Franco and Hitler : Spain, Germany, and World War II

by Stanley G. Payne

• ISBN13: 9780300151220
• ISBN10: 0300151225
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-02-24
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Was Franco sympathetic to Nazi Germany? Why didn't Spain enter World War II? In what ways did Spain collaborate with the Third Reich? How much did Spain assist Jewish refugees? This is the first book in any language to answer these intriguing questions. Stanley Payne, a leading historian of modern Spain, explores the full range of Franco's relationship with Hitler, from 1936 to the fall of the Reich in 1945. But as Payne brilliantly shows, relations between these two dictators were not only a matter ofrealpolitik. These two titanic egos engaged in an extraordinary tragicomic drama often verging on the dark absurdity of a Beckett or Ionesco play. Whereas Payne investigates the evolving relationship of the two regimes up to the conclusion of World War II, his principal concern is the enigma of Spain's unique position during the war, as a semi-fascist country struggling to maintain a tortured neutrality. Why Spain did not enter the war as a German ally, joining with Hitler to seize Gibraltar and close the Mediterranean to the British navy, is at the center of Payne's narrative. Franco's only personal meeting with Hitler, in 1940 to discuss precisely this, is recounted here in groundbreaking detail that also sheds significant new light on the Spanish government's vacillating policy toward Jewish refugees, on the Holocaust, and on Spain's German connection throughout the duration of the war.

Author Biography

Stanley Payne is Hilldale-Jaume Vicens Vives Professor of History Emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a world authority on the history of European fascism and is the author of many books on Spanish and modern European history, including The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism and The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933–1936, both published by Yale University Press. He lives in Madison, WI.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
From Civil War to World War
The Spanish Civil War	p. 3
Hitler's Strategy in the Civil War	p. 20
Military and International Significance of the Civil War	p. 32
A Tilted Neutrality	p. 44
"Nonbelligerence"
Franco's Temptation	p. 61
The Meeting at Hendaye and Its Aftermath	p. 87
The Zenith of Collaboration	p. 114
Temptation Continues	p. 128
The Blue Division	p. 146
Temptation Abates	p. 155
Temptation Ends	p. 180
The Struggle to Escape the "Axis Stigma"
Spanish Diplomacy and the Holocaust (I)	p. 209
Spanish Diplomacy and the Holocaust (II)	p. 221
Neutrality by Compulsion	p. 236
The End of the Relationship	p. 253
Conclusion	p. 266
Notes	p. 277
Index	p. 309
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