Spanish Fascist Women’s Transnational Relations during the Second World War: Between Ideology and Realpolitik

For most of the Second World War, Spain was not a neutral country. Although officially neutral at the beginning of the conflict, for the first nine months it was in fact benevolent towards the Axis powers. Spain became even less neutral after its declaration of non-belligerence in June 1940, which lasted until October 1943, that is, for 40 out of the 68 months (almost 60 per cent) of the duration of the war in Europe. This clearly favourable positioning was a mixture of gratitude for the invaluable help from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), the ideological affinity of Spanish fascists and the firmly held belief (shared by conservatives and authoritarians) that a new anti-liberal, if not directly fascist, era was about to begin in which Spain would have a significant role, if it played its cards right.

This conviction was also shared by fascist women in these three countries and led to fluent relations between the women’s organization in the Spanish fascist party, Falange’s Sección Femenina (SF), and their counterparts in Italy and Germany. ¹ These relations resulted in at least 49 visits between 1937 and 1943, including 12 top-ranking visits from Spanish, German and Italian female leaders. Most of these visits (over 30) were by Falangist women to Italy and above all to Germany. In the changing context of a civil and a world war, however, these relations were forced to cede to realpolitik imperatives: by late 1943 the increasingly unfavourable progress of the war for the Axis made it patently clear that the political survival of the fascist party in Spain and even the dictatorship itself had to be ensured above all else. To that end, Francoists, and in the last instance Falangists as well, demonstrated evident political opportunism by hiding and even retroactively denying any such relations, let alone ideological affinity with the previously friendly nations.

These relationships were based on the tradition of political contacts in the 1930s, especially those of the so-called transnational networks of interwar fascism. Since the turn of the century, fascist cross-border relationships have increasingly attracted the interest of more and more researchers. Their analyses have shown the influences and interactions between fascist movements and regimes, especially (but not only) between Italian Fascism and German Nazism. ² The underlying premise is not only that these movements and parties ‘cannot be studied in isolation as they constantly influenced each other’, but also that cross-border relations constitute one of the three areas in fascist studies for which ‘a transnational perspective is most relevant’. ³ However, these pioneering studies have been ‘gender-blind’ as they have not considered the female members and leaders of those very same fascist parties, who from the late Thirties were actually developing their own cross-border activities in parallel and ultimately built a multinational network of fascist women. ⁴ As single-party leaders, they enjoyed the status of official representatives of their countries, but the fluid relations have been given scanty attention both by studies on fascism (perhaps because they were women) and by women’s or gender studies (perhaps because they were fascists).

The Spanish Civil War soon became not only ‘an important arena for transnational collaboration between European fascists’, but also the ‘most obvious example of transnational links in the history of interwar fascism and anti-fascism’. ⁵ In parallel to the wider historiographical evolution, since the 1990s central importance has been attached to the role of culture and propaganda (book editions, translations, foreign-language teaching, institutions, journalism) in the relationships of Franco’s Spain, regarding both Fascist ⁶ and Nazi ⁷ cultural foreign policy. Lastly, light has been shed on the participation of Spanish officials in several European projects driven by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, such as the European Writers’ Union, studied by Benjamin Martin, or the public health experts willingly joining the new International Association Against Tuberculosis and paving the way for a ‘totalitarian’ Public Health after the ‘Endsieg’, recently analysed by David Brydan. ⁸ In comparison, political relations have been less studied at the level of party, ⁹ let alone women’s organizations. Contacts between the SF and its German and Italian counterparts have been mentioned in early and recent literature on the women’s organizations of the Spanish Falange and the NSDAP, ¹⁰ while Spanish participation in Hitler Youth’s multilateral activities between 1940 and 1943 has not gone beyond mere confirmation. ¹¹ However, to the best of my knowledge only a few historians have dedicated thorough analysis to this topic. ¹²

This article analyses the relationships between Falangist and Nazi women through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, and the impact ideology and practical concerns had on them. It firstly outlines the establishment of SF’s cross-border contacts during the civil war and frequent bilateral visits to Italy and especially Germany. Secondly, it focuses on how the Second World War affected those relations, enabling at first multilateral relations between European women’s and youth organizations in which Falange’s SF participated so actively and enthusiastically to build (and co-direct) the fascist ‘Young Europe’. Finally, I explain the impact of political changes in Spain and the rest of Europe on the withdrawal from politics and return to the domestic sphere of Spain’s fascist women.

In interwar Europe, fascist groups and parties increasingly thought of themselves as part of the same ideological family. According to Mussolini’s idea of ‘a Rome-led yet universal revolution’, ¹³ the Nazi ‘seizure’ of power in 1933 confirmed that Fascism was no Italian exception. By that time Rome had become the genuine ‘gravitational centre’ around which fascist groups orbited as though they were in ‘magnetic fields’. ¹⁴ The slogan ‘Italia docet’ reflected the enormously powerful resonance of Fascism across the political spectrum. As ‘Ideology tourists’ ¹⁵ (not only fascists) and their ‘political travel’ ¹⁶ (not only to fascist countries) were typical in the interwar period, delegations travelled on the ground to see ‘the Italian original’ with their own eyes; an audience with the Duce was regarded as an ‘act of accreditation in the fascist world’, ¹⁷ usually followed by political advice … and succulent funding.

