War Veterans and Fascism during the Franco Dictatorship in Spain (1936–1959)

The Francoist veterans of the Spanish Civil War are still remembered for the combative role they played against the process of transition to democracy during the 1970s. General Franco’s funeral, held on 23 November 1975 in the infamous Valle de los Caídos, was marked by the solemn presence of former alféreces provisionales (junior officers), old members of the Spanish Legión, Falangist veterans, and officers and generals who had started their military careers in the battles of 1936–1939. ¹ Despite the activism of the Francoist veteran organizations during the last period of the dictatorship, ² the history of the Francoist ex-combatants of the Spanish Civil War has been, until recently, largely ignored. ³ In contrast, there is a long tradition of studies about the post-First World War veterans’ movements and organizations in different countries. ⁴ This historiographical gap is even more surprising if we take into account the historical relevance of the veterans in the origins of fascist and authoritarian regimes – such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Vichy France – which were, to some extent, related to the early Francoist regime.

This article examines the historical relationship between war veterans and Fascism by exploring the history of the Francoist veterans. It assesses the veterans’ historical role in the origins, survival and transformation of the Franco dictatorship, while stressing their seemingly unshakable loyalty to the regime. It focuses on the trajectory of the main veterans’ organization of the Francoist regime, the Veterans’ National Delegation (Delegación Nacional de Excombatientes) (DNE) of the party Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (FET-JONS). This veteran organization was created in 1939, after the end of the Spanish Civil War. As this article demonstrates, the Francoist veterans, despite some particularities, can be usefully compared with the veteran organizations and cultures of other fascist regimes. Moreover, the history of the Francoist veterans can provide insights on four important matters: (1) the essential relationship between Fascism and war; (2) the existing linkage between war veterans and fascist movements and regimes; (3) the processes of fascistization and defascistization; and (4) the history of neo-fascism.

An inquiry into the sources available for research on the Francoist veterans may indicate why they have hitherto received scant attention from historians. Above all, public access to the archive of the DNE has been subject to important restrictions. Currently, the DNE records, as part of the archival material produced by the General Secretary of FET-JONS, are held in the Archivo General de la Administración (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid). ⁵ However, the majority of the documents, including the personal files of thousands of Francoist veterans, were unavailable to researchers until 2011. The DNE archive consists mainly of detailed bureaucratic records, since the most common document-generating DNE function was managing veterans’ benefits. Nevertheless, these archives do allow us to trace the political activities of the Francoist veterans. Although the papers of the first Veterans’ National Delegate (1939–1954) – the Falangist from Valladolid José Antonio Girón de Velasco – are missing, the archive does contain the personal papers of the second National Delegate (1954–1959), the Falangist officer of the Spanish Blue Division Tomás García Rebull.

As the DNE was a highly hierarchical and centralized structure, researching the historical development of the Francoist veterans across Spain as a whole requires complementing the DNE documentation with press and published sources. It is rather surprising that the DNE, as a FET-JONS mass organization, never had its own press organ. Unlike most of the Falangist ‘services’ or ‘delegations’, the DNE did not produce its own publications, not even a bulletin or journal, during the early 1940s. In contrast with the high proliferation of veterans’ journals in the postwar period in countries like Italy or France, ⁶ the Francoist veterans lacked a press organ, and only received attention in a few articles published by Falangist newspapers during the 1940s. It was not until the mid-1950s that the Francoist veteran organizations began publishing some bulletins. However, this dearth of sources should not make us believe that veterans’ issues had no historical relevance during the Franco regime. With the available sources, in the first two parts of this article, I shall survey the main lines of political development of the DNE over time. On this basis, I shall apply, in the third part of the article, a comparative and transnational perspective to approach the historical relationship between veterans and fascism.

I

On the surface, it seems that the Francoist veterans were largely invisible as an organized group in the early Franco period. The war experience did not result in the formation of a politicized mass movement of veterans. The fact that it had been a civil war might have been the cause of this apparent particularity. Composed of around 1 million members by 1939, the Francoist army cannot be considered a monolithic, ideologically coherent unit. ⁷ Coercion characterized the mobilization for the war; and the war experience was traumatic for most drafted soldiers. Many leftists were obliged to fight within Francoist units. Classism characterized the relationships among officers and the lower ranks. The Francoist junior officers (alféreces provisionales) were overwhelmingly young middle-class men. Thus the class structure of Spanish society was transposed onto the Francoist army. Former ‘reds’ had to suppress their own views while serving in the Francoist army, ⁸ but the adoption of a fascist ideology through the practice of rituals and political propaganda was generally limited to the Falangist units (Banderas). The nationalist mobilizing discourse of the Francoists drew on diverse ideological sources, and an internal struggle over national symbols characterized the early process of the dictatorship’s institutionalization. ⁹

During the war, however, a process of ideological amalgamation took place, which pivoted on the figure of Franco as the indisputable leader. It can be understood as a process of fascistization, and it also affected the combatants. The traditionalist soldiers (Requetés) lost part of their distinct identity when Falange Española and the traditionalists were fused into the FET-JONS – the new party under the direct control of Franco – in April 1937. Consequently, the undisputed leadership of Franco became the main shared reference for those combatants and particularly junior officers who had faithfully fought at the front against the despised ‘reds’. ¹⁰ The Francoist leaders kept a firm political control over the soldiers.

