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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, ColumbiaLondon, University of Missouri Press, 2000. * 101 +