Partial transcript of Spain Betrayed, one of seven films in Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series, narrated by Walter Huston
This is the original transcript for the film, as was shown to US troops prior to Operation Longsword in 1943. Though the script went to lengths to distinguish the Spanish clergy from Christianity, Catholicism and the message of Jesus itself, the depiction of 'the bishops' as one of the pillars of Franco's regime still ultimately drew complaints from Catholic organizations when later screened for civilian audiences, and was accordingly removed from later cuts.
In the previous films, we’ve seen how the peoples of Germany, Italy, and Japan willingly surrendered their democracies and their rights to leaders who swore to solve all of their problems. We have seen how these leaders together plotted the conquest of the whole world. We’ve seen how Hitler, through treachery and force, enslaved Europe. We’ve seen how the Japanese warlords, through fanaticism and terror, subjugated Asia.
[Stock footage from previous films in the series; German tanks in Paris, German soldiers in Russia, the bombing of Rotterdam]
But what about Spain? Why are we fighting Spain? What’s the story there?
Maybe you think you know about Spain.
Guitar! Olive groves! Matadors! Rich wine! Pretty señoritas!
[Stock footage of flamenco dancers, bullfights, religious processions, peaceful olive groves]
Spain is all that, but Spain is more than that, too. And there is a darker side to sunny Spain.
Spain is one of the poorest countries in western Europe. In 1935, a quarter of the population was illiterate. Tuberculosis, rickets, rheumatism, diseases rarer and rarer in prosperous countries like ours, still plague the Spanish people.
Since time immemorial, Spain had been governed by a grim trio–the grandees, the bishops, and the generals. There was a king, sure, but these were the guys who were really in charge.
The grandees were the great lords of Spain, some tracing their ancestry back to the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. On their massive estates spanning millions of acres, thousands of illiterate, poor peasants toiled from long before sunup to long after sundown for starvation wages. It was not uncommon for a man to drop dead from exhaustion. In the summer, when there was no work, the laborers would hunt the field for roots, or leaves, or even bugs–anything to feed their wives and children. Later, when industry and commerce came to Spain, the industrialists and the financiers joined the ranks of the grandees. These modern grandees didn’t own great estates, but they owned factories. Dim places where just like in the countryside, workers toiled in the greasy gloom for just enough bread to fill their bellies. They lost arms to machines, they lost their health to fumes and exertion. The grandees didn’t care. Spain was their country, not the people’s.
[Footage of dire Spanish poverty, taken mostly from Luis Buñuel’s 1935 Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan]
The bishops were the masters of the Catholic Church in Spain. But they had long ago put aside any notion of serving God. Instead, they served the grandees. They directed their priests to preach docility and submission. The people were told to keep their heads down and mouths shut. “If you’re hungry, if your children are hungry, it’s because God wants it that way!” The bishops also ran Spain’s schools–those lucky enough to go to school, the sons of the grandees, were taught that the present order was holy, and any attempt to change it was from the devil. The bishops were compensated handsomely for these services. Jesus Christ went barefoot. He had nowhere to lay his head. He preached love and humility. He preached compassion for the poor and the brotherhood of man. He said that he who gave away all his wealth was holy. But these men who dared to call themselves His representatives grew fat on the largesse of the grandees. They occupied palaces, where they feasted nightly while their flock starved outside. They wore gold rings and necklaces. They even violated their vows of chastity.
[Footage of masses, well-fed clergy, footage from the civil war of a priest haranguing a crowd before the Yoke and Arrows]
But if the sweet words of the bishops were not enough to keep the people in their place, well, that was where the generals came in. The Spanish Army was far removed from the glorious days of Cortés. By the turn of the century it was a poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly motivated force. But that was alright, because the job of the Spanish Army wasn’t to protect the Spanish people from foreign enemies. The Spanish people were the enemy. If the Spaniards got too big for their britches, if they demanded trade unions, or free speech, or representative government, the army would be there to put them back in their place. In 1909, the people of Barcelona came out in protest of the unpopular war in Morocco, a war that was taking away their sons to die in a parched desert for the glory of the grandees and the generals. The army was there to put a stop to all that. In the ensuing slaughter, 100 unarmed men, women, and children were shot down. That was the glory of Spanish arms. The generals liked their job. They liked being the strong arm of the grandees and the bishops. As far as they were concerned, they were Spain, not that filthy rabble called ‘the people.’
