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General Franco As a Military Leader ++++++ Paul Preston General Franco as a military leader Article (Published version) (Refereed) Original citation: Preston, Paul (1994) General Franco as a military leader. The transactions of the Royal Historical Society: sixth series, 4 . pp. 21-41. ISSN 0080-4401 DOI: 10.2307/3679213 © 1994 Royal Historical Society This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/26103/ Available in LSE Research Online: October 2012 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. GENERAL FRANCO AS MILITARY LEADER By Paul Preston READ 22 JANUARY 1993 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES COLLEGE OF CARDIFF BOTH duringhis lifetime,and afterhis death,General Franco was reviledby his enemieson the leftand subjectedto the mostabsurd adulationby his admirerson the right.As thevictor in a bloodycivil war which inflamedpassions throughout the world,that is hardly surprising.Leaving aside his personalpolitical success in remainingin powerfor nearly four decades, his victoryin the SpanishCivil War was his greatestand mostglorious achievement, something reflected in the judgementsof detractorsand hagiographersalike. For the left, Franco the generalwas a slow-wittedmediocrity whose battlefield triumphswere owed entirelyto the unstintingmilitary assistance of Hitler and Mussolini.For the right,Franco the generalwas the twentieth-centuryincarnation of Alexander the Great, of Napoleon and of thegreat warrior hero of Spanishlegend, El Cid. Beyondthe propagandisticexcesses of the Caudillo'swilder syco- phants,however, what is altogethermore remarkable is thatboth his wartimeallies and the most soberjudges fromhis own side have concurredin a generallycritical view of his prowess as a militaryleader. The viewsof both Fuihrerand Duce, forinstance, could barelyhave been morehostile. Hitler commented at a dinnerin 1942,'Franco and companycan considerthemselves very lucky to have receivedthe help of FascistItaly and NationalSocialist Germany in theirfirst civil war ... The interventionof the GermanGeneral von Richthofenand the bombs his squadronsrained fromthe heavens decided the issue'.' Duringthe Civil War, Hitler's first diplomatic envoy General Wilhelm Faupel was frequentlyscathing in his dispatchesabout the painful slownessof Franco'smilitary leadership.2 The Italianswere equally critical.In December1937, outragedat Franco'sapparent inability to presshome the advantageof his superiorforces, the Italian Foreign MinisterCount Ciano wrotein his diary 'Franco has no idea of synthesisin war.'3During the battleof the Ebro in 1938,the Duce himselfprotested about Franco's'flabby conduct of the war', telling Ciano, 'Put on recordin yourdiary that today, 29 August,I prophesy '[Adolf Hitler], Hitler'sTable Talk 1941-1944 (1953), 569. 'See, forinstance, Documents onGerman Foreign Policy Series D, III (1951), 408-10. 3Galeazzo Ciano, Ciano'sDiary 1937-1938 (1952), 46. 21 22 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY the defeatof Franco.Either the man doesn'tknow how to makewar or he doesn'twant to. The redsare fighters,Franco is not.'4 The viewsof Franco's German and Italianallies might be dismissed as ill-foundedon the groundsof distanceand lack of familiaritywith Spanishconditions. However, equally negative, albeit more cautiously expressed,criticisms came fromwithin the Generalisimo's own military establishment.Two such assessmentsof Francoas strategistemanated fromthe heart of the Nationalisthigh command-GeneralAlfredo KindelhnDuany, the Chiefof Franco'sAir Force,and Colonel (later General)Jorge Vig6n Suerodiaz, Chief of Staff first to theArmy of the Northand thento Francohimself. During the early stages of thewar, Vig6nwrote several letters to KindelAn,urging him to use hisinfluence withthe Generalisimoto bringabout a change of strategyand an accelerationof operations.Kindelan wrote memoirs in theimmediate aftermathof the war in which he revealedhis own and Vig6n's reservationsabout Franco's overall conduct of thewar. Permission for theirpublication was withhelduntil 1945 and even thenthe criticisms of Francoas a strategistwere cut fromthe textand not restoreduntil thesecond edition which was publishedseven years after the Caudillo's death. In relation,for example, to Franco'sfailure to seize theopportunity openedup by thefall of Bilbao in July 1937 for a rapidsweep through the north,Kindelan wrote:'the enemywas defeatedbut was not pursued;the success was notexploited, the withdrawal was notturned into a disaster. This was dueto thefact thatwhile the tactical conception of the operationwas masterly,as was its execution,the strategic conception on theother handwas much more modest.' The italicisedpassage was suppressedalong withmany others.5 In his own diaries,not publisheduntil 1970, it is possibleto discernVig6n's frustration with those of Franco'smilitary decisionswhich delayed major advances.6 Subsequently, the Francoist army'smost distinguished official historians have also been discreetly criticalof theirCommander-in-Chief.7 Whatall thesecriticisms, whether German, Italian or Spanish,have in commonis thebelief that Franco could have speeded up theprogress 4Ciano, Diay 37-38, I48. 