Postwar official narrative of Nazism and the extermination of the Jews
II. Catholicism vs. Nazism
Along with the 1945 Fuero de los Españoles, a piece of legislation that high-lighted the religious nature of the regime and of Spanish society, the Parliament approved the 1947 Ley de Sucesión, which defined Spain as a monarchy and Franco as a lifelong regent. These manoeuvres signalled an
16 ‘Periodismo fácil y barato’, Arriba, 18 May 1945. This and following translations are made by the author.
17 ‘La falsedad contumaz’, ABC, 18 May 1945.
18 ‘Se desmiente oficialmente una falsa información de Associated Press sobre Nanclares de Oca’, Arriba, 18 May 1945.
19 Xavier de Echarri, ‘España en el panorama de Europa’, Arriba, 23 May 1945.
20 See, for example, ‘El régimen de Franco es defendido por la prensa del Perú’, Arriba, 19 April 1945.
institutional mask whereby the Falangist power diminished while Mon-archic and Catholic groups saw their influence increase. This significant turnabout was behind the Franco regime’s exploitation of a Spanish Cath-olic identity and religious traditions, as opposed to any reference to National Socialism. Nazism, formerly praised in public, was now vilified as a political system based on state idolatry. In contrast, as was now argued by the Spanish media, the ideological foundations of the Franco regime, namely the ideas of Falange’s founder Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, excluded ‘theocracy’,
‘racism’ and ‘cult of the State’ and genuinely sought a Hispanic identity. The journalist Alfonso Junco argued in the pro-monarchic newspaper ABC that
‘the Catholic doctrine excludes radically and inexorably (…) the Totalitarian conception of the State as the single source of Law’, and that Spaniards aimed for a true democracy, in which the population felt that it was ‘governed’ and
‘guided’ by the State.21
The Spanish Church insisted that racial theories had no place in Franco Spain’s ideology and pointed to profound differences between the Third Reich and Franco’s Spain.22 In messages about the Second World War and Nazism, emphatic distinctions were made between the world war and the Spanish Civil War, the latter being portrayed as the Communists’ persec-ution and extermination of Catholics. Archbishop Pla i Demiel, one of the most important figures within the Spanish Church, argued that the European war illustrated the loss of Christian unity that resulted from the 16th-century Reformation, which laid the foundations for the emergence of states that ‘deified strength (…) and that have ruined the peoples that implement them’. Pla i Demiel believed that the postwar world ought to be built by prioritising Christian values over ‘icons of blood and race’ and be based upon love and brotherhood among peoples.23
Accounts of Spain’s involvement in the Second World War emphasised the motivations for Franco’s neutral position during the conflict. They pointed out that Franco reacted to a threat from the whole of Europe; the dictator aimed to preserve peace in the continent and raise the voice of ‘Christian serenity and fraternity and the European community in order to put an end
21 Alfonso Junco, ‘La España de hoy’, Arriba, 14 April 1945.
22 The Church became one of the most vocal allies of Franco and became very insistent in the public defence of Spain’s stance during WW2. See Javier Tusell, Franco y los Católicos. La política interior española entre 1945 y 1957 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1984), 119–121.
23 ‘Ojalá que la paz futura se procure asentarla sobre el derecho de grandes y pequeños’, Arriba, 9 May 1945.
to the war’.24 Franco, as portrayed by the official narrative of the Second World War, was a messianic leader who had resisted pressure from Hitler to enter the war and protected Spain from another catastrophe. Franco became providential for Spain’s fate, as he did everything in his power to avoid new crimes being committed on Spanish soil. He had managed to keep Spain safe and peaceful, a fact that was stressed as a historical exception in Spain’s modern history.25
The postwar official memory on the Third Reich, albeit not clear-cut, became highly critical of the German spiritual chaos and of the country’s desperate need for a messianic leader immediately after the end of the First World War. In clear contrast with previously praising narratives, Hitler now embodied weak leadership, mediocrity and sexual depravity; he was portrayed as an insane social agitator of the German population through a Pagan, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic ideology that originated in Nietzsche, Spengler and Rosenberg.26
Among countless examples of Nazi violence and crimes, it was anti-Catholicism on which official attention focused. Nazi concentration and extermination camps symbolised Nazi persecution and murder of Catholics, as illustrated by the mysticism attached to Dachau and Buchenwald. For example, in 1953 the press publicised the beatification of the Italian Prin-cess Mafalda of Savoy, who died in Buchenwald in 1944.27 However, such a view was not exceptional, and it echoed the Vatican’s rhetoric of victimhood over its relationship with Nazism. Pope Pius XII’s speech to the cardinals in June 1945 was devoted to the martyrdom of ‘millions of brave Catholics, men and women, who gathered around their Bishops, whose brave voice never stopped to resonate until the end of the war’ and stated that ‘the Holy See, without hesitation, extended progressively its protests to German ombudsmen’.28
24 ‘Ojalá que la paz futura se procure asentarla sobre el derecho de grandes y pequeños’, Arriba, 9 May 1945.
25 ‘Emoción y serenidad’, Arriba, 9 May 1945; L de Galinsoga, ‘Victoria de Franco’, Arriba, 8 May 1945; ‘La validez de una política’, Arriba, 27 April 1945.
26 JA Köpfe and M de Juan, Nazismo contra Cristianismo. Libro Primero: El Hombre y el Mito (Madrid: Javier Morata Editor, 1946), 46, 82, 51–5, 136 and 161–72; PA Pérez Ruiz, Lo que el mundo debe a Alemania (Madrid: s.n., 1946), 5–7.
27 Julián Cortés Cavanillas, ‘Se ha reiterado la solicitud de beatificación de la princesa Mafalda, Mártir de Buchenwald’, ABC, 30 September 1953; Julián Cortés Cavanillas,
‘Hace doce años que la Princesa Mafalda de Saboya murió trágicamente en Buchenwald’, ABC, 2 Oct 1956.
28 ‘Su Santidad expone ante los cardenales la «radical oposición entre el Estado nacional-socialista y la Iglesia»’, ABC, 3 June 1945.