Paul Preston

Not So Neutral

Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II

By

Yale University Press 328pp £19.99 order from our bookshop

The defeat of Hitler in May 1945 was greeted by Spain’s tightly controlled press with extravagant eulogies of Franco, the genius who bestowed the gift of peace upon Spain. According to the Falangist Arriba, the end of the war was ‘Franco’s Victory’. The monarchist ABC carried a front-page picture of the Caudillo ‘chosen by the benevolence of God. When everything was obscure, he saw clearly … and sustained and defended Spain’s neutrality.’ For the next thirty years, Franco’s admirers hailed wartime neutrality as something achieved by dint of skilful and courageous deceit of Hitler. 

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Lecture on war and peace in 19th-century Europe by Professor Sir Richard Evans, Thurs 25 Oct, 6.30pm Europe House… ,
    • 'Why, throughout the world, are so many people fascinated by the fiction and reality of espionage? And why of all p… ,
    • . here on books, Muriel Spark and life's tangled dance ,
    • RT : There aren't enough aggressive subtitles these days: ,
    • Churchill's on the cover of the October edition of the magazine. Piers Brendon reviews two new books about the Brit… ,
    • 'Readers have no more power to predict where the next story is going to take them than the prisoners had to determi… ,
    • 'Ho was no Soviet or Chinese puppet. He was a nationalist first and foremost. Had the Americans just realised this.… ,
    Follow Us