Show description

Nothing was so worthy of praise as a woman’s “submissiveness” Fascism and the Will to Survive (1939–51) 39 to men. Numbers of members never even reached a third of those in equivalent organizations in Italy; women barely took part in mass processions and could rarely be photographed doing gymnastics. The Party quickly lost the political battle in two areas. In the summer of 1940 militias were set up but not much was achieved beyond laying down very elementary guidelines for mobilization. The military makes militias superfluous and in Franco’s Spain the initial victory that had laid the foundations for the regime belonged unequivocally to the Army.

He asked one of his associates. It must be said that he himself had not won any great victories and Spain might become a competitor in the sharing of power around the Mediterranean. What happened after that was a repeat of what had gone before: Italy wanted Spain to join in the war but only when Italy said so and only when it best suited Italian interests. From the start of 1941 on, Germany’s military strategic planning on Spain was purely defensive: it anticipated only the creation of a protective front in the north which would move back gradually in the event of British troops taking the Iberian Peninsula.

The entire population was divided into different categories identified with 26 Introduction letters of the alphabet. ” With this mixture of repression and surveillance it is not surprising that the regime managed to ensconce itself so firmly in Spain. Exile and the Start of the Postwar Period in Spain These repressive measures were aimed at the vanquished but some of the defeated escaped them by choosing to emigrate. In this sense too the end of the Civil War caused a rupture in the course of Spanish history.