Was our toleration of Franco's regime justified?

Great Debates
1

In the mid-1930s there were three major hard-right nationalist regimes in Europe; Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.

All 3 were censured by the other major Western democracies, and, of course, the first two were brought down in WW2. The obvious relevant difference between them and the Spanish Falangist regime is that they attacked other sovereign nations.

Now it can be argued that we’d have taken on Hitler without his annexation of the Sudetenland and invasion of Poland, and that Mussolini would still have been taken out without the Abysinnian campaign, but that’s a different story.

After winning the '36-'39 Civil war, Franco ran Spain with an iron fist, and human rights were pretty much the privelige of wealthy Catholics who were loyal to the Falangist Party. Regional languages were outlawed, as were unauthorised Trades Unions, homosexuality and socialist opposition parties.

Moreover, the brutality with which laws were upheld resembled that of Hitler’s SS. The Civil Guard dealt out beatings (and worse) with impunity, with people frequently ‘going missing’. If they ever returned, they usually bore the scars of beatings and/or vicious torture. “Honour Killings” of allegedly unfaithful wives or girlfriends received a semi-official ‘Blind Eye’. And don’t start me on the issue of Garotting - even friends of mine who support the death penalty find that method beyond the pale.

I’ll stop rambling and get to the point:

This regime continued into the 1970s with little more than quiet criticism from the UK and USA. The UK invested billions in their blossoming tourist industry, and Uncle Sam had military bases there (a handy tactical Western European outpost).

With hindsight, should we have turned a blind eye to the anti-semitic, totalitarian regime as we did? When people look back on the Nazi era, it’s the inhumaity, racism and brutality of the regime that we use to justify the actions we took.

Why not Franco’s Spain?

2

It was because Franco’s regime was not Communist.

3

We didn’t attack Franco’s Spain because he didn’t attack any of our allies. If the UK had joined with the Axis the way that Hitler had expected them to before Poland, and if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor, we’d have probably stayed out of WWII altogether, at least until the Axis decided the US was too big and too dangerous to leave alone.

4

You could ask the same about Zimbabwe or Burma or a number of other states today. They aren’t bothering the US and they don’t have natural resources on a scale to hint at justifying the cost of invasion.

5

[QUOTE=Sub Judice]
In the mid-1930s there were three major hard-right nationalist regimes in Europe; Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.

…The obvious relevant difference between them and the Spanish Falangist regime is that they attacked other sovereign nations.
[/quote]

To me, the obvious difference is that the former two declared war on the U.S. and the latter did not.

6

[QUOTE=Frank]
To me, the obvious difference is that the former two declared war on the U.S. and the latter did not.
[/QUOTE]

It’s not quite that simple, though, is it? We were assisting the Allies long before we actually entered the war. That’s hardly neutrality.

7

I think it’s also worth noting some of the other effects of the Spanish Civil War.

I’ve argued before on these boards that even the Republicans in Spain would have a reason to hold a grudge against the parties that made up the Allies, simply because they could feel, with justification, that they were let out to hang by the nominal democracies of the day. So, for want of a better term, those people whom the Allies would most have been counting on for support still would have a recent grudge.

It’s also worth noting that military small arms were, AIUI, common all through Spain after the Spanish Civil War, and that most families would have people who were familiar with their use. Partisans do not do well for effectively contesting advances of modern armies. They are excellent for harassment attacks that degrade a modern army’s ability to supply itself, and destroy its moral and ability to fight effectively.

And the Nationalists would fight tooth, nail and precious bodily fluids to keep the Allies, who had supported their enemies and often enough attacked them directly, from gaining any ground easily. It would have been a bloodbath, completely at odds with the experience for most Allied armies fighting in Western Europe during WWII.
One final point to consider: When we talk about The Allies, it’s a polite fiction. Describing the Americans, English, French and Russians as a unified group with unified aims conceals at least as much reality as it describes. The only time, that any group of peoples could have considered doing anything more than diplomatic notes and economic leverage vs. Spain would have been after, say, the fall of Italy. Planning could have begun, then, for an Iberian campaign, but I don’t believe that anything concrete could have begun until after VE Day. At which point, that polite fiction of The Allies broke down, and The Cold War began.

I think that any attempt to impose a military solution upon the mess in Spain would have been perceived as weakening the soon-to-be-NATO countries, while giving the Warsaw Pact nations a chance to observe NATO equipment, tactics and doctrine. (Why this reasoning wasn’t applied to the proxy battles between NATO and Warsaw Pact arms with the various Arab-Israeli conflicts I can’t begin to say.)

8

As far as I know, Franco ruled with an iron fist-but in a velvet glove.If you kept your mouth shut, and didn’t piss the governmrnt off, you were pretty much free to do as you wished. His regime was never as brutal as Hitler’s. And, franco was smart-he didn’t join the war, because he knew that whatever happened, the Axis would lose. As far as i know, Spain sent only a token military force to fight in Russia ( the “Blue Legion”). Franco knew that Spain would never escape German influence, if he actually joined the war.

