Franco : A Biography

Few Americans know much about Francisco Franco, leader of the winning side in the Spanish Civil War and subsequently dictator of Spain. Yet from 1936 until 1975, he was a famous world figure. Now he is forgotten—but not by all. Franco is, and has been for decades, a cause célèbre among the global Left, seen as the devil incarnate for his successful war against Communist domination of Spain. To successfully delay, or worse, block, any Left attempt to establish their permanent rule, thereby revealing that history lacks a progressive direction, is the unforgivable sin. Naturally, therefore, my own impression of Franco was generally favorable. But after reading up on him, my impression of him has changed. Now it is positively glowing.It is very difficult to grasp the controversial figures of the past century. By “controversial,” I mean right-wing, since no prominent left-wing figure is ever deemed, in the common imagination formed by the left-wing dominance of academia and media, to be “controversial.” Instead, such people are “bold” or “courageous.” The only way to get at the truth about a right-wing figure is to absorb a great many facts about him. It doesn’t matter much if the facts are slanted, or are disputed, or even if lies are told, as they always are about any right-wing figure. Reading enough detail allows the truth to come into focus, which mostly means ferreting out where the Left is lying or where one’s impression has been formed by propaganda or half-truths.Even though facts matter most, the first thing to do when reading a book about any right-wing figure, or any event or happening important to the Left, is to check the political angle of the author, to know the likely slant. Somewhat surprisingly, most recent popular English-language general histories of the Spanish Civil War are only modestly tilted Left. The best-known is that by Hugh Thomas (recently deceased and a fantastic writer, mostly on Spain’s earlier history), which I’ve read; Antony Beevor, specialist in popularized histories of twentieth-century war, also wrote one, which I have skimmed. Several others exist, and voluminous Spanish-language literature, as well, about which I know essentially nothing other than as cited in English-language texts.Reading biographies of Franco, rather than histories of the Civil War, pulls back the lens to see Spain across the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, not just in the years between 1936 and 1939. Any history revolving around Franco in that period is necessarily both a history of Spain and the history of Left-Right conflict. This is useful because my purpose is not just to understand Franco, although that’s interesting enough, but what Franco and his times say for our times. While my initial intention was just to read one biography, it quickly became clear that more detail would allow more clarity. I deemed this amount of effort important because I think the Spanish experience in the twentieth century has a lot to say to us.Therefore, I selected three biographies. The first was "Franco: A Personal and Political Biography," published in 2014, by Stanley Payne, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Payne has spent his entire long career writing many books on this era of Spain’s history, and he is also apparently regarded as one of the, if not the, leading experts on the typology of European fascism. Payne’s treatment of Franco is straight up the middle, neither pro nor con, and betrays neither a Left nor Right bias—although, to be sure, a straightforward portrait contradicts the Left narrative, and thus can be seen as effectively tilted Right, whatever the author’s actual intentions. The second was Spanish historian Enrique Moradiellos’s 2018 "Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator," a shorter treatment generally somewhat negative with respect to Franco. The third, "Franco: A Biography," is by Paul Preston, a professor at the London School of Economics, who like Payne is an expert in twentieth-century Spain. Unlike Payne, or Moradiello, he is an avowed political partisan, of the Left, and his 1993 biography of Franco is vituperative, but it was also the first major English-language study of Franco, and is regarded as a landmark achievement offering enormous detail, even if it is superseded in some ways by later scholarship. Preston also published, in 2012, the dubiously named The Spanish Holocaust, analyzing through a hard Left lens the killings of the Civil War, which I have read in part and to which I will also refer. In addition, I have consulted a variety of other books, including Julius Ruiz’s recent work on the Red Terror in Madrid, and repeatedly viewed the five-hour 1983 series "The Spanish Civil War," produced in the United Kingdom and narrated by Frank Finlay, available on YouTube, which while it has a clear left-wing bias, offers interviews with many actual participants in the war.Unlike my usual technique, which is to review individual books and use them as springboards for thought, I am trying something new. I am writing a three-part evaluation of twentieth-century Spain, through a political lens, in which I intend to sequentially, but separately, focus on three different time periods. First, the run-up to the Civil War. Second, the war itself, mainly with respect to its political, not military, aspects, and its immediate aftermath. Third, Franco’s nearly forty years as dictator, and the years directly after. Using multiple books from multiple political angles will highlight areas of contradiction or dispute, and allow tighter focus on them. True, I have not read any actually pro-Franco books—I would, but, as Payne notes, there are no such English-language books, though he mentions several in Spanish.The American (and English) Right has always been very reticent about any endorsement of Franco. Part of this is the result of ignorance combined with the successful decades-long propaganda campaign of the Left. If you’re ill-informed, it’s easy to lump Franco in with Hitler, or if you’re feeling charitable, Mussolini, and who wants