Summer 1941: Franco's Blunder
España No Ha Muerto
“We are confronted by the twin dangers of Bolshevism and Masonic-Plutocrat capitalism. The spirit of both is Judaic. But the Spanish people already know how to deal with this menace. We have defeated it once before on the battlefield, and we shall do so again. And this time, we are not fighting alone, because this time all of the nations of Europe are fighting together in a brotherly struggle for their common civilization and traditions.”
- Generalissimo Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, speech to the National Council upon the occasion of war with Great Britain, 28 June 1941
“Paco’s really fucked us now, hasn’t he?”
- General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra to his daughter Maruja, 3 July 1941
“This time, we shall pass.”
- Spanish socialist lawyer and politician Fernando de los Ríos to fellow exile Indalecio Prieto, July 1941
“The government of General Franco is a Quisling regime, imposed upon the Spanish people by the mechanized might of the Axis powers. Indeed, the Spaniards may boast of having been the first to bear arms against this gang of tyrants that now menaces the whole world. It is to the great shame of the free nations that they fought their fight alone. But the day is soon coming when Spain, and all of Europe, will breathe free air again.”
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘fireside chat,’ 28 April 1942
Excerpt from The Spanish Ordeal by Stanley Payne
After the stunning fall of France in a mere four weeks and the capture or destruction of a significant portion of the British Expeditionary Force [1], Franco became convinced that Germany had won. He remarked to Serrano Suñer, “the English cannot fight alone; they are beaten.” But his natural prudence asserted itself, and he refrained from declaring Spain’s belligerence at that moment.
Nevertheless, Franco dispatched a telegram to Berlin, congratulating Hitler on the ‘spectacular victory’ achieved by his forces. He signed off with his customary, ‘¡Arriba España!’ but, tellingly, appended, ‘¡Arriba Alemania y Arriba Italia!’
Excerpt from The Last Crusade: Spain in the Second World War by Wayne Bowen
In the aftermath of the German victory over France and the Low Countries, the Spanish press dropped all pretense of neutrality. Little changed for periodicals like Informaciones, which had always been openly pro-Nazi. But even ‘moderate’ publications like the Catholic-conservative ABC declared that “Germany is fighting the same war that Spain fought.” Across the country, local FET delegates and even clergy harangued huge audiences on the virtues of the Axis and the iniquities of the Allies. “This is a battle,” declared one ardent young Falangist speaker in Valladolid, “against the Jew international that controls the whole world except for Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain.”
Excerpt from “Spain’s Army on the Eve of War,” by Rafael Rodrigo Fernández, published The Spanish Military in the Twentieth Century (translated from Spanish)
In the summer of 1940, the Spanish Army numbered some 350,000 men, divided into ten Army Corps and twenty-five divisions. Each division of line infantry was composed of three infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, one battalion of sappers, one signals company, one administrative company, one medical company, and one veterinary company.
Nineteen of these divisions were stationed on the Spanish mainland, with another six in Morocco. The distribution was as follows:
- Captaincy General of Madrid - Guadarrama Army Corps
- 11th Division (Madrid)
- 12th Division (Badajoz)
- 13th Division (Madrid)
- Captaincy General of Seville - Andalusia Army Corps
- 21st Division (Seville)
- 22nd Division (Algeciras and Gibraltar)
- 23rd Division (Granada)
- Captaincy General of Valencia - Turia Army Corps
- 31st Division (Valencia)
- 32nd Division (Alicante)
- Captaincy General of Barcelona - Urgel Army Corps
- 41st Division (Barcelona, stationed in Morocco)
- 42nd Mountain Division (Gerona)
- 43rd Mountain Division (Lérida)
- Captaincy General of Zaragoza - Aragón Army Corps
- 51st Division (Zaragoza)
- 52nd Mountain Division (Huesca)
- Captaincy General of Burgos - Navarre Army Corps
- 61st Division (Burgos)
- 62nd Division (Pamplona)
- Captaincy General of Valladolid - Castille Army Corps
- 71st Division (Valladolid)
- 72nd Division (Oviedo and Asturias)
- Captaincy General of Coruña - Galicia Army Corps
- 81st Division (Lugo)
- 82nd Division (Vigo)
- Ceuta - Morocco Army Corps
- 91st (Ceuta - Tetuán)
- 92nd (Larache)
- 93rd (Xauen
- Melilla - Maestrazgo Army Corps
- 101st (Melilla)
- 102nd (Villa de Sanjurjo)
Along with the ‘regular’ army was the Legion, stationed in North Africa, and consisting of three ‘Tercios’ (equivalent to regiments), with three ‘banderas’ (equivalent to battalions) each, with the exception of the first Tercio, which had five banderas.
Finally was the ‘Groups of Regular Indigenous Forces’ (GFRI), the ‘moors’ which had loomed so large in Republican imagination during the Civil War. There were 10 GFRI formations, each of regimental strength, with three battalions. Both the legionary and Moorish formations were larger and more heavily officered than the regular peninsular units. [2]
Excerpt from A World at Arms, by Gerhard Weinberg
Spain’s entry into the war was by degrees. The German victories in the west had deeply impressed Franco, and over the course of 1940 he had slowly shifted his country closer to the Axis. In the autumn of that year, a new trade agreement had been concluded with Berlin, which provided for greater German shares in Spanish agricultural concerns and especially the mining industries in the north. In August, the cautious monarchist Beigbeder was removed from the foreign ministry and replaced with the fervently pro-Axis Serrano Suñer. Later in that month, Himmler made his infamous state visit to Spain, where he attended a bullfight, and then spoke privately with the Generalissimo for several hours, in the course of which Franco was apparently assured that Spain’s entry into the war would be compensated by territorial concessions in North Africa (at the same time as Hitler promised the Vichy authorities that no such thing would happen). The personal meeting between Hitler and Franco at Hendaye that Autumn confirmed the informal agreement made with Himmler a month earlier, and Spain and Germany signed a secret protocol committing Spain to enter the war by the New Year. In December, the British ambassador was ejected from Madrid.
