Nothing like ignoring truth and facts when discussing history.

The truth is that the Republic turned first to the US, England and France when fascism threatened. All three countries turned their backs on her just as they turned their backs on the millions of Jews they could have saved from the death camps run by Franco's allies. France and England weren't going to do anything to further the demise of monarchism, and the US, in its official language, considered it "premature" to oppose fascism until December 7, 1941.

Had ANY western power come to the aid of the Republic, Spain would not have been forced into the desperate step of accepting the USSR's decidedly inferior military power. Our failure to save Spain and then all of Europe from fascism in the 1930s was nothing less than shameful. THAT was our opportunity to ensure liberty and democracy throughout the continent. Instead of taking that opportunity, we allowed the Nazi boots to march from Germany, Italy and Spain across much of Europe, bringing death to tens of millions and decades of repression and agony to tens (if not hundreds) of millions more.

In the process, we created a military situation that demanded sharing of power with the USSR in the war's aftermath--and poor Spain was left to suffer under fascism for decades after it was vanquished on the rest of the continent. I doubt highly whether the Spanish people, during the 40 years when Franco's hands were around their throats, gave a damn about whether he was "valuable" as our ally--because we surely were not their allies when they desperately needed us to be.

No amount of vintage Cold War revisionist rationalization changes these facts. And no proclamation that Spanish fascism was "good" for the US does anything but slander the ideals of democracy and liberty on which this country is supposed to be founded.

Aphra, you as well as I know why La Pasionaria was not afforded any kind of shrine: She was half Basque.

Franco was an opportunist. When the Germans showed themselves to be the dominant military power, it was with them that he aligned himself. When they went down to defeat, he waited a while, since he had been publicly neutral during WWII, then in the 50s, when his own country faced the hardships caused by isolation, he turned to NATO and the US in order to enter the world stage again. It's the same two-step made famous by fascism's other former power: Italy, although they ended up better off since they did it before the end of WWII. Nonetheless, it's essentially the same.

That Franco got what he wanted (genocide and oppression for all his enemies) and then played the neutrality card was shrewd to say the least. What Spain got in return was 40 years of worldwide misundestanding and domestic oppression.

Anyway, I agree with Aphra: This is an issue where people must agree to disagree. I want to commend all of you for your opinions expressed, especially since the last heated debate was over ETA, and people seemed to take things too personally. I appreciate that we haven't had that to deal with here...

We can play would've and could've and should've all night. But I think there is little doubt that Spain would have come under Communist control if Franco had not won. This is not to suggest that a dictatorship under Franco was necessarily better than one might have been under Communism. We cannot know that. I do know that when I lived in Spain for a couple of years during the Franco regime, that I could not have been there had Franco lost and the country gone Communist.

While there I talked with natives of Madrid who had their business collectivized by the Communists during the Civil War. Too, early in the war, all Spanish gold was shipped to Russia for safe keeping, never to be recovered--adding power to Russian domination. (Huge Thomas, "The Spanish Civil War.")

I have no doubt that the Communists would have remained in control had they won. What I cannot venture to say is for how long. Given the history of the cold war in Eastern Europe, perhaps quite a while.

I am aware that feelings on these emotional issues remain strong among many older Spaniards. I speak only from a US viewpoint when I suggest that Franco was better for us, if not necessarily better for Spaniards, than a Communist Spain would have been.
Cantabene

The last post contains as many would-have/should-have's as it critiques. Which goes to show the obvious: an in-depth analysis of history must take into account a multiplicity of factors. Why don't people post the historical readings they recommend to understand the Spa. Civil War in the context of WWII, the USSR, the USA, etc? More light.

I have been to the place and found it in typical dictatorial poor taste, much as EUR near Rome or any public edifice in former communist countries. I mean, was there a law against taste?

Anyway, this is a part of history like it or not. Go there and see it and be disgusted or impressed or spit on it or whatever, but don't ignore it.

rgf:
Let me ask you this. Had Franco lost the war, would that not have left his opponents the victors? Who do you believe to have been his opponents?
Cantabene

A radical thought: perhaps this is a debate that ought not be dominated (even on this board) by those of us in the States? Contrary to the prevailing opinion here in the US, everything is not always all about us.

Just today my friend Valerie Collins, who was born in England but has lived in Spain for decades, sent a link to her recent article about life under Franco. The link will take you to her site for ex-pat writers, Worlds Apart Review.
http://www.worldsapartreview.com/franco.htm

Read it and learn.

Aphra- The US in the '30's possesed armed forces that totalled perhaps a half-million and was in the throes of the Great Depression. We were in no position to "stop" facism in Spain or anywhere else. To suggest otherwise is itself vintage Cold War revisionist rationalization.

Hitler was not seen as a universal threat to the world then. In fact, he was seen as a bulwark against soviet and communist expansion, which was a real threat to European stability then.

The idea that this nation "turned its back" on the Jews of Europe must be comforting to the tens of thousands who lost loved ones in France and the Pacific in WWII. Also, it was the USSR itself that created a situation which "demanded" that we share power with them in the post=war world. They did that by destroying about 75% of the nazi army. Now those ARE facts.

Was Spain better off under Franco? Who knows, but the post-franco situation looks alot better than the post-communist situation in Europe.

1938: Hitler is so little recognized as a universal threat that 32 countries attend the Evian Conference in France, convened by FDR, to discuss the European refugee problem. Inexplicably, nearly all the conference participants decide against increasing quotas on Jewish emigres.

1939: A Senate bill that would have allowed 20,000 German children to enter the US does not even make it out of committee.

1939: 930 Jewish refugees on the SS St. Louis are refused entry to the US and are returned to death in Europe.

1939: Britain, which controls Palestine, issues an order that caps Jewish refugee emigration to Palestine to a 5-year total of 75,000.

1940: Hitler's campaign against the Jews and the existence of the death camps is so little known that they are the subject of a major motion picture, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

"We didn't know" is a tired old lie. We knew. We just didn't give a damn. In that respect, we were just the allies Hitler, Franco and Mussolini needed to do their evil.

Thank you for sharing the link, Aphra. My first time in Spain more-or-less fit the time and economic frame she was refering to- cash poor, adventure hungry - idealistic and impressionable. Valerie Collins caught the essence - heart and soul - of what Spain was like then in the still unjaded eyes of someone that age. Thanks again for sharing.