Franco

In fact, the pace of the Army of Africa had already been slowed considerably. It took as long to get the 80 km from Talavera to Toledo as it had to travel the nearly 400 km from Seville to Talavera, a reflection of the fact that the Republic was gradually beginning to get some trained men into the field.42 This was reason enough to hasten the attack on the capital. Nevertheless, on 25 September, three columns of the Moroccan Army, since 24 September under the overall command of the African veteran and Carlist sympathizer, General Varela, swept to the north of Toledo. Under the individual commands of Colonel Asensio, Major Castejón and Colonel Fernando Barrón, they cut off the road to Madrid and then moved south against the city on the following day. After fierce fighting, the militia began to retreat. On 27 September, the world’s war correspondents, ‘who previously had been permitted to “participate” in the bloodiest battles of the war’, were prevented from accompanying the attacking Legionaires and Regulares as they unleashed another massacre. No prisoners were taken. The streets were strewn with corpses and literally ran with rivulets of blood which gathered in puddles. The American journalist Webb Miller told the US Ambassador that he had seen the beheaded corpses of militiamen. Hand grenades were tossed in among the helpless wounded Republicans in the San Juan Bautista hospital. On the next day, 28 September, General Varela entered the Alcázar to be greeted with Moscardó’s laconic report ‘Sin novedad en el Alcázar, mi general’ (all quiet in the Alcázar, general).43

On the evening of Sunday 27 September, in the flush of the victory at Toledo, Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray addressed a frenetically cheering crowd from the balcony of the Palacio de los Golfines in Cáceres. Franco spoke hesitantly, his fluting voice anything but inspirational. Yagüe, recalling the threatening conversation which he had had with Franco earlier in the day, was carried away with enthusiasm. He declared vehemently ‘tomorrow we will have in him our Generalísimo, the Head of State’. Millán Astray said ‘Our people, our Army, guided by Franco, are on the way to victory’. There were parades by the Falange and the Legion while the band played the anthem of the Legion Los Novios de la Muerte (bridegrooms of death) and the Falangist song Cara al sol (face to the sun). The crowd chanted ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. The scenes of popular acclamation for Franco were described lavishly in the press of the entire Nationalist zone.44

As the crowd melted away, Nicolás Franco and Kindelán were drawing up a draft project to be put to the following day’s meeting of the Junta that was to decide the powers of the new Generalísimo. Yagüe had already played a key role by announcing in his speech that the Legion wanted Franco as single commander. Nicolás Franco and Kindelán continued to play their part, arranging that, on arrival at the airfield at Salamanca for the proposed meeting, Franco would be met by a guard of honour, consisting not only of a number of airmen, but also of a detachment of Carlist Requetés and another of Falangists. Thus, the somewhat intimidating symbolism of his political, as well as his military, leadership would be established before the meeting.45 On the morning of Monday 28 September, Franco, Orgaz, Kindelán and Yagüe flew to Salamanca, ‘determined’, in Kindelán’s words, ‘to achieve their patriotic purpose whatever the cost’.*

At the morning session of the meeting, the other generals showed some disinclination to discuss the question of the powers to be exercised by the single commander and some were in favour of putting off the decision for some weeks. After all, a week previously when, with more or less goodwill, they had agreed to make Franco military Commander-in-Chief, there had been no hint that he might also have political powers. With the fall of Madrid and the end of the war assumed to be imminent, the generals were reluctant to bestow wide-ranging authority on Franco since they suspected how difficult it would be to persuade him to relinquish it. However, Kindelán insisted and read out the draft decree. In article 1, it proposed the subordination of the Army, Navy and Air Force to a single command, in article 2 that the single commander be called Generalísimo, and in article 3 that the rank of Generalísimo carry with it the function of Chief of State, ‘as long as the war lasts’, a phrase which guaranteed Franco the support of the monarchist generals. The proposal, which implied the demise of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, was received with hostility, particularly by Mola. He recognized that Franco was the superior general but that did not mean that he wanted to give him absolute political power. Even Orgaz wavered in his support for Kindelán.

