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Stalinists like England's Jack Jones, the mighty 1970s trade union leader, Malraux, Koestler, Hemingway and various Eastern Europeans like Petru Roman's father Walter. The Republican side was full of people who helped Stalin rule Eastern Europe after the Second World War.
On the other hand many people backed the Nationalists, from the Catholic Church and therefore Hilaire Belloc to JRR Tolkien, Gertrude Stein and Winston Churchill.
I was very interested to learn from the Spectator today that near the end of his life the Generalissimo predicted that after his death:
‘Spain will go a long way down the road that [the West] wants: democracy, pornography, drugs and so on. There will be a lot of crazy things but nothing terminal.’How did he know?
‘Because I’m leaving something that I didn’t find on taking over the government of this country 40 years ago: the Spanish middle class… There won’t be another civil war.’
I remember an Anglo-Spanish friend laughing about how growth in Spain after his death never equalled what it was in his last years. His lasting monument, however, is not his tomb in the Valley of the Fallen (it's been moved anyway) but the jerrybuilt tourist resorts.
He saved his people from some bad things, though. It does not get much worse than Communism.
Andrew Roberts has said that how Hitler is judged in two hundred years time will depend on what happens in the next two hundred years. If things go well for democracy he will be judged as he is now, if not not.
Andrew Roberts has said that how Hitler is judged in two hundred years time will depend on what happens in the next two hundred years. If things go well for democracy he will be judged as he is now, if not not.
The same apples to Franco.
If the ethnic Spanish become a minority in Spain he will become attractive to many Spaniards.
The same applies, of course, to the much more benign (even saintly, some thought) figure Dr Salazar, who always balanced the Portuguese books.
I read Paul Preston's enormous biography of Franco some years back and it was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences of my life, as Preston, who is a very, very far-left person, clearly hated him, and his rage and frustration as his subject won the civil war, ruled Spain and died in his bed is hilarious and gratifying.
ReplyDeleteI also discovered a 1973 Franco biography in a library last week by an English author named Brian Crozier, who said quite interestingly in the preface that he had entered the work feeling hostile to Franco but ended up developing a grudging admiration, whereas with his previous biography of De Gaulle the sentiments had gone in the opposite direction.
Stanley G Payne is probably the most balanced biographer. His "Franco: a personal and political Biography" is very good.
I've read a couple of interviews with Stanley Payne but I have not listened to this one on the esteemed palaeo-conservative site or magazine Chronicles, which I recommend.
DeleteI bought Payne’s book on Franco's Spain but it's been in storage many, many years.
DeletePreston. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/06/george-orwell-homage-to-catalonia-account-spanish-civil-war-wrong?CMP=share_btn_tw
DeleteSalazar said his system wouldn't outlast him. It did by a few years. If they hadn't bogged down in colonial wars, perhaps the Estado Novo would have lasted longer, but it's hard to imagine it lingering through the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteFranco offered to join Hitler, but Hitler waved him away impatiently. Franco did not offer a very high level of military strength and wanted too many benefits in return.
ReplyDeleteHe wanted territories in Spain at the expense of France which Germany could not give him. People who praise him for keeping Spain out of the Second World War do not know that.
ReplyDeleteHitler said after negotiating with him that he would rather have his teeth taken out than go through that again.