to associate himself with them? Part of it is the inculcated taste for being a beautiful loser, on sharp display for some reason among modern English conservatives, not only Peter Hitchens in his book "The Abolition of Britain" but also Roger Scruton on "How To Be A Conservative." But a bigger part, I think, is distaste for the savagery of civil wars, combined with the feeling that Christians should not kill their enemies, except perhaps in open battle in a just war. On the surface, this seeming pacifism appears to be a standard thread of Christian thought. But examined more closely, it is actually a new claim, since the contested dividing line has always been if and under what circumstances killing in self-defense is permitted. Whether the killing occurs in the heat of battle is a mere happenstance, now incorrectly elevated by some on the Right to the core matter, probably as a backdoor way of limiting killing by the state. The effect, though, is to repudiate killing in self-defense outside of battle, even by the authorities, ignoring the admonition of Saint Paul, that the ruler “beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”Competently illustrating this weak-kneed and incoherent line of thought among the modern Right, Peter Hitchens wrote a recent piece in "First Things" about Franco. Hitchens was, in fact, also reviewing Moradellios’s book, and his review exquisitely demonstrates this intellectual confusion and theological incoherence. He goes on at great length about the evils of the Republicans and how their victory would have been disastrous for Spain. But then he goes on at greater length telling us that Christians cannot look to Franco, because he committed “crimes,” none of which are specified in the review (or, for that matter, in the book being reviewed), probably because to specify them would make them seem not very crime-like. We must therefore reject Franco, Hitchens tells us, for an unspecified alternative that was most definitely not on offer in 1936, and is probably not going to be on offer if, in the future, we are faced with similar circumstances. This is foolishness. (It is not helped by Hitchens’s self-focus and his repeated attempts to establish his own personal intellectual superiority, sniffing, for example, that Franco watched television and “had no personal library,” though if Hitchens had read Payne, he would know that was because the Republicans destroyed it in 1936.) And Hitchens whines that Franco “hardly ever said or wrote anything interesting in his life,” which is false, though in part explained by Franco’s oft-repeated dictum that “One is a slave to what one says but the owner of one’s silence.”Hitchens squirms a bit, though, when he (at least being intellectually honest) quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s ringing endorsement of Franco. “I saw that Franco had made a heroic and colossal attempt to save his country from disintegration. With this understanding there also came amazement: there had been destruction all around, but with firm tactics Franco had managed to have Spain sidestep the Second World War without involving itself, and for twenty, thirty, thirty-five years, had kept Spain Christian against all history’s laws of decline! But then in the thirty-seventh year of his rule he died, dying to a chorus of nasty jeers from the European socialists, radicals, and liberals.” Hitchens, for no stated reason, seems to think that Moradiellos’s book proves Solzhenitsyn wrong, when the exact opposite is the case. Hitchens even ascribes Solzhenitsyn’s praise to “infatuation on the rebound,” whatever that means, though the quote is from the late 1970s (from the recently released autobiography Between Two Millstones), long after Solzhenitsyn’s experiences in the Gulag. Probably realizing how weak his argument is, Hitchens then switches gears without acknowledging it, dropping the “crimes” line and claiming that since Franco’s work was all undone rapidly after his death, Franco was bad. Which is even more intellectually sieve-like.The lack of mental rigor in this line of thought can be seen if we switch the focus from Franco to any one of scores of Christian heroes of the past. Once you leave St. Francis of Assisi behind, any Christian military hero plucked at random from the pages of history did far worse things to his enemies, and often to his friends, than Franco. Try Charlemagne. Or Saint Louis IX. Or Richard II Lionheart. Or El Cid. Or Don Juan of Austria. All wars fought to decide ultimate questions are unpleasant and involve acts that endanger the souls of men. It is merely the proximity of Franco to us in time, combined with the lack of steel that has affected many Christians for decades now, that makes Hitchens shrink from endorsing Franco and his deeds, all his deeds. In two hundred years if, God willing, the Left and its Enlightenment principles are nothing but a faded memory and a cautionary tale, Hitchens’s complaints will seem utterly bizarre, like a belief that the Amazons were real. Would I care to stand in Franco’s shoes before the judgment seat of Christ? Not particularly. But I am far from certain that it would be an uncomfortable position.Several events appear in every history of the Spanish Civil War. Among these are the 1930 Jaca revolt; the 1934 Asturias Rebellion; and the 1937 bombing of Guernica. In astronomy, there is the concept of “standard candles.” These are stars of a known luminosity, whose distance can be accurately calculated, and against which other celestial objects can then be measured. I think of events that regularly recur in histories as standard candles: happenings about which certain facts are not in dispute, but which different authors approach differently, either by emphasizing or omitting certain facts. By examining each author’s variations, we can measure him against the standard candles, determining, to some degree, whether his history is objective, or a polemic, in which latter case its reliability becomes suspect.[The remainder of this review, which is very long, is available at my review of the same book at Goodreads.]

