“Franco: A Biography”, by Paul Preston

1024 pages, Basic Books, ISBN-13: 978-0465025152

You’re a Peter Sellers fan, right? Of course you are. In 1979 Sellers starred in a movie called Being There in which his character, Chance the Gardener, a.k.a. Chauncey Gardiner, is a simple-minded cipher who ends up as candidate for President of the United States, totally by accident and even without his knowledge. I bring this up because Paul Preston’s Franco: A Biography could just as easily have been titled Being There II: The Dictator. In this massive work – 1000+ pages, fer chrissake – El Caudillo de España spends whole swaths of the book raving about Freemasons and Jews when he isn’t shooting birds by the thousand (see page 675) or fishing for whales (whales? Anyway, see page 723). All around him things just…happen, without Franco evincing any talent, aptitude or intelligence at having made those things happen. This leads Preston to conclude that the countless books written after Franco’s death in 1975 (having never relinquished power, mind you) portray an “astonishing personal mediocrity which characterized ‘a sphinx without a secret’” (see page 783).

Really? Well, let’s consider some of the things that just “happened” to Franco: he personally led charges of the Fuerzas Regulares Indígenas (Indigenous Regular Forces, known simply as the Regulares, or Regulars) in Morocco during which he was wounded, earning him the reputation as a man of baraka (good luck) amongst the native Moroccans, as well as making him a darling of the Africanistas, the elite, battle hardened Spanish veterans. During the Alhucemas landing on September 8^th, 1925 (the first amphibious landing in history supported by seaborne air power, by-the-bye) Franco countermanded an order to withdraw and instead ordered an assault which led to the successful establishment of a bridgehead (see page 48), later vindicating himself at a disciplinary hearing called to question his actions. Franco was later promoted to brigadier general when he was only 34-years-old, making him the youngest general in Spain and, perhaps, the youngest general in Europe (see page 49), despite the fact that most promotions were by seniority (were those who promoted him over all his peers’ ciphers, also?)

Franco, of course, became the leader of the Bando nacional, fought and won the Spanish Civil War, kept his own Nationalist side reasonably united (to the everlasting hatred of the Bando republicano), held on to Spain and to power during the nightmare years of World War II, weathered the post-war years until the Cold War realignment, and appointed those who helped facilitate explosive economic growth in the 1960s. Last and certainly not least, he educated and groomed the mild and enlightened prince he designated to replace him. Obviously the model for this man is...Chance the Gardener. Right…wait, that’s that I hear you say? That Franco didn’t want to be succeeded by a moderate, democratic regime and instead wanted his Falange party to rule ad infinitum? Well, then, lemme ask ya: are we to believe instead that Chauncey Franco thought he had stumbled upon the second coming of Pedro the Cruel?

To paint Franco as the anti-Semite’s anti-Semite, Preston must have printed every word Franco ever said in favor of Hitler and/or against Jews that he could find. While certainly not an enlightened despot willing to let others go-along to get-along, Preston must know perfectly well that no Jew was ever kidnapped, incarcerated in concentration camps, nor deported from Spain during the Holocaust (Franco sure as hell kept out of the War even as his Fascist Bros were begging him to join their glorious anti-communist crusade). This rather begs the question: why didn’t the author explore why Franco said so many awful things about Jews and yet shielded every Jew he had the power to protect, whether in Spain, France or Eastern Europe? Don’t believe me? Read The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg in which Franco’s diplomats (besides Sweden’s) are constantly protesting, publishing and decrying the persecution and murder of Jews? It doesn’t take a genius to imagine Franco ordering this in August 1944, but he still ordered these things from the first day of the war when it was obvious to everyone that Hitler was going to win (he alone was responsible for them; he was a dictator, remember?) While I admit that I do not understand Franco’s motivations, a more serious biographer would have tried to explain this mystery to us rubes.

Oh, there are good things in the book: Franco’s life is recorded in minute detail, his military career in Morocco is well documented from start to finish, and we learn from Preston that he loved his family and was loyal to them. But what else can you expect from a leftist academic? Perhaps the best thing you can do before starting this brick is to read the Epilogue first, starting on page 779. If you can’t stomach this nine page paean of hatred to Franco you’ll probably not get anything out of the book; if, however, you think this Epilogue really is a summation of the preceding work, well then you’ll love the damn thing.