Nevertheless in the winter of 1940 - ‘41, the ‘Caudillo’ got cold feet. The New Year’s deadline lapsed, without any Spanish declaration of war, much to Hitler’s outrage. Serrano Suñer apologized to Von Ribbentrop on his brother-in-law’s behalf, explaining vaguely that “Spain’s position had become unfavorable.” In his diary, Goebbels ranted about the “gutless little reactionary” Franco.
This brief reversal lasted until the spring, and Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans. The invincibility of German arms seemed again confirmed, and upon the fall of Athens Franco prepared to declare war immediately. But once again he backed out at the last moment.
It was not until the Summer of 1941, and the opening of the Soviet front, that the fate of not only Germany, but of Spain, was sealed.
While Franco’s sympathies had very much been with the Axis from the start, and he wished for Spain to wind up on the winning side, he had little personal quarrel with France or the Anglo-American countries, besides a generalized distrust towards the nations he viewed as corrupted by freemasonry and democracy. But the USSR was a different matter. As the citadel of world communism, Franco held Soviet Russia directly responsible for having instigated Spain's hideous civil war, and he viewed bolshevism as the premier threat to Europe in general and Iberia in particular.
The Caudillo was known for being cold and reserved, but this was in no small part an emotional response. On 28 June, 1941, Franco drafted a declaration of war upon the Soviet Union, and presented it to his cabinet. Later that day, he delivered a public address in the Plaza Monumental in Madrid, where he announced to the Spanish people and to the world Spain’s entry into this ‘noble crusade.’
Two days later, the United Kingdom declared war on Spain.
Excerpt from Even The Olives Bled: The Spanish People in War and Peace, by Ronald Fraser
…the declaration of war was greeted with dismay by the greater part of the Spaniards. Even Franco’s own security services had to admit in their internal reporting that, “the people are weary of war, and many of them say that the Caudillo has made a very bad decision.” In Madrid and Seville, men and women were reported weeping in the streets. While the mood in the traditionally conservative regions of the northwest was at least receptive, with little reported open dissent, it was still cautious, with especially monarchists of the old-style muttering that they were unsure about the “fascist war.”
The most ominous response was in Málaga, a traditional left-wing stronghold. When a young deputy from the FET gave a speech to a crowd in the old square, exhorting them to “rise up in defense of the Fatherland,” and urging young men in particular to rally to the colors, the response was less than enthusiastic. At first, the crowd ignored him, and when he urged them “not to be cowards,” they began to cry, “¡No más guerra! No more war!” Soon the chanting went from dissatisfied to seditious, and cries of “¡Viva la República!” and “¡Muerte al fascismo!” were heard. The young falangist activist barely escaped with his life, as the crowd mobbed his podium. The mood spread, and soon Málaga was in the grip of a full-blown riot, as masses of workers rampaged through the streets shouting, “No más guerra!” and “¡Pan! Bread!” Emblems of the regime, such as red-gold banners, Francoist eagles, and posters of the Caudillo were attacked and defaced. Falangists in uniform, and even some women of the Seccion Feminina, were beaten, at least one to death. The Policía Armada was unable to cope, and the riot took a battalion of troops to quell, with forty-five dead, almost all of them workers.
The only truly enthusiastic response to the war came from two diametrically opposed sectors of the Spanish population.
The first was the ideologically committed fascists of the Falange, such as Victor de la Serna, who published the Naziphile paper Informaciones, and exulted that “Europe’s time has come at last.” In Valladolid, youth from the FET roistered drunkenly in the streets, crying “¡Arriba Hitler!” and attacked passersby who did not share their glee.
The other was that hardcore of Republican dissidents who had never given up the fight against Franco, and who saw before most the massive blunder the Caudillo had made. Manuel Cortés, a socialist, had spent the three years since the end of the Civil War in hiding, literally concealed in the walls and floorboards of his own home, cared for by his wife and daughter, who insisted to the authorities they did not know what had become of him. Cortés emerged only at night, when the curtains were drawn, and the lights were off. When he came out the evening of the 28th to eat, he found the women crying. “They told me, ‘Spain is in the war now.’” I said to them, ‘why are you crying? You should be dancing!’ They thought it would mean fascism for a century, but I knew Germany would lose the war, and Franco would lose with her.”
[1] – the POD is that France falls even quicker, and a slightly smaller portion of the BEF is successfully evacuated from Dunkirk. The difference isn't big enough to significantly alter the trajectory of the war, but it's just enough to alter Franco's psychology to the point where he's willing to bring Spain into it.
[2] - information here is taken almost verbatim from "El Ejército Español en 1940" https://web.archive.org/web/2016030...oads/tx_iugm/COMUNICACIONES_LOS_EJERCITOS.pdf
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