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In early July 1936, two men, a spy and a reporter, sit down to lunch at a London restaurant. Located in The Strand, this venue is as establishment as it gets. It's a haven of the British elite. Chandeliers illuminate the all-male, street-level dining room. Light glints off the polished wooden wall pieces and the tall, ornately carved chairs. Waiters smoothly navigate between tables, dressed neatly with crisp white cloths.
bringing Scottish salmon and English mutton to salivating customers in dinner jackets. At their table in the corner, the spy and the reporter are deep in conversation, but they're careful not to be overheard. One of the men is an experienced MI6 agent called Major Hugh Pollard. His lunch companion is Luis Bolin, the London correspondent for a right-wing Spanish newspaper. They're putting the finishing touches to a plan for a top-secret mission.
It will involve smuggling General Francisco Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco on board a small private plane. The reason for this subterfuge is that the Spanish Civil War is about to begin. The right-wing nationalists will soon launch a coup against the left-wing Republican government. Francisco Franco is said to be a key general in the conflict, but right now he is marooned off the coast of West Africa, while his men are stationed in Morocco.
It's imperative for the nationalist cause that Franco links up with his soldiers and brings them back to Spain. Officially, the British government will stay out of the Spanish Civil War, but behind the scenes, many in the establishment are keen for the right-wing nationalists to triumph. Such is their fear of socialism, they are willing to lend a hand to Franco at this critical juncture. They assume that the General and his allies will triumph without much trouble.
But in fact, their intervention will unleash a bloody civil war and a 40-year dictatorship. This is part three of the story of Francisco Franco. And this is Real Dictators. At 7:15 a.m. on July 18, 1936, a small Dragon Rapid airplane takes off from Croydon Airfield, just south of London, England. On board, Captain Cecil Bebb, pilot,
Major Hugh Pollard, navigator, and with them, two young blonde women. To the unsuspecting eye, these travelers resemble a party of happy-go-lucky sunseekers off to the Canary Islands on their holidays. No one suspects the true purpose of their voyage. Dr. Peter Anderson,
A group of right-wing sympathizers, partly Spanish and partly British, chartered a plane in London, in the United Kingdom, disguised as holidaymakers, including two British girls to give it some glamour and to try and disguise what they were doing. A few hours later, the plane lands in the Canary Islands. Here, a new passenger is waiting for them.
They flew down to the Canary Islands. The plane picked up Franco and flew him to Morocco. So he's now in Morocco, he's in charge of the Foreign Legion. The Spanish Republican government has been keeping close tabs on Francisco Franco. But these conniving Brits have given them the slip. Had the plane carrying Franco been a Spanish one, the authorities would have noticed it. But this aircraft has been registered in England.
It's piloted by two men with United Kingdom passports. The general has made it to Morocco in one piece and now takes charge of his men. Sir Paul Preston. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Franco was not the most senior general, but he actually, for a variety of reasons, was the commander of the one bit of the Spanish army that actually worked, which was the colonial army in Morocco.
And the colonial army in Morocco, what it was good at was conquering unarmed civilians with massive superiority of weaponry. And that's, of course, what happened in the Spanish Civil War. General Franco is a prominent and even revered figure for the Spanish right. But at this point, no one really suspects that he will go on to dominate the nationalist leadership, much less become the dictator of Spain. But as soon as he arrives in Morocco, Franco begins projecting himself as the standout leader of the right.
He reaches Morocco on the 19th of July and immediately sets up his own press office. Now that is mind-boggling. All the other generals involved, all they're concerned with is how we win this war.
Franco is already working on his image. And so you can see in the world's press lots of reports about things he said. And it's, you know, General Franco, head of the rebel forces. Well, he wasn't head of the rebel forces, but he had been smart enough to create the press office that was pumping out all this propaganda.
You can see how he had his eye on the prize. There's a cause. The cause is to wipe out the left, put an end to all of the challenges that there have been from the Republic on women's rights, on education, all of that. That's, if you like, the cause.
