Word: franco
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Spain. Wells was not the only one to wince. The nauseous memory of the Hoare-Laval Deal to appease Mussolini (1935) was still fresh. That of the Hitler-sweetening at Munich was even fresher. In 1940 Britain needed someone to talk straight, not sweet, to Spain's Franco. Sir Samuel hardly seemed the man. He had passed "from experience to experience, like Boccaccio's virgin," said a wag, "without discernible effect upon his condition...
...suddenly turned Spanish republican. Now Viscount Templewood, he describes himself as an "English monarchist," suggests that a new Spanish monarchy might bring back peace and even "vigorous social reform" with the crown. But he makes plain his feeling that almost any form of government would be an improvement over Franco's, and cannot hide his disgust with the Franco regime...
...nothing higher in it than a five of clubs." German prestige was boundless; German spies and informers were thick underfoot. A "very sinister" Turk named Lazar, attached to the German Embassy although he was a Jew, controlled the Spanish press. Seated before signed photographs of Hitler and Mussolini, Dictator Franco received the British envoy with polite disdain. "Why don't you end the war now?" Franco asked. "You can never...
...Franco been a little less sly, and Hitler and Mussolini a little less stupid, Spain would have joined the Axis, Sir Samuel believes. It was largely luck that Spain stayed out and pretended to be neutral-luck, plus Allied economic bait, plus the sympathies of a few Spaniards, notably Count Francisco Gomez Jordana, for two years (1942-44) Franco's Minister for Foreign Affairs...
Before the war they split. Cortot, a collaborationist, became Vichy's secretary for music. Casals, a fiery Spanish Loyalist, hid out in France during the war, performed at Loyalist benefits. Now 70, he has announced that he will never play publicly again until Spain is liberated from Franco. Jacques Thibaud, less politically minded than either, gave concerts in Vichyfrance, but also performed clandestinely in Switzerland and Spain. In France, aging Jacques Thibaud is regarded with somewhat the same mixture of admiration and affection that U.S. audiences feel for Thibaud's close friend, Fritz Kreisler...