For Spanish fascism as well the political horizon was located, ‘[f]rom all points of view’, in Europe. ¹⁸ Six weeks after Hitler came to power, José Antonio Primo de Rivera expressed his firm belief that Spain would embrace ‘this new civil religion’, a pointed reference to fascism, which ‘now announces its high tide in Europe’. ¹⁹ For pre-war Falangism the main benchmark was Italy, a country the Falange’s founder visited twice, in 1933 and 1935. He had little problem in proclaiming his admiration for Fascism to Italian newspapers as ‘the most outstanding historical event of our time’ and Mussolini as the ‘master of this new doctrine’. ²⁰ However, the Italian benchmark was not the only one. Soon after the party’s foundation in late 1933, Primo de Rivera also asked for an invitation to Berlin, where he finally met Hitler in May 1934 and visited among others the Reich Labour Service (RAD), the German Labour Front and the Hitler Youth; the very same social and youth areas, which were also attracting many other fascists’ (and conservatives’) attention. ²¹

Falangist women also took European fascisms as a benchmark right from the start. Even before the party was founded, in March 1933 the weekly paper, El Fascio, the first joint editorial project produced by Spanish fascists, underlined the alleged appeal of fascism for women, citing as an example the fact that a woman had initiated British fascism. ²² Probably as the result of her brother’s first trip to Rome, Pilar Primo de Rivera obtained a signed portrait of Mussolini, undoubtedly the first available evidence of her early ideological affinity with Fascism. ²³ However, beyond the above-mentioned high-level contacts between major (male) leaders, I have found no evidence of contacts at the level of youth and women’s organizations before the summer of 1936. The putsch against Spain’s first democracy and the subsequent civil war radically changed this state of affairs.

Unlike their Italian and German counterparts, Spanish fascists had been unable to seize power through legal means during peacetime. A failure at the polls (less than 1 per cent in the last general elections) and parliamentary meaningless as a party (two seats), Falange was however, essential in its contribution to Spain’s social and political polarization before the putsch. Paradoxically, by July 1936, Falange was experiencing an astonishing growth in numbers (with membership increasing ten-fold) and greater influence in the perceptible fascistization of life and political discourse in Spain. After the military revolt failed, the fascist party was not only instrumental in the mass mobilization (and savage repression) in rebel Spain, but it also constituted one of the two most influential political cultures during the Franco dictatorship: fascist and even secular in its origins, Falangism was ideologically predominant until the early 1940s, when the other political culture, namely the nationalist, deeply Catholic reactionaries, gained the ideological upper hand. However, they never became omnipotent either and had to cohabit with Falange until Franco’s death. ²⁴

As with war itself, Falange’s totalitarian New State could by no means be a men only enterprise. Spanish women had immediately responded to the coup d’état, in what has been considered their ‘first mobilization … in a total war’. ²⁵ In rebel Spain, where their sudden, public protagonism was also considerable, the Sección Femenina soon became ‘the most important auxiliary Falangist organisation’ after the militias, ²⁶ with a mass membership of tens and soon hundreds of thousands. The SF was keen to actively carry out the Falangist political project: only a ‘national-syndicalist revolution’ would return Spain to its imperial grandeur. Their mission was to organize and indoctrinate the female half of the ‘national community’. But, how was it to be done? Significantly enough, Falangist women showed no interest in the Austrian ‘Corporative State’ or, despite geographical and cultural proximity, in Salazar’s Estado Novo, two major references for the Spanish anti-republican right. ²⁷

Help would come from Nazi Germany. Its first ambassador to Franco, Wilhelm Faupel, was commissioned ‘at the Führer’s request’ to take ‘one man for propaganda and another for Falange organisational issues’. At a time when the Hitler Youth did not yet have any direct interest in Spain, Faupel and the special task force (Sonderstab), sent by Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, were to become a major driving force behind the start of these contacts. The ultimate aim was the result not only of ideological affinity but also of political opportunism. Faupel wanted to secure for Germany ‘the fruits of our political and economic support’ in post-war Spain. In early 1937 he felt the best way of achieving this was to become ‘active in the cultural and social sphere now and as intensely as possible’. ²⁸ In the following months nearly every major party and government office was supplied with propaganda material on Italian and German party organizations (militias, social, youth and women).

This propaganda flow was certainly not imposed from above and abroad. Quite the opposite in fact, German and Italian plans met the Spanish fascists’ search for organizational models halfway. Falangists inundated Italian and German diplomatic representations in Spain, with requests for books, magazines, leaflets, portraits, and even films. ²⁹ Like their male comrades, Falangist women looked abroad for inspiration and ideology led them towards Italy and Germany. Firstly, as Italian Fascism had been the ideological reference for the Falange, ³⁰ Spanish fascist women even reached out to the Fascist party in Rome. As an SF local leader in Seville proclaimed in a letter to the National Secretary, Achille Starace: ‘we are beginning to organise here … Dawn is breaking in Spain. Fascist enthusiasm is great. … Our totalitarian time is drawing near.’ ³¹ And secondly, the Women’s Section looked towards Nazi Germany. In March 1937, seeing that most Falangists lacked ‘models, examples and stimuli’, Faupel introduced a new phase in these ‘cultural’ relations and proposed sending Falangists to Germany to study Nazi organizations on the ground. ³²

The presence of women on these visits is somewhat surprising, as political trips abroad were not a common activity for women at that time, let alone during a civil war. However, their numbers were significant right from the start (four out of the ten places planned for the first group), and would increase further for practical reasons: as the result of the unification of all rebel political forces in the new single party, decreed by Franco in April 1937, the situation of its male section was awaiting clarification. The Germans decided to focus on the women’s organizations, as the SF and Auxilio Social (AS, Social Aid) were not expected to see major changes in staff or leadership. ³³ The first three female Falangist leaders headed to Berlin in July for a preparatory visit, followed in September by two groups (each for the SF and the AS) in the first study visits.

