Spain: A Unique History (41 page)

Pío Moa's observation that prior to the Civil War Franco obeyed Republican legality more thoroughly than did Manuel Azaña is correct. Azaña was associated with a military insurrection in December 1930, sought to nullify arbitrarily and illegally the most honest and democratic elections in Spanish history in November 1933, maneuvered for months to thwart the majority of a democratically elected parliament and then attempt to carry off an ambivalent "legal pronunciamiento," was ambiguously associated with revolutionary insurrection in 1934, and subsequently, as prime minister and president, endorsed the latter while presiding over massive violations of constitutional law in 1936. Compared with such a record, Franco had merely tried to expedite a presidential decree in February 1936, which the prime minister refused to put in effect.

By that point Franco had gained the strongest reputation of any figure in the military hierarchy. He was not the most intelligent or best educated, the most imaginative or the most popular, but he was widely recognized as the one who most combined all the qualities of an outstanding commander in terms of experience, personal courage, discretion, determination, professional skill, and the singular quality to command. This was also apparent to the most perceptive leftist leaders, such as Indalecio Prieto, or Manuel Azaña, who privately labeled him "the only one to fear" among the Spanish generals.

He was soon in touch with the military conspirators, but played only a marginal role, refusing to commit himself firmly to armed revolt. He viewed this as a desperate undertaking not likely to work, probably prone to do more harm than good, and something to be attempted only as a last resort. In this he reflected the views of the majority of army officers. As late as the latter part of April 1936, he did not view the Republican system as immediately in danger of collapse and sought to play a new political role by election to the Cortes on the CEDA ticket in the special elections in Cuenca. Ironically, this drew vehement objection from José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who had been added to the rightist list in the province. At that point José Antonio was disgusted with the military, and he protested that the appearance of Franco gave a "militarist" and "reactionary" look to the rightist list. More pragmatically, he pointed out that the Spanish parliament placed a premium on rhetoric and rapid debate, in which Franco might not be expected to do well. Prudently, the general finally agreed to withdraw. Two months later he wrote to Casares Quiroga that the army was not disloyal (which, technically, at that moment was more or less correct), urging him to strengthen bonds with the military and affirm national unity. Amid the multiple uncertainties of the moment, this was not a dishonest presentation of his opinion.

By the spring of 1936 Franco clearly saw himself as destined for some new role of leadership, though he would have been hard put to define what exactly that might be. He spent more time reading works on contemporary politics and economics, and after assuming his new command in the Canaries began to take regular English lessons. But as late as July 12, again like most of the military, he still refused to commit himself to armed revolt, which he continued to insist was premature and might be counterproductive. The core conspirators around Mola were disgusted with Franco, deriding him as "Miss Canarias" for his "coquetry." The killing of Calvo Sotelo on the night of July 12-13 had much the same traumatic impact on Franco as it did on a great deal of moderate and conservative opinion. In effect, he joined the revolt when he judged that it had become more dangerous not to rebel than to rebel.

The political plan of the revolt had been devised by Gen. Emilio Mola, organizer of the conspiracy. It envisaged a "Portuguese solution" — that is, not restoration of the monarchy or inauguration of a fascist regime but the establishment of a rightist, corporative, more authoritarian republic rather like Salazar's "Estado Novo" in Portugal. This was the solution that divided the military least, since only a minority of them were monarchist, and some of the top generals in the revolt (Cabanellas, Goded, Queipo de Llano) had been noted Republicans. There is no reason to think this did not accord with Franco's own thinking, for that was the sort of solution for which he had been striving in his collaboration with the CEDA. The initial announcements and proclamations by the military commanders were virtually unanimous on this point.

Nonetheless, as Clausewitz observed, the dynamics of war create a
Wechselwirkung
, a process of reciprocal interaction (and sometimes of mutual radicalization) on both sides, leading to drastically new situations and decisions. This immediately took place during the Spanish war, as the Republican government empowered the only full-scale violent worker revolution in the history of western Europe, while the military rebels quickly moved to more and more extreme positions and practices.

Naming a commander in chief late in September was an important step by the rebel leaders, for had they not done so they probably would not have won the war. Once it was decided to name a generalissimo, Franco was the inevitable choice. Some of his colleagues were not happy with this outcome, for he was more respected than popular and there was some apprehension about his penchant for domination, but they accepted the fact that there was little alternative. Monarchists played key roles, though it was not due to their initiative alone, and Franco undertook no formal political obligations to them.

His political thinking underwent considerable change and also radicalization, as it began to move from a Portuguese model to an Italian model of regime, with some degree of fascistization. The fact that key military support came from Rome and Berlin was no doubt a factor in the equation: his evolving policy was strictly sui generis and one that Franco proposed to control on his own terms. So long as the Civil War lasted, he did not see his way clear to the full construction of a new system, which was postponed to the postwar period. Franco's achievement was to achieve total wartime political unity, and the state party was an important aspect of that process, accepted (but not exactly supported) by the other political forces. Beyond that, Franco simply banned all political activity for the duration of the conflict. This, especially when contrasted with the internecine strife in the Republican zone, was an important factor in his victory.
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Franco had carefully positioned himself militarily (and also to some extent politically) on the eve of the Civil War by bargaining for command of the elite combat forces in Morocco. So far as we know, he had no difficulty in obtaining this, for he was not too far away in the Canaries and, in strictly professional terms, had been the obvious choice. Due to the partial failure of the rebellion, the units in Morocco (even though their effective numbers were fewer than 30,000) became indispensable to the success of the insurgency, all the more since this would provide the base for recruiting more than 60,000 additional Moroccan volunteers of high combat value. Added to this was Franco's success in attracting the attention of Hitler and Mussolini and gaining significant assistance from them.

