Hitler would have supported the Red Terror in Spain (and Islam)

[Menydh]

The text is a translation from Spanish of an article by North American Historian Stanley G. Payne, for his newly released book Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II.

Originally Posted by Stanley Payne

The day that Hitler considered supportting the "Reds"


We know much of the political attitudes of Hitler, but we know less about his personal opinions. He dictated two books, in 1924 and 1928, but he used to write from his own pen less than other big dictators --even less than Franco, for example-- and he did not leave personal papers after his death. For this reason, the best sources to rebuild his strictly personal opinions about an infinity of issues have been his conversations, much as the different versions of these conversations may be uncertain. The most systematic source are the notes by a military officer which are compiled in the 700 pages of his unofficial Conversations, from 1942 to 1945. In those two books Spain is rarely mentioned, as it was important to Hitler only because of the Civil War and then in 1940, when he was trying that Spain joined the war to conquer Gibraltar.

He did not like his only meeting with Franco, in Hendaya in October 1940. Hitler was used to dominate in all conversations. But he found in Franco a Spaniard who was surprisingly loquacious and who insisted in talking about himself. He bored the Führer with two hours of stories about the importance of Morocco in the history of Spain, and other stories about his personal military campaigns in Northern Africa; all of it very classical from the Caudillo. Having to listen to so many details of what he deemed to be an inrrelevant colonial campaign was something that annoyed Hitler, for which he later told his interpreter Paul Schmidt, that before going through the same again he would rather have "three or four teeth pulled off".

The Führer and Islam

However, he developed a totally enthusiastic impresion of the military command of Muñoz Grandes and of the soldiers of the Spanish Blue Division. He said that, although the Spanish troops appeared to be "tremendously undisciplined" and "a clique of little street urchins", they "never gave in one palm of land" when they were attacked: "It is not possible to imagine more dauntless men. It is very few times that they look for cover. They show a total disregard for death. I know that our men are always happy of having the Spanish near to them, in their sector."

He classified the Spaniards as "the only Latins ready to fight", in opposition to Italians and French. However, due to his ignorance of the History of Spain and of his racial ideas, the impresions of Hitler were generally negative. To Hitler, they were disgustingly identified with Catholicism, and Hitler detested Spanish Catholicism even more than Christianism in general. He rated Spain from his usual racial fantasies, speculating that "in the Spanish people there is a mix of Gothic, Frankish and Moorish blood".

In his ignorance, he also had the idea that Queen Isabella was "the biggest whore in history", apparently confusing her with Isabel II.

In his opinion, the Islam hegemony produced "an intellectual era and the best and happiest in all senses of the history of Spain". He appeared to have no knowledge of the Reconquista or of the Spanish Golden Age. Generally speaking, Hitler had Islam in a very high regard and on one occasion he proclaimed that it was the best of all religions, for its theological simplicity and for its insistance on the holy war. However in Spain, after Islam, arrived the sourge of Christianity. Hitler regretted that Islam had not expanded through Western Europe.

If Christianism had been substituted in Germany, he believed that the innate racial superiority of Germans, combined with Islam, would have taken them to conquer much of the world during the Middle Ages.

Although he helped Franco in the Spanish Civil War, for strategical reasons, Hitler looked at the revolutionary Left in Spain as a justified answer "to a long series of atrocities. It is impossible to conceive how much cruelty, ignominy and falseness has meant Christianism for our world."

He was very disappointed in that Franco did not return the favour and got directly into the World War. He insisted in that Franco's regime could never survive a possible defeat of the Third Reich. Although, in reality, Franco's regime collaborated with Hitler's Germany much more than any other European neutral Government, in the diplomacy, as well as in trade and economic relations, cultural exchange, propaganda organization, and even in technical military aspects. Among them the envoy of a special division of Spanish troops, the famed Blue Division, to fight along the Wehrmacth in the Russian frontline.

In fact this nexus between Franco's regime and Nazi Germany stained the Spanish regime with what has often been called "the Axis stigma". It forced Spain to a situation of isolation since the end of the World War and until the start of the Cold War.

Hitler even regretted that it was the Communist threat that forced him intervene in Spain. Because, if it had not been so, "the clergy would have been exterminated" and that would have been better for the country. Although he admitted that, in general, the religious activities in Spain were no different to other countries, on one occasion he confessed himself amazed at the religious obscurantism of Franco, and he said to be surprised when he learnt that Franco's wife used to attend daily Mass. Adding in a gratuitous way that "the Spanish women" (of who he knew none, personally) "are incredibly stupid" aside of their education level.

In 1943 Hitler was convinced that the Spanish State was gearing towards "a new disaster". "We must be careful not to put Franco's regime in the same level as [Spanish] National-Syndicalism or [Italian] Fascism", since he argued that the latter were revolutionary while the former was disgustingly clerical and reactionary. Of the approximantely 50,000 Spanish workers in the German industry of war, the vast majority were former Republicans recruited from France to improve their economic conditions. Mainly former trade unionists from the Anarchist CNT. They worked well in the factories and Hitler got very positive reports on them, which led him to the conclusion that these "Spanish Reds are not Reds the way we understand it". He believed that they were very worthy and he wanted to have them "as a reserve in case that there was a second Spanish civil war". He fantasized that "together with the survivors of the old Falange, they will make up the more reliable force to our dispostion."

However Hitler valued the fact that the Spanish media, at least until 1943, granted the Reich a more favourable treatment than in any other neutral State. So much so that he got to say that "the Spanish media is the best in the World!" Apart from their repellent religion, the Spanish were noticeable for their elegance and style. "Spain is a nation to which it is impossible not to develop feelings of affection. The Spaniards are full of grandeur and, in war, the courage... I don't think that I have found anyone who does not profess a profound admiration for the Spanish." The materialistic values of North America and the heroic ideals of the Spaniards kept them deeply apart from each other.

The worst of Spain for the German dictaror, aside from Catholicism, were its leaders. Hitler apparently ignored that Serrano Suñer had been the best friend of Germany in Madrid and he considered Hitler partly responsible for the fact that Spain did not join the World War. Hitler accused Serrano of being "jesuitic" and he declared that since his first meeting with him, he "was conscious of a feeling of disgust".

He called Franco a "Latin charlatan" and he fantasized that, once he had won the war in Europe, he would intervene in Spain for a second time to bring down its regime, replacing it with a truly "revolutionary" system led by Falangists and Anarcho-Syndicalists. This would kill off for good the "clerical-monarchic dirt" that ruled in Madrid.