Six years later there had been at least 22 visits to Germany and twelve by the Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft (NSF, National Socialist Women’s Organization) and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM, League of German Girls) to Spain. Although itself a women’s organization, the SF fostered much closer cooperation with both the Italian and the Nazi youth organizations. This can be explained above all due to the totalitarian aspiration of Pilar Primo de Rivera to organize all Spanish women regardless of their age within the SF. In a long struggle with her party comrade, the (male) National Youth Delegate, she successfully manoeuvred to obtain the monopoly on the female youth and to fully incorporate it into the SF, in open contrast with Germany and Italy, where the women’s organizations (NSF and FF) repeatedly failed to regain control over the female branch of their youth organizations. ³⁴

All in all, there were 34 confirmed visits, with an imbalance (2 to 1) in favour of the Spaniards. The visits were mostly concentrated in two main periods (1937–9 and 1941–2), with a pause of 16 months after the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War. The most outstanding in terms of numbers and importance are the six visits of the SF’s national delegate, Pilar Primo de Rivera: four of her visits to Germany were concentrated in a 13-month period from August 1941 to September 1942, coinciding not by chance with the peak period of Axis control over Europe. There were also exchanges between SF and its Italian adult and youth counterparts: the Fasci Femminili (FF) and the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL), but they began later and were less frequent. ³⁵

The essential aim of these bilateral visits was to observe the work of Fascist and above all, Nazi organizations, which had far more consolidated paths, structures and activities, as well as much higher membership figures. In Germany the Falangists visited the central services and the territorial delegations of Nazi organizations and studied their structure and work ‘in careful detail’. ³⁶ Preference was given to practical experience over theory, meaning that Spanish fascist women would learn first-hand over long stays (normally two or three months). They followed an intensive schedule of activities, with hardly any time for diversion or leisure. Once back in Spain, they could teach minor leaders or rank-and-file members, promoting the multiplier effect of what they had learned. Many of these visits were directed at studying topics related to what were already, or would be in the future, SF’s most intense areas of activity: leadership schools and domestic economy run by the BDM; RAD camps, summer camps and sports activities. ³⁷ They also met high-ranking leaders: from Hitler to Goebbels, the Gauleiters or the senior leaders of their host organizations, for example, Baldur von Schirach from the Hitler Youth, Jutta Rüdiger from BDM and Gertrud Scholtz-Klink from NSF. Finally, Falangists had the chance to experience the ‘liturgy’ of Nazi mass events; and they found Nuremberg ‘unforgettable’, ‘tremendous, awe-inspiring, beyond words’. ³⁸

The main training aim was repeatedly confirmed by statements from Falangists during and after the visits: while one of the first leaders to return from Germany claimed in late 1937 that ‘Of course we went to study’, the head of another SF group said enthusiastically on her arrival in Hamburg the following summer: ‘We want to see, see many things … and learn!’. ³⁹ These visits to the Nazi organizations were mostly aimed at studying issues related to what were – or would be later on – the female Falange’s most significant spheres of activity. Back in Spain, the learnings would be implemented in the SF organizational structure in 1938, as well as in the founding of training schools for senior leaders, domestic schools or summer camps, the configuration of sport activities, and a mandatory Social Service for all the young Spanish women at the end of 1937. ⁴⁰ There are repeated public and private confirmations of satisfying and successful visits. In December 1937 one of the SF leaders back from Germany said: ‘My impression of the whole, and everyone feels the same, is that it is excellent’. Shortly afterwards, another Falangist was exultant in her praise in a private letter to a German civil servant about ‘how interesting the studies were’: ‘What can I say about my stay in Germany? … this is simply marvellous’. ⁴¹ In spring 1938, at the end of her first visit, Pilar Primo de Rivera told the Völkischer Beobachter that Nazi Women’s organizations were of ‘great interest’ to her and then wrote a letter of thanks and admiration to Hitler, in which she admitted to having seen why ‘this great people love their Führer so much’. ⁴²

But learning had a wider application for Falangists. Italy and above all Germany had an important referential function, which captures the true meaning of these contacts and visits. From the beginning, when looking at Italy, Falangist women knew ‘We want our country to be like yours, magnificent’, an impression enthusiastically confirmed a year later after the first visit: ‘This is a great people. I dream that the New Spain is and will be like this … .’ ⁴³ With its potential as a role model, a stay in Germany ‘has served, above all, to make us realise what opportunities are open to our Falange’; after seeing what Hitler had achieved by 1937, SF leaders were ‘convinced … of just how much Spain can do in four years’. ⁴⁴ These fluid relations were based on ideological affinity and helped to strengthen a sense of political identity, of camaraderie and community with their Italian and German ‘sisters’ or ‘comrades’. They saw themselves as ‘companions beyond borders’, united ‘for ever over and above any diplomatic expediency’, seeking solutions to deal with issues related to training women from a fascist perspective because ‘Nazi women and Falangist women share a common set of interests and a series of problems with identical characteristics’. ⁴⁵

In the months after the end of the civil war in April 1939, Franco’s Spain and the Axis powers formed close ties and were enthusiastic about the New State’s future role in the world. While the conservative ABC newspaper was already speaking of a Berlin-Rome-Madrid axis as the ‘future triangle’ with the ‘august mission of modelling the future of the European continent’ (‘And meanwhile, let democracies sort themselves out as best they can’), the main Falangist newspaper Arriba referred to ‘our sister Germany’ and yet another newspaper called Italy ‘our friend’, ‘sister in peace and in war’. ⁴⁶ One of the outcomes of this marked political approach was an increase in the number of SF visits to Germany: while in just under two years since the start of the study trips, five Falangist women’s groups had visited the ‘sister country’, in the short weeks between the end of May to mid-July 1939, in addition to receiving Else Paul, a Reich female deputy, three SF delegations went to Germany. ⁴⁷ Only the German invasion of Poland broke off the exchanges, as Pilar Primo de Rivera immediately ordered the withdrawal of two SF Delegations visiting Germany on 1 September.