As analysis of the few trench journals of the Francoist army reveals, the authorities were much more interested in appeasing the veterans’ discontent and impatience than in arousing excessive expectations for the postwar period. ¹¹ Disabled veterans’ potential unrest was checked by the creation of a military-ruled institution, the Benemérito Cuerpo de Mutilados de Guerra por la Patria (BCMGP), of which General Millán Astray, the ultra-conservative, severely disfigured personal friend of Franco, was the appointed leader. The programmatic text of the Fuero del Trabajo (published in March 1938 and inspired by the fascist Carta del Lavoro) stimulated the veterans’ post-war hopes, given that it envisaged the reservation of ‘work, honour and command positions’ for the fighting ‘heroic’ youth. ¹² This promise did not apply to all veterans equally. The postwar prospects for some, such as the officers, looked good, whereas the masses of soldiers, on the other hand, were told to return to a life of work, silence and submission.

Following Franco’s victory in April 1939, veteran politics in Spain was modelled on the Italian and German fascist examples. While the Francoist army was being demobilized, Europe was experiencing extreme international tensions. Between May and August 1939, the powers of the Axis – Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – displayed their military potency. Celebrating their common victory, Spanish soldiers paraded together with the Germans and Italians. In this context, it is not surprising that the Falangists created the DNE on the fascist model of war veterans’ organization. In August 1939, after the formation of a new Francoist government with an important presence of Falangist politicians, the Falangist José Antonio Girón was elected first Veterans’ National Delegate. ¹³ Within a few months, he set up a totalitarian structure to control the Francoist veterans. The group was now commanded by a group of ex-officers, some of them inspired by the revolutionary rhetoric of National-Syndicalism. ¹⁴ The decision of both Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain to grant the status of party members to all the war veterans in December 1939 bears testament to the proximity of the regimes in this period. ¹⁵ In fact, the Veterans’ National Delegate José Antonio Girón and the fascist leader of the Italian Veterans’ National Association (Associazione Nazionale Combattenti – ANC) Amilcare Rossi employed an almost identical political discourse in their speeches and messages to the veterans. They exalted a set of military virtues that should characterize the ideal veteran: loyalty, abnegation, readiness to serve. If the primary duty of the Italian Fascist veteran was to obey the Duce, the Francoist veterans had the obligation of serving the Caudillo and bringing about the ‘National-Syndicalist Revolution’ (Revolución Nacional-Sindicalista). ¹⁶ From the outset, the DNE was part of an entirely fascist political project. ¹⁷

However, during the early 1940s, while trying to make a national revolution, the DNE occupied itself with a much more prosaic task: combating veteran unemployment. The war had left Spain in an appalling economic condition, and hunger, impoverishment and disease affected the masses of Francoist ex-soldiers. Republican veterans were in exile, marginalized, persecuted or in concentration camps. ¹⁸ In many cases, Francoist veterans from the lower social classes did not enjoy their hypothetical privileges as victors. A law published on 25 August 1939 had reserved a great number of vacant jobs for Francoist disabled veterans and ex-combatants; and unemployed veterans acquired the right to receive unemployment benefits (subsidio). ¹⁹ In practice, many employers disregarded the law, and local authorities managed these benefits arbitrarily. ²⁰ On one occasion, the Guardia Civil beat a group of labourers in a village of Salamanca province because they insisted in applying for the veterans’ subsidio. ²¹ In reality, the promise of benefits and jobs was used by the Francoist authorities to keep veterans submissive. Throughout the country, starved veterans approached the Falangist veterans’ delegations begging for some material help, ²² so the most common activity of the DNE was writing references for veterans to obtain jobs. ²³ As the DNE required the veterans’ full compliance with the political system as a precondition for assistance, the war veterans were slowly transformed into silent supporters of the dictatorship. In the repressive context of autarky, ²⁴ the DNE worked to manage the limited social benefits among the veterans. Thus, the DNE contributed to strengthening the dictatorship. Not only did Franco benefit most from this situation, but the system also confirmed the FET-JONS as the representative of veterans’ interests in the early Franco regime. It is interesting to note that, during the economic depression of the early 1930s in Italy, the Fascist ANC had played a very similar role, conceding material help to unemployed veterans in exchange for their submission to the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) and the Duce. ²⁵

If in Fascist Italy some veterans of the First World War attained important positions of political power, in Francoist Spain an elite group of war veterans played a similar role. During the early 1940s, the wide inclusion of war veterans in many local councils in most Spanish provinces allowed certain Francoist veterans to reach positions of political power within the regime, even if this process was rather restricted to the local level. ²⁶ The access of ‘new men’ to local government was in relation to the increasing influence of FET-JONS members in provincial politics. ²⁷ The most important criterion for these men to be appointed was their behaviour and their services to the Francoist cause during the Civil War. Thus, ex-combatants and ex-captives, and victims of Republican repression, were often chosen as municipal ‘administrators’ (gestores). As early as August 1939, the new local council of the small town of Benavente (Zamora) was composed of four volunteers of Falange militia units. ²⁸ The incorporation of veterans into the local power structure was still important in 1944–45, when the authorities appointed not only Civil War veterans, but also men returning from fighting in the División Azul at the Russian front. (In 1942, veterans of the Spanish División Azul had acquired the same privileges as those ex-combatants of the Civil War.) ²⁹ Veteran-dominated local institutions were more common in the small rural villages of the northern part of central Spain (from where the bulk of the Francoist army originated). For example, in the small village of Letux (province of Zaragoza) all the seven members of the 1945-appointed local administration were war veterans. ³⁰ But even in regions that had been part of the Republic until the end of the war – such as Catalonia – Francoist veterans were important collaborators of the dictatorship. ³¹