This biography is extremely detailed. Thankfully it is easy to read and very interesting, but I am skipping entire pages, it's just too much.

This is a classic and describes a period of Spain's history that has formed post-Franco culture to an important level. Paul Preston has written a very detailed book about this period, well researched and documented; it also reads well and even though most of the readers will know how the story ends (this is what defines 'history')it maintains the tension even when re-reading after some time. The most recent book (I believe only written in Spanish so far) about Don Juan Carlos (king of Spain) is equally impressive. To both books, however, there is one thing I missed: the deeper psychological background to the key players. Why did they do what they did? Why was Franco able to 'hang on' for so long, how was Juan Carlos able to live under one regime and then change to a democracy (doing what I would call a 'Gorbachov': growing up in the system, getting powerful in the system and then defeating the same system). I am looking forward to have those aspects covered by Mr Preston one day.

Only one conclusion from the book: Franco was a deviate - a horrible person which the US during the Eisenhower Administration supported.

If you really want to understand a crucial and telling piece of world history that has been kept largely a secret due to a largely secretive maniac, Paul Preston's FRANCO: A BIOGRAPHY is the book to read.On one level, it can definitely be argued that "karma's a bitch" and that, because of that, Spain perhaps was due to get back a little of what they'd put so much of Latin America through for so long, and so God created Francisco Franco as a fair and just punishment for the people of Spain.On another level, however, it could also be argued -- and I think much more convincingly argued -- that any culture is dominated and thus actually ruled by its most powerful militarized elements against which most of the people have no say if they disagree. In essence, societies and empires are captives of "their" militaries and those who strategize for them, and most likely Spain has never been any different, even through its most sado-masochistic peak as THE global empire.The problem is that many Spanish most likely wanted no part of the Inquisition, the takeover of the New World, or any of the brutalities perpetrated by the Spanish Empire down through the ages. Yet the sadistic element in Spain, as in every other country, typically remains in control down through time. And so, when it came time for Spain to meet its final defeat in the Spanish-American War at the hands of Teddy Roosevelt, those same sadistic elements in control of Spain, having no more outside whipping boys against which to continue the tradition of indulging their penchant for wanton domination and cruelty, they turned first against Morocco to their south in the Rif Wars, and then against their own internal human infrastructure, in terms of what is so sanitizingly called "The Spanish Civil War", but which, upon the revelations of recent years, should be most accurately called The Spanish Holocaust. And at the center of all that, with the help of pro-fascist, pro-Nazi American-Germanist elements like the Bush family, the Rockefeller family and so on, was the general Francisco Franco.