Despite the complete victory that he gained, Franco's leadership in the Civil War would later become increasingly controversial among historians. He has frequently been accused of timidity and lack of imagination in military operations, and there is truth in such accusations, although they are sometimes exaggerated.
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The first major criticism concerned the delay in reaching Madrid, including the priority of swinging west to secure the Portuguese frontier and then to relieve the Alcázar de Toledo before attempting a frontal assault on Madrid from the southwest. For the most part, Franco had sound reasons for his decisions. The direct route to Madrid was only slightly shorter, while he lacked the effectives to advance directly without securing his flanks. Assuring logistical support through Portugal was of considerable importance, while the rebels were under so much military pressure elsewhere (including, but not limited to, the fronts of Oviedo, Aragon, Córdoba, and Granada) that Franco had to divert small but vital units to avert the danger of collapse on other fronts. Seizing Madrid might have been of little value if the Republicans had scored key victories elsewhere, though Franco might have been better advised to approach Madrid downhill from the north than uphill from the southwest.

Combat tactics during the Spanish war were generally unimaginative on both sides. It could hardly have been very different in the case of two improvised mass armies. Only in the breakthrough in Aragon during the early spring of 1938 was a battle of movement achieved, but that was also due to a temporary Republican collapse.

Franco's strategy has also been seriously questioned during the late spring and summer of 1938, when first he elected not to seize directly a weakly defended Catalonia and then, later, to respond to the Republican Ebro offensive with a set-piece counteroffensive that moved painfully slowly by direct assault over the hills southwest of the Ebro. In the case of Catalonia, international factors may have played a role. This was the only point at which there seemed to be some danger of French intervention, while Hitler also discouraged the invasion of Catalonia at that time, with the cynical goal of prolonging the Spanish war as an international diversion that would distract attention from his own initiatives. There is, however, no conclusive evidence regarding the basis for Franco's decisions.

The battle of the Ebro revealed Franco at his most unimaginative. His judgment that destruction of the Republican forces would give him a decisive advantage in the remainder of the war was correct, but the superiority of his own army in open offensive warfare offered him the opportunity for a flanking offensive that might have trapped the Republican army west of the river. This he apparently never considered.

Franco was not a brilliant strategist, but he was a competent commander who won his war, always the bottom line. It is said that amateurs do strategy, while professionals do logistics, and Franco did logistics well. He had to organize an effective mass army, sustain its morale, and lead it to victory, all the while maintaining political unity, an adequate economic base, and the continued military assistance of Italy and Germany, while preserving his own independence and freedom of action. All these things he accomplished in the most successful counterrevolutionary struggle of the twentieth century.
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The worst stain on Franco's record is the repression. This is not to be excused by saying that the Republicans did much the same, or that it was similar to other repressions in revolutionary/counterrevolutionary civil wars. Both these points are correct, but the repression remains atrocious and indefensible. Moreover, Franco took about two months longer during the war to moderate it than did the Republicans, and held greater central control.

Much the same can be said of the postwar repression. Military tribunals handed down approximately 50,000 death sentences during the immediate postwar period. Though many were commuted, as many as 30,000 were apparently carried out. It will not do to say, as sometimes has been done, that many of those executed had themselves been guilty of atrocious crimes during the Red Terror. This was doubtless true, but a large proportion were condemned for political responsibilities, not criminal atrocities.

Franco evidently first developed the sense that he was destined to play some higher role as the political crisis developed between 1934 and 1936. He accepted his election as Generalísimo as an action of divine providence, a conviction deepened by the eventual victory, which he considered proof that the hand of God lay upon him, that he had been called by the Almighty to be absolute ruler of Spain. This may be dismissed by critics as hysteria or megalomania, but it would remain his conviction ever after: hence the sense of self-confidence and self-righteousness that he would display. This did not mean that Franco believed that he was a magician with a crystal ball, for he had always to calculate each political and strategic move as astutely as he was able, but it produced a sense of absolute legitimacy from which he never wavered. By the end of the Civil War, this conviction had reached a level of overweening presumption, producing the sense that Franco would be the author of a completely new era in the history of Spain. Initially, this stimulated megalomaniac ambitions of making the country a great military power with a major African empire, but it was not long before the harsh realities of the European war abroad and a desperately struggling economy at home began, step by step, to cut these ambitions down to size.

Hardly had the Civil War ended than the European war began. If the great myth of the Left in contemporary Spanish affairs is that the wartime republic was a democracy, the great myth of the Right, or at least of the franquistas, is that Franco was not
really
on Hitler's side during the war. This is also false.

The terms of the Civil War inevitably oriented Franco toward the Axis powers. He had signed special agreements with them during the final phase of the Spanish conflict, and already had an agreement with Hitler to tilt Spanish policy toward Germany (while technically remaining neutral) even before the invasion of Poland. Thus the months down to June 1940 were not a time of genuine neutrality, for collaboration with Germany had already begun, while the long period of non-belligerence that followed marked a clear tilt toward Germany (copying Mussolini's policy of 1939-40), initially intended as a phase of pre-belligerence.

Javier Tusell and others have contended that the decision that Spain not enter the Second World War was made by Hitler and not by Franco, and there is some truth to this contention. Franco wanted very much to enter the war between June 1940 and April 1941, but only on his own terms. From about the end of July Hitler also began to seek Spain's entry, but soon concluded that he could not meet Franco's terms — all of Morocco, large parts of French northwest Africa, and massive economic and military assistance. Franco's position, as he wrote to Serrano Súñer in the autumn of 1940, was that "Spain cannot enter just for fun [por gusto]," but must receive firm and extensive assistance and compensation.
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