Francoist veterans were altogether a suitable strategic human resource for strengthening the dictatorship’s institutions and armed forces. The bulk of the postwar army was composed of a great number of young officers whose loyalty to Franco was unshakable. The Civil Guards (Guardia Civil) recruited many war-experienced NCOs (sargentos provisionales), ³² who thereby continued to serve the dictatorship while fighting the anti-Francoist guerrillas. The priority given to veterans in state employment meant that they were able to obtain jobs, for example, as guardians of the overcrowded Francoist prisons. In 1941, the minimum age required for applying for a temporary position as a prison guard was expressly reduced to 21 for applicants who were former war volunteers or disabled veterans. ³³ The behaviour of these ex-combatants handling political prisoners is a matter of speculation, but it is widely known that maltreatment and corruption characterized the vindictive Francoist prisons. ³⁴ This Spanish experience can be compared with the repressive Italian Fascist system, where ex-soldiers of the Great War who had become fascists and squadrists during 1919–1922 often composed the leading cadres of the fascist Militia (MSVN). ³⁵

Paralleling the fascist and national-socialist propaganda at that time, the Francoist authorities displayed the veterans in numerous military and religious rituals in the early 1940s. ³⁶ Veterans were always under the strict control of the party and the army. The sources reveal the instrumental manner in which war-mutilation was publicly shown, the superficial honour disabled veterans were accorded, and their submission to authority. ³⁷ Once the first months of frenzied victory celebrations were over, this propaganda strategy became less prominent. Furthermore, it increasingly entailed religious elements. However, the cause of this evolution was the fate of the European fascist regimes. It is interesting to note, for example, that the last important DNE-organized demonstrations of Francoist veterans in this period took place at the beginning of July 1943, in two Catalan cities, Vich and Manresa. ³⁸ Shortly after, the American invasion of Fascist Italy frightened the Spanish Falangists and pro-Fascists. This Allied offensive marked the end of a political phase for the Francoist dictatorship.

The dramatic collapse of Mussolini’s regime, and later the destruction of the Third Reich, provoked a profound crisis in FET-JONS. ³⁹ The party managed to save its position by reinforcing its loyalty to Franco. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church helped to wash away the blood and the fascist stains of the dictatorship. The exaltation of veterans would have demonstrated their kinship with Fascism; for this reason, the authorities made them all but disappear from the public sphere. This concealment meant that war veterans lost some of their privileges. The law of 25 August 1939 was substituted by another of 17 July 1946, under which only 20 per cent of all new civil vacancies were reserved for ex-combatants, disabled veterans, ex-POWs and families of victims. ⁴⁰ Between 1945 and 1949 there was only 16 new appointees to the position of provincial delegate of the DNE, ⁴¹ although institutions such as the DNE or the BCMGP were not dissolved.

The Allied victory in the Second World War resulted in the marginalization of Franco’s Spain from the new international order, but as the structure of the dictatorship was barely altered, the elites of Francoist veterans conserved their power, while thousands of common ex-soldiers maintained their low-profile loyalty to the ‘man of peace’: Franco. ⁴² In April 1946, in a carefully staged propagandistic gesture, Girón gave to Franco the signatures of 700,000 veterans who thus expressed their loyalty to the Caudillo. ⁴³ However, the Francoist veterans would have to wait longer to reappear in the public sphere. They would come again to the fore in the Cold War period, when anti-communism allowed the symbol of the fascist veteran to resurface in Europe.

II

The Cold War was an entirely different context for the history of Francoist veterans. During the 1950s, the Western European countries faced new concerns, particularly communism and the eventuality of a destructive war between two ideological blocs. The old continent was a vital space for both the Soviet Union and the United States. ⁴⁴ As a transnational political phenomenon that sought to revitalize the fascist ideology and legacy, ⁴⁵ neo-fascism could play the card of anti-communism in such a context. It is not by chance that the European Social Movement, an international organization set up by neo-fascist leaders of several countries, was born in 1951. This was also the key year for the resurrection of pétainisme in France. ⁴⁶ In this scenario, the Axis’s former soldiers were in an ambiguous position: they were a potential force to check the international advance of communism, and at the same time a suspicious reminder of fascism. ⁴⁷ As a contemporary analyst wrote, ‘veterans’ organizations have offshoots which occasionally reflect the memories of former Nazi military formations’. ⁴⁸ It is interesting to consider, therefore, the history of the Francoist veterans during the Cold War period as a prism for assessing the revitalization of fascism with new shapes, and understanding the twists and turns in the Spanish process of defascistization. ⁴⁹

In a sense, the Korean War saved the FET-JONS from total ostracism. The bipolar global context that this conflict inaugurated allowed Franco to rehabilitate his party. The dictatorship highlighted anti-communism as its fundamental characteristic. Franco was said to have been the first in defeating communism in battle. With this mythical self-representation, the regime found acceptance among American diplomats. Indeed, the veterans of the American Legion publicly called for the re-establishment of relations with Spain. ⁵⁰ In July 1951, Franco and his supporters felt sufficiently confident to include within a new Francoist government the Falangist Raimundo Fernández Cuesta as the Ministry-Secretary General of FET-JONS. (This was a political position that had been conveniently left vacant since July 1945.) In the same cabinet, José Antonio Girón retained the position of Minister of Labour, simultaneously holding the position of Veterans’ National Delegate.