Over lunch, Kindelán and Yagüe worked on their comrades, describing the scenes of popular rejoicing in Cáceres on the previous evening. No doubt Yagüe stressed the will of the Legion and Nicolás Franco emphasized the German pressures to which he had been subjected. Before the afternoon session began, Queipo and Mola returned to their respective headquarters. On the basis of Kindelán’s proposal, a reluctant agreement was reached to the effect that Franco would be head of the government as well as Generalísimo. Cabanellas undertook to put it into practice within two days.46 On leaving the meeting, an exultant Franco said to his host, Antonio Pérez Tabernero, ‘this is the most important moment of my life’.47 In fact, Cabanellas still harboured doubts and decided to sign the decree only late in the night of 28 September after lengthy telephone consultations with Mola and Queipo. According to Cabanellas’s son, Queipo said ‘Franco is a swine.* I have never liked him and never will. However, we’ve got to go along with his game until we can block it’. A more cautious Mola made it clear that he saw no alternative to the reluctant acceptance of Franco’s nomination.48

Cabanellas entrusted to a professor of international law, José Yanguas Messía, the wording of the Junta’s decree formally recording the decision. Its first article stated that ‘in fulfilment of the agreement made by the Junta de Defensa Nacional, the Head of the Government of the Spanish State will be Excelentísimo Sr. General Don Francisco Bahamonde, who will assume all the powers of the new State’. There have been claims that, before being printed, the decree was tampered with either by Franco or his brother. Ramón Garriga, who was later to be part of Franco’s press service in Burgos, alleged that the reference in the draft to Franco being head of government of the Spanish State only provisionally ‘while the war lasted’ was read by Franco and crossed out before it was submitted to Cabanellas for signature. Tampering was not necessary. Made Head of the Government of the Spanish State, Franco simply referred to himself as, and arrogated to himself the full powers of, Head of State. The hopes of monarchists like Kindelán, Orgaz and Yanguas were totally misplaced. Having reached the peak of his power, Franco had no intention of handing over in his lifetime to a King, although he would always skilfully keep alive the hopes of the monarchists.49 The bulk of the Nationalist press announced that Franco had been named Jefe del Estado Español (Head of the Spanish State). Only the Carlist Diario de Navarra committed the sin of referring to Franco as Jefe del Gobierno del Estado Español (Head of the Government of the Spanish State).50

Cabanellas commented ‘You don’t know what you’ve just done, because you don’t know him like I do since I had him under my command in the African Army as officer in charge of one of the units in my column. If, as you wish, you give him Spain, he is going to believe that it is his and he won’t let anyone replace him either during the war or after until he is dead.’51 Cabanellas’s comment was uncannily similar to one made some years later by Colonel Segismundo Casado, also a one-time Africanista, ‘Franco incarnates the mentality of a Captain of the Tercio. That is all there is to it. We are told, “Take so many men, occupy such-and-such a position and do not move from there until you get further orders”. The position occupied by Franco is the nation and since he has no superior officer, he will not move from there.’52

Franco derived incalculable political capital from his decision to divert his forces from Madrid. The liberation of the Alcázar was re-staged two days later and cinema audiences across the world saw Franco touring the rubble with a haggard Moscardó. In front of reporters, Moscardó repeated his famous phrase, sin novedad (all quiet), to Franco.53 Overnight Generalísimo Franco became an international name, a name which symbolized the Nationalist war effort. In Nationalist Spain, he became the saviour of the besieged heroes. Not the least of his pleasure must have derived from emulating the great warrior heroes of medieval Spain.

The analogy was given the sanction of the Church on 30 September by the long pastoral letter, entitled ‘The Two Cities’, issued by the Bishop of Salamanca Dr Enrique Plá y Deniel. The Church had long since come out in favour of the military rebels but not hitherto as explicitly as Plá y Deniel. His pastoral built on the blessing given by Pius XI to exiled Spaniards at Castelgandolfo on 14 September in which the Pope had distinguished between the Christian heroism of the Nationalists and the savage barbarism of the Republic. Plá y Deniel’s text quoted St Augustine to distinguish between the earthly city (the Republican zone) where hatred, anarchy and Communism prevailed, and the celestial city (the Nationalist zone) where the love of God, heroism and martyrdom were the rule. For the first time, the word ‘crusade’ was used to describe the Civil War.54