Interesting book from the respected author. Easy to read for non-speaking English. Gives you more insight into Franco's life. Recommend for the people who are interested in history

An extensive detailed biography of the longest surviving European dictator .It is cram-full of political and diplomatic details that can be exhausting for the casual reader but rewarding for the patient committed reader. I feel that a shortened version could have a wider readership through editing particularly the long wartime narrative with the General's constant prevarications about joining the Axis forces and the crafty opportunism he displayed by playing one side against the other. I am not so sure that every reader would want to know the outcome of every single meeting he had with the Western ambassadors or the German and Italian dignitaries, let alone every exchange he had with his various foreign affairs ministers and acolytes. Sure it can be riveting in a perverse way but I would have preferred for instance more information about the nature of the " Carlist" movement and the origins and doctrine of the Falangists. An insight into the post civil war living conditions of the Spanish population would have been interesting or the fate of the incarcerated Republican prisoners.This is a matter of personal taste and doesn't detract in anyway from the magnificent achievement of the author , a monument to his meticulous scholarship.

If you want pages and pages of detail about what seems like each and every decision made through the three years of the Civil war then this is the book for you. I became so bogged down in wearisome details, names etc that I just skipped to the end of some of these chapters. It is a hugely impressive work but failed on a number of levels for me. The authors very obvious view lurks constantly throughout the narrative. Franco is presented as evil, callous, politically manipulative, personally as cold as ice. From start to finish. And that's it. There is little, if any, time spent on how this regime actually affected everyday life for the people of the country-except as victims. Excellent work for historical and diplomatic detail but left the actual character and motivation of the man a mystery to me.

It is important to have ready up on the Civil War prior to reading this book. The level of detail and the onslaught of names as a result of the level of detail will mean it is hard work to take all into account. However, the book does give an excellent insight to how Franco emerged from a country loyalist to paramount dictator, as clearly (from the book) this was not his original goal. He saw himself, quite ironically, as the country's saviour, even if it meant liquidating half his countryfolk.

This biography is particularly strong on diplomatic history. Readers interested in the broader social context might well need to consult other sources.Preston provides an intricately detailed analysis of each stage of Franco's life from childhood to senescence. He offers a careful assessment of the Caudillo's military strategy during the Spanish Civil War, which relied on the pitiless destruction of all resistance across the nation before giving consideration to ending the conflict. Whilst he was in power, Franco saw himself as ruling for the winning side, rather than on behalf of all Spaniards. He saw reconciliation as weakness and was responsible for the ruthless repression of all potential opposition after his victory. Though Franco kept Spain out of WW2, Preston concludes his inclination was consistently to sympathise with the fascist axis.This authoritative and well-referenced work ultimately portrays Franco as a vindictive mediocrity of limited intellect with no real vision for his country other than to cling on to power. It is a must read for anyone interested in the history and evolution of modern Spain.

Not a history book, history should be based on facts alone to allow the reader to judge by himself, as usual Preston fails to keep his personal opinions to himself,The book is full of the author's own opinions and does nothing but criticise both Franco and Spain whilst praising the United Kingdom and the USA every time half a chance arisesThere are a couple of contradictions and a couple of mis-translations when quoting spanish phrases or words