Nonetheless, contacts continued at distance for over a year, ⁴⁸ during which the Falangists continued to use the impact and prestige earned by their relations with their ‘German comrades’ to consolidate their position not only within the Falange but also in Franco’s Spain itself. Thus, in January 1940, SF did not hesitate to use Germany to justify the continued public presence of Falangist women in the New Spain. Recovering an alleged quote from Hitler in reference to his people’s women (‘Without you we would have been unable to do anything’), the Spanish fascist women’s monthly magazine declared ‘As a great leader of masses, [Hitler] knew right from the start that they comprised two parts: men and women and nothing would make him disregard one of them when enlarging the homeland’. ⁴⁹ At a time when voices could be heard calling for women to return to the home now the exceptional situation of the civil war had ended, it was evident that if part of the Spanish people ran the risk of being ‘disregarded’, it was not the men.

In spring 1941 bilateral visits were vigorously resumed in a second and longer period of contacts, which involved at least 26 visits between the SF and its Nazi and Fascist partner organizations. The scenario had completely changed as the Axis sphere of influence extended now from Norway to the Libyan-Egyptian border and from the Pyrenees to the German–Soviet border. At a bilateral level, in barely two and a half years the SF sent at least five groups to Germany and two to Italy and received five Nazi women’s delegations and three groups of female Fascist leaders in Spain. ⁵⁰ These numbers also account for Germany’s and especially Italy’s growing interest in Spain between 1941 and 1943, as visits to the Spanish informal ally from the HJ/BDM noticeably increased or in the case of the GIL suddenly rocketed. However, the most remarkable feature of this period was the rise of a multilateral, European level through the cooperation of fascist youth organizations from fourteen countries.

After the fall of France in June 1940, the very concept of Europe was allegedly no longer linked to liberalism or internationalism, but had now become a synonym for a ‘New Continental Order’, ushering in the twentieth century as the century of fascism. Contradictorily enough for such ultranationalist regimes, Fascist Italy and especially Nazi Germany developed an Axis internationalism. As a concept, this internationalism was now devoid of any prior liberal or democratic connotations and had further political and ideological extensions, reaching for example into the Arab world and Japan. ⁵¹ Mussolini’s words, back in the early 1930s, about a future ‘fascist or fascisticised’ continent suddenly now seemed like a prophecy about to be fulfilled. ⁵² Germany had caught a sort of ‘European fever’ ⁵³ and both fascist powers frenetically launched a series of cross-border activities and created some institutional structures in several fields to shape the future ‘New Order’. With the Axis directly controlling or indirectly influencing most of the continent and furthermore showing world-wide ambitions, spaces like Europe or even the international arena itself were no longer liberal- or democratic-loaded and consequently, concepts like Europeanism or Internationalism could be ‘reloaded’, that is, reinterpreted in a fascist way. Similar terms around a ‘New Europe’ were being debated in quite a few countries on the continent, so that writers, public health experts and women leaders from Axis-allied and occupied countries all over Europe willingly engaged with the different modalities of this Axis internationalism. ⁵⁴

In this broader context of multilateral projects, the Hitler Youth also carried out its ‘cultural work’ at European level. The Reichsjugendführung (the Reich youth leadership) interpreted these geopolitical changes as a ‘clean sweep’, recognized in the emergence of ‘a new concept of Europe’ a broad space for action: the ‘recently emerged Europe will be young and will also be a Europe for young people’. ⁵⁵ In close collaboration, but once again also hidden rivalry, Hitler Youth and GIL began a dialogue with the fascist youth organizations they had had bilateral contacts with in previous years. An initial multilateral meeting, the Marcia della Gioventù, took place in Padua in October 1940, with the participation of German, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian male youth delegations. ⁵⁶

In Spain, the enthusiasm of the victory in the civil war turned into euphoria in 1940, ‘surely the key year of fascistisation’. ⁵⁷ On 12 June, two days after Italy entered the war, Franco abandoned the official status of neutrality and declared, following the Italian precedent and for the same future purposes, Spain’s non-belligerence. A few weeks later ABC noted that ‘the face of Europe has changed’ and announced ‘the end of a political era’. ⁵⁸ Although war and in general, international politics were considered ‘men’s issues’, the SF monthly magazine dedicated space in almost every issue to provide its readers with news on the war, called ‘The story of the war for girls’, according to a headline used in two articles. In the pages of this main SF publication, Mussolini was presented as the ‘saviour of the Italian people’ and Hitler as the ‘victorious leader of an Army and organizer of a formidable State’. Full of enthusiasm, Spain’s fascist women soon ran out of superlatives: thanks to ‘the fastest and most amazing war campaign in history’ ‘the triumph of the Axis is complete’ and now ‘totalitarian countries make the law on the Continent’. ⁵⁹ The belief in an imminent German final victory was such that, even in private, a young Falangist woman who had already been to Germany begged impatiently for a new invitation that summer: ‘Please, please, Frau Nolte, … I would love to be present in Berlin at the victory parade after the defeat of England’. ⁶⁰

In 1941–2, as already mentioned, bilateral visits peaked significantly. The main difference, however, was that now the Falangists actively participated, right from the start, in the multilateral ‘Young Europe’ project. In Spain, the fascist party was characterized from its very beginnings by ‘Falangist Europeanism’. ⁶¹ Its Youth and Women’s organizations were thus very keen to join in when they received the invitation in late December 1940, while Germany and Spain were still negotiating the date for Franco to enter the war. The first SF delegation to travel to Germany during the Second World War arrived in February 1941, the very same day as an irritated Ribbentrop ordered his Ambassador in Madrid not to pressurize the Spanish government any more to declare war. ⁶² Germany’s war aims had turned eastwards. Thus, at the very time when Spain was moving away from the war, the two main Falangist organizations decided to collaborate politically with their German and Italian counterparts on their main European-wide project, probably in the hope of keeping Spain and the Falange on the European stage with a view to the Axis powers’ ‘Final Victory’.

