Perhaps. In post #2 I made this point and I think it explains most of this stuff:
Yes, but that’s not what’s going on right now. The people that are causing our current problems aren’t the “stop the work, I want to get off” people. It’s the “I want to hurt others, even if I get hurt in the process, because I like causing pain” people who are the real problem. That doesn’t change with age. Sure, some might go from “raging socialist asshole” to “raging capitalist asshole”, but that’s doesn’t really matter, because the raging asshole part doesn’t change.
To give the devil his due- he kept Spain out of WW2, and Franco famously stood up to Hitler, so much so that Hitler famously told Benito Mussolini later that he would “prefer to have three or four of my own teeth pulled out than to speak to that man again!”. So, anyone that can stand up to and annoy Hitler that much cant be all bad.
And keeping Spain out of WW2, which the Republicans likely would not have. He also engineered a peaceful transition to a democracy after he died.
But he was a tyrant, and did some bad things to stay in power.
So yes, a bad guy, but not on the level of many of the worst.
That is quite the oversimplification of something you got mostly backwards, Dr., and a couple of non sequiturs and falsehoods besides. I think I see why there is a thread in The Pit that won’t die. Two, actually.
Goo ahead and educate me then. But Spain did not enter WW2, and Francos meeting with Hitler is well known. So what did I get wrong? I am willing to listen.
I mean, Neville Chamberlain kept the UK out of WW2 (for a while, at least), and nobody thinks that was a good thing. Why was it a good thing to keep Spain out? Because you’re assuming they would have been on the Axis side? Think about why you’re assuming that, and then think about what that means about how bad Franco was.
Spain did not “not enter WWII” because Franco was such a good man, but because it was exhausted from the civil war that just had finished. A civil war, btw, that served Hitler as a training ground for his tactics in that very WWII. See Guernica and concentration camps, if you want to google.
Spain did not enter WWI either because we were exhausted from losing our last colonies (Cuba and the Philippines) to the USA. That is not Franco’s merit either.
The anecdote with the pulling of teeth is funny, but apocryphal, that is, only backed by Mussolini. It is true that Franco negociated long and hard at the meeting in Hendaye, but he could not make the concessions Hitler craved because he had nothing to offer and felt the best way to negociate under those circumstances was to make demands Hitler could not meet. Yes, I am simplifying too, this is the Dope, not a PhD. If you want to pity someone, pity the interpreter, not Hitler. But Franco helped where he could. He gave Hitler all the tungsten mined in Galicia and Salamanca as long as he could, which was important for war relevant alloys. And he sent the División Azul (Blue Division) to fight in Russia.
He sure did not
That, Dr., is BS.
That is quite an understatement. Insensitive and unnecessary too.
And that is just childish. He was a “bad guy” and “did some bad things”, but there was worse? Is that suposed to be an excuse? A provocation? Congratulations. It worked. And now I have spent my time answering your post for nothing. It took me double as much effort as it did you to put together your post. You will excuse for wondering whether it was worth it and suspecting it was not.
Slightly less than a year.
Axis side would mean losing side, with bombings. And Nazi troops in Span- or if the Republicans won- would Spain turn Communist? or Join with the Allies, leaving Germany to invade Spain? Yes, Spain was in no condition to join either side, but it was constantly pressured by both sides to join.
True, but remember Stalin sent aid to the Republican side, and they learned stuff from that.
Perhaps I misremember? Franco did not leave the nation to a Dictator successor, as most tyrants did- unless assassinated or removed forcibly.
Which he ordered back in 1943.
Sold, not gave, and Sweden sold Steel to the Nazis, not to mention all the trade between Stalin and Hitler before Hitler invaded. Yeah, neutrals traded with Germany during the war- and they traded with the Allies, such as the Cortina Agreement: which traded coal from England for iron ore from Spain.
What do you want me to say? I agreed- he was a bad man, not a good one.
Enemies liquefied, families shattered, rats forced to masquerade as Siberian hamsters…
But I give up. By no means am I trying to say Franco was not a villain.
Liquified/liquidated… exactly what makes that red stuff in Franco American Spaghettios?
By coincidence I happened on this map of Franco’s mass graves the other day:
6000-some of them
Most tyrants take the principle of “apres moi, le deluge”, and don’t give any care to their successor. It doesn’t mean they’re setting up to be replaced by a democracy; usually it just results in them being replaced by an even bloodier tyrant.
40,000 Spanish troops (or at least the ones not killed or stranded in Russia) might have a quibble.
Good lord am I late, but yes - you absolutely misremember.
Franco left the power to king Juan Carlos I, whom he did his damnedest to groom as a suitably fascist successor. Franco took charge of his education from the age of 14, and made sure to appoint tutors that would mold him into a little Franco v 2.0
The thing that saved Spain is that, by some fucking miracle, it did not catch. Juan Carlos I ended up rebelling against that education in a very underhanded and discreet way (otherwise he would have been instantly thrown away or worse) and he was instrumental in shaping the transition of Spain into a democracy (he would go on to completely ruin his legacy in his later years with nasty corruption scandals and his Bourbon inability to stay away from women who are not his wife, but I digress).
But, rest assured - Franco absolutely wanted his regime to be perpetuated under the rule of someone whom he tried to make into a political clone of himself.
Fuck Franco, may he be in the deepest part of the circle of traitors in Dante’s Hell.
That is a much better title for this thread than what I chose.
Didn’t he also want this fellow to be his successor?
In which case, on the subject of assassination:
Ah, the first fascist in space.
He did not make it far, nor for long. They did not want him there and sent the mortal coil back.
Not exactly. The plan was for Carrero Blanco to be prime minister under King Juan Carlos I. In that role, he would have been charged with “helping” the king keep going along the lines drawn by Franco.
Carrero’s assassination definitely screwed up with THAT plan. The substitute was Arias Navarro, a Franco loyalist, but the guy was not really enough of a strongman to prevent Adolfo Suárez from becoming prime minister in his place.
Adolfo Suárez was on the same wavelength as the king, and although the late 1970s - early 1980s were a scary period in Spain, Suárez and the king were able to navigate those difficult waters remarkably successfully.