Towards mid-1952, the new international and internal context allowed the Falangists to put forward the idea of organizing a national congress of war veterans. The FET-JONS was decisively returning to the public sphere and resuming the old discourses about the heroic ‘Crusade’. Who else in Spain had better anti-communist credentials than the Francoist veterans? The first calls to the DNE veterans to take part in the congress awakened nostalgia and feelings of self-assertion among them. ⁵¹ The congress would be held in Segovia, in October 1952. A great closing ceremony was to be held at the Alto de los Leones, a hill with mythic status near Madrid where Falangists like Girón had fought during the first weeks of the Spanish Civil War. The congress was intended to strengthen the party’s position within the regime, but it would also serve a purpose in both the internal and international spheres.

Firstly, the veterans’ congress of 1952 served to reinforce the veterans’ loyalty to Franco. ⁵² More than a decade after the end of the war, FET-JONS members had reached highly-ranked positions in the military. Thus, Falangist military figures, such as José Moscardó (the ‘hero’ of Toledo’s Alcázar), or Tomás García Rebull (future DNE National Delegate), occupied many of the presidential chairs of the congress. Apart from the DNE leaders, dozens of DNE provincial delegates from across the country attended the congress. In José Antonio Girón’s opening address, the goal of this reunion was clear: the renewal of the indissoluble loyalty of the veterans to the ‘Fatherland and to the ideals that led to the Victory’. ⁵³ The veterans’ congress, however, did not give the Francoist ex-soldiers the opportunity to express themselves; the thousands of Spaniards who had fought in the Francoist army had no room to raise their voices. The ‘official’ talks at the congress, given by a set of Falangist leaders, reiterated the loyalty of the ex-combatants to the Caudillo. There was an undertone of bitterness and radicalism in some of the speeches, but the Falangist press that published the congress’ proceedings concealed any trait of anti-capitalism or political protest. During the sessions, there were debates about several political and economic issues, but all this activity remained hidden from the wider public. The main political objective was achieved: the reaffirmation of the veteran elites’ support for the dictator, and the public exhibition of the veterans’ massive devotion to Franco. In a sense, the expression of the veterans’ ‘consensus’ was genuine, but it was inseparable from the propaganda, the lack of liberties, and the censorship that characterized this event as a whole. ⁵⁴

Secondly, displaying the veterans’ support for Franco exerted a function in the international sphere. As Girón stated in his opening speech, one of the reasons for organizing the congress was to contribute to the international fight against communism. The ceremony at the Alto de los Leones was intended not only to raise the spirits of its participants, but also to impress external observers. Thousands of Francoist veterans gathered on this peak, on a cold and foggy day, to participate in this religious, military and political ritual. The Caudillo used the occasion to proclaim that the ‘Crusade’ (i.e. the Spanish Civil War) had been the first victorious battle against communism in the world. He also warned that now a ‘third world war’ threatened the life of all the nations; Spain would be prepared for any eventuality. ⁵⁵ Considering the poor conditions of the Spanish economy and army, these pronouncements sounded quite adventurous. What was their purpose?

In all probability, the international context determined the choice of Franco’s words, as well as the characteristics and timing of the veterans’ meeting on the Alto de los Leones. In particular, the process of integrating Spain into the Western defence system is crucial to understanding why the Franco regime resorted to the symbol of the veteran. By 1952, the United States had made some diplomatic moves towards aligning Spain with the Western bloc, yet President Truman was still reluctant, in view of Spain’s anti-democratic regime. At the time, the European and American leaders were discussing the question of creating a European army. The Western leaders considered allowing the German Federal Republic to re-arm in order to oppose the Soviet menace, even if the French feared the revival of German militarism. Ex-combatants of the Waffen SS claimed that they had constituted a pioneer anti-communist European army, and called for the recognition of their rights as veterans. ⁵⁶

This is the context in which the Spanish veterans’ congress must be understood. The widely publicized declarations at the congress were part of another manoeuvre of the Franco regime to push for the integration of Spain into the Western anti-communist community without introducing any substantial political reform at home. Shortly after the congress, Eisenhower’s victory in the 1952 United States presidential elections eased the way for a final agreement with Spain, and in 1953 the accords for military cooperation between both countries were the definitive step for the international absolution of Franco. Francoist veterans had played their part in this achievement.

