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FIGHTING for FRANCO This Page Intentionally Left Blank FIGHTING for FRANCO International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain During the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 FIGHTING FOR FRANCO This page intentionally left blank FIGHTING FOR FRANCO International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 JUDITH K E E N E Foreword by Professor Gabriel Jackson hambledon continuum Hambledon Continuum A Continuum imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 First published in hardback 2001 First published in paperback 2007 © Judith Keene 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-7185-0126-8 (hardback) ISBN 1-8528-5593-2 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keene, Judith, 1948- Fighting for Franco: international volunteers in nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 / Judith Keene; foreword by Gabriel Jackson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7185-0126-8 (hardbound) 1. Spain—History—Civil War, 1936-1939—Participation, Foreign. 2. Fascists. I. Title. DP269.45 .K44 2001 946.081—dc21 2001023395 Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn Contents Foreword by Gabriel Jackson vi Maps of Spain ix Introduction 1 1. The historical context of the Spanish Civil War 18 2. English narratives about Franco's Spain 45 3. Not quite king and country: Franco's English-speaking volunteers 94 4. Spectators at their own drama: Franco's French volunteers 135 5. Snow boots in sunny Spain: White Russians in Nationalist Spain 188 6. Slaying Satan, saving Franco: the Romanian Iron Guard in Nationalist Spain 215 7. With Flit and phonograph: Franco's foreign female supporters 245 8. Conclusions 291 Select bibliography 295 Index 305 Foreword Let me start by indicating the unique character of this book. There have been dozens of studies published concerning the International Brigades, the approximately 40,000 volunteers from some fifty countries who came to Spain in 1936 and 1937 to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic. We know in great detail who they were, where they came from, what ideologies and what personal experiences motivated them to see in the struggle against Franco a cause worth the sacrifice of their lives. We also know in considerable detail, though with less in the way of individual biographies, the numbers and the motives of over 70,000 uniformed Italian troops and aviators, approximately 20,000 German military specialists and several thousand Portuguese soldiers who were sent by Mussolini, Hitler and Salazar to fight in the ranks of General Franco's army. And in the cases of both the International Brigades and the military units sent by the fascist dictators, we know pretty much what was their military importance to the side they were supporting, and what were their political roles in the course of the 32-rnonth Civil War. But the above paragraph does not account for another, much less numerous and less militarily significant, group of foreigners; namely, the perhaps 1000 to 1500 English, Irish, French, White Russian and Romanian volunteers who came to Spain to fight on the side of General Franco. There have been several important studies of the English and Irish groups, which studies are referred to in Professor Keene's notes and bibliography, but there has been no previous scholarly study of the pro-Franco foreign volunteers as a whole, and this is the unique characteristic of the present volume. Franco's volunteers came from a wide variety of social and ideological backgrounds, but the common denominator of their motives for coming to Spain was the conviction that the Republic was Communist-dominated, and that it must be militarily destroyed in order to prevent the establishment of a Soviet-style Communist regime in Western Europe. Many were Roman FOREWORD Vli Catholics outraged by the fact that the Spanish Republic had disestablished the Church in one of Europe's historically most Catholic countries, and by the church burnings and lynchings of priests which occurred in the first few months of the Civil War. Others were fascists, convinced that Socialist, Communist and anarcho-syndicalist trade unions and propaganda organiza- tions were destroying the patriotic traditions, the necessary discipline and social hierarchy of Western capitalist societies. As fascists they also shared the leadership principle, the glorification of militarism and the male bonding characteristic somewhat of Mussolini's, and very strongly of Hitler's, ruling parties. The White Russians and Romanians were mostly members of the Orthodox national churches in their homelands, but they were spiritually united with Western Catholics in the defence of 'Christian civilization' against the 'satanic hordes' of Marxists, agnostics, atheists and Freemasons. The great majority were also anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim. In their hero-worship, their militarism, their anti-Communism and anti- Semitism, they were psychologically comfortable with the Falangist, Carlist, politically dogmatic and thoroughly conservative ideals of the military in Franco Spain. Protestants were occasionally offended by some of the things they heard said about their faith, but the anti-Communist and pro-fascist aspects of most conversations were much more important than religious differences within the Christian camp. Most of the volunteers were anti- Muslim on both religious and 'racial' grounds, but they had no difficulty in accepting the fact that General Franco was using tens of thousands of Moorish troops. The use of elite foreign mercenaries has been frequent in the history of many empires. In the present instance, General Franco's Moorish Guard and redoubtable Moroccan assault troops contributed to his prestige as a crusading warrior and effectively terrorized both the Republican troops and the civilian population. At the same time, their iron discipline and complete subordination were evidence, for all fascist supporters, domestic and foreign, that these Muslims were the obedient servants of a Christian ruler. Two other factors have surely been important in the relative neglect of the subject of Franco's volunteers in the massive bibliography of the Spanish Civil War. For one thing, Franco always insisted that there were virtually no foreigners fighting on his side. All his propaganda efforts, co-ordinated with those of Mussolini and Hitler, were directed towards attributing the whole Republican military resistance to Communist, Bolshevik and Masonic influences. The Spanish officer corps had been generally sympathetic to Germany in the First World War, and Spanish neutrality in that war had meant that they had had practically no contact with their French and British viii FOREWORD peers. During the Civil War they felt great professional respect for the Germans, and felt mixed gratitude or scorn towards the Italians depending on the flow of military events. But, in any case, they were very loath to credit military victories to their German and Italian allies. The second factor was the small numbers, the unknown languages and the truly minor military role of the 1000 to 1500 Irishmen, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, French and Belgian Catholics, White Russian Orthodox and Romanians. These were people of whose history and religion the franquista leadership knew absolutely nothing (and the same was true in reverse). Communication was severely limited by the fact that very few knew a word of each other's languages. Personal attitudes were inevitably based on ignorance of just about everything except the shared pro-fascist and anti-Communist sentiments expressed in the simplest forms. In addition, after the Second World War, both Franco Spain and its foreign supporters were busy adjusting their statements to the triumph of democracy and claiming that they had never been fascist or Nazi, only more consistently anti-Communist than the Western democracies had been in the 1930s. For various reasons, the lives, motives and roles of Franco's real foreign volunteers have received very little attention in the historical literature. It is to the great credit of Professor Keene that she has undertaken a detailed, fully documented study of these volunteers as a group. She has evaluated their letters, their journalistic and autobiographical memoirs. She has placed them in the context both of their home countries and of the armed forces led by General Franco. She has combed the English-, French- and Spanish-language press for all references to the volunteers. She has seen them as human beings apart from their political roles and has reported their activities as thoroughly as possible without in any way exaggerating the measurable effects of those activities. Gabriel Jackson Map 2 The Iberian peninsula showing locations (annotations to GMT cartography by Sam Keene). Map 1 The Iberian peninsula showing locations (annotations to GMT cartography by Sam Keene). Introduction Towards the end of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle's autobiographical novel, Gilles,1 the hero, Gilles Gambier, a Frenchman passing himself off as a Belgian Rexist, is picked up on the coast of Majorca by two men in a pleasure yacht. They have come south to support General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The yacht's owner is Irish and stowed below are arms for Franco. The yachtsman tells Gilles that he is a 'Catholic who wants to defend Catholic civilization'. The other passenger is Polish, a 'Catholic fascist' committed to a fascist revolution from which, he says, the Church will benefit. The dangers and the exhilaration of battle kindle a spirit of camaraderie among the three, determined as they are to fight for Franco. Gilles and his comrades powerfully evoke a large segment of Franco's foreign volunteers. The bravado, the eulogizing of action and their other clerico-fascist sentiments all ring true.
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