But most of the guys involved, most of the generals involved, what they want to do is win the war against the cause. Almost everything that Franco does, I mean, obviously he wants to win the war, but he wants to win it in a way that will end up with him in charge. So he's obsessed with this idea of destiny. Soon after his arrival in Morocco, Franco receives yet another lucky break. José Sanjouho, the man poised to be the leader of the right-wing forces,
dies in a freak plane accident. Dr. Antonio Cazorla Sanchez. He's very lucky. Sanjuljo dies in an aviation accident. So the man who was going to be the leader of the rebellion is out of the way. He's designed by the rebels as the man who has to command the colonial army. And that will be the making of Franco as the dictator because he commands the most important unit the rebels have.
Franco is in pole position to rally the Spanish right, but he faces a major problem. He may have made it to Morocco, but he's still stuck in Africa. How on earth is he supposed to get his army across the Strait of Gibraltar and into Spain? Travelling by boat is off the cards. Republican warships patrol the Strait in anticipation of the African army's arrival, so there's no other option. Franco must reach the peninsula by air. Two key allies are on hand to help.
Franco reaches out to a member of the Nazi party stationed in Morocco. This contact, in turn, manages to get direct access to Adolf Hitler.
Franco's German connection manages through the Nazi party to get direct access to Hitler. Hitler has been enjoying an opera. When this German Nazi manages to meet him, Hitler is in a euphoric mood. The question of giving support to Franco is considered. There are all kinds of calculations. What will the British do? What will the French do? Will he be successful?
This is partly where the cult of Franco comes into play, because Hitler, although it's a bit of a wild gamble on his part, taken in a euphoric moment, thinks that Franco is the kind of general and the Foreign Legion is the kind of organization that might be able to make the difference and agrees to send, in fact, more planes to support Franco than he'd actually requested.
Hitler sends Franco 26 transport planes to help with the airlift. The following day Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, follows suit, sending 12 bombers and other military material to the insurgents.
Mussolini later, or shortly afterwards, also agrees to send planes. So, in a combined operation involving German and Italian aircraft, members of the Foreign Legion are airlifted across the Straits of Gibraltar to Seville in the south of Spain in the world's first major airlift of troops. This makes a decisive difference in the Civil War.
The aircraft making their way over the choppy ocean waters spell doom for the Second Republic. This airlift, a pioneering move in military history, will help turn the Spanish Civil War in favour of the Nationalists. Arriving in mainland Spain, General Franco is tasked with moving his troops from the far south up to the capital, Madrid. The plan is for General Mola, another Nationalist figurehead, to simultaneously move his troops down from the north.
Over the summer of 1936, Franco's going to firmly cement his reputation. Mola in the north becomes bogged down in fighting and doesn't make much progress. Mola was trying to move from Pamplona to Madrid. Franco starts to move up with his crack troops from the south of Spain, from Seville.
They do it rather brutally. And it's this seeming success of Franco that helps cement his reputation and pave the way for him becoming the supreme general and leader in the Spanish Civil War.
He's lucky again because the only other force who have been able to advance towards Madrid were the Carlist troops of General Mola from the north. And those troops were stopped by the Republicans just in the mountain passes north of Madrid where they were stuck. Franco's colonial army is being well-equipped by the Italians and the Germans. The Italians and Germans are going to push for a unified command
All those factors will contribute to elevate a man who only a few weeks before just wanted to be alone into the leader of the rebels and eventually the dictator of Spain. He could not believe his luck. It will take Franco's troops nearly three months to reach the outskirts of Madrid. Franco is content to take his time. His strategy is to occupy territory and secure complete control of the land slowly but surely.
He wants to crush all resistance. Franco's soldiers slaughter the Republican supporters in their path, eliminating any threat of a rearguard attack. Dr. Sebastian Faber is an historian of the Spanish Civil War and author of the book Exhuming Franco. I think most historians agree that the way that Franco went about fighting the Civil War, the way he went about slowly but surely conquering more territory under the Republic,
was purposely slow and methodical. So he could have won more quickly, especially because he had the support of Hitler, Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy. But he went very slowly in part because the plan was to not only conquer, but to exterminate. The idea was for every inch of territory covered, Spain has to be cleansed of negative influences. So that meant purges, that meant every town
Every city that was conquered, lists had already been drawn up of leaders of political opposition, and those people were arrested and shot or arrested and imprisoned. Terror is a power wielded by many dictators, and it's a tool that Franco comes to utilize with brutal clinical efficiency.