During the rest of the 1950s, the transformation of the dictatorship was slow and superficial, and the DNE changed accordingly. As FET-JONS was revitalized, it followed that the veterans’ organization would also need reanimating. In 1954, Tomás García Rebull replaced Girón as the Veterans’ National Delegate. ⁵⁷ He inherited a ‘cold’ bureaucratic structure, to which he intended to give new life. There was no profound renewal of leadership in the DNE, though. García Rebull tried to reactivate the provincial delegates’ interest in defending the veterans’ privileges; he also obtained funds from the party to sponsor a propaganda campaign in several provinces, in order to have veterans elected in the ‘organic’ local elections of November 1954. ⁵⁸ Rituals, commemoration ceremonies for the fallen soldiers and small veterans’ meetings were again organized throughout the country. García Rebull took advantage of the radicalism of certain veteran elites, even though his primary objective remained the cultivation of their fidelity to Franco. A similar strategy worked to appease the increasingly desperate material demands of lower-class veterans. Veterans found no real solutions but only words of comradeship and appeals to their proverbial loyalty and abnegation. ⁵⁹ The DNE was the same fascist agency for the management and exchange of patronage and political allegiances that it had been in the early 1940s.

Apart from working to consolidate the veterans’ loyalty to Franco, the DNE strived to invigorate the FET-JONS by attracting veterans to the party. In May 1955, García Rebull decided that henceforth the DNE would consider only those veterans who were also members of FET-JONS to be ‘ex-combatants’ (excombatientes). ⁶⁰ This plan raised protests from several provincial delegates, who were conscious of the Francoist veterans’ diverse political provenance. Yet, García Rebull, a political fanatic, continued working to reinforce the old ideals of the Falangist movement inside the DNE. During the second half of the 1950s, more changes aimed to energize the veteran organization and increase the potency of the FET-JONS.

Most interesting was the case of the ‘brotherhoods’ (hermandades) of veterans of the Blue Division. These ‘brotherhoods’ mushroomed during the mid-1950s in several cities, with the aim of reuniting the ex-soldiers of the Russian front. ⁶¹ They succeeded in concealing their links with Nazism, by stressing, instead, their anti-communism and their allegedly Catholic inspiration. The United States had become an ally, and even The New York Times published a positive review of a novel about the Blue Division written by a Falangist ex-combatant. ⁶² With the connivance of both the Minister of the Army, Agustín Muñoz Grandes and the DNE leader, García Rebull, who were Blue Division ex-officers themselves, the ‘brotherhoods’ stepped up their activities after 1956. ⁶³ In June 1959, they created a National Brotherhood of División Azul Veterans. ⁶⁴ As the organizational model of these hermandades was working well, it became an inspiration for a more profound transformation of the DNE. Paradoxically, these changes slowly moved towards a relative liberalization of the veteran movement, and thereby towards the abandonment of fascist and totalitarian traits.

The leadership change that took place in the FET-JONS in 1957 stimulated the final transformation of the DNE. In 1956, the level of dissent within the country had become clear, and the crisis was tackled by restructuring the government. The FET-JONS unsuccessfully tried to gain power and influence. Franco rejected the Falangist projects of the Secretary General José Luis Arrese, who was then replaced by José Solís Ruiz. Importantly, in this governmental change Girón stopped being a Minister after many years in power. With the loss of power of the FET-JONS, the DNE correspondingly declined. Furthermore, there had been important criticisms about failures in provision ascribed to the DNE. Many Francoist veterans were fed up with the Falangist claims on the veterans’ loyalty that thwarted their aspirations for social improvement. ⁶⁵ A change was needed, but this change would mean a clear loss of relevance for the DNE, if not its technical abolition. In the wake of the restructuring of the party, the veteran organization became subservient to the new National Delegation of Associations (DNA). ⁶⁶ A new organization was substituted for the DNE: the so-called Former Combatants Service (Servicio de Antiguos Combatientes). In contrast to the hierarchical model of the DNE, based on provincial and local delegations, the FET-JONS now promoted the creation of locally-based veteran ‘councils’ and ‘associations’. Nonetheless, the political discourse and declared objectives of these associations did not substantially alter. The same ideological content was kept within a less-centralized structure. There was no substantial change in the social profile of the veteran leaders, either. The fact that Tomás García Rebull also became the head of the new Servicio de Antiguos Combatientes shows the superficiality of these changes. However, by 1959, as more profound reforms took place in the Francoist regime, the transformation of the DNE was irreversible. Although the history of the Francoist veterans continued, the history of the DNE can be considered to end here.

III

This overview of the Francoist veterans’ history until 1959 has allowed us to gauge the relevance of the war veterans’ symbolic and real presence in the Franco regime. The question that remains is: to what extent were the Francoist veterans indicative of the fascist credentials of the Franco regime? Furthermore, can the history of the Francoist veterans teach us something about the history of fascism? ⁶⁷ In this concluding part, I shall advance an answer to these questions, while reflecting on the theory and definitions of both fascism and Francoism.

