Franco and Hitler. Spain, Germany, and World War II

Stanley Payne explores the full range of Franco´s relationship with Hitler, from 1936 to the fall of the Reich in 1945. But as Payne brilliantly shows, relations between these two dictators were not only a matter of realpolitik. These two titanic egos engaged in an extraordinary tragi-comic drama often verging on the dark absurdity of a Beckett or Ionesco play. While Payne investigates the evolving relationship of the two regimes up to the conclusion of World War II, his principal concern is the enigma of Spain´s unique position during the Second World War, as a fascist country struggling to maintain a tortured neutrality. Why Spain did not enter the war as a German ally, joining with Hitler to seize Gibraltar and close the Mediterranean to the British navy, is at the centre of Payne´s narrative. Franco´s only personal meeting with Hitler in 1940 to discuss precisely this is recounted here in groundbreaking detail that also sheds significant new light on the Spanish government´s vacillating policy toward Jewish refugees, the Holocaust, and Spain´s German connection throughout the duration of the war.