In the summer, when the rapid German advance through the Soviet Union appeared to bring that victory nearer, Francoist Spain became vibrant. Ramón Serrano Suñer, president of the Falange’s political Board and Interior and Foreign Affairs Minister, raised the ‘extermination of Russia’ to the category of ‘requirement of History and for the future of Europe’. When news suddenly broke about a Spanish Volunteer Division (the so-called División Azul, because of the Falangists’ blue uniform) to be sent to Russia, the SF’s National Delegate proclaimed ‘Justice is promoting our cause’. Then she asked her members to pray ‘so that we and soldiers from other nations fighting by our side for the same cause will triumph together’. She assured them in messianic language of the imminent arrival of better times: ‘Great days are coming’. ⁶³ In late August, Primo de Rivera went to Germany for the second time. It was the start of an intense cross-border activity for her: by September 1942 she had been three more times; in total, four visits to the Reich within 13 months, in addition to her second visit to Italy.

Enthusiasm for the Axis victory was palpable not only from the increase in visits but also from the pages of SF publications. A few days after the attack on the USSR, Y began to publish propaganda on the New European Order. With slogans like ‘Our new Continental Europe!’ and ‘One idea, one outcome’, the campaign celebrated European economic autarky and German technological ‘prowess’. ⁶⁴ Other Spanish periodicals published some of these advertisements, but none with the systematic nature evident from at least 22 advertisements within a two-year period. Many of them were in large format (half or whole page), and therefore undoubtedly more costly, thus increasing the consequent profit for SF. Furthermore, a colour map of Europe published in a two-page spread showed Falangist women readers the main victories of the Axis powers in the first ‘Two years of war’ (the title) with arrows pointing from all the countries participating in the ‘European crusade against Bolshevism’ to the heart of the USSR. The longest and biggest arrow was the one starting from Spain. ⁶⁵

Meanwhile, several multilateral preparatory meetings punctuated the path to the ‘Young Europe’: two of a sporting nature (the 1941 winter and summer Hitler Youth championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Breslau respectively) and the ‘Weimar-Florence Cultural Bridge’ in June–July 1942. As all but one of these meetings took place after the invasion of the Soviet Union, there was no further obstacle to public recognition of anti-communism as ‘the main binding agent’ ⁶⁶ capable of forging a clear identity between the different youth organizations. Baldur von Schirach stated as much when speaking of the cultural and ideological basis shared by the delegations that met in Breslau: ‘We are joined by common ideals … We are brothers and sisters in the fight for freedom of the European spirit against Bolshevik terror and the power of gold. We march and we fight for these ideals’. ⁶⁷

Finally, in mid-September 1942, the European Youth Association was founded in Vienna as a ‘supra-regional union of youth organizations from countries under German influence’ in the form of ‘one committee with one central multinational leadership’. ⁶⁸ ‘[T]he real centre of the conference’ ⁶⁹ was formed by sixteen working groups, each one focusing on a certain field of work, such as Pre-military training, Sports, or Leadership Education. Their mission was to prepare the work to be carried out in the future ‘New Europe’. In those days both Stalingrad and El-Alamein seemed about to fall and there was a general feeling that the realization of the ‘New Europe’ was imminent. The Youth organizations of 14 countries did not want to be late. With the German and Italian national youth leaders, Artur Axmann and Aldo Vidussoni, as joint presidents, 300 male and female leaders came together in Vienna from Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Flanders and Wallonia, that is, the European members of the Axis, their satellites and occupied countries in western and northern Europe. Therefore, no neutral country participated officially at this meeting in Vienna nor was any a member of the Association.

Only Spain did not fit into any of these three categories. And yet, not only did the Falange participate in this multilateral project as a full member right from the first meeting, but also in Vienna, Pilar Primo de Rivera shared the chair of the only working-group dedicated to a ‘womanly’ subject (‘Female Youth’) with two comrades she had known for a long time: German and Italian female youth leaders, Jutta Rüdiger and Penelope Testa. The three of them considered themselves to be the group’s ‘initiators’, forming a ‘triumvirate’, which aspired to ‘direct education and training for Europe's young women’. If anticommunism was the ‘main connecting link’, then Spain’s record (the Civil War as ‘the world-first victory against communism’) should allow her country to get its ‘well-deserved place in History’, as the SF National Delegate stated in an interview back from Vienna. ⁷⁰ The post in Vienna was the culmination of her long political career. In contrast, the National Delegate for the Frente de Juventudes, José Antonio Elola Elaso, failed in his attempt to force – with the support of Spanish diplomacy – the creation of a third chair for the Association (which he would occupy) and had to make do with being on one of the 15 working committees on male issues. ⁷¹ This fact did not detract from Primo de Rivera’s satisfaction with her assessment of the meeting in Vienna in the slightest, on the contrary, in the ‘frank debate’ between Axmann and Elola which settled the dispute, she ‘particularly supported’ Axmann rather than her fellow Spaniard and party comrade. ⁷² After all, through her appointment in her ‘domain’ the woman Falangist achieved what neither Franco nor any Falangist male leader was able to achieve in theirs: a collegiate exercise of power together with German and Italian counterparts within a ‘tripartite leadership’. ⁷³

The idea of these young ‘emissaries of the New Order’ ⁷⁴ was to make this new ‘Congress of Vienna’ the first of a series. A subsequent edition was soon announced for mid-1943 in Italy, the other organizing country; by then the working groups should have met in their respective presidents’ countries and moved forward in their tasks. However, just as the war had encouraged the conception and initial configuration of this project and featured prominently at each stage, the change in direction of the war after late 1942 affected subsequent developments: the ‘Press, cinema and radio’ working group met without problems in Rome in October and the ‘Youth and family’ group still managed to meet in Madrid in December (although half its members were absent); but those planned for February 1943 in Oslo (‘Peasantry and rural service’) and May in Italy (‘Female Youth’) were postponed sine die. ⁷⁵

