Hunting Nazis in Franco’s Spain by David A. Messenger (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hunting Nazis in Franco’s Spain by David A. Messenger Sandra Ott Hunting Nazis in Franco’s Spain. By David A. Messenger. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 218. Cloth $34.76. ISBN 978-0807155639. In Hunting Nazis in Franco’s Spain, David A. Messenger provides a fascinating, meticulously researched account of the development and implementation of the Allied program to repatriate “obnoxious Germans” (5) from Spain to occupied Germany in the postwar years. Repatriation subjected Germans to the process of denazification, including internment, interrogation, and possibly judicial proceedings. “Obnoxious Germans” were mainly Nazi intelligence agents, SS men, and party officials. When World War II ended in 1945, the Allies feared a revival of the Third Reich in Spain. The Germans had a longstanding presence there, with deep roots in both the Spanish economy and society. During the Spanish Civil War, some nineteen thousand Germans volunteered to serve in Hitler’s Condor Legion. Many of them had ties with Spain through family or business, or involvement with its German community before 1936. Such men made prime candidates for service in Nazi intelligence networks. Nazi agents operated across Spain during the Civil War and World War II, despite Spain’s official neutrality. German spies often exchanged information with their Spanish counterparts and the national police. In late 1944, the British raised a key postwar issue in so-called neutral countries: what should be the postwar fate of Germans who had engaged in political, commercial, or espionage activities? The issue forms the focus of Messenger’s study of the repatriation program. By April 1946, some ten thousand Germans remained in Spain. British and American embassies identified 1,677 Germans for repatriation. Allied diplomats pressed Franco’s regime to comply with the program and even provided means of transportation back to Germany. The Allies, however, received minimal cooperation from Franco’s regime. Spanish officials promised to comply with the program but responded unenthusiastically. The Allies eventually realized that Spain’s frustratingly slow response to the repatriation scheme derived not only from a lack of cooperation at the top but also from complicity at the grass roots level. The Spanish police, Spanish citizens, members of the German colony, and Catholic priests variously enabled “obnoxious Germans” to stay put. One of the most fascinating chapters in the book explores the dynamics underlying German attempts to obtain exemption from repatriation. Operating at the intersections of history and ethnography, Messenger makes excellent use of declassified documents in the Spanish Foreign Ministry as well as in British and American archives. He found that petitions for exemption revealed several clever strategies to avoid repatriation. While not disavowing their Nazi past, Germans commonly argued that it was Francoism and their political commitment to Franco’s regime that had motivated them during both civil and world wars (113). They cast their Nazi activities as service not only to the Nationalist “crusade” but also to Franco’s anticommunism [End Page 442] crusade (116). Germans similarly used religion to enhance their image as loyalists to Franco by emphasizing their devotion to Catholicism (121). Finally, many Germans who had lived in Spain before Hitler came to power in 1933 claimed insider status as German Spaniards. Most of them had married Spanish women, raised families, and established social relations in Spanish communities. They projected a “practiced” Spanish identity and sought to achieve “social” citizenship as a means of gaining Franco’s protection (100). As Messenger shows, “obnoxious Germans” skillfully utilized Franco’s postwar discourse about the meaning of membership in the New Spain. Spanish officials willingly supported their efforts on the grounds of “incorporation into Spanish life.” In parallel, many Germans also continued to develop a Nazi identity in what came to be known as “werewolf” groups—Nazi resistance movements designed to operate secretly behind Allied lines. Although never large in number, such groups came under the close scrutiny of Allied intelligence agencies that feared the spread of Nazi ideology in Spain. By 1947, the Spanish authorities had forced only 265 Germans into repatriation. Individuals on the Allies’ priority lists typically managed to remain in Spain or to make their way to Argentina, among other destinations. By the end of...