Assessing whether fascism was an essential characteristic of the Franco regime raises a number of burdensome interpretative and conceptual issues. In Spanish historiography, the debate about the ‘nature’ of the Franco regime has lingered over decades, while reaching no wide consensus. ⁶⁸ Stated crudely, the positions have been as follows. Those who consider the Franco regime as ‘authoritarian’ have underlined the great influence of the Catholic Church and the army, the limited pluralism within institutions, social conservatism, the restricted leverage of the fascist party, and the modernizing trends of the 1960s. Those who conceptualize Francoism as ‘fascism’ recall that the regime performed the same functions as the inter-war fascist dictatorships, and highlight the use of extreme violence during the early phases of Franco’s regime. A third interpretative line opts to define the Franco regime as a ‘fascistized’ dictatorship. ⁶⁹ More recently, new lines of discussion have appeared, no longer fixated on the quest for a static conceptual definition of the regime, but rather interested in situating the Franco regime within a wider dynamic European context. Historians of Francoism have introduced new debates, analysed political cultures and established comparisons. The key topic of historiographical debate is focused on the social support for the Francoist regime, and on the study of popular opinions, ‘consent’, ‘collaboration’ or ‘participation’ in the fascist and totalitarian dictatorships. ⁷⁰ Yet, researchers remain interested in the issue of the Franco regime’s links to fascism.

The difficulty of defining the Franco regime is surpassed by the difficulty of defining fascism itself. Often, historians of Francoism make their analyses and comparisons, while failing to make clear their specific definition of fascism. An additional problem is that most definitions of fascism are based on the assumption that Italian Fascism and German Nazism are the archetypes of ‘generic’ fascism, and therefore, only these two models provide the defining characteristics of what is considered fascist. Thus, no deep analysis of the Spanish case would provide further insights to the ‘nature’ of ‘generic’ fascism. Analysing from the same perspective both the original fascist models and the various para-fascist movements and regimes remains a problem.

The use of the category ‘fascistization’ has provided a solution, since it facilitates the analysis of the process by which inter-war movements and regimes acquired or lost fascist ideological and organizational traits over time. ⁷¹ This concept has proven valid for understanding the extent to which the institutions and political culture of Francoism can be considered fascist. ⁷² The interwar period shows that fascism was a highly protean phenomenon; its history can be better understood by looking into the different stages of its evolution. Only by bearing in mind this mutability can the fascist character of Francoism be grasped.

Having said that, in order to understand whether the Francoist veterans represented fascism in Francoist Spain, one needs to consider the origins and evolution of Francoism within its historical context. The Spanish Civil War was embarked upon when the two fascist archetypes, Italian Fascism and Nazism, had reached the ‘stage of the exercise of power’, the fourth stage according to Paxton’s interpretative model. ⁷³ Once Franco was settled in power, the institutions of his dictatorship were progressively and substantially homogenized with those of Italian Fascism. However, in the period from 1941, Italian Fascism and Nazism entered a process of radicalization through war: the fifth and final stage of Paxton’s model. After failing to increase the military support that Franco offered to the Axis for the Russian campaign, and in view of the events that proved to be the turning points of the Second World War during 1942, Francoism seems to have undertaken a process of defascistization, inverting the process of political and ideological radicalization and accommodation with the Axis. (In theory, this phenomenon perhaps should represent an alternative to the fifth stage of Fascism, or even a sixth stage added to Paxton’s model.) ⁷⁴ The key issue is that, after 1944–1945, the Francoist regime stand alone as a regime that had traversed a fully fascist experience and survived to tell the tale. In view of contextualization, the character of the late-1930s Francoist projects should not be judged in diachronic comparison with the origins and evolution of Nazism and Italian Fascism, but in relation to the traits that Italian Fascism and Nazism had acquired by the late 1930s.

Moreover, the Franco dictatorship in Spain was established in the context of the ‘second wave’ of fascism in Europe. ⁷⁵ If in the 1920s the example of Italian Fascism, the memory of the First World War and the activism of its war veterans had marked the first fascist wave, the 1930s second wave was propelled by the rise of the Third Reich, the Great Depression and the threat of war. There were common elements present in both waves, such as political violence, anti-liberalism or anti-communism. That the importance of the veterans in fascism was, in principle, typical of the first wave of fascism, and not of the second wave when Francoism was born, implies certain paradoxes when comparing the Francoist model of veteran politics to the fascist one.

An additional hurdle comes from the manner in which historiography has examined the relationship between veterans and fascism. Historians have usually approached this question through the lens of the famous ‘brutalization’ thesis of George L. Mosse. ⁷⁶ Focused on the case of Nazi Germany, this interpretation argued that the myth of the war experience bore responsibility for the inter-war brutalization of politics, which led to Nazism, war and genocide. Having experienced combat, veterans were prone to join the postwar paramilitary organizations which preceded the fascist movements. A wide international debate ensued from this provocative thesis. On the one hand, historians such as Antoine Prost, ⁷⁷ who underlined the pacifist tendencies of the French veterans’ movement, flatly rejected the notion that the war experience was by itself the foundation of political violence and fascism. Benjamin Ziemann, in his careful analysis of the history of German veterans, has been also very critical of the brutalization thesis. ⁷⁸ On the other hand, without rejecting the value of the brutalization thesis as a research tool, other historians have reached more nuanced interpretations. For example, Robert Gerwarth has pointed out that the experience of defeat, rather than the war experience as such, was the catalyst of post-war violent reactions; anti-Bolshevik paramilitary groups were largely joined by veterans, particularly ex-officers. ⁷⁹ The continuities between the Freikorps, veteran organizations like the Stahlhelm, and Nazism; ⁸⁰ the role of veterans and war-experienced officers in the rise of Italian Fascism; ⁸¹ the connections between French veterans’ groups and fascist leagues ⁸² – such cases have persuaded many historians that somehow the brutalizing experience of war transformed veterans into people prone to join fascist organizations and adopt fascist ideologies. However, detailed historical research has often contradicted this hypothesis. ⁸³