9

OtakuLoki - Yes the Spaniards who opposed Franco remain bitter to this day at the lack of support from the nations who became the ‘allies’ (and yes, I accept that is a subjective term).

I wasn’t just thinking of a military opposition. The sanctions taken against South Africa are an example if what could have been justified, but throughout the 60s and into the 70s we tacitly endorsed the regime.

As for the velvet glove argument ralph124c, I can’t agree. A state that represses free speech and punishes the mildest transgression with violence and torture doesn’t fee very velvety-soft to me. Just my $0.02

10

Yes, it was justified. Because the Spanish Republicans have been so romanticized in books and movies, people forget that they murdered thousands of innocent people, especially Catholic priests and nuns. They were supported by the Soviets, and if they had won, they would have taken away property rights, persecuted Catholics, and banned the Catholic Church… and who knows how many people would have been “purged” to create this workers’ “paradise”? Judging by the bloody history of communism, you’d have to say untold millions.

Franco wasn’t the nicest guy. He probably went too far in repressing regionalist cultures. However, he was fighting against a much more dangerous enemy. Remember that much of the support for Communism was in those regionalist areas, like Catalonia. Suppressing the Catalan language, etc., was just one of the weapons Franco employed to secure Spain’s freedom from communism.

It’s the same reason why we tolerated (or outright supported) other dictators, like Pinochet, during the Cold War. They represented the lesser of two evils. As bad or violent as some of Franco’s policies were, the alternative would have been much, much worse.

p.s. the garrote, when properly administered, inflicted a quick and painless death by severing the spinal cord. It doesn’t look pretty, but it’s probably less painful than death by hanging or the gas chamber.

11

[QUOTE=Chouan]
Yes, it was justified. Because the Spanish Republicans have been so romanticized in books and movies, people forget that they murdered thousands of innocent people, especially Catholic priests and nuns.
[/QUOTE]

Oh I’m not painting a pretty picture of the republicans’ behaviour during and before the war, but I don’t see that as justification for supporting a dictatorship.

By the 1960s it wasn’t merely a choice of the lesser of two evils. As King Juan Carlos proved after Franco’s death, the Spanish were quite capable of exercising free democracy and its politics have rarely swung far to the right or left since then.

OK, Madrid elected a communist Mayor shortly after democracy was introduced, but it was a pretty watered-down approach more akin to centre-left policies lately.

12

The simple answer is no. And in particular, the tolerance of his coup was a huge mistake, as it enabled the Nazis. I don’t know what would have happened had the Republic been supported, but I am pretty certain European history would have been changed for the better in the following years.

13

[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
… Describing the Americans, English, French and Russians as a unified group with unified aims …
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think you really meant “English” there. Unless you’re really sure that no other part of the U.K. was involved, sent troops, got bombed, all that fun stuff. Yes, it’s a slight tangent, but just a bit of ignorance-fighting.

14

[QUOTE=Chouan]
It’s the same reason why we tolerated (or outright supported) other dictators, like Pinochet, during the Cold War. They represented the lesser of two evils. As bad or violent as some of Franco’s policies were, the alternative would have been much, much worse.
[/QUOTE]

Bullshit. Allende was NOT a Communist. He was a socialist, and the population of Chile had legitimately elected him. What Pinochet did, with the help of the US, was evil and ushered in an era of absolute hell for South America, as other populist regimes fell to the Chicago School ideology and millions were starved, tortured, disappeared, exiled and outright murdered. The sooner everyone stops canonizing Milton Friedman and the monsters who put his dreams into action the better off the vast majority of the world’s population will be.

15

I think it’s hard to give Franco a pass if we consider our role in the world to include policing it, though we leaned much more towards isolationism around Franco’s time.

Still, I’d have been in favor of intervening. I’ve got Guernica hanging over my desk, and it’s having an effect on me. Which it is supposed to.

16

[QUOTE=Napier]
I’ve got Guernica hanging over my desk, and it’s having an effect on me. Which it is supposed to.
[/QUOTE]
Even people who don’t ‘get’ Picasso are moved by that.

Ironically, I was in Guernica this Summer, and it’s a Shit-hole.

I blame Franco. (Or Nato arrogance)

17

[QUOTE=Celyn]
I don’t think you really meant “English” there. Unless you’re really sure that no other part of the U.K. was involved, sent troops, got bombed, all that fun stuff. Yes, it’s a slight tangent, but just a bit of ignorance-fighting.
[/QUOTE]

It’s a fair cop. :wink:

Sub Judice, I wasn’t trying to excuse the complete lack of action, just offering my interpretation for a lack of military action. Things are further complicated by the Cold War of the 60s and 70s, IMNSHO. If you look at the way that both the US and USSR spent money to “help” countries that they felt were at risk of falling into the other’s sphere of influence, I can see where certain minds would consider Franco a nuisance, but one they could live with, and so would be reluctant to upset the applecart.

Neither this reasoning, nor the reasoning I gave against direct military intervention, actually answer your original question. They only illuminate some of the thinking for how people of the time looked at it, as I undersand the events.

