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A TIME OF WARS AND COMMON TOTALITARIAN PROJECTS
This image that the press gave of the future of the war contrasts with the
sensibilities of the inhabitants of Vitoria, which were much more complex
and heterogeneous. We know from reports that the Provincial Head of the
Movement drafted on the political and social situation in the city that, from
the beginning of the war, the Allies stirred sympathy among a significant
number of inhabitants of the city, who saw in an Allied success a possible end
to the Francoism of the early 40’s, clearly pro-German and fascist. However,
the regime’s ability to reformulate itself and its image abroad and to fit
into the new post-war context, with the Axis defeated, failed to fulfil these
aspirations.
Pro-German propaganda: distinctive elements
With the pro-German vision that Francoism wanted to spread through the
press during much of World War II, another very interesting phenomenon
took place: that of intense propaganda between 1940 and 1943, related to
German products and to the technical prowess of this country.
The fundamental core of this propaganda policy was the idea that National
Socialist Germany represented the reference, the technological vanguard at a
European level and the “beacon” that Spain should follow to bea strong nation
in the New Europe that would arise after the victory of the Axis powers in
the War”.
The propaganda guidelines, accompanied by capital to facilitate its
diffusion in Spain, arrived from Germany to this country’s embassy in
Madrid. From there they passed it on to the Spanish Ministry of Government,
which through its press service leaked messages to national newspapers.
Part of the significant success of German propaganda, which explains how
it reached not only national newspapers, but also other more local ones such
as Pensamiento Alavés, was thanks to the figure of the person in charge of
propaganda in the German embassy in Madrid, Josef Hans Lazar. Lazar was
an influential personality in Madrid’s political and diplomatic circles in the
1930s and early 19405s%.
This German propaganda was, along the lines of what can be observed in
local publications, of variable intensity and topics. Between 1940 and 1943,
for example, it was customary for the Alava press to report on a small number
of German products, many of which were impossible to find in shops in a
small city of less than 40.000 inhabitants like Vitoria, and in a context of
famine and post-war poverty. This did not, however, prevent the description
22 Xose Manoel Nifiez Seixas: Falangismo, nacionalsocialismo y el mito de Hitler en España
(1931-1945), Revista de Estudios Politicos, Vol. 169, 2015, 13-43.
3 Wayne H. Bowen: Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order, Columbia¬
London, University of Missouri Press, 2000.
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