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A TIME OF WARS AND COMMON TOTALITARIAN PROJECTS
With the advent of the Franco regime in Spain and the beginning of the
Second World War, the German presence in Vitoria changed its propaganda
priorities. Until the end of 1942 Germany seemed unstoppable in Europe,
and its propaganda service concerned itself with building, in its , friendly
countries", a feeling of identity with a European and totalitarian focus.
Germany would be the country to lead that ,Great Continental Europe”,
thanks to its leadership and its technical, technological and military might,
thanks to its status of ,vanguard”. This project, evident from the great
propaganda effort carried out in local publications like Pensamiento Alavés,
lost intensity from mid-1943, after the first great German defeats in the war.
Other elements, such as their shared aversion to Bolshevism, led to
the creation of other ties, such as the Blue Division, and supported the
maintenance of solid relations also from 1943, despite the fact that Francoist
Spain began to look, from 1944 onwards, towards another power renowned
for its opposition to the USSR: the USA.
There is no doubt that Germany tried to become a reference in Spain, and
that in many instances, especially between 1936 and 1942/43, Spain was
interested in having Germany as a reference.
On the basis of this evidence, it was necessary to gauge, beyond the propaganda,
the degree of effectiveness of this intense pro-German activity. Reports by local
political authorities have helped us to play down the impact of this propaganda
on social and identity codes, especially during the development of the Second
World War. In a city like Vitoria, small but very complex and varied in terms
of identities and ideologies, we know that the sentiment was not unanimously
pro-German during the war. On the contrary, and as the reports show, Basque
nationalism and the political left, present in the city despite being persecuted
by the Franco regime, showed their sympathies to the allies clandestinely, and
hoped that a defeat of Germany would return democracy to Spain, ridding it of
Franco. However, Franco’s skilful strategy, redefining Spain’s place in the world
depending on the progress of the war, negated this possibility.
This paper is a first approximation to a phenomenon, that of the existence
of a solid and convinced German project which, through military support and
strong propaganda, sought to influence a new sense of identity in Spain, based
on the projection of an idea of Europe governed by Germany and in which
Spain, and Spaniards, had to make an effort to fit in.
Through our approach, focused ona small city that is complex yet eminently
conservative and with strong identity traits, the effectiveness of this attempt
is played down. However, at the same time, it opens up a path for research
that is as rich as it is little explored: that of the variables of the scope, the
impact and the different contextual determinants that, beyond the narrow
geographic limits of our “micro” study, this German propaganda effort had
not only in Spain, but also in Europe andperhaps even beyond.
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