So that kind of methodical purge shows Franco's ideology in a way, the way that he saw Spain and the way he sought to quote unquote save Spain warranted killing or imprisoning large segments of the Spanish population.
It illustrated a kind of military attitude that, in Franco's case, had been honed in years and years and years of colonial military practice. So the way in which the Franco army treated the Spanish population was really like a colonized population in a kind of dehumanizing way. In early August 1936, news reaches Badajoz, a town on the border with Portugal.
The Franco's African army is on the march. In anticipation, Republican militia begin arriving in the city. Around 2,000 militiamen assemble, ready to fight off the Nationalists. But they are no match for what Franco has planned. On August 14th, the Nationalist forces descend. They batter the city with aerial bombs, before engaging in bloody hand-to-hand combat with the Republican militias. Outgunned and outmanned, Badajoz falls to the Nationalists.
A bloodbath ensues. Moroccan troops gun down civilians on sight, including women and children. Lieutenant Colonel Yagwe, leader of the Francoist forces, orders the confinement of 2,000 prisoners to the town's bullfighting ring. Anyone who has the bruise of a rifle recoil on their shoulder is shot. The remaining prisoners huddle together, unsure of their fate. Later that night, the mass executions begin.
Some accounts suggest that 1,800 men and women are killed on the first night alone. From the rooftops of neighboring towns, people notice fires burning throughout Badajoz. These are piles of bodies that the nationalist soldiers have set ablaze. In the following days, Republican sympathizers begin fleeing to Portugal to seek refuge. But many of the Portuguese police are allies of the Spanish nationalists. Hundreds of Spanish refugees are turned away at the border. When asked later about his actions at Badajoz,
Lieutenant Colonel Yagwe will reply, "Of course we shot them. What did you expect? Was I expected to turn them loose? And let them make Baderhoth red again?" This massacre encapsulates Franco's approach to the entire Civil War. Rebel division commanders are instructed to carry out "radical cleansing," in which all opponents in conquered villages are executed en masse. The rebels seek to justify their actions by pointing to acts of violence on the Republican side.
When the civil war starts, forces on both sides practice what I call the violence of anticipation. There has been a lot of language demonized on the other side in the previous years. And when the war starts, there is this fear or this desire or this anticipation that I'm going to do to the other side what they are going to do to us.
In Republican Spain, the state collapses and unions and parties create committees at the local level, which are going to be the ones in charge of committing that violence. And in fact, they are going to kill about 40,000 people. Right-wing, local notables, members of the clergy, rebel officers and soldiers, etc. Clearly, both sides have blood on their hands.
But the atrocities committed by Franco's forces quite simply dwarf the republican violence. In the region of Andalusia alone, the number of people killed by the nationalists surpasses all the people killed in the entirety of republican Spain.
There are numerous moments when he could have finished the war, but he didn't want to because what he wanted to do was effectively, as he put it, conquer Spain inch by inch, square centimetre by square centimetre, square metre by square metre, square kilometre by square kilometre, because what matters is the territory and the people who live within it. So the idea was if he had a very quick victory, this would leave millions of Republicans who could still oppose him.
So central to his war effort is this idea that he had to annihilate as many Republicans as possible in military terms, literally to wipe the Republican army off the face of the earth. Franco's acts of repression will become known as the White Terror. After the Civil War, these tactics will persist through at least the first nine years of Franco's dictatorship. This period will claim some 200,000 Spanish lives.
Franco claims these killings are justified as they constitute a Catholic crusade against communism.
