Franco (left) with one of Hitler's
mgjor industrialists, Alfred Krupp.

By JUAN COBO

T* brutality of Francisco Franco
gai was the thing which from early on
c Red him particular favor with his
aa who opened before him the way
i € top. He made his career in the
Onial war against the Moors. Arrogant
Y Nature, he looked on them as ‘‘sub-
mans” against whom no means were
Savage.
raiidalgo de Cisneros describes how
ieee was regarded by his fellow of-
oe a in Africa: ‘‘At the Mar Chica base
- detested him, including his brother
ane to whom he hardly spoke. When
ae 4 Was wanted for Francisco Franco,
is y Ody tried to avoid the assignment...
nae told us he had always had an
oie lority complex on account of his
rt stature and tendency to corpulence
bine © not remember ever having seen
tie Smile... People feared him... and
afr T showed any friendliness let alone
€ction for him...”
me Same methods of suppression
as Franco practiced in Morocco he
inti used against the Spanish people,
lally in the Asturias in 1934.
The quality which King Alfonso and
: dictator Primo de Rivera valued in
anco and advanced him for was fully
PPreciated by Admiral Canaris, too.
Spai Fanco lived up to his expectations.
tim n had seen plenty of violence in her
€, but the massacres which Franco

his

a

Staged after July 1936 had no precedent in

Panish history.

Preulality was an essential feature of
Aeo’s plan to crush the Left forces.
€n. Francisco Mola’s plan was to
. 8 out all the garrisons in Spain at
conve ointed time, move them in four
milit Tging columns on Madrid, where the
cess ary rebellion had no chance of suc-
— yy’ 2nd with the’help of a ‘‘fifth column”’
ax paciats within the capital — swift-
Atrie® ure the city. And the mercenary
force omy was only to be a reserve
als a or many of the conspiracy gener-
ne Te afraid to have the Moors, who
iards standably enough hated the Span-
: Nd were capable of anything, ap-
On Spanish soil. They felt it might
= a against the rebels in the end,
; ed to avoid bringing the Moors
‘to the business, ad
his Bue on the other hand, acting on
and fe with the help of the Germans
colon; qnans airlifted the Legion and
rebel troops to Spain right after the
ae broke out and let them sack
of cane they entered. On the evidence
Who Sh newspaperman John Whitaker,
Was ve at Franco’s headquarters, it
and te Moors (and of course German
ady an assistance) that enabled him
Dain ane across the whole of southern
rancoj Wards Madrid. Later, when
of the Ist strength began to fail and many
Bame Tebel generals already felt the
amy ee up, ‘‘Mussolini sent Franco an
and ««e,00,000 Italians,” Whitaker notes,
€rman and Italian money brought
rebels More Moors from Africa.’’ The
amy of d not been able to rally an
British. Spaniards to their cause,”’ the
the hice points out. Franco was
h lef- of an army consisting over-
: ingly of foreigners.
looked oormore, unlike Mola, Franco
brutal Orward to a long-drawn-out and
Canta} War. He told Italian Ambassador
last re in April 1937 that:the war would
See three years. His reasoning was
right €n if he managed to enter Madrid
‘alt he would not be able to im-
untry. Political power throughout the
tended’, In other words, he already in-
With fj at that time to go through all Spain
tive g Te and sword and butcher all ac-
“mocrats and republicans.
32 - War did last nearly three years —
§ aoe to be exact. Large numbers of
ards were killed in battle, but still

Mo; Avie
"fell victim to Franco terror.

brin

\

Franco’s propagandists later put out
the story that the terror was on both
sides, and this myth gained currency in
other countries, too, and even some per-
fecily honest people helped to spread it.
But it is a myth all the same. Granted that
excesses occurred at times on the Repub-
lican side. Maddened by the fascists’ per-
fidy, some undisciplined individuals met-

ed out summary, justice, generally egged -

on by the anarchists, then very influential
in Spain. But these were isolated inci-
dents, instinctive outbursts of the peo-
ple’s anger at the savage atrocities of the
fascists.

But the fascist terror had nothing in-
stinctive about it. It was a deliberate and
methodical extermination of political op-
ponents, which dated to before the rebel-
lion. Already at that time the fascists had
murdered hundreds of Republicans, from
vendors of Left newspapers to well-known
progressive politicians. The Falangists
actually had a list of Republicans whom
they had ‘‘sentenced to death,’ and
among those who figured in it were the
few loyal military men. Top of the list
stood the name of Captain Faraudo; sec-
ond, of Lieutenant Castillo. Faraudo was
murdered in the street in June 1936,
Castillo in July.

