Francisco Franco

Dictator of Spain

• Born: December 4, 1892
• Birthplace: El Ferrol, Galicia, Spain
• Died: November 20, 1975
• Place of death: Madrid, Spain

Franco led Nationalist forces to victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and established a stable, although authoritarian, government. He kept Spain neutral in World War II, associated Spain with the West in the Cold War, and provided for a smooth transition of power on his death.

Early Life

Francisco Franco was born to Nicolas Franco, an officer in the Spanish Naval Administrative Corps, and Pilar Bahamonde Franco, a pious and conservative-minded Roman Catholic woman from an upper-middle-class family. The youthful Franco obtained his elementary education in El Ferrol’s Roman Catholic School of the Sacred Heart. He was destined to follow the family tradition and pursue a career in the navy, but fate intervened. Admissions to the Academia de Marina (Naval Academy) were temporarily halted in 1907. Thus Franco entered the Academia de Infantería (infantry academy) in Toledo. Three years later, he was graduated and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army at only seventeen years of age.

Franco began active duty in Spanish Morocco in 1912. The following year he was promoted to first lieutenant. It was the first of a rapid succession of promotions in a meteoric career that found him a national hero and brigadier general in 1926, at only thirty-three years of age. Franco’s career was interrupted in 1931. In that year, King Alfonso XIII was ousted from power, and a republic was established. Franco, a monarchist, was sent into semiretirement as Captain General of the Baleric Islands. With the coming to power of conservative forces, Franco was called back to Spain in 1933.

In an incident reminiscent of the early career of the great Napoleon I, Franco used military force to suppress a rising of Asturian miners in 1934. The miners rose in opposition to the newly elected conservative government. Franco’s swift but brutal action won for him new recognition from the Right and the nickname the Butcher among leftists. He was promptly promoted to major general and appointed chief of the army’s general staff. He immediately set about restoring discipline in the army, seriously weakened by the antimilitaristic policies of the early republican government.

The rightist National Bloc suffered defeat in the elections of February, 1936. A new leftist Popular Front government was formed. Social disorder and economic decline followed. Franco, himself, did not associate with any political faction. Believing that anarchy was the greatest threat to Spain, he urged the government to proclaim a state of emergency to ensure law and order. The government, perhaps fearing Franco’s popularity within the army, removed him from the general staff and sent him to the Canary Islands as commander and chief. Loyal to the state, Franco did not protest what amounted to a sentence of exile.

As the political situation in Spain deteriorated during the summer of 1936, an antigovernment plot began to take shape among right-wing army officers. Franco did not join the conspiracy until after the political situation worsened to the point at which anarchy threatened to engulf the nation. The assassination of Calvo Sotelo, a prominent rightist politician, in which government security forces were involved, pushed the army into open revolt. The revolt began in Morocco, on July 17, 1936, and soon spread to army garrisons in Spain.

On July 18, Franco broadcast from the Canary Islands a manifesto proclaiming the revolution. The following day, he flew to Morocco and assumed command of the army in revolt. Franco led the army in a march on Madrid, the capital. On October 1, as the army halted outside Madrid in preparation for the final assault, Franco was proclaimed head of state and generalissimo of the army by the Nationalists. It was the beginning of almost three years of bloody civil war in Spain.

Life’s Work

The outcome of the civil war could not have been in doubt from the beginning. All the advantages were on the side of General Franco and the Nationalist forces. Whereas the republican armed forces were a mélange of disunited, poorly led, and ill-equipped militiamen, Franco’s armies were well trained and led by competent senior and junior officers. Of significance was the aid given to the Nationalists by Germany and Italy and the lack of any decisive aid for the Republican forces. Franco appealed to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini for military assistance. Both responded favorably, perhaps seeing an opportunity to test weapons, gain combat experience for officers, and expand their anticommunist fascist alliance. Both sent aircraft, tanks, and artillery. Germany sent an air force of one hundred combat planes, known as the Condor Legion. Italy sent infantry soldiers.

The Republicans were never able to muster any meaningful international support. Both Great Britain and France, deeply divided at home and pursuing foreign policies of appeasement, announced that they favored nonintervention. They refused to supply either arms or soldiers. The only power that assisted the Republican forces was the Soviet Union. The Soviets sent military supplies, and the Communist International, under Soviet leadership, recruited the International Brigades to serve in Spain. However, Soviet support waned in 1938, as the war turned decisively in favor of the Nationalists.

By late fall, 1937, Franco’s forces had captured the nation’s key industrial area in the north. As Franco pressed the attack during the winter and spring of 1938, discipline among the Republican forces broke down. Divisions within the Republican government came to the forefront, and on March 7, 1939, civil war between communists and anticommunists broke out in the Republican capital of Madrid. On March 28, Madrid fell to the Nationalists. By April 1, the Nationalists under Franco’s leadership had secured an unconditional victory in the civil war.

Perhaps resigning themselves to the inevitable, both France and Great Britain recognized Franco’s government in February, 1939. The United States hesitated to do so until after the final victory in April. Franco gave evidence of the fact that his sympathies lay clearly with the Axis (Germany and Italy) when he hastened to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact in April, 1939. Within five months, Franco was shocked by Germany’s unprovoked attack on Roman Catholic Poland.

It was during World War II that Franco proved himself a capable leader and diplomat. Spain was exhausted by the civil war. The economy was in ruins. What the nation needed most of all was peace. Franco skillfully resisted Hitler’s persistent wooing. He declared Spain’s neutrality in 1939, while remaining on friendly terms with the Axis, even allowing the Germans to recruit soldiers in Spain to serve on the Russian front as the Spanish Blue Division. He refused Hitler’s demand to allow German military aircraft to fly through Spain to North Africa in 1941.