The text was submitted to Franco before being published. He not only approved it but adjusted his own rhetoric subsequently to derive from it the maximum political advantage. By latching onto the idea of a religious crusade, Franco could project himself not just as the defender of his Spain but also as the defender of the universal faith. Leaving aside the gratifying boost to his own ego, such a propaganda ploy could bring only massive benefit in terms of international support for the rebel cause.55 Many British Conservative MPs, for instance, intensified their support for Franco after he began to stress Christian rather than fascist credentials. Sir Henry Page Croft (Bournemouth) declared him to be ‘a gallant Christian gentleman’ and Captain A.H.M. Ramsay (Peebles) believed Franco to be ‘fighting the cause of Christianity against anti-Christ’. They and many others used their influence with banks and government to incline British policy towards the Nationalists’ interests.56

On 1 October 1936, the investiture of the new Chief of State took place. The pomp and the ceremony that were mounted were a long way from the improvisation of Franco’s first days as a military rebel barely ten weeks ago. A large guard of honour consisting of soldiers as well as Falangist and Carlist militias awaited his arrival in front of the Capitanía General of Burgos. An enormous and delirious crowd erupted into applause and cheers when his motor car entered the square in front of military headquarters. In the throne room, in the presence of the diplomats of Italy, Germany and Portugal, Cabanellas formally handed over the powers of the Junta de Defensa to a visibly delighted Franco. An anything but impressive figure, short, balding and now with an incipient double chin and paunch, Franco stood apart on a raised dais. Cabanellas said ‘Head of the Government of the Spanish State: in the name of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, I hand over to you the absolute powers of the State.’

Franco’s reply was shot through with hauteur, regal self-confidence and easily assumed authority: ‘General, Generals and Officers of the Junta, You can be proud, you received a broken Spain and you now deliver up to me a Spain united in a unanimous and grandiose ideal. Victory is on our side. You give me Spain and I assure you that the steadiness of my hand will not waver and will always be firm.’ After the ceremony, he appeared on the balcony and made a speech to the sea of arms raised in the fascist salute. The grandiloquent tone of his words in the throne room was replaced by a rhetorical commitment to social reform which can only have reflected a desire to be in tune with his Nazi and Fascist sponsors. Its cynical promises were to remain long unfulfilled: ‘Our work requires sacrifices from everyone, principally from those who have more in the interests of those who have nothing. We will ensure that there is no home without light or a Spaniard without bread.’ Altogether more credible was his declaration that night on Radio Castilla to the effect that he planned a totalitarian State for Spain.57

Thereafter, from his very first decree, Franco simply referred to himself as Jefe del Estado. At that stage, of course, there was not much in the way of a State for Franco to be Head of. The task of constructing it began immediately, although with little immediate success. The Junta de Burgos was dissolved and replaced by a Junta Técnica del Estado, presided over by General Fidel Dávila.* General Orgaz was made High Commissioner in Morocco with the job of maintaining the flow of Moorish mercenaries. The Junta Técnica remained in Burgos while Franco set up his headquarters in Salamanca, near the Madrid battle front without being too near and merely one hour’s drive from Portugal should things turn out badly. Mola was given command of the Army of the North, newly formed by merging his troops with the Army of Africa. Queipo de Llano was given command of the Army of the South, consisting of the scattered forces operating in Andalusia, Badajoz and Morocco. Cabanellas was marginalised in punishment for his lukewarm response to Franco’s elevation, being given the purely symbolic title of Inspector of the Army. Franco could rarely find time to receive him in Salamanca. No doubt he resented the fact that Cabanellas had once been his superior and usually referred to him, like Sanjurjo had done, as ‘Franquito’ (little Franco).58 He was equally unforgiving with other one-time superiors, like Gil Robles, who found himself cold-shouldered.†

One of the first things that Franco did after being elected as Nationalist leader was to send fulsome telegrams to Hitler and Rudolf Hess. Hitler responded with a verbal, rather than a written, message via the aristocratic German diplomat, the Count Du Moulin-Eckart, who was received by Franco on 6 October. Hitler claimed that he could better help Franco by not appearing to have recognized the Nationalist Government until after the capture of Madrid. On the eve of renewing the assault on Madrid, Franco responded in terms of with ‘heartfelt thanks for the Führer’s gesture and complete admiration for him and the new Germany.’ Du Moulin was impressed by the conviction of his enthusiasm for Nazi Germany, reporting that ‘the cordiality with which Franco expressed his veneration for the Führer and Chancellor and his sympathy for Germany, and the decided friendliness of my reception, permitted not even a moment of doubt as to the sincerity of his attitude toward us’.59