In the case of Spain, the main problem with the brutalization thesis is that Spain did not participate in the Great War, and therefore there was no mass veteran movement in Spain that might have been developed into fascism. Still, some historians have revisited the concept of brutalization to explain the high levels of political violence during the Spanish Second Republic. ⁸⁴ Also, the concept of ‘war culture’ has been proposed to analyse the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist regime. ⁸⁵

In fact, the Spanish Civil War can be seen as the war that catalysed fascism in Spain, and this is where the closest association between Francoism and fascism may be found. During the years of the Second Republic, the first Spanish fascist groups were unable to form a mass movement. For the Spanish Francoists, the war experience of 1936–1939 played the same foundational role that the First World War had played in the formation of the culture, political style, mentalities and worldview of fascists and Nazis. ⁸⁶ Despite being an internal conflict, nationalistic discourses and the dehumanization of the enemy were ingredients of the Spanish War mobilization, ⁸⁷ thus paralleling the Great War. Just as fascism was a historical impossibility without the First World War, the Francoist regime and the transformation of the Spanish early fascist groupings into a mass, state-sponsored party (FET-JONS) cannot be conceived without the experience of the Spanish Civil War. The symbolic element of the veteran, crucial in the Italian and German fascist experiences, could be politically employed by the Spanish fascists and by the Franco regime only after the Spanish Civil War. The Francoist veterans contributed to keeping alive a ‘culture of war’, ⁸⁸ based on myths, discourses and rituals, which can be directly compared with the fascist and Nazi use of the Great War memory.

Comparative and transnational history can provide insights into the relationship between fascism, war veterans and Francoism. However, different methods of comparison will reach different conclusions. A diachronic comparison between the origin of Italian Fascism, Nazism and the Spanish case does not yield any commonality regarding the role of veterans. In Italy and Germany, after the First World War, diverse and massive veterans’ organizations appeared, independently from the fascist and Nazi original movements. Both Mussolini and Hitler were veterans, but quite different personalities. Mussolini had been a journalist, an embittered ex-socialist and an interventionist, whose war experience was probably not traumatic. ⁸⁹ Hitler, on the contrary, had been a simple soldier, profoundly marked by the war experience and the defeat. At the beginning, Mussolini and his group harboured a strong desire to mobilize the war veterans politically for anti-Bolshevik and nationalist purposes, particularly after the Italian ‘victory’ was ‘mutilated’ at Versailles. Certain groups of veterans, the arditi for example, joined the Fascist movement, thus developing a characteristic culture of political combat. ⁹⁰ Although most Italian veterans were not attracted to Fascism, the movement gained enough support to destroy socialism, obtaining governmental power by October 1922 and full control of the state by 1925. In the German case, the early Nazi movement was not particularly interested in recruiting veterans; anti-republican veterans formed other organizations such as the Stahlhelm. However, especially following the March on Rome, many of these anti-republican veterans took part in the violent attempts to destroy the Weimar republic, as in Hitler’s failed putsch of 1923.

During the 1920s in Italy, Fascism took complete control of the veteran organizations, and Mussolini’s regime bestowed upon the veterans important symbolic and material privileges. The fascistization of the ANC was not easy, as the veterans did not want to lose their political autonomy, but the process was complete. The ANC became fully fascistized by 1925, and was then led by the fascist decorated veteran Amilcare Rossi. Under Mussolini, there was another entity for the war disabled, the Associazione Nazionale Mutilati e Invalidi di Guerra (ANMIG). At the beginning, the fascistization of the ANMIG implied the granting of important concessions to the disabled veterans. Later, the main disabled veterans’ leader, the war-blind poet Carlo Delcroix, transformed himself into a fanatic fascist, so that the ANMIG remained loyal to the regime. By the 1930s the ANC and the ANMIG had been transformed into fascist propaganda tools; they were instruments for the totalitarian control of the Italian war veterans. ⁹¹

What was happening in Germany? During the early 1930s, the Nazi movement successfully targeted the veterans as potential supporters. Nazi propaganda made use of the disabled veterans, since the economic depression had severely affected them. After January 1933, the Nazis affirmed their intention of restoring the honour of German veterans. At the same time they carried out a swift and ruthless nazification of the Stahlhelm, which disappeared in 1935. For disabled veterans, the Nazis organized the Nationalsozialistische Kriegsopferversorgung (NSKOV), led by the Nazi veteran Hans Oberlindober. ⁹² The Nazification of the remaining veterans’ associations took place later, in 1938, when they were amalgamated into the Nazified Kyffhäuserbund. ⁹³

The contrast with Spain is striking. During the 1920s, the war in Morocco formed a caste of ‘Africanist’ military officers with combat experience and a profound disdain for liberalism, democracy and republicanism. ⁹⁴ Franco and Millán Astray were clear examples of this. However, during the 1920s and 1930s, veterans of the war in Morocco did not play any decisive role in the origins of Spanish fascism. As the extreme right leader José Calvo Sotelo remarked in 1933, Spain lacked hardened ex-combatants to form a strong and assertive anti-parliamentarian reaction, as in other countries. ⁹⁵ The Falange was, above all, initially a party of middle-class students. These realities would considerably change during the Spanish Civil War. Reaching this timeframe, a synchronic comparison with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy yields a very different image.