Although Franco never made any real commitments to the Axis, it is generally believed that, had the Axis been able to win a swift and decisive victory in the war, Franco would have joined them. To what extent his moral support for the Axis seemed to stem from sincere sympathies for German national socialism and Italian fascism, or gratitude for their active aid during civil war, or, what is more likely, his consistent anticommunism is impossible to discern. In 1943, when Germany’s defeat was imminent, Franco attempted to negotiate an end to the war to unite the West against what he regarded as the real enemy, the Soviet Union.

When World War II ended in 1945, the victorious Allies sought to isolate Spain and force the downfall of Franco’s government. The United Nations refused to admit Spain to membership, regarding Franco as the last fascist dictator. Responding to a United Nations General Assembly resolution of December 12, 1946, the United States withdrew its ambassador from Spain. Other nations followed the United States’ example and called their ambassadors home.

Franco responded to various efforts to foment revolution by issuing a Charter of Rights in July, 1945, strengthening his ties with the Catholic Church and diminishing the role of the Falange (Fascist) Party. Franco was able to use such external opposition to unite Spain behind his government. He seemed to sense all along that time was on his side. As the rift between the wartime Allies widened and the Cold War deepened, it was inevitable that the Western alliance would court the longtime foe of communism.

The restoration of Franco was not long in coming. By 1948, he was regarded once again as a leading anticommunist statesman. In November, 1950, the United States voted to end Spain’s diplomatic isolation. American loans to the Spanish economy followed in 1950. In 1951, a new American ambassador arrived in Spain, and negotiations began for an American-Spanish defensive alliance. In 1953, the United States was granted four air and naval bases in Spain in exchange for significant economic aid. Throughout the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, the Spanish economy enjoyed increasing prosperity from its integration into the Western alliance system. In 1972, Spain signed a trade agreement with the Soviet Union.

Franco’s skill as a leader was also very evident in his domestic policies. His rule was always authoritarian and at times brutal. According to some sources, “tens of thousands” were executed during the civil war and the immediate years following its conclusion. Unlike most dictators, however, Franco took steps early in his rule to ensure that there would be a smooth transition of power on his death. In 1947, an official referendum resulted in Spain’s being designated as a monarchy with Franco as regent for life. In 1969, Franco named Prince Juan Carlos, the eldest son of the pretender to the Spanish throne and grandson of its last king, Alfonso XIII, as his legal heir and future king of Spain. Franco, in failing health during the summer of 1974, delegated his constitutional powers to Juan Carlos. Franco, Europe’s last fascist dictator, died in Madrid on November 20, 1975.

Significance

It is not easy to assess the career of Franco. One’s perspective is likely to be influenced by one’s view of the Spanish Civil War and the fact that Franco’s Nationalists were openly supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Franco’s association with, even admiration for, Hitler, one of history’s most infamous characters, makes it difficult to evaluate him on his merits as a statesman.

Franco remained a monarchist throughout his life, a fact that is evidenced in his provision for the restoration of the monarchy on his death. In so doing he attempted to see through his commitment to maintaining law and order in Spain. Franco, the young army officer, remained loyal to the republic until it became evident that the Republican government was leading Spain down the road to anarchy.

Franco’s regime was never popular among the masses. Yet, after he successfully integrated Spain into the Western alliance, the economic prosperity that came to Spain as a result, and his efforts at liberalizing an admittedly authoritarian government, did much to eliminate all direct opposition to his rule. During the 1960’s, he successfully courted the image of an elder statesman.

Outside Spain, Franco’s image improved as the Cold War demonstrated the strategic importance of Spain to the Western alliance. Western leaders, who themselves fought a world war in alliance with the Soviet Union, preferred to forget Franco’s flirtation with the Axis and remember instead his consistent anticommunism. Since Franco’s death and the transfer of power to a constitutional monarchy, democratic institutions have continued to develop in Spain. Perhaps therein lies his legacy.

Bibliography

Amodia, José. Franco’s Political Legacy. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1977. This is a useful reference book and introduction to how Spain was governed under Franco. Amodia believes that Franco never intended to give Spain a democratic government.

Crozier, Brian. Franco: A Biographical History. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967. This is a balanced, well-researched, and very readable study by a journalist. Crozier assesses Franco’s importance in world history, while discounting myths of both Right and Left.

Hills, George. Franco: The Man and His Nation. New York: Macmillan, 1967. Intended for the general reader with some knowledge of modern Spain, Hills’s biography of Franco is based on official army documents and conversations with Franco and associates of his from various stages of his career.

Hodges, Gabrielle Ashford. Franco: A Concise Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. A psychological biography in which Hodges depicts Franco as an insecure and vengeful man and describes how his actions were fueled by his mental state, as well as his political ambitions.

Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Jackson attempts to view the civil war from within Spain. It is a clear and scholarly account, although sympathetic to the Republican cause.

Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. 1961. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. This is the classic history of the civil war in Spain. Thomas concentrates on the military, political, and diplomatic history of Spain from the 1920’s to 1939. Extensively researched, it is the most balanced account.

Trythall, J. W. D. El Caudillo: A Political Biography of Franco. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. Packed with factual detail, yet easy to read, this work focuses on Franco’s career from the origins of the civil war to 1969. It is respected as an objective account.