By early 1943, there had been important political changes in Spain. In May 1941 the Falange had launched a political offensive to seize power and force Franco to finally join the war on the side of Germany. Spanish fascists had seen the Second World War as their last chance to overcome non-fascist rivals and bring about a Falangist revolution. They failed, and in the aftermath prominent party leaders resigned or were gradually replaced with members who were more faithful Francoists than fascists. Nonetheless, the majority found a place, along with posts, salaries and perks, in a domesticated Falange which became increasingly Catholic and less fascist. The party would not disappear, but its fascist project was facing the ‘beginning of the end’, ⁷⁶ condemned in September 1942 when a Falangist as important as Foreign Minister Serrano Suñer was suddenly replaced with a conservative Army officer, Count Jordana. It is worth mentioning that all these changes had happened exactly in the period of maximal extension of German military influence, from spring 1941 to late summer 1942. Then, with the first major Axis defeats, many Falangists sank into a state of ‘increasing loss of morale’ and recommended high-ranking party leaders to keep a lower profile with regard to the war. Spain’s fascist party was ‘exhausted ideologically and with scanty initiative in political issues’. ⁷⁷

Nazi officials continued to regard the Falangists as ‘our natural allies’, but recognized their influence was declining and that leaders and posts held by those known for their ‘close links with Germany’ were being systematically replaced’. ⁷⁸ Pilar Primo de Rivera, however, remained loyal to her commitment to the Reich as she demonstrated publicly in late January 1943, by attending the celebration of the Nazi ‘takeover’ ten years previously, organized by the German embassy in Madrid and the local NSDAP group. ⁷⁹ Things were getting so serious that the Italian consulate in Malaga even detected that Axis sympathizers were beginning to doubt the final victory and even felt ‘compassion’ for what might happen to both fascist powers after a Soviet victory. ⁸⁰ But the highest-ranking Falangist woman saw the imminent German defeat by the banks of the Volga not as an obstacle, but as encouragement to demonstrate her continued loyalty in public. In July the ‘hara-kiri of Fascism’ (to quote the provincial governor of Malaga) caused the ‘deepest impression’ among Spanish fascists. ⁸¹ The collapse of the first fascist regime, birthplace of the ideology, pioneer and benchmark for Falangism ‘caused a … sensation of imminent collapse’ that led many Spanish officials to ‘panic’. ⁸²

The number of those convinced that Spain needed to reposition itself was growing. The press received instructions to ‘disengage’ from the Axis powers in foreign news, stating that Spain had nothing to do with – nor had any preference for – either side in the war. ⁸³ As a quickly improvised firewall against a fascist forest in flames, the Arriba newspaper applied itself tirelessly to the task, launching the idea of Falangism as a supposed ‘original Spanish concept’, and asking for ‘presence of mind’ because ultimately, Spain had not been ‘touched by the fire’ abroad. ⁸⁴ At home, the process of national Catholicism to which the Falange was subjected was now rhetorically emphasized, to underline all its typically Spanish characteristics and purge it of ‘exotic’, that is, Nazi and Fascist influences. Thus the day after Italy declared war on its one-time ally Germany, an Arriba editorial did not hesitate to proclaim ‘there is no hidden party behind Falange’, and it continued the Secretary-General’s discourse stating for the first time that Falange ‘is not a political programme’ and ‘it is not seeking a totalitarian State’. ⁸⁵ In just under a month and a half after the fall of Mussolini, José Luis de Arrese who, in 1940 had published solemnly that in political terms Falangism, Fascism and Nazism were ‘brothers, twins if you like’, ⁸⁶ rejected, with the stroke of a pen, the Falange’s status as party, its manifesto and even its ultimate goal. Things had changed a lot in barely three years.

Rejecting the obvious and disassociating, even retroactively, from the Axis meant eliminating the proof, a task that became much more complicated outside Spain. In mid-September 1943, Jordana, the Foreign Minister instructed the Embassy in Rome to prevent sensitive Italian documents on Spain’s Axis temptation (‘especially’ from 1940 to 1941) from falling into German hands when they entered Rome. ⁸⁷ In October, Arriba again made it clear that Spain did not have ‘an exclusive sympathy abroad … our exclusive criterion is the constant affirmation of Spanishness’, ⁸⁸ undoubtedly in preparation for the imminent withdrawal of the División Azul. Finally, there was a return to official neutrality in November, although this fundamental turnaround was ‘not recognized as such at any time’, ⁸⁹ but was camouflaged as mere reaffirmation.

This repositioning, however, was not unanimous. The Secretary-General of the Falange in Madrid was one thing, but its leaders and rank and file were quite another. Aware of their debts, many resisted not only silencing but also having to publicly deny their ties and sympathies with the previously ‘friendly nations’, without whose help they would never have won the civil war. This reluctance explains why in 1944 there were still public expressions of support for Italian Fascism and even professions of faith in an increasingly unlikely German victory. Falange youth and women, the most ideologized sections in the fascist sense, were more difficult to persuade, especially the SF because of the political importance of its National Delegate.

Primo de Rivera had been observing ‘with concern’ the gradual change in domestic policy, fearing a restoration of the monarchy with the consequent betrayal of the Falange’s ideals. ⁹⁰ Internationally, the SF was still reluctant to abandon loyalties forged over years. Barely three days before Mussolini fell, the SF ended a course in Madrid for Italian war nurses and did so ‘with the highest spirit of comradeship’ and ‘reaffirming the ties of friendship that unite [these] two peoples’. ⁹¹ On 26 July, the SF National Delegate, certainly aware of what had happened the day before in Rome, flew to Berlin in response to a prior invitation. As the Spanish government had prohibited all positioning in foreign affairs, officially the trip was justified by the desire of Falangist women to ‘find out how some of the institutions of the National Socialist party operated’. ⁹² After six years of visits and exchanges, however, this explanation obviously bore no relation to the real situation and was just an excuse, as a way of continuing to publicly show her support for Nazi Germany.

