spain to enter the war? These and many other questions are touched on as well as the dynamics of the relationship between Franco's Nacionales and the Axis powers on one hand, and that between the Franco government and the Allies on the other. What I came away from the book with is that 1)Franco's obduracy vis-a-vis the Third Reich quite possibly saved the war for the Allies, at least as far as their ultimate total victory is concerned, 2)Franco was less of a fascist dictator than a nationalist who put Spain (and his own skin, of course) first when he made a decision on anything, 3)that Hitler came to regard Franco as somewhat of putz who had exaggerated the Communist threat to get his help in the first p

This book is well worth reading, if the subject of Francoist Spain's relationship to Hitler-era Germany interests you. Military, diplomatic, and economic dimensions of the Spanish-German relationship are examined. The role and influence of prominent personalities of the time are shown and explained, and considerable detail is given to struggles between the FET, (Spain's fascist political party) Franco, and monarchist tendencies. The author makes clear the crucial weakness of Spain in the aftermath of its civil war, showing that Franco would have liked to enter the war alongside Italy and Germany, but Hitler's military turn toward the east--meaning the Soviet Union--rather than south toward the Meditteranean, ensured that Spain would play only a marginal role as a "nonbelligerant." Also explained at some length is the treatment of Spain's Jewish population, and the very bureaucratic, often conflicted response to Jews outside Spain, seeking refuge from Nazi persecution. Individual heroes are identified and their deeds described, but they are a small picture of the overall response shown by the Franco regime; similar to Mussolini's stance preceding pressure from National Socialist Germany, Spain neither persecuted its own Jewish population, nor turned them over to the Nazis. In sum, this book does a good job of covering its subject. The writing (and proofreading) is not of the best quality, but it is generally competent. Most lacking is adequate coverage of the Spanish civil war, addressed in the first part of the book. While it is understandable that this aspect of the story rececives relatively sparse attention, anyone who has read other texts about the civil war will recognize dubious assertions by the author. That the overall numbers of civilians killed by the Republican side may be roughly equivalent to those killed by the Nationalists, finesses the important difference in how this came to pass. The author does not inform the reader about the systematic practice of Nationalist shooting of former political and civil officials; this was accomplished in especially brutal fashion, with any show of defiance (such as shouting slogans) from the prisoners about to be shot, bringing beatings and then repetition of being placed before a firing squad. This sometimes occurred over and over, with the prisoner(s) in question beaten to a subdued status. Then they were shot. Things like this, while not central to the text, serve as a kind of commentary that makes the informed reader wonder what else might have been given a coloration or "tilt," whether intentional or not. This is why I give this book four stars rather than five.

Writing about a man who amused himself by composing lists of races to be exterminated, their order of extermination, and who then blithely administered the process, is very hard. If Hitler (or Stalin or Mao, who indulged in the same amusements on a far more massive scale) could be adequately described, it would be the stomach churning stuff of sordid fiction and not of history. Franco, by contrast, was to much of the world uninteresting and of little impact. In a way, boring. But, by showing how these two obliquely related characters with their tangential worldviews worked together -- or didn't as was often the case -- Payne has artfully illuminated both in a way you will see nowhere else. Payne shows Franco as a gritty, plain thought man who understood his Mediterranean world just as Charles V would have: the eastern and western Mediterranean and the Atlantic approaches to Africa, America, and Northern Europe. Vastly more impoverished than Charles or his son Philip II, Franco strained to manage his world on limited resources. To advance his ambitions, he needed the wealth he thought, erroneously, that Hitler could provide. Payne shows Hitler's essential provincialism: a man who knew little of his world and saw less; a man who's judgment was limited in range but whose egotism and self centeredness drove the world into the abyss. Hitler's inability to grasp Franco's needs, so peripheral to his own, reveal the size and scope of his inadequacies and do so in his own voice, a remarkable insight you won't find elsewhere. Equally, Franco's inability to understand the weaknesses of Fascism and the role of the major powers helps us to see the limitations of Vladimir Putin, Cesar Chavez and others of the newly revived Mussolini school of government. This is a fine work, and well written too.

Payne gives us a concise and authoritative account of the relationship between Hitler and Franco before and during WW2. The relationship is characterized by Franco's constant attempt to milk everything he can from the Germans while Hitler vacillates in interest in Spain. Ironically, it was probably best for Hitler and Franco that Spain never entered the war (despite Franco's constant promises that it would). Even if Hitler would have gone through Spain to take Gibraltar, Spain's military and economy were in such abysmal shape that, in the long run, Spain would have been a liability rather than an asset. (A curious scenario: the Allies land in Spain in 1943 instead of North Africa). FaH may be of limited interest for most WW2 enthusiasts but it is well done and presented in a concise style. Even though the subject matter is a bit dry, at least it moves along nicely. It's mostly "high politics" so you don't really get much of a feel for what was going on in Spain at the time; I would have liked to know more about the success (or lack thereof) of the massive pro-German propaganda campaigns. How did the majority of the Spanish people see the war? Did they share Franco's (proclaimed) desire to fight with the Axis? There is also a chapter or two about the Blue Division (Spanish volunteers on the Eastern Front) but, personally, I would have liked a more in-depth look at them. Anyway, HaF is well done history. Recommended.