Franco: A Biography. - book reviews

THERE ARE good points to this biography of the Spanish dictator. It is well written, packed with interesting details, and, while it does not give its subject due credit for his achievements, it does bring the man and his family to life. More is the pity that the author, although a professional historian, avoided writing a genuine history, which might have interfered with some of his adverse judgments.

Here is one such judgment. Twenty-one years ago, NR ran a seven-page cover story under the title "Getting at the Guernica Myth." In an earlier issue, Jeffrey Hart had written an article entitled "The Great Guernica Fraud." Yet as treated in this immense tome, the myth and fraud of Franco as a murderer of innocent noncombatants re-emerge, intact.

The author, Paul Preston, professor of International History at the London School of Economics, writes: "That Guernica was destroyed by explosive and incendiary bombs dropped from aircraft of the Condor Legion piloted by Germans is no longer open to any dispute. Moreover, there can no longer be any doubt that the atrocity was carried out at the behest of the Nationalist high command [i.e., Franco], and not on the initiative of the Germans."

Wrong, O Professor! The dispute will continue so long as those who ought to know better by now go on perpetuating the myth. When living in Madrid in 1966-67 while writing my own "biographical history" of General Franco, I was alerted to the possibility that this particular atrocity was unlikely to have been carried out by the Nazis, for the secret archives of the German foreign ministry recorded surprise and indignation at the charges.

Back in London, I received a visit from Sir Archibald James, a World War I airman and former British member of Parliament who had been in Guernica shortly after the attack, went over the whole area, and concluded that its (partial) destruction could not have been caused by air bombardment. There were two main reasons for his conclusion. One was that the small town of Guernica consisted of four quadrangles, three of which had been burned to ashes, whereas the remaining one was intact. Given the state of bombing technology in 1937, there was no way this could have been done from the air. The other point was that the surviving quadrangle contained the Tree of Guernica, the Basque Council Chamber, and the Church of Santa Maria la Antigua. The Nazis had no particular interest in preserving these relics of the Basque heritage; the retreating Basque Republicans did.

On a motoring holiday in Spain shortly before the NR cover story, I deviated to Guernica to see for myself. The historic quadrangle was as history had left it; the three residential quadrangles had been totally rebuilt. It is worth adding that the myth of Guernica originated in a telegram to the Times of London from its war correspondent George Steer, who had not reached Guernica when he wrote it.

I do not believe I am maligning the author when I say that he appears to have set out to damn Franco by systematically opting for the worst interpretation of any event open to alternative analyses.

Also important is the question of Franco's attitude toward Jews. Perhaps rightly, Mr. Preston dismisses the fact that Franco and Bahamonde (the General's matronymic) were common Jewish surnames in Spain as "idle speculation that his family was Jewish." One wonders why such speculation should be idle, but let that pass: Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, and those left behind had opted for Catholicism. Franco was not a Jew in the accustomed sense.

But more significantly, while quoting anti-Jewish passages in Franco's speeches (clearly designed to ingratiate himself with Hitler), Mr. Preston omits to mention that Franco offered Spanish citizenship to Sephardic Jews and allowed as many as 40,000 Jews to cross Spain to safety in Spanish North Africa. Words, it would appear, are more important than deeds.

Let it not be thought that I am out to whiten Franco. My estimate of Franco's reprisals on his erstwhile Republican foes was of 200,000 executions. The Spanish authorities contested this figure, citing 40,000 as authentic. Perhaps legitimately, Mr. Preston avoids figures.

Some other mysteries remain unresolved. For instance, was Franco responsible for the disappearance of the repatriated families of Spanish Republicans transferred by Petain's Vichy regime to the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen after the German invasion of France in 1940? Mr. Preston does not consider this vexed question; neither did I, for my attention was drawn to it only recently.

More omissions: The author (rightly) dwells on the Nationalist massacres in Malaga and other atrocities on the Franco side, but glosses over similar atrocities on the Republican side. He has nothing to say about the Communist-instigated persecution of the Trotskyist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista). While dwelling at length on Franco's supposedly obsessive anti-Communism, he does not bother to mention the important fact that the Republican premier Juan Negrin shipped $500 million worth of Spanish gold to Moscow, where Stalin reigned. He mentions only the outrage of the Republican Colonel Segismundo Casado "that Negrin and the Communists talked of resistance to the bitter end while simultaneously arranging to get funds out of Spain." Nota bene: "out of Spain," not "into Stalin's hands."