At the very beginning of the war, when it was quite obvious that in order to gain international support, it was necessary to have the Vatican behind him, he very quickly adopted the idea that what the war effort that he was leading was about, it was actually a Catholic crusade. The Catholic Church was complicit in the repression that took place.
and later on, of course, derived very considerable benefit in terms of its important position in society, which it had lost under the Republic because the Republic was a laic regime which had tried to break the power of clericalism in the education system and so on. The church regained its power under Franco. In late September 1936, Franco makes the decision to divert his troops towards the town of Toledo.
Toledo houses Spain's infantry academy, which Franco himself attended as a boy. Some 2,000 nationalist troops are being held inside a fortress at the academy. Franco wants to set them free. The intended symbolism is clear: the man who once trained at the academy returns to liberate it. From a tactical perspective, this mission makes little sense. Toledo holds no real military significance for either side, but Franco doesn't care.
He knows that this will be a powerful, symbolic victory. It's not necessarily from a military point of view the best thing to do, but from the cult of personality point of view and cementing his own power, it's absolutely the right thing to do. So they liberate this city. He attracts all kinds of public attention for this. Two days after the liberation of Toledo, Franco declares himself El Caudillo. Caudillo roughly means warlord or strongman.
It's perhaps closest to the German term "Führer". Franco is now openly declaring that he is Spain's so-called "savior", the country's leader in waiting. But before that, before he assumes office in Madrid, Franco knows he must crush the remaining forces of the left. His diversion to Toledo has given a glimmer of hope to the Republicans. It's held up the nationalist attack on Madrid by a whole month. This has given the Republicans time to plan a defense, and to call for backup.
Madrid becomes the symbol of resistance to Franco and the symbol of resistance to fascism. Volunteers from around 53 different countries, about 35,000 in all, joined the international brigades
The international brigades were ordinary people who felt they had to fight fascism. They came from a wide range of countries, including African Americans from the United States, who broadly believed that by defeating Franco, they could defeat fascism. And if they defeated fascism, they could defeat the political oppression or repression that they faced at home. So Franco at this point becomes a symbol of the fascist cause, and defeating him would be the triumph of anti-fascism.
This may be Spain's civil war, but the rest of the world is watching on with heightened interest. This is a war between the left and the right. Spain is a snapshot of the tension that's simmering across the globe. A tension between two opposing ideologies. For the international far right, having another fascist regime in Europe would greatly strengthen their cause. They'd have another close ally. They'd enjoy access to Gibraltar and North Africa.
Benito Mussolini signs a secret treaty with the Spanish Nationalists. In return for military aid, they agree to allow Italy to establish military bases in Spain. Adolf Hitler also continues to lend a hand, sending men, planes, tanks and munitions. On the other side of the divide, for the Soviet Union, another far-right European power would pose a major threat. Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin hopes to convince the Spanish Republicans to embrace communism.
The Soviet Union is the main supplier of military aid to the Republican army. As General Franco turns his fire on the Spanish capital, the newly arrived international brigades, which Stalin has helped to organize, are vital in keeping the nationalists at bay.
In Madrid, International Brigade volunteers arrive in November 1936 and help fortify the lines. Franco, despite repeated attacks, fails to capture Madrid, in part because the Soviet Union at this point has also sent support, particularly planes that are able to help defend Madrid.
So if you like, Madrid is a great failure of Franco's military campaign. He doesn't manage to seize it and at the same time he becomes the symbol of evil fascism, if you like, all the horrors of fascism. It was such a frustration that there were even talks about changing the capital of Spain from Madrid to Seville.
Everything had seemed in Franco's favor. But now, the battle for Madrid is in danger of drifting into a stalemate. So Franco shifts his focus. German strategists convince the general that the nationalists should concentrate on more vulnerable areas in the immediate term. Franco moves his forces to the north.
The war in the north, as this phase of the conflict will be known, begins in mid-March 1937. Northern Spain houses key centres of industrial production, as well as a mineral-rich natural landscape. Resources of iron, coal, steel and chemicals could help the Nationalists establish dominance. Nazi Germany is also eager to launch this new campaign, albeit for a very different reason.