In Germany, Pilar Primo de Rivera continued to enjoy considerable prestige. The Head of the Auslandsorganisation, Ernst-Wilhelm Bohle, recognized she had ‘extraordinary sympathy for Germany’ and attributed her with ‘great influence in Spain’, while the Madrid correspondent for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the most influential German newspapers, highlighted in his praise of the Falangist on the front page her historical and political significance in Spain (placing her alongside Franco) and quite openly thanked her for her continued loyalty to Germany. ⁹³ At a time of intense allied bombing, plans were made to show her the effects on Catholic regions and buildings like Cologne cathedral, but the propaganda action was rejected in the end because the Spanish government was likely to object. ⁹⁴ Upon her arrival in Berlin, the Falangist received ‘celebrity treatment’, with high-ranking protocol and ‘extraordinary impact’ in the country’s press, both in the capital (the main Nazi newspaper followed her almost daily), and on the outskirts of the Reich. ⁹⁵ Unsurprisingly, according to the Spanish press attaché: ‘All the press in Germany has given the visit a lot of space’, presenting the Falangist as ‘one of the best examples of women in the new Europe’, whereas in the same period the visit by the Spanish National Trade Unions Delegate only received ‘very brief’ coverage in the newspapers. ⁹⁶

In contrast, in the Spanish press, Primo de Rivera’s sixth and in the end, last visit to Germany barely merited a couple of laconic mentions on her departure and return. Even in her own organization, the weekly magazine Medina published four photographs of her arrival in Berlin, without further text than the captions, and on her return it published nothing, not even her assessment of the visit. The magazine Y did not even mention the visit, something which had never happened since the magazine first appeared in 1938 with the National Delegate’s trips abroad. ⁹⁷ In the end, the August edition of Medina was the last reference in an SF magazine of ties with Nazi Germany or its women’s organizations, whose final visits to Spain at the end of the year were also ignored.

The obvious worsening of the war situation for the Axis powers throughout 1943 was also reflected in SF magazines. In the first half of the year, Y published three crosswords where the black spaces made up, not by chance, two of the most important elements in Nazi symbology: swastikas, twice; the Balkenkreuz, once. ⁹⁸ In April, shortly after the defeat at Stalingrad, the advertising for the ‘New Continental Europe’ campaign, which had been published proactively for almost two years, was replaced by a more defensive campaign entitled ‘European brains and arms save Europe from Bolshevism’, which sought to exalt Spain’s economic strength in an autarkic Europe, resorting to the safe ground of anti-communism and praising Spain’s orange and olive trees, mining, cork and wine. The campaign was a lot shorter, lasting just seven months, and ended in October 1943, in parallel to the Spanish government’s return to official neutrality. ⁹⁹

Among the European youth leaders who participated in Vienna, the breakdown of Fascism also caused ‘a sensation of insecurity and uncertainty’ which did not go unnoticed in Berlin. The Foreign Minister and the German presidency of the European Youth Association decided not to celebrate its first anniversary with a joint event, but sent their corresponding congratulations to the presidents of the working groups to test the atmosphere. When it came to expressing their ‘satisfaction’ and ‘sincere predisposition’ in relation to the future, Primo de Rivera and Elola stood out from the rest. They highlighted ‘their firm belief in continuing to collaborate as comrades in Europe’s common cause’ as well as ‘their determination, for the future as well, for close, ever stronger collaboration’. ¹⁰⁰ With the disappearance of Fascist Italy from the international stage, they were obviously trying to get Spain to take its place, at least in the sphere of ‘Young Europe’.

In Spain itself, however, the Falangists’ difficulties just kept growing. In October, Pilar Primo de Rivera expressed her irritation in private to a group of close collaborators. Given the political redirection obvious now from Arrese’s statements, the SF National Delegate, ‘furious … beside herself, excited’, threatened to ask him to retract or resign, because ‘Falange orthodoxy had been totally changed and we have to stand firm’: ‘to say that Spain is not totalitarian is to betray the Falange’ and ‘the Falange comes first and foremost’, she declared. Similarly, she thought the decision to withdraw the División Azul was nothing less than ‘a betrayal of the Falange and Germany’. ¹⁰¹

In late May 1944, a request reached the Spanish Foreign Ministry from the Falange’s Foreign Service. Its Youth and Women’s Organizations were asking for permission to invite a female and male Hitler Youth group to Madrid to attend the 2nd National Meeting of the Sección Femenina at El Escorial in early July. At first permission was granted only to the BDM group because ‘Pilar invited the girls’, but then the male group was also allowed to attend, both under the condition of no publicity. ¹⁰² No further archival records are conserved on this issue and therefore we do not know if this visit ever actually happened. However, the mere fact of the invitation itself, two weeks before Normandy (and the liberation of Rome) and with the Soviet Army back again on Polish soil, significantly demonstrates her and her organization’s commitment to Nazi Germany.

After Normandy, everyone except the most fanatical, assumed German defeat was inevitable. Given the increasingly suffocating pressure from the Allies, the instinct to survive promoted the most basic policy considerations among Falangists: in view of events, the only way the single-party could survive was to concentrate its efforts on the survival of the Francoist dictatorship. It was a question of forgetting, at least in public, past ties and in their place Spanish fascists began to proffer exacerbated declarations of loyalty to the Caudillo and adherence to Catholicism. In private, their room for action was considerably reduced to actions that were not far reaching but significant. Thus, until the end of the Second World War, in her office the SF National Delegate Primo de Rivera kept the official portraits Hitler and Mussolini had dedicated to her in a prominent place, now accompanied by a photograph of Pope Pius XII. ¹⁰³

In contrast, increasingly strict (self-)censorship in the press forced increasingly subtle demonstrations of germanophilia. Spanish fascist women ended up clinging to details, not in their periodical publications, but on their official calendars at least. The 1944 calendar still had two explicit references to contacts with German women (one for the week of the second anniversary of the meeting in Vienna), while one of their books published that spring also contained several photographs from visits to and from Germany. But in the 1945 calendar there was just one photograph which, if you did not know what you were looking at, did not reveal what it actually was, that is, a photograph of senior BDM officials on a visit to Spain four years previously. With allied troops now in German territory, at the end of 1944, the Falangists had had to rescue an old photograph of, for them, better times and add as a caption a circumlocution which, to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, said nothing and even lacked an active subject: ‘Study trip to Spain. Spanish institutions are studied on trips organised by the Foreign Service’. ¹⁰⁴ It just so happened that the photograph was used to illustrate the week ending on 2 September 1945, precisely the day when the Second World War ended.