But once the rebellion was on, the
fascist terror became a veritable orgy of
killing. One of its first victims was

Spain’s great poet Federico Garcia Lorca,
really quite remote from politics but a
democrat by conviction. The reprisals
were not against individuals, however,
but against the people at large. In a vil-
lage near Valladolid, for example, Franco
troops broke into the Casa de Pueblo (one
of the clubhouses set up under the Repub-
lic), where a film was being shown, and
machine-gunned everybody in the place.
In Badajoz over 500 inhabitants were
machine-gunned in the bull-ring. A local
member of Parliament was made to rep-
resent a bull in a “‘bull-fight.”’ Banderillas
were stuck.in his shoulders, he was prick-
ed with picadors’ lances and finally, to
the howls of the fascist mob, was run
through with a sword and the body drag-
ged through the ring.

Such were the reprisals visited on the
“Reds,”’ who made up the overwhelming
majority of the population: according to
historians’ figures, only five percent of all
the people in Spain supported the fascists.

Garriga relates that during the war
the Caudillo (Franco) signed death sen-
tences on captured Republicans every
day. If the sentence called for a lesser

" penalty, he would change it with his own

hand to one of execution. And he revived
the medieval practice of execution by
garroting.

The mass terror continued long after
the war was over. Italy’s Foreign Minis-
ter Ciano, visiting Spain in June 1939, put
down in his‘ diary that 200-250 people were
being shot every day in Madrid and at
least 150 in Barcelona. According to Abel
Plenn, nearly five million Spaniards were
in prison or concentration camps at the
time.

Franco’s massacres of democrats in
Spain can only be likened to the nazi atro-
cities in Germany. Which is logical
enough, for assisting in them were ad-
visers from the Gestapo and the Italian
Ovra.

The British historian Arnold Toynbee,
in his book ‘‘The War and the Neutrals,”
classifies Franco as a ‘“‘neutral’’ and
applauds the ‘‘flexibility’’ that enabled
him to avoid siding with Hitler in the war.
But this is a myth that withers at the
first contact with the facts. Franco did
side with tne Axis as far as his position
and resources allowed. He sent the Blue
Division, which could more accurately be
described as a small ermy, to fight the
Soviet Union. He supplied Germany and
Italy with strategic materials, provided
facilities for their submarine fleets, fur-
nished them with valuable intelligence.

“Franco is deeply and firmly persuad-
ed that his fortunes lie with Germany and
Italy,” Colonel Kramer of the German
General Staff reported to Berlin during
a trip to Spain in 1939. He added that the
Caudillo hated the French and British and
intended to build up the ‘‘closest coopera-

tion with the German armed forces.”
In mid-1942 German Ambassador in
Madrid Stohrer reported: “‘Spain is loyal
to her friendship with Germany and Italy,
and not only out of gratitude or sentiment
but from a clear understanding of her
own interests...”

Franco himself declared in those days
that if need be he would send a million
Spanish soldiers to Berlin to defend the
German capital from the “‘Reds.”’ And in
a telegram to Goring he wrote: ‘I shall
be happy to see the victories of the glor-
ious German air force in the skies of
New York.”

If Franco did not join more actively in
Hitler’s war, it was simply because he
was physically in no position to do so.

However, when Franco realized that
the balance was tipping steadily in favor
of Hitler’s enemies, he was ‘‘seized with
panic,’’ according to foreign residents in
Spain at the time. and began to ease him-
self out. His first action was to alter
Spain’s status from. “‘non-belligerent’’ to
“neutral.’”’ Next he offered his services as
mediator to both the Germans and the
British.

To the new German Ambassador
Miltke, who arrived in Madrid in 1943, he
proposed moves to ‘‘deepen the disagree-
ments between Britain and America, and
also between Britain and Russia,” in
order then to create a general European
front against Bolshevism.

Also in 1943, in talks with British Am-
bassador Samuel Hoare, te cffered Brit-
ain and America a separate peace with
Germany in order to “‘avert the Com-
munist threat’ to Europe. Official Ger-
man documents affirm that Hoare re-
ceived these proposals very attentively
and that many perscns in London viewed

them with favor. Nothing came of -

Franco’s effort, to be sure, but Britain’s
reactionaries appreciated his anti-Com-
munist zeal. In a speech in 1944, Churchill
expressed sympathy for Spain and her
“neutrality.”

That was the first lifebuoy thrown the
sinking Franco regime. And though after
the war that regime was condemned by
the U.N. and nearly all ambassadors were
recalled from Madrid, Franco did not
lose hope of his anti-Sovietism meeting
with recognition. He was prepared to
offer the West Spain’s territory, so im-
mensely important strategically, and as
early as 1950, he began to receive Ameri-
can aid, while in 1953, the agreement on
U.S. bases in Spain was concluded and
the stream of dollars started pouring in
which enabled him to escape economic
disaster. Later on he started building up,
alongside the American link, an alliance
with West Germany, to which he was
drawn by old sympathies.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 25, 1969—PAGE 5