Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II, by Stanley G. Payne * Entre la Antorcha y la Esvastica: Franco en la encrucijada de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, by Emilio Saenz-Frances San Baldomero

Abstract

On 2 September 1942, a prominent falangista was executed in Spain. Juan Domínguez had been found guilty of leading a bomb attack on a congregation of the faithful as it left a church in Bilbao, following a memorial service for the Carlist civil war dead. Franco's War Minister, General Varela—an outstanding field commander in 1936–9—was lucky to escape unharmed. In a tense phone conversation, Varela, demanding retribution, came close to threatening his generalísimo. But Domínguez was a veteran of the prestigious División Azúl, then still in action against World Communism in the Leningrad sector: another of the condemned had been severely wounded in the civil war. Franco commuted the latter's death sentence but insisted on having Domínguez shot, ignoring widespread appeals for clemency. The political imbroglio surrounding this ‘Begoña Crisis’ was the most dangerous, complex and intense ever to confront Spain's resilient Caudillo. Both authors under review seek to analyse the outbreak of internecine hatred between two basic components of the Francoist state. Stanley Payne's treatment is characteristically clear and sure-footed, but necessarily brief. His book has a panorama twice as wide as that of Emilio Saénz-Francés yet is less than one-third of the length of the latter's huge volume. Here, however, we are made vividly aware of the wider significance of ‘Begoña’. Only hours before Domínguez's execution, Hitler made it known that he had awarded him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle for his services on the Eastern Front. Payne does not miss this fact, but Sáenz-Francés, with space and detail at his disposal, is able to point up how Hitler's intervention—in effect an appeal for clemency from the most powerful source imaginable—was seriously counter-productive. Franco could not afford tamely to gratify the Führer’s wishes in a case so fundamental to his own authority. He resented Hitler's action, which strengthened his resolve to clip the wings of Spanish fascism. He sacked his pro-Nazi Foreign Minister and brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Súñer, leading protagonist of Falange ambition, simultaneously dismissing Varela. The cabinet was re-orientated in a pro-Allied direction. Events conspired to highlight Franco's nerveless judgement. Within weeks, Allied landings in North Africa changed the complexion of the war, and Spain's strategic situation within it. Until then, Spain was committed to ‘non-belligerence’, a device that was intended to be taken by Berlin as anything short of a full military alliance. But in the winter following Operation Torch—the fulcrum of Sáenz-Francés’ book—rumours of an imminent German invasion of Spain pullulated throughout the relevant diplomatic and intelligence networks. A previously unregarded detail of German intervention in wartime Spain thus emerges as (perhaps) one of Hitler's more portentous mistakes.