In tune with the warmth of such sentiments, there began a massive propaganda campaign in fascist style to elevate Franco into a national figure. An equivalent title to Führer and Duce was adopted in the form of Caudillo – a term linking Franco to the warrior leaders of Spain’s medieval past. Franco considered himself, like them, to be a warrior of God against the infidels who would destroy the nation’s faith and culture.*60 All newspapers in the Nationalist zone had to carry under their masthead the slogan ‘Una Patria, Un Estado, Un Caudillo’ (a deliberate echo of Hitler’s Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer). The ritual chants of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’ were heard with insistent frequency. The sayings and speeches of Franco were reproduced everywhere.

Almost immediately, Nicolás Franco made tentative plans for the creation of a Francoist political party along the lines of General Primo de Rivera’s Unión Patriótica. It would have consisted of conservative elements, largely from the CEDA, and therefore encountered the hostility of the Falange. Realizing how ill-advised it was to work against the ever larger Falange, the brothers dropped the idea.61 There was an element of irony about what was happening. The new powers that had been granted to Franco were given in the belief that a single command would hasten an already imminent victory. In fact, the Nationalist triumph was soon to become a distant long-term prospect. In part that was for reasons beyond the Caudillo’s control, such as the arrival of the International Brigades and Russian tanks and aircraft, and the creation of the Popular Army. However, that such things were able to have the effect that they did was largely Franco’s responsibility, attributable to the delay of nearly two weeks in the march on Madrid as a result of the diversion to Toledo and then of the time devoted to the orchestration of his elevation to supreme power. Increasingly thereafter, it would begin to seem that Franco had an interest in the prolongation of the war in order to have time both to annihilate his political enemies on the Left and his rivals on the Right and to consolidate the mechanisms of his power.

Once established as Head of State, and with the eyes of Nationalist Spain now upon him, Franco’s propagandists built him up as a great Catholic crusader and his public religiosity intensified. From 4 October 1936 until his death, he had a personal chaplain, Father José María Bulart.62 He now began each day by hearing mass, a reflection of both political necessity and the influence of Doña Carmen. In order to please his wife, when he was available he would join in her regular evening rosary, although, at this stage of his career at least, without any great piety.63 No one can say with total certainty what part Carmen Polo played in encouraging her husband’s ambition nor how much he had been affected by Bishop Plá y Deniel’s declaration of a crusade. Doña Carmen believed in his divine mission and such fulsome ecclesiastical support made it easier for her to convince him of it.64

As Franco came to believe in his own special relationship with divine providence, and as he became more isolated and weighed down with power and responsibility, his religiosity became more pronounced.* Apart from any spiritual consolation it may have given him, his new found religiosity also reflected a realistic awareness of the immeasurable assistance which the endorsement of the Catholic Church could give him in terms of clinching foreign and domestic support. In the Generalísimo’s elevated concept of his own importance, the official approbation and blessing of the Church was essential. It was not just a question of broad Catholic support for the Nationalist cause but rather of specific recognition by the universal Church of his personal status as its champion. The speed with which Franco sought such recognition mirrored the speed with which he began to manifest monarchical pretensions. Religious ritual had traditionally played a crucial part in elevating the figure of the King in the great age of early modern Spain. Believing that he represented continuity with the glories of the Golden Age, he took it for granted that the Church would validate his rule. Accordingly, he arrogated the royal-prerogative of entering and leaving churches under a canopy (bajo palio).

On 1 October, the Primate of Spain Cardinal Isidro Gomá y Tomás sent a telegram congratulating him on the relief of the Alcázar and on his elevation to the Headship of State. Franco replied on 2 October with one of his grandiloquent messages, beginning ‘on assuming the powers of the Headship of the Spanish State with all their responsibilities I could receive no better help than the blessing of Your Eminence.’65 It was the beginning of a close relationship with Gomá.