[Footage of the Spanish army marching, battle in Morocco]
In 1931, the last king, a playboy called Alfonso, was forced to abdicate. A Republic was formed. This was a shock to the bishops, the grandees, and the generals. But they could adapt. They simply set up massive, well-financed political parties to launder their will as the will of the people. Thanks to lying propaganda, suppression of the opposition, and outright fraud, the old rulers of Spain were able to keep themselves in power even under the new Republic.
[Footage of celebrations in the streets of Madrid after the proclamation of the Republic]
But the people saw a promise in the Republic, even if it was yet unfulfilled. And in the spring of 1936, they elected a new government. It was called the People’s Front, and its mandate was to smash the power of the old trio forever. The Spaniards had voted for no more than those basic rights we Americans take for granted. The right to speak and print whatever you please, without fear of arrest. The right to work for a living, and form a trade union. The right to worship in whatever church one pleases, or no church at all.
In the streets of Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville, the Spaniards danced and sang. Here at last was hope! Here was freedom!
[Footage of celebration upon the election of the People’s Front]
The People’s Front promised to build schools for the nation’s children, schools that would give their pupils a modern education, teach them to think for themselves. Bad for the bishops, who would lose their stranglehold on the minds of the Spanish youth.
The People’s Front promised to cut down the bloated army budget, to redirect this money towards hospitals, libraries, tractors, and cultural development. Bad for the generals, who would no longer be able to command the people at the point of bayonets.
But worst of all, the People’s Front promised to break up the great estates and give land to the peasants who worked the fields, and to legalize trade unions. Bad for the grandees, who would no longer grow fat on the tireless toil of the people.
The bishops, the generals, and the grandees, saw power slipping out of their hands. And they weren’t going to take this lying down. They knew their only chance to preserve their positions was to throw out the People’s Government and if possible, smash the Republic entirely.
But what does this have to do with the war? With Hitler and Mussolini?
Well, Il Duce and Der Fuehrer had been watching Spain. They had long-planned the conquest of Europe. But France, always an obstacle, was in the way. If the fascist powers wanted to rule the continent, he had to get rid of the French Republic. France is bordered on one side by Germany, another by Italy, and a third by Spain. The last thing Hitler and Mussolini wanted was a democratic government in Spain, which might provide support to the French against Axis aggression. But a fascist Spain would instead be an ally to the dictators, and France would be surrounded.
[A map of Europe appears. Germany and Italy are black. Spain slowly turns black, as the encirclement is depicted.]
So Hitler and Mussolini got in touch with the sinister trio in Spain. Spanish officers and businessmen met with their German and Italian counterparts clandestinely, in Spain and abroad. And slowly, they worked out a plan.
The Spanish generals and their backers would be provided with planes, tanks, and whole regiments of troops. They would use this army, provided on credit, to destroy Spanish democracy, and force the people back into the hopeless poverty and ignorance they had just escaped. In exchange, Spain would become a Nazi colony in the Mediterranean.
On the 17th of July, 1936, the generals struck. In cities all over Spain, the army came out of its barracks and opened fire on the people. They arrested mayors, governors, city officials, school teachers, and union leaders, who were lucky if they got a five minute ‘trial’ in front of army officers, before they were led out and shot like criminals.
