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GUILLERMO MARÍN
of the unsurpassed goodness and guality of German products which, as was
written, would arrive in abundance in Spain once the war ended.
Besides these, other reports of considerable graphic strength highlighted
the great technical advances of the avant-garde German industry, underlining
both its advances in those early years of the 1940s and its pioneering tradition
in earlier times (“An idea, an accomplishment”, from the original “Una idea,
una realizacién””’).
And there were other reports, in a military context, such as the one before
the battle of Stalingrad, in which German troops seemed unstoppable in
Europe, emphasizing the contributions that Spain could make to the project
of a continental Europe (from which both the Soviet Union and The British
Isles were excluded) under a totalitarian rule governed by Germany.
The apogee of this pro-German propaganda policy was, in the local press
studied, between the end of 1940 and the beginning of 1943, its decline
coinciding with the first great defeats of the Axis in World War II, which
forced Francoism to reformulate its approach, going from a discourse that
was openly favourable to Germany during the war, to an abandonment of this
position through 1943, with insistent references to its neutrality.
Pensamiento Alavés, 1941-1942. Made by Xabier Sagasta Lacalle for the exposition
Europa en llamas. Ecos de la Alemania nazi en Vitoria (1939-1945). Curators:
Guillermo Marin, Virginia Lopez de Maturana, Xabier Sagasta Lacalle. November
2016-January 2017, Vitoria-Gasteiz.
4 Pensamiento Alaves, January 28, 1942, 2; March 23, 1942, 3; April 21, 1942, 3, etc.
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