5Compare Alfredo Kindelan, Mis cuadernosde guerra1936-1939 (Madrid, n.d. [1945], 86 and Mis cuadernosdeguerra 1936-1939 2" edici6n (Barcelona, 1982), 9, 127.All subsequent referencesare to the 2nd edition. Cuadernosde notasde 6JorgeVig6n Suerodiaz, guerray paz (Oviedo, 197), 49-50, 212. 7It is remarkable,for instance, that Franco is a shadowyfigure in the seventeen- volumeset ofMonografias de la guerrade EspaAa produced by the SpanishArmy's Servicio Hist6ricoMilitar under the direction of ColonelJose Manuel Martinez Bande, (Madrid, 1968-1985).See alsothe critical comments on Franco'sgeneralship to be foundthroughout GeneralsRam6n & JeslusSalas LarrazAbal,Historia general de la guerrade Espaffa (Madrid, 1987). FRANCO AS MILITARY LEADER 23 of hiswar effortat severalcrucial moments. The basisof this view was Franco'sdilatory decision-making style in generaland his readiness,at Brunete and Teruel in 1937 and at the Ebro in 1938, to divertlarge numbersof troopsto the strategicallymeaningless and usuallycostly taskof recoveringterritory captured by the Republicin diversionary attacks.The Generalisimo'sapparent propensity to lose sightof major strategicgoals on theseoccasions, together with his readinessto ignore severalopportunities to conquera poorlydefended Catalonia, has led to theconclusion that he was lackingin vision.Certainly, it cannotbe denied that,as his one-timesuperior officer, General Jose Sanjurjo, commentedin 1931 'he is no Napoleon'.8It is probablyan under- statementto suggest,with Hitler and Mussolini,with Kindelin and Vig6n,that he was deficientas a militarystrategist. However, it is the contentionof thispaper thatto judge Francoin termsof his capacity to elaborateelegant and incisivestrategy is to missthe point. He won the SpanishCivil War in theway in whichhe wantedto winit and in thetime within which he wantedto winit. Most importantlyof all, he derivedfrom his victory that which he mostwanted, the political power to remakeSpain in his own image,unimpeded either by enemieson the leftor rivalson theright. In both formand content,Franco's strategy pursued a long-term politicalagenda ratherthan immediate battlefield objectives. That this shouldhave been thecase derivesin partfrom a personalityin which instinctivecaution coexistedwith almostunlimited ambition. Even morecrucial was hismilitary education and trainingbetween I907 and 19io at the antiquatedInfantry Academy in Toledo and his formative experiencesin Spain'ssavage colonial wars in Morocco.In one import- ant respect,his personalexperiences and the ethos of the Toledo Academywere to come togetherand determinethe centralplank of Franco'smilitary style during the Spanish Civil War. Deeply traumatised as a child by the infidelitiesof his pleasure-lovingand free-thinking father,he identifiedwith his pious and conservativemother. Throughout his life,he would rejectall thosethings which he associatedwith his father,from sexual dallianceand alcoholicdrink to the ideas of the left.His childhoodcoincided with the lowestebb of Spain's political fortunes,and, overtime, he came to associatehis personaldifficulties withthose of his country.In 1898,Spain sufferedhumiliating defeat at thehands of the United States and lostthe last remnants of her empire. When the fourteen-year-oldFranco enteredthe militaryacademy in 1907,he foundan atmosphereof fetidhostility to liberalpoliticians whowere held responsible for the imperial disaster of 1898. Throughout 8In a conversationwith the Ministerof War, Manuel Azafia,on 20o July 1931- Manuel Azafia,Obras completas 4 vols (MexicoD.E, 1966-1968),IV, 35- 24 TRANSACTIONSOF THE ROYALHISTORICAL SOCIETY his life,he would blame his nation'sdisasters on men who were uncannilylike his father.9During the Civil War, his objective was not speedy victorybut the long-termeradication fromSpain of such men and theirinfluence. The InfantryAcademy taught Franco little by wayof
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