Franco’s fellow generals were somewhat taken aback by the ease with which the new Generalísimo adopted a distant and elevated style. He set up his headquarters in the Episcopal Palace in Salamanca which was graciously ceded to him by Bishop Plá y Deniel. Within two weeks of his investiture, visitors to the Palace, often known as the cuartel general, were being required to attend audiences in morning suit.66 He was already surrounded by the Guardia Mora, the Moorish Guard, which would accompany him everywhere until the late 1950s. In resplendent uniforms, they stood like statues throughout the palace, a graphic indication of the Asiatic despotism in the making. German specialists arrived and built a special air-raid shelter.67 Franco’s picture appeared everywhere, on cinema screens, on the walls of shops, offices and schools. Along with his portrait, slogans were stencilled on walls, ‘the Caesars were undefeated generals. Franco!’ An entire propaganda apparatus was erected and then devoted to the inflation of the myth of the all-seeing political and military genius Franco. The scale of adulation to which he was subjected inevitably took its toll on his personality.68

In the process of moving from the improvised bureaucracy appropriate to a military campaign to the erection of a State apparatus, Franco made several errors in his choice of collaborators until the entire enterprise was taken over by his brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Suñer. His brother Nicolás may have been an excellent kingmaker but he was less successful as a chancellor. By dint of his relationship with the new Generalísimo, and operating out of an office next to that of his brother, he quickly accumulated enormous power. Nicolás, who resembled his father in his tastes and appetites much more than he did his brother, was an amusing and popular bon viveur whose bohemian and chaotic life-style was the despair of all who had to deal with him. He would rise at 1 p.m. and receive visitors until 3 p.m. when he would disappear for lunch until 7 p.m. followed by an evening’s socializing. Reappearing around midnight, he would then work until 4 or 5 a.m., often keeping those who had come to see him waiting for seven or eight hours at a time. Given his relationship to the Generalísimo, few complained, although his practices especially infuriated the Germans.69 Yet despite the power and the favour that he enjoyed, Nicolás did little or nothing to begin the task of creating a State infrastructure.

However, the most disastrous of Franco’s appointments was that of Millán Astray as Head of Press and Propaganda. It is possible that Franco enjoyed Millán’s adulation but most of his activities were counter-productive. Within days of Franco’s elevation, Millán was proclaiming that Franco was ‘the man sent by God to lead Spain to liberation and greatness’, ‘the man who saved the situation during the Jaca rising’ and the ‘greatest strategist of the century’.70 He ran the Nationalist press office like a barracks, summoning the journalists in his team with a whistle and then haranguing them much as he had the Legion prior to an action. Franco seems to have seen him as a kind of mascot, but his antics ended up bringing the Nationalist cause into disrepute.71 Millán’s own choice of collaborators was especially unfortunate. Because of the link established between Franco and Luis Bolín during the flight of the Dragon Rapide, Millán named Bolín chief of press in the south and gave him the honorific title of Captain in the Legion.72 Bolín started to use the uniform and throw his weight about accordingly, attempting to control the flow of news about Nationalist Spain by intimidating foreign journalists. Millán Astray encouraged his subordinates to threaten foreign journalists with execution. Bolín followed the order with gusto, most notoriously in the case of Arthur Koestler, the mistreatment of whom provoked an international scandal which led to his release from prison. As a result of the subsequent publication of Koestler’s book Spanish Testament, Bolín fell into disgrace.73

Press liaison in the north was put in the hands of the notorious Captain Gonzalo de Aguilera, Conde de Alba y Yeltes, a polo-playing excavalryman, mainly on the grounds of his manic bigotry and the fact that he could speak excellent English, German and French. Captain Aguilera did more harm than good by outrageous and eminently quotable remarks to journalists. Much of what he said merely reflected the common beliefs of many officers on the Nationalist side. On the grounds that the Spanish masses were ‘like animals’, he told the foreign newspapermen that ‘We’ve got to kill and kill and kill’. He boasted to them of shooting six of his labourers on the day the Civil War broke out ‘Pour encourager les autres’. He regularly explained to any who would listen that the fundamental cause of the Civil War was ‘the introduction of modern drainage: prior to this, the riff-raff had been killed by various useful diseases; now they survived and, of course, were above themselves.’ ‘Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in their infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended us to have. Sewers are a luxury to be reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock.’74 He believed that husbands had the right to shoot their unfaithful wives. When accompanying the influential journalist Virginia Cowles, Aguilera maintained a constant flow of sexist remarks which he occasionally interrupted to say things like ‘Nice chaps, the Germans, but a bit too serious; they never seem to have any women around, but I suppose they didn’t come for that. If they kill enough Reds, we can forgive them anything’.75