It’s not listed in Beevor’s “History of the Second World War”. Afterwards Hitler supposedly said Franco “almost made me feel like a Jew” negotiating with sacred possessions and later described him as “Jesuit swine”.
An interesting theory I’ve never encountered before. Who were these big wigs who were actually running things?
Well, No. Hitler met Franco on 23 October 1940 and pressed him to join the Axis, Franco refused. Hitler certainly thought Franco a pain but it did not stop him on 10 December again appealing to the Generalissimo to allow German troops to cross Spain to attack Gibraltar, an appeal that was again rejected. Then on 12 February 1941 it was Mussolini who tried, and failed, to get Franco to reject his neutral stance.
Sr Siete is referring to the death of Sanjurjo and Mola at the beginning of the war. Apparently he believes that with Sanjurjo, Mola and Primo de Rivera dead, the National machine just… sustained itself. While I certainly don’t think it was a case of “Franco vs everybody else” (as the amount of people who “didn’t fight for him” might lead one to believe), I’m reasonably sure he and his cronies did more than pat heads and cut ribbons.
Max Hastings devotes some ink to the issue in All Hell Let Loose, if anyone’s interested. P.112;
"The shrewd Portuguese ambassador in Madrid, Pedro Teotonio Pereira, reported to Lisbon on 27 May 1940: ‘Beyond doubt Spain continues to hate the Allies…German victories are received with joy…They do not judge the war to be infamous, but themselves in a bad position to take part’.
That was their own damn fault: after the end of the SCW, they left, and couldn’t get back in later when they wanted. I doubt Stalin would have made that mistake if the outcome had been for the other side.
Though even if Franco had allowed the Nazis to attack Gibraltar and worse case scenario: seal the Med; Egypt isolated and lost, would it have effected the outcome, or just tied up a lot of Axis troops needed in the USSR? Then in the aftermath, the Allies would be obliged to implement regime change in Spain while contending with the Communists as they had to in Italy and Greece, and stretched the Marshall Plan even thinner.
Max Hastings also notes that Britain forked out £13 million in bribes to senior Spanish generals to ensure their opposition to direct Spanish participation in the war!
If anyone really wants to follow up this topic try Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II by Stanley G. Payne.
Indeed. Franco was very good at never actually saying ‘no’ for that matter. He always said he would join the effort with ‘proper support’ which would involve Germany supplying all the arms, ammo, and fuel. Rumors had it that he was advices by some allies as to what to ask for.
Other have noted that Franco was more nationalist than fascist, and really would rather not involve himself in the mess at all. The Blue Division gave him the chance to get the local hotheads out of the country.
Plus, where’s the upside for Spain?
Italy already took the nearby Mediterranean, Germany controlled Vichy France and wouldn’t let go of that or its Algerian territory…
Germany and Italy go to expand their areas of immediate control (or in Italy’s case, tried to…). There really wasn’t anywhere for Spain to expand except Morocco and that general direction, and they didn’t need to be part of an axis and jump on the bandwagon right away for that. Evn if they did, it’s not like Germany or Italy would give them any adjacent territory (“Here. you can have western England when we’re done”)
Basically, the goals of Germany and Italy weren’t the same as theirs.
Fascinating topic. Could Spain have taken Gibraltar? What would that have done to Allied operations in the Mediterranean?
We have to thank Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, who was a friend of Franco and cordially despised Hitler.
Canaris advised Franco not to get entangled into the War as part of the Axis, and when the head of the Intelligence service of a nation sez their Leader is a loon, you have to accept he knows what he is talking about.
Thanks! I’ll def try to track down more info about this.
Another after affect of the civil war that might have been on Franco’s mind considering entering WWII was raising the necessary troops. Not only were a lot of men killed (both directly during the war and purges afterwards), but these men had families and friends who hated Franco.
To raise a really large army, Franco would be in danger of arming a lot of people who had sympathies on the other side of the civil war. Could he really trust these men? Would they fight well? Cf. the various slavic brigades the Nazi’s raised who didn’t fight all that well later in the war.
These would not be same quality as the volunteers that joined the German Army.
Franco just wasn’t in the same league as Hitler and Mussolini in persuading people with rhetoric. He relied on bullets.
“One of these things is not like the other.”
Yes I think that’s a better way of thinking of it than just ‘Spain was exhausted’. It was potentially dangerous for Franco himself, the danger of internal opposition which was not serious for Hitler till the war was virtually lost, and which Mussolini under estimated. But Franco had real reason to estimate such a danger to him as far greater.
Mussolini had been consolidating his power since the early 1920’s. Hitler had less tenure than Mussolini but overwhelming support in the German public in 1939. Franco OTOH had just defeated the armed forces of the large portion of Spanish society which opposed him, but those large segments of Spanish society had not themselves suddenly disappeared or changed their minds. Purging Spanish society of serious potential opposition to him took till long after 1939.
Max Hastings again;
“If Franco had joined the war, the inevitable fall of Gibraltar would have doomed Malta. It would have been much harder - perhaps impossible - for the British to hold the Middle East. The damage to their prestige and confidence would have been immense, and Churchill might not have survived as prime minister. Franco deserved no gratitude from the Allies, because cautious Spanish diplomacy was driven by self-interest.”
I’m aware that Franco hadn’t been a leader of the Nationalist forces. But I feel he emerged as the leader when the original leaders were killed. Possible rivals like Fal Conde, Gil-Robles or Hedilla were all marginalized. (Or were dead like Lesdesma, Redondo, or Sotelo.)
Sr Siete apparently feels otherwise. He said that there were big wigs who designated Franco as a figurehead after the war was over in 1939. But I can’t figure out who these supposed people were. I can’t see anyone who was powerful enough to challenge Franco at that point much less control him.
How had Franco not been a leader of the Nationalist forces? He commanded the army in Morocco from the beginning, and used it to take Badajoz and Merida, then in September of 1936, he was named Commnder in Chief of the Nationalist forces, and then Head of State in October. He hadn’t been one of the early coup planners, being on the fence, but once the Civil War started, he took a leadership role from the beginning, and, after Mola’s death, there wasn’t anybody strong enough to counter him.
Okay, Franco may have been a leader. But in dictatorships of the era, being a leader is meaningless. You’re either the leader or you’re essentially nothing. Anyone who’s just a leader is simply carrying out the orders of the leader.
Jose Sanjurjo had been the leader of the Nationalist forces and Franco didn’t become the leader until after Sanjurjo died.
Quite a few of those volunteers were people who, shall we say, “would not have voted for Franco”, and who felt they needed to demonstrate their loyalty; they were putting their lives on the line to protect their families back home. Similar although not so extreme attitudes show up in such things as the raising of funds to build religious monuments (lots of statues to the Sacred Heart, lots of brand new Basilicas including the monster in Los Caídos…): those who had nothing to prove gave what they wanted, those who had to prove their loyalty gave more.
And one of the two groups in the National side had exactly zero reason to go to war as part of the Axis. Falangists had ideology in common with the other Fascist forces - Carlistas did not; even if they hadn’t been sorely bled and kicked in the balls by their supposed allies, they would have had no reason to volunteer for the Axis (“against the Reds,” yes; “for the Axis,” no).