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Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II. By Stanley G. Payne. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-12282-4. Notes. Index. Pp. viii, 328. $30.00.
The defeat of Hider in May 1945 was greeted by Spain's tighdy controlled press with extravagant eulogies of Franco, the genius that bestowed the gift of peace upon Spain. According to the Falangist Arriba, the end of the war was 'Franco's Victory'. The monarchist ABC carried a front page picture of the Caudillo 'chosen by the benevolence of God. When everything was obscure, he saw clearly... and sustained and defended Spain's neutrality.' For the next thirty years, Franco's admirers hailed wartime neutrality as something achieved by dint of skilful and courageous deceit of Hider.
There was no more fervent admirer of Franco than the Caudillo himself. Either directly in his speeches and his books and articles and in published interviews with journalists or through private audiences granted to his hagiographers, he worked tirelessly to create a lifestory that justified comparison with the great figures of Spanish history and legend. Among his most cherished myths were three - that he had won the Spanish Civil War by dint of military genius, that he had masterminded Spain's economic boom of the 1960s and, above all, that neutrality in the Second World War was his brilliant achievement. In fact, there was no truth in any of them. Victory in 1939 was gained thanks to the unstinting aid of Hitler and Mussolini and the non-interventionist policies of Britain and France which deprived the democratic Republic of the weapons that it needed to defend itself. Economic boom came after Franco had relinquished day-to-day decision-making. Before 1957, his economic policies had been disastrous. During the Second World War, the self-styled 'Caudillo of Peace' had been desperate to enter the war on Hitler's side and was thwarted only by Spain's parlous economic situation and the Führers reluctance to take on another ally even more impecunious than Mussolini.
Historical writing in Spain, and also in Britain, since Francos death in 1975 has shattered these myths although all three still have their proponents, largely, it must be said, amongst die-hard Francoists....