Franco

"Paul Preston is another great British historian and his subject is Spain. This is the biography of Franco. What is so wonderful about it is that, generally speaking, the history of the last war for many decades in Britain is seen through the prism of what happened to Britain and America. And all the other countries that suffered so terribly in Europe were very much neglected. And then along came Ian Kershaw whose three-volume biography of Hitler opened up the whole story of what happened in Eastern Europe – horrific, horrific stories about the Nazi occupation there. And then Russia – it took many years for British people to realise that it was Russia that really won the war and it took something like 20 million dead to do it. Of course they had a leader, in Stalin, who thought little of allowing 20 million people to die. Now, all the time these horrors were going on, Spain was, so-called, neutral. Of all the dictators of Europe in the 30s it was Franco who lived the longest and ruled the longest. And, of all of them – Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Pétain in France, Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain – my choice for the worst of them all is Franco. Franco actually hated and killed his own people, which is an unusual attribute for a fascist. Paul Preston’s book tells you about his hideous regime. What’s so fascinating is that, because Franco wasn’t at war, most of the German and French war criminals – those who achieved freedom and there were a substantial number – were sheltered after it by Franco in Spain. It’s remarkable how much material there is in the archives about the war criminals who lived here. Many used Spain as an avenue to Argentina or Brazil, but many, many stayed. And this book covers the whole period. It tells too how his ghastly rule came to an end. Franco died – and it all stopped, instantly. Preston brilliantly describes this most extraordinary episode. Well, it was sheer ruthlessness, I think: Franco had more in common with Stalin than any of the others. And, of course, he had the power of the Catholic church in Spain on his side. The church was an enormous supporter of Franco. The church and the army kept him in power."