“Spain's Neutral Holocaust: Memories of the Axis Alliance in Francoist and Post-Franco Spain”

Tony Judt once wrote that Europe was finally preparing “to leave World War Two behind—as the last monuments are inaugurated, the last surviving combatants and victims honored.”  This crystallization of memory allowed the European continent “to guarantee its restored humanity” for the foreseeable future.  Yet, there were some European countries that were neither belligerents in the war nor really participants in this postwar settlement.  This difference has not meant that these countries have escaped the burdens of 20^th century European history.  In fact, an uneven reckoning with the past remains an important and on-going component of the European present. Spain is an important case in point.  I am examining the role that the Nazi regime’s genocide of European Jewry played in forging Spanish national identity during the Franco regime and the transition to democracy.  While Spain was officially a non-belligerent state in World War II, the Axis powers aided the Francoists during the Spanish Civil War between 1936-1939.  Franco returned the favor during World War II, providing the Axis with material support and sharing a broad political ideology, in particular an energetic antisemitism at least through 1942.  This paper examines the Franco regime's particular and contradictory distancing of the regime from its wartime alliances while allowing an energetic German community former Nazis to proliferate and succeed in Spain and even celebrating them in popular culture. Based on archival and printed materials, this work examines the very public presence of an officially hidden population in Spanish culture of the Franco regime.