Franco And The Axis Stigma
by David Wingeate Pike /
2008 / English / PDF
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The German Admiralty's archives in Freiburg, Germany, reveal details of the extent to which Franco collaborated with the Axis both by supplying U-boats in Spanish ports and by setting up observation posts on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar, to the utter detriment of the British convoys on the Malta route. The German archives also provide evidence that Franco's Blue Division on the eastern front, while illustrious in combat, was disgraceful in German eyes for its behaviour away from the front. Against a background of major events in Europe and the world in the period 1939-45, Franco and the Axis Stigma provides a systematic examination of the Franco press, in all its four dimensions: Church, military, monarchist and Falangist, representing the four differing expressions of what was then a totalitarian regime. What it reveals is that the regime's yearning for an Axis victory never waned up to the bitter end.