In 1983, Pilar Primo de Rivera continued to deny in her memoirs that SF and the Falange had any affinity or ideological relationship with Fascism and Nazism, but she did state that ‘I am the proud owner of a portrait of the Duce’. ¹⁰⁵ In Spain, there was democracy again, the SF had ceased to exist barely six years before and its ex-National Delegate still struggled to distance herself from the once ‘friendly nations’ of Franco’s Spain. Her arguments continued along the lines she had been repeating since the mid-1940s but repetition does not make Falangist women’s retrospective distancing any more believable. As we have seen throughout the text, the main ideological benchmarks for SF from its beginnings were Italian Fascism and Nazism.

Firstly, Falangist women established bilateral contacts from late 1936 with Nazi and Fascist women’s organisations (BDM/NSF and GIL/FF), with whom in the context of fluid relations, they exchanged a minimum of at least 49 visits until 1943. In just under six years, SF leaders visited Germany 22 times and Italy nine, while in Spain they received at least 12 visits from their Nazi comrades and six from Italian fascist women. One in every five visits was by senior officials, eight by Pilar Primo de Rivera to Germany (six) and Italy (two), returned once by Jutta Rüdiger (BDM), once by Else Paul (NSF), and on another occasion by Penelope Testa (GIL) and Olga Medici del Vascello, the FF’s general inspector. We find here again that ‘obvious asymmetry’ within transnational fascism, as described by Arnd Bauerkämper: there was more interest in German and Italian organizations than the other way around. It remains for another study to complete this analysis with the third angle in this triangle: contacts between German and Italian women.

If we compare these contacts with the Falange’s previous transnational contacts two major differences arise. On the one hand, we find their predilection for the Nazi benchmark: as the numerical distribution indicates, relations were much more fluid between Falangists and Nazis (34) than between Falangist and Fascist women leaders (fifteen), a proportion of 2:1. On the other hand, we find considerable protagonism of leaders from the ‘female Falange’, as until 1936 there is no evidence available for female leaders participating in the transnational networks of fascism. The situation created by the Civil War allowed Spanish fascist women to access the international stage for the very first time. And they did so resolutely. This feat is even more considerable, given that these contacts occurred at a time (civil and world war) and in a scenario (cross-border politics) where according to traditional gender roles those women were not supposed to have acted at all, let alone as female leaders consciously and freely representing a fascist party. If ‘international collaboration was particularly appealing to those who were excluded from the more traditional political channels within their states’, and even more so in the case of smaller nations, ¹⁰⁶ then the SF-leaders seemed to have had all at once three reasons (as Spaniards, as fascists and as women) for exploring other ways of political participation in a Nazi-Fascist New Europe.

More than just in number, rank and direction, already significant in themselves, these bilateral visits helped Spanish women to find out in the field about their more firmly established counterpart organizations and thus learn first-hand from their experiences, especially at organizational level. As a result, many of SF’s most well-known areas of action involving millions of Spanish women for decades are directly related to what was learned on those visits. But Germany and Italy also had a benchmark function, as models of society to emulate, especially in the early years: the present they saw in Italy and Germany was the future they longed for in the New Spain. Obviously, as in the case of other European fascisms, the principle to follow was not to adopt acritically everything they saw during the visits but to adapt what was learned to the specificities in Spain. Nevertheless, in practice, awareness of the differences was of relative importance and did not diminish the ideological identity and feeling of comradeship and collaboration among female officials in these three fascist parties.

Secondly, Spanish women launched themselves enthusiastically into building the New Europe, designed in the youth version by the Hitler Youth and GIL. In this new stage of multilateral contacts, ideology met with political opportunity. At home, the Falange was experiencing serious difficulties and was unable to impose itself on its non-fascist allies and launch the national syndicalist revolution. The hopes deposited in joining in the war were that it would bring about, with support from Germany and Italy, Spain’s complete fascistization. Then the focus of the war moved definitively eastwards, away from Spain, but Falangist women did not make an about-turn and return home, either to Spain or their own households: in the same period, a delegation of top officials from SF landed in Germany to take part in their first multilateral ‘Young Europe’ meeting. Thus, when German victories permitted, the Falangists made the most of the opportunity to strengthen Spanish presence in the New Europe. With their active, highlighted and recognized participation at all the multilateral meetings held between 1941 and 1942, Falangist women not only set foot in Nazi-fascist Europe, but integrated fully and enthusiastically in it. Only the change in the war prevented an even greater commitment.

Thirdly and finally, after the collapse of Fascism, political reality came to the fore, although only gradually and rather reluctantly, Falangist men and women gradually became aware of the impact of the change in the international situation. In view also of their evident loss of ideological influence on domestic policy, Spanish fascist women ended up succumbing to the weight of the same ‘diplomatic convenience’ which barely five years before they had sworn to ignore. With their hasty withdrawal from Nazi Europe, their original Falangist Europeanism was replaced with exclusive commitment to Spanish nationalism. Realpolitik finally imposed itself and just like the rest of the party rechristened as the Movement, the instinct to survive forced Spanish fascist women to forswear the loyalties forged over almost a decade. To save the Falange, SF and the dictatorship itself, required retrospective rejection of any ideological relationship with Nazism and Fascism. It was a price they were willing to pay.