I think the crux of your question is at what point is a “bad peace” more moral to accept than to foment a revolution or civil war. Before I go further I have to throw out a bit of cover - my understanding of Twentieth Century Spanish history is sketchy. I will admit right from the beginning, I know I’m going to be missing much of the picture. Having said that, though, I don’t think that there was any realistic expectation, while Franco was in power, that he would ever willingly hand over the reins to anyone else. That he did just that seems to me to have been a singularly shocking event for the observers of the time. And Carlos was not expected to have been the King he has shown himself to be.

If I had a series of intelligence briefs indicating that Franco was a tin-pot dictator with every intention of holding on to power, no matter whom he might crush under the wheels, and a recognition of how justified his opponents would be to view any promise of aid or support with a jaundiced eye. I’d be very, very leery of doing anything that would allow for the situation to get even worse. I want to say that letting Franco remain in power for so long without at least economic sanction was an evil act. Og knows that there are numerous things done in pursuit of the whole Domino Theory that I will categorize as just that.

On the other hand, taking a moral stand that one believes to be futile that one has reason to believe would result in an even worse mess, harming far more people than are being currently harmed… I can’t quite say that that is actually a moral act. I don’t ask for an assurance of success. But I suspect that the experts of the day may have had all sorts of studies showing why upsetting the Franco apple cart would have been 90% likely to make things worse.

I honestly don’t know whether, at the time, that the decision to leave Franco in power was justified or justifiable.

Without trying to sound like Pangloss, I’d like to ask of the people reading this thread who are better informed than I in Spanish history: My understanding is that a lot of Spain’s current liberty is the legacy of Carlos’ actions, philosophy, and work. The more normal progression after a charismatic dictator rules (however autocratically, and inhumanely) a nation is to have tin copies follow his footsteps. Twentieth Century Spain managed to avoid that pattern. How likely would that have been to have happened without Franco turning over authority to Carlos?

Gah, that still sounds too much like Pangloss.

What I’m trying to ask is who were the men standing in a position to be likely to pick up the pieces after Franco died or fell? Do those who know Spanish history think they would, or could, have gone on towards the more liberal Spain we know today? Or would they have tried to be Franco 2?

And this kind of second guessing, looking at the results 40 and 50 years after the decision makers in question, is even worse. Even if my suspicions that without Franco’s transfer of power Modern Spain would still a repressive state are correct, the chain of events that lead to that seem so low-probability, it still looks like the result of a lucky roulette spin. i.e. not exactly the sort of probability one wants to see involved with a gamble with a people’s freedom. (Before Nava comes to yell on me, I am well aware that to talk about Spain as consisting of a single people is another one of those convenient fictions that hides more truth than it illuminates. I’m just being a little poetic.)

18

[QUOTE=jayjay]
Bullshit. Allende was NOT a Communist. He was a socialist, and the population of Chile had legitimately elected him. What Pinochet did, with the help of the US, was evil and ushered in an era of absolute hell for South America, as other populist regimes fell to the Chicago School ideology and millions were starved, tortured, disappeared, exiled and outright murdered. The sooner everyone stops canonizing Milton Friedman and the monsters who put his dreams into action the better off the vast majority of the world’s population will be.
[/QUOTE]
You say this as though there’s a meaningful distinction between communism and socialism. Allende (only elected by a minority of voters) was allies with Fidel Castro and was well on his way to making Chile another Cuba, with all of the horrors that implies.

Pinochet was a brutal ruler, no doubt. But he turned around and stabilized Chile’s economy after Allende’s attempt to nationalize everything. And while a few thousands of people were killed (primarily in the aftermath of the coup), you have to wonder how many would have died if Allende had remained president. Allende once threatened that “Santiago will be painted red with blood if I am not ratified as President!” and documents (including one called “Plan Z”) discovered after the coup confirmed that he was planning to massacre opponents. (cite: General Augusto Pinochet in Perspective)

If Pinochet didn’t take action, total class warfare would have broken out. Similar situation as Franco in many ways.

19

[QUOTE=Chouan]

Pinochet was a brutal ruler, no doubt. But he turned around and stabilized Chile’s economy after Allende’s attempt to nationalize everything.
[/QUOTE]

Well I guess that justifies the cigarette burns down the back of my friend’s wife. I’m sure she feels good about her part in making Chile a better place for capitalism.

20

[QUOTE=Sub Judice]
Even people who don’t ‘get’ Picasso are moved by that.

Ironically, I was in Guernica this Summer, and it’s a Shit-hole.

I blame Franco. (Or Nato arrogance)
[/QUOTE]
A work of political propaganda. Picasso was a Communist. Plus, Loyalist fighters were holed up in Guernica at the time, and they had the support of the locals.

Not that that justifies the Germans firebombing the city, just pointing out that there were military targets in and around the city.

Lots more civilians died in the bombing of Dresden, too. And Hiroshima. And Nagasaki. But we acknowledge that these were necessary military operations to defeat the Germans and the Japanese, don’t we?