Page 103 [103]
OCR
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. * 102 +