By the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi and Italian Fascist models for the political control and manipulation of the war veterans shared most of their key characteristics. Both of them were totalitarian systems, in which the war veterans had no real possibility of expressing opinions. The number of veteran publications had been greatly reduced, and those that remained merely replicated the regime’s official discourses. The veteran organizations were directly beholden to Mussolini and Hitler, and depended on the PNF and the NSDAP. War invalids and veterans were organized into separate bodies, but they walked hand in hand. The veterans’ organizations in both countries also shared similar political functions, which in practice were reduced to participation in fascist rituals and war commemorations. Congresses and meetings were just occasions to express faith in the Duce and the Führer. These fascist and Nazi organizations delivered the same kind of political discourse to the veterans, which insisted in a set of ideological values such as sacrifice and fanatical obedience. Finally, both regimes had created laws and mechanisms to provide material privileges to veterans, although the real material situation of veterans was dependent on the general economic situation and other factors such as social class.

The Francoist model of Spanish Civil War veteran politics matched all these fascist characteristics, the only differences being those of scale. Perhaps the most striking divergence was the fact that the Francoist veterans were even more controlled in ideological and political terms, and had even less freedom of speech. This dissimilitude would place the Francoist model of veteran politics closer to the totalitarian ideal type. Another important issue is that, as the Spanish fascist experience came out of a civil war, and not out of a national one, Francoist veteran politics aimed to maintain the privileges of the victors over the vanquished. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that in Italy and Germany, the experience of the Great War and the early postwar period involved bitter and violent internal divisions that were understood in terms of civil war. ⁹⁶ Moreover, by the end of the 1930s, veteran organizations were similarly contributing to the construction of idealized ‘National Communities’, putting into practice mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. Being qualified as a veteran was a factor for inclusion in the three dictatorships, and the three dictatorships manipulated the conditions by which a person would be considered a ‘veteran’. For example, in Germany, Jewish ex-combatants of the First World War believed they would be respected, ⁹⁷ although this hope soon proved to be an illusion. Something similar can be said for the case of Spain, where many men who had served in the Francoist army were never able to validate their supposed privileges. It might be also argued that the scarce public presence of the war veterans in Francoist Spain is a proof of its diluted fascist character, but this idea is only partially correct. In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany the veterans did not enjoy such visibility at that time. However, beyond the public sphere, in the three dictatorships, the presence of people who depicted themselves as war veterans flooded institutions; the symbolic elevation of the veteran was the same in the three cases.

How was it possible that the three dictatorships shared these definitely fascist characteristics regarding veteran politics? The answer requires applying a transnational perspective, focused on transfers, contacts and cross-border relations. The entanglement of Italian Fascism and Nazism has been many times demonstrated. ⁹⁸ By 1939–1941, Francoist Spain was part of the same entanglement, and veteran politics was an important facet. Significantly, the leaders of the Francoist organizations, José Antonio Girón and José Millán Astray, had visited Fascist Italy during the war. ⁹⁹ These kinds of political visits between the three regimes stepped up during 1939, helping the synchronization of their fascist veteran politics succeed. ¹⁰⁰

In conclusion, if the history of the Francoist veterans is a valid analytical tool for assessing the ‘nature’ of the regime, then Franco’s dictatorship should be considered as a fully fascist regime at least until 1943. Thereafter, the history of the Francoist veterans reveals the extreme difficulties of Francoism in divesting itself of its fascist credentials in order to survive. In this sense, it is interesting to note that towards 1944–1945, while the FET-JONS’ thrust for power was arrested, war veterans were still providing much of the membership of the political cadres of the dictatorship. Furthermore, the history of the Francoist veterans since 1945 perfectly exemplifies the internal intermittent defascistization process, as well as historical connections between the Franco regime and the European phenomenon of neo-fascism. The symbol of the veteran was as important for neo-fascism as it was for the interwar fascism, as, for instance, the prominence of veteran culture in the Italian Social Movement (MSI) suggests. ¹⁰¹ In Italy, Germany and France, former combatants such as Augusto De Marsanich (leader of the MSI) and ex-members of the Waffen SS such as Arthur Ehrhardt embodied the neo-fascist movement. The Iberian peninsula was one of the hubs of this transnational neo-fascist network. ¹⁰² These realities put forward new questions and topics that scholars had not yet fully explored. Nevertheless, the case of veteran politics in Francoist Spain shows the persistence of the fascist ideology beyond 1945, and demonstrates the strong transnational connection between the symbol of the veteran and fascism. The history of the Francoist veterans offers a rare insight into the historical relationship between war and fascism, into the processes of fascistization and defascistization, into the ‘nature’ of fascism, and into the dynamics of neo-fascism, during the short, war-riddled European twentieth century.