Who were the men who sought to strangle Spanish liberty in its cradle? For a front-man, Hitler and Mussolini picked a portly little general called Francisco Franco. He was a soldier of no great ability, but vicious, and a convinced hater of democracy. He would be Hitler’s ‘gauleiter’ in Spain, and when the Republic was smashed, he would rule the country for the benefit of himself and the old trio, and of course, for the benefit of Der Fuehrer.
[Footage of Franco waving from a balcony, discussing strategy with his officers.]
But there were others. There was the sadistic, drunken sex pervert General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, who bragged over the radio of the ‘fun’ his men would have with the women of their enemies. Under his bloody rule in Seville, more than fifty thousand were ruthlessly murdered. There was General Emilio Mola, a humorless martinet who stated, “It is necessary to spread terror, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. Anyone who helps or hides a democrat will be shot.”*
From Il Duce these traitors got a ‘volunteer’ corps, 70,000 strong, composed of Italian regular soldiers and filled out with Blackshirt fanatics. From Der Fuehrer they got dozens of the newest Nazi warplanes, and pilots to fly them. From the Spanish colony of Morocco, they recruited Moorish native volunteers. The Moors had a reputation as ferocious fighters, and only a decade earlier they had been fighting against the Spanish invaders of their homeland. But the Moors came from desperately poor little villages, and they were easily lured into the ranks by promises of loot and glory. Finally, there was the Legion. Though the Legion was composed mostly of Spaniards, they were the scum of the nation–psychopaths, common criminals, murderers, thieves, rapists, sadists. These atavists, unfit for any civilized society, found a place in this outfit. Turned loose in the savage colonial wars of Africa, they could inflict massacre, robbery, and torture upon the natives to their hearts’ content. Now they were coming home, to subject their fellow Spaniards to the same.
Franco and the traitor generals flung this mercenary horde at the gates of Madrid. With their terrible army, and with their shiny new tanks from Italy and fast new planes from Germany, the generals bet it would be easy to smash the Spanish people back into slavery.
They bet wrong.
[The CRASH of an artillery shell. A montage of battle footage–Madrid, Jarama, Guadalajara, the Ebro]
The Spaniards had tasted freedom for a little while, and they weren’t going to give it up without a fight.
But because their own military had betrayed them, they could not count on any army for protection. So through their unions and political parties, they organized militias, like the minutemen of our revolution. The great majority of these militiamen had never held a gun in their lives. They did not have the weeks of rigorous training you fighting men received before shipping overseas. They were farmers, mechanics, longshoremen, bricklayers, railwaymen, carpenters, shopkeepers, teachers, students, accountants, doctors, scientists, lawyers, poets. Even those pretty señoritas picked up rifles and went to the front alongside their brothers and husbands.
They weren’t soldiers, but they fought with the courage of epic heroes. As they marched to battle they sang, “¡No Pasarán!’--”So long as one militiaman remains, the traitors will not pass!”
All qualified military observers predicted Madrid would fall within a month. She held out for three years.
Like the Americans of 1776, the Spanish people showed the whole world how a free people defends its liberty against tyrants.
Oh, Franco and his buddies were furious! So were the grandees! And the bishops! How dare this rabble resist them? How dare these filthy commoners, this trash, defend themselves?
The traitors wrought a terrible vengeance.
Franco filled the sky with his new German planes. Bombs rained down on Madrid, on Barcelona, on Valencia, on Málaga. The traitors did not restrict themselves to military targets. They dropped bombs on men coming home from work. On women standing in lines for milk. On children playing in the streets.
[A violin wails as the camera pans slowly over the carnage left after a rebel bombing raid. Corpses of men, women, and children lined up solemnly at the edge of the street, with the rubble of ruined houses at their backs.]
The Republic painted red crosses on the roofs of hospitals and children’s shelters, hoping to deter the rebels from destroying these buildings. It was a heartbreaking display of naiveté, a sign of the Spanish people’s desperation to believe there was some glimmer of decency left in the hearts of their enemies. The German airmen used these crosses as targets.