The senior Nazi, Hermann Göring, will later describe Germany's mission in Spain as an opportunity to test under fire whether material had been adequately developed. The Nazis see the Spanish Civil War as a gigantic training camp. Some 19,000 soldiers are cycled through battle zones by the Nazis. According to one German general, two years of combat experience are more useful than 10 years of peacetime training. The Nazis are particularly keen to test brand new aircrafts
as well as a brand new military technique called Blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg literally means "lightning war" in German. It's an approach designed to break the spirits of enemy forces. Through surprise, speed, and relentless firepower, Blitzkrieg techniques can level whole cities in a matter of hours. But they are, as yet, untested. The Nazis have their eyes on what they see as a perfect laboratory,
a settlement in the Basque region of northern Spain, called Guernica. April 26th, 1937, is a market day. The spring sun shines down upon the emerald green valley that surrounds the small picturesque city. People stroll through the open-air market. Guernica is home to 5,000 residents, but on market days, people flood in from the surrounding region. Today, some 10,000 people are assembled on the streets.
Some are farmers selling fresh sun-ripened crops, others are there to stock up on food for the week. At around 4:30 pm, the shoppers and the merchants are suddenly shocked out of their weekly routine. Church bells begin to clang. It's an air raid. A plane appears on the horizon. It's a German Heinkel bomber. The plane reaches the airspace over the city center. The pilot opens the bomb doors.
The peaceful market scene erupts into a fiery hellscape. Metal and stone fly through the air as people flee, stumbling over the bodies of the fallen. Gunner planes await the survivors. Flying just 30 meters above the ground, they rain down shells, herding people back into the burning city. Over the next two and a half hours, bombs continue to fall on the city. The planes drop incendiary explosives to destroy the survivors' hiding places.
When the raid finally ends, Guernica lies in ruins. Smoke rises in great plumes that almost block out the sun. The attack on Guernica claims the lives of 300 people and leaves thousands more injured. It's one of the first large-scale air raids on an unarmed civilian population. In a few short hours, Franco and his Nazi backers have shattered the long-held military precept of doing no harm to civilians.
Historically it matters because it's the first time a city in Europe or a town in Europe suffers such a heavy bombardment. It attracted all kinds of publicity across the world when people looked on in horror at what had happened. Of course, people were thinking of what would happen in a future war and cities like London or Paris or Amsterdam could suffer a similar fate.
It was broadly covered by the media because in nearby Bilbao there were a couple of journalists, most notably George Steer from the London Times, who as soon as he heard of the bombardment jumped in a car and went over there and was able to give his own eyewitness testimony of what he saw in the wake of the bombing and interview people and get a dispatch out to the London Times that was then picked up by the New York Times and other papers the next day.
By April 27th, the whole world knew what had happened. So that helped basically amplify the effect of the bombardment and its shock effect on world public opinion. The idea that on market day people go about their business and suddenly dozens or hundreds of planes come and drop bombs on these people and the whole city is destroyed.
So the newness of that kind of warfare, amplified by the media coverage, brought home to the world that we were all entering a new kind of historical moment, a moment where it was okay for armies to target civilians. People across the world demand to know who is responsible for this shameful attack. Franco and his Nazi allies deny involvement. Franco tells reporters that retreating Republicans were the ones who destroyed Guernica.
The leaders of the Nazi Legion claimed that no Germans participated in the raid. And I think this is probably one of the enduring memories in world culture about Franco. It's very hard to divorce Franco from Guernica.
Of course, at the time Franco tried to deny it and did deny it right through his regime, which I think tells us something else about Franco, that for years and years and years he denied or silenced some of the worst atrocities that he carried out, which also goes to the heart of the myth of Franco because he's often remembered as the great Christian general or the crusader.
but actually his conduct of the civil war is marked by intense violence behind the lines and the use of aerial bombardment, which we can see in Guernica. Guernica, or what's left of it, has fallen to the Nationalists. Now Franco sends military specialists into the ruins to collect suspicious remnants of the bombing. They comb through the rubble, picking out anything that could link Francoist forces to the atrocity. Franco is attempting to rewrite history.
