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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Concise and authoratative, June 3, 2008
This review is from: Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II (Hardcover)
Payne gives us a concise and authoritative account of the relationship between Hitler and Franco before and during WW2. The relationship is characterized by Franco's constant attempt to milk everything he can from the Germans while Hitler vacillates in interest in Spain. Ironically, it was probably best for Hitler and Franco that Spain never entered the war (despite Franco's constant promises that it would). Even if Hitler would have gone through Spain to take Gibraltar, Spain's military and economy were in such abysmal shape that, in the long run, Spain would have been a liability rather than an asset. (A curious scenario: the Allies land in Spain in 1943 instead of North Africa).
FaH may be of limited interest for most WW2 enthusiasts but it is well done and presented in a concise style. Even though the subject matter is a bit dry, at least it moves along nicely. It's mostly "high politics" so you don't really get much of a feel for what was going on in Spain at the time; I would have liked to know more about the success (or lack thereof) of the massive pro-German propaganda campaigns. How did the majority of the Spanish people see the war? Did they share Franco's (proclaimed) desire to fight with the Axis? There is also a chapter or two about the Blue Division (Spanish volunteers on the Eastern Front) but, personally, I would have liked a more in-depth look at them.
Anyway, HaF is well done history.
Recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EXCELLENT HISTORY AND ANALYSIS, May 29, 2010
Among the many controversies which still exist about WW2,the relations between Hitler and Franco have not,so far, been analyzed in depth.The book authored by Stanley Payne has one purpose:to address this question.Indeed,many articles and book touched this topic but there has not been any synthesis in this respect.
Payne concludes that Hitler's attitude toward Spain was ambivalent.Despite the fact that the he had a high respect for Spanish valor,he was generaly ignorant of the country,pontificating that "in the Spanish people there is a mixture of Gothic,Frankish and Moorish blood", the native Celtic-Iberian population being presumably nonexistent.Isabella,the Catholic queen was,in his view,the greatest harlot in history and opined that had Islam conquered Spain forever,humanity would have gained only benefits from this fact.One must also remember that Hitler regarded the Spaniards as the only Latins "willing to fight".
The special relationship between Hitler and Franco and their countries developed as a result of the Spanish Civil War.Spanish public figures hoped that Germany would be the source which would help modernize and industrialize Spain.This relationship sagged somewhat between the end of the Civil War and the fall of France.Franco thought,after France's defeat,that Hitler had actually won the war,however he constantly refused to make any concessions to the Nazi dictator.The famous-and only-meeting between the two in Ocober,1940 produced a commitment by Spain to enter the war as Hitler's ally,but this never happened mainly because Frnco was always suspicious of Hitler.Another reason was that Churchill played an important role in making sure that Spain remain neutral.This he had achieved by successfully bribing officers in Spain through a notorious Mallorcan dealer,Juan March.To be more precise,13 million dollars were paid in bribes to various Spanish recipients during the whole war.
Payne offers the reader a panoramic description about the "Blue Division" which Frnco sent to Russia to aid the Germans.In addition,two very good and extensive chapters are devoted to Spain and its attitude toward the Jews and Jewish refugees.By the spring of 1942,thousands of Jewish refugees were allowed into Spain ,albeit the light anti-semitic atmosphere which was part of the Spanish mentality.
What finally emerges from this splendid study is Franco's supposed endorsement of Hitler's policies and his efforts to adhere to his 1940 agreements with the German dictator.The economic pressure that Britain and the US put on Franco's regime has finally convinced him to abandon Hitler.
This is a fascinating and an extremely informative book,supported by an excellent analysis of the events mentioned written by a master historian.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Class and Incisive, February 7, 2009
Writing about a man who amused himself by composing lists of races to be exterminated, their order of extermination, and who then blithely administered the process, is very hard. If Hitler (or Stalin or Mao, who indulged in the same amusements on a far more massive scale) could be adequately described, it would be the stomach churning stuff of sordid fiction and not of history.
Franco, by contrast, was to much of the world uninteresting and of little impact. In a way, boring.
But, by showing how these two obliquely related characters with their tangential worldviews worked together -- or didn't as was often the case -- Payne has artfully illuminated both in a way you will see nowhere else.
Payne shows Franco as a gritty, plain thought man who understood his Mediterranean world just as Charles V would have: the eastern and western Mediterranean and the Atlantic approaches to Africa, America, and Northern Europe. Vastly more impoverished than Charles or his son Philip II, Franco strained to manage his world on limited resources. To advance his ambitions, he needed the wealth he thought, erroneously, that Hitler could provide.
Payne shows Hitler's essential provincialism: a man who knew little of his world and saw less; a man who's judgment was limited in range but whose egotism and self centeredness drove the world into the abyss. Hitler's inability to grasp Franco's needs, so peripheral to his own, reveal the size and scope of his inadequacies and do so in his own voice, a remarkable insight you won't find elsewhere.
Equally, Franco's inability to understand the weaknesses of Fascism and the role of the major powers helps us to see the limitations of Vladimir Putin, Cesar Chavez and others of the newly revived Mussolini school of government.
This is a fine work, and well written too.
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