In Seville, Granada, Salamanca, Burgos, all the cities where Franco and his generals ruled, the firing squads worked daily.
Ever been late to church? In Franco’s Spain, that meant you didn’t love the bishops enough.
[The crack of rifles.]
Ever groused about your boss? In Franco’s Spain, that meant you didn’t love the grandees enough.
[The crack of rifles. Footage of the Badajoz massacre]
This is the bullring of the city of Badajoz, in the southwestern corner of Spain. But no bulls have died here today. No, these are the bodies of the men of Badajoz who took up arms to defend their city against the traitors and their mercenary armies. And they weren’t killed in battle. They surrendered, expecting they would be treated as prisoners of war. Instead, they were stripped and beaten by the Legion. Finally they were herded into the bullring and machine-gunned by the hundreds. Their only crime was to defend their democratically elected government.
The generals, the true traitors, had the temerity to accuse them of “treason” against Spain. But it is plain to all that these brave militiamen were loyal. Loyal not only to their Republic and to their people, but loyal to the best sentiments of mankind that every American cherishes as his highest values, loyal to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And it is plain to all that they died not like traitors, but like free men.
Franco’s terror was carefully organized with the aid of Gestapo advisors from Berlin, calculated to break the spirit of the Spanish people, according to the best ‘scientific’ techniques of the ‘master race.’
But it only stiffened the resolve of the stubborn Spaniards. Now the defenders of the Republic knew what they were fighting for, and just as important, what they were fighting against. Now they knew what defeat would mean for themselves and their loved ones.
And what about the rest of the world? What did the great powers, France and Great Britain, do, while Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini slaughtered the Spanish people by the hundreds of thousands? What did we do?
Well, France and Britain were tired of war. So were we. So Britain came up with a nice sounding idea, called the “Non-Intervention Committee.” The idea was that if no foreign power sold arms to either side in Spain, the sooner the war would be over, and the less people would die. It was a sound idea in theory. But it didn’t account for the fact that what was happening in Spain was not really a civil war at all. One of the ‘sides’ was the legitimate, elected government of the Spanish People, and the other side was an Axis invasion of Spain aided by a small minority of native traitors.
And it didn’t account for the fact that committees and treaties meant less than dirt to Hitler and his stooge Mussolini. While the democracies scrupulously adhered to the ‘Non-Intervention,’ the dictators happily went on supplying weapons and fuel to Franco and the generals, while publicly insisting they were doing no such thing.
For three years, abandoned by the democracies, the Spaniards fought alone against the overwhelming might of the Axis powers. They fought the same fight we are fighting today, and they fought it while the rest of the world preferred to pretend there was no fight going on at all.
But it was a fight they could not win. For every plane they shot out of the sky, Hitler would give Franco five more. For every tank they destroyed, Mussolini would supply a dozen.
By now you may be beginning to understand why Spain is different from the other powers we are fighting. Unlike the peoples of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Spaniards did not willingly surrender their freedom. It had to be stolen from them, by terror and massacre.
In April of 1939, Franco marched into Madrid. Victorious.
[Footage of Franco’s victory parade in Madrid, with special emphasis on Italian and German troops participating]
But the end of the war did not mean peace. The firing squads kept working. The prisons filled to the bursting, so that by 1940, a full 2% of Spain’s population was in jail. For the Spaniards, the terror never ended. Spain descended into dire poverty, as the old trio reestablished themselves. More than 50% of Spain’s already meager national budget was allocated for guns, planes, and rifles. What was left went to fatten up the grandees and the bishops. Once again, the Spaniards were scrounging in the gutters for food. Once again they were working from sun-up to sun-down for not enough to feed themselves, let alone their families. Once again, they were slaves.
Nearly a million Spaniards crossed the French border ahead of the oncoming fascist armies, to escape Franco’s ‘justice.’ Most were not so lucky. SInce the ‘end’ of the war in Spain, more than 50,000 have been shot without trial.
