Word: franco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that followed for three bloody years became an epic of its time, with all the emotive horror that Viet Nam has spawned today. Nazi Germany sided with Franco; the war was an apt testing ground for new weapons like the Stuka dive bomber. The Soviet Union backed the Spanish Republic and its Popular Front Government; so did Communists everywhere. Volunteers poured in from around the world, among them a brigade of intellectuals, including Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, Arthur Koestler and George Orwell. The war was to shape their words forevermore. They carried the memory of it within their hearts...
...Pariah. Spain's brutal war had scarcely subsided in 1939 before Europe's war began. Despite his debts to Germany and Italy for their help in his victory, Franco avoided the bigger battle, and even turned aside a German request for permission to attack Gibraltar through Spain. Franco and Hitler met for nine hours one day in 1940 to discuss the question. By the end of their conversation, Hitler was unnerved by Franco's high-pitched monotone. "The man is not cut out to be a politician," the Führer complained later. "I would rather have...
Nevertheless, Franco's sympathies were so obvious that at war's end he was considered a pariah by the victorious allies. Spain was refused membership in the new United Nations organization, France for a time closed its borders and halted commerce, and active plans were made to overthrow Franco. Economic crisis and occasionally actual hunger plagued Spaniards. They warmed to Franco for the first time when he told them defiantly: "If the world chooses to turn its back on us, we will go it alone...
...Franco's isolation ended after the Berlin blockade persuaded the U.S. that Spain was essential for the defense of Western Europe. In 1953 John Foster Dulles drew up a pact providing $85 million in economic aid and $141 million in military aid in exchange for U.S. air and naval bases in Spain. It was the high point of Franco's long career. "The West needs us in the fight against Communism," he boasted to a Falange meeting in Madrid...
...rest of Europe insists on remembering all too clearly who it was that cheered for Hitler in World War II. The Benelux countries in particular are vehemently opposed to letting Spain into the Common Market club, so long as it is ruled by Franco or anyone like him. On the other hand, Western Europe hopes to influence the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the direction of liberalism, with a policy of "Wandel dutch annäherung," or "change through drawing nearer," as West German Chancellor Willy Brandt puts it. That same policy might equally and more profitably be applied...