He's determined to silence all truth-sayers, but he can't silence everyone. The world-renowned artist, Pablo Picasso, is shaken to the core when he reads reports of the bombardment. The painting he produces in response will become a modern masterpiece, simply titled Guernica. On a massive canvas that takes up an entire wall, Picasso paints a scene of horror. A wide-eyed bull stands over a grieving woman, holding a dead child in her arms.
A horse falls in agony with a large gaping hole in its side. On the ground, a dismembered soldier writhes in agony. A citizen screams for help in a burning building. Guernica looks like a photograph of a nightmare. Most Spaniards will not be able to see this masterpiece under the Franco dictatorship. The general will ban art produced by citizens in exile. But Picasso's message will reverberate throughout the world.
In June 1937, the Nationalists, aided by the Italians, seized the Basque city of Bilbao. By the end of July, they controlled this entire region of northern Spain. Now Franco sets his sights on the Mediterranean. The cities of Barcelona and Valencia have remained loyal to the Republic, but infighting has broken out between different factions of the Republican alliance. By February 1939, the Nationalists have taken Barcelona and reached the French border.
Some Republicans reach out to Franco, seeking a compromise, but the General rejects these advances. Hundreds of thousands of refugees flood into France, most of them on foot. The long civilian column, winding its way through the snowy mid-winter mountains, becomes a target for intense bombardments by Italian and German planes. By the end of February, both Britain and France officially recognize Franco as Spain's new leader.
It's not just the Soviets and the Nazis who have been watching Spain keenly. Since 1936, the British government has fronted a non-intervention agreement, which has been signed by 27 countries. The British have, in truth, tacitly backed Franco all the way through.
Obviously, he has very high-tech aid from Hitler. He has massive aid from Mussolini. And most important, he has the clandestine aid of the British government.
The whole notion of non-intervention aimed at, if you like, anesthetizing this very dangerous war in Spain, really the whole thing is set up in a way that hobbles the Spanish Republic. It prevents the Spanish Republic from exercising its rights at international law to buy arms.
throws the Republic into the arms of the Soviet Union, which allows Franco, of course, to sort of vicious circle, allows Franco to say, look, you know, the Republic is just the puppet of Moscow and so on. So all of these factors come together and essentially guarantee him winning the war. On March 28, 1939, nationalist troops enter Madrid unopposed. By the following day, what remains of Republican Spain has surrendered.
In full view of the assembled reporters, Francisco Franco arrives at a church. He heads inside and places his sword on the altar. He vows never to take it up again unless Spain herself is threatened by invasion. Franco depicts himself as the bringer of peace. This may be a barefaced lie, but El Caudillo controls the narrative now. He formally declares victory on April 1st.
Franco is able to move into Madrid completely unopposed. In fact, there are newspaper stories from the time of the Francoist soldiers getting on the metro, the public transport system, buying a ticket and traveling into central Madrid, which tells us, I think, a lot about just the collapse of the military efforts at the ends of the war. As many as one million lives have been lost in the Spanish Civil War, either directly through combat or as a result of privation. But even now,
The horror is far from over. Next time on Real Dictators: The campaign of terror continues as Spain's strongman assumes power. Franco declares that Spain is entering a glorious new era. He commissions a movie to tell the story of his own life. Die-hard Republican rebels continue to take the fight to the Nationalists up in the mountains as they wait for support from abroad that will never arrive.
In the aftermath of World War II, Franco rebrands his regime and aligns himself with the United States. His volte-face will be rewarded when a U.S. president pays him an official state visit. That's next time on Real Dictators. Real Dictators is presented by me, Paul McGann. The story of Francisco Franco was written and produced by Addison Nugent.
The show was created by Pascal Hughes, produced by Joel Dodal. Editing and music by Oliver Baines, with strings recorded by Dory McCauley. Sound design and mix by Tom Pink, with edit assembly by George Tapp. Follow Noiser Podcasts on Twitter for news about upcoming series. If you haven't already, follow us wherever you listen to your favorite shows or check us out at realdictators.com. Tune in on Wednesdays for new episodes.