Barely five months after Franco’s victory parade in Madrid, Germany unleashed its ‘blitzkrieg’ against Poland. France and Britain declared war on Germany. The great conflict had begun. Franco was thrilled. He expected a quick, tidy German victory, and that he would ride on Hitler’s coattails all the way to the prizes he had coveted for years.
What were they?
The first was Gibraltar. A little spit of land jutting out of Spain’s southern coast, Gibraltar had belonged to Britain for two-hundred years. The people of Gibraltar weren’t Spanish – they didn’t consider themselves Spanish, and they did not want to be part of Spain. But Franco wanted it anyway. His pride couldn’t bear the presence of foreigners on a strip of land he considered his by right.
Hitler wanted Franco to have Gibraltar, too. The reason for that was simple. Germany and Italy were fighting Britain in North Africa, and they were having trouble throwing the British back to Cairo as was their plan. Britain could supply her forces by one of two routes: one was through the Indian and Red Seas, and the Suez Canal. The other was through the Strait of Gibraltar. If Franco took Gibraltar, then he could close the straits to British shipping, and starve British forces in North Africa of the materiél they needed to resist the Axis.
[A map appears of the Mediterranean. The relevant countries and positions are indicated, and the Strait is presented as a large trap snapping shut.]
In July of 1941, Franco finally worked up the guts to jump in. He declared war on Russia, which Hitler had just attacked despite his treaty of non-aggression with that country, and shortly thereafter was at war with Britain as well.
Immediately, his armies assaulted the tiny British garrison at Gibraltar. But Franco’s soldiers had gotten used to brutalizing defenseless civilians. They weren’t ready for a real fight.
[Footage of the Battle of Gibraltar.]
After weeks of throwing themselves onto the British defenses, Franco went crying to Hitler for help, just like he’d done in 1936. He got it.
[Footage of German troops on the march. Ominous music.]
After weeks more of fighting, the British were forced to surrender. Gibraltar was Franco’s. Which meant it was Hitler’s. He’d got one of the things he wanted out of the war.
But his other goal was a little loftier.
Franco and his crew had never really gotten over the old glory days of Columbus, Cortés, Ferdinand, Isabella, and the Emperor Charles, when Spain had ruled the world. They couldn’t get over the fact that Spain had lost her vast empire in the new world. And they wanted to fix all of that.
The ‘Phalanx’ party, Franco’s tool for manipulating opinion in Spain, had a theory not dissimilar to the Nazi theory of the blood, which stated that anybody anywhere in the world with a drop of German blood in his veins owed his first and last loyalty to the Fuehrer, no matter what country he happened to be born in or what political philosophy he subscribed to. Likewise, the Phalanxists believed that all of the republics of Latin America, from the Rio Grande down to the Tierra del Fuego, belonged to Spain by right, because Spain had once governed there, and because Spanish blood still runs in the veins of their people.
[A map of Latin America is shown. The borders of the old Spanish empire at its height dissolve into those of 1941.]
Franco fully expected that once the war was won, and Germany had become master of the world, Latin America would be turned over to him, and the empire reborn. To that end, Spanish propagandists were hard at work in the republics south of our border, through the ‘Exterior Service’ of the Phalanx. They spread Nazi lies among the peoples of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Uruguay, and elsewhere, insisting that the states of Latin America were enslaved by American imperialism, that they would only truly be free when they had come back under the loving guidance of mother Spain, that the peoples of ‘Hispanic’ blood should rise up against the ‘Yankee oppressor,’ and ‘the lie of democracy,’ and take their place in the ‘New Order’ which Hitler was forging with the help of Franco, Mussolini, and the Japanese warlords.
But that was a dream for the future. Franco had another problem for the moment, a little closer to home. That problem was Portugal, and its stubborn leader, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar…
*In fact, Mola said, "anyone who helps or hides a communist will be shot." The OWI ordered the judicious alteration.
