ABSTRACT
As an openly declared enemy of liberal democracy and Bolshevism Franco could not conceal his sympathies when Hitler unleashed his war to exterminate both. In the last resort, however, the Caudillo’s natural inclinations in foreign policy were restrained by two overriding considerations: his own domestic survival and Spain’s economic and military capacity for war. In both of those areas he was obliged to pay considerable heed to the views of the army high command. The army was the most powerful player within the complex game of power rivalries between the component groups of the recently victorious Nationalist coalition.1 At the beginning of the Second World War military conviction of an inevitable German victory was virtually unanimous. However, the likelihood of Spanish generals acting on the basis of that conviction was diminished both by their awareness of Spain’s shattered economic and military capacity and by their monarchist sympathies. From the autumn of 1940 onwards the generals showed increasing scepticism about the ultimate Axis triumph. The Falange was a different matter. In its ranks could be found an unrestrained sympathy for German military exploits which was to remain undiminished until the last days of the war. Ideological affinities with the Third Reich immeasurably strengthened the Falange in the internal power struggle within Spain. The military and the Falange were the two major influences on Franco in the making of his foreign policy during the Second World War. Aristocratic royalists and middle-class Catholics were more ambiguous in their views, at first grateful for German assistance in the Civil War and envious of the Third Reich’s success but increasingly suspicious of its religious policies and fervent anti-monarchism.
