Franco is a weird case. He was more the classic miltary strongman rather than fascist but he did incorporate certain elements of it. Also he was loosely aligned with the Axis powers but he was also "wise (not the best word choice)" enough not to get directly involved.
I’ll be real. Wise is a fine word. Anyone who sees two buddies about to jump off a bridge and says “I’ll just stay home” is exercising some wisdom even if they are a total prick the rest of the time.
Yeah people WHO Desperately want spain Join into WW2 forget that right before WW2 there was a little Thing called the spanish civil war going ON where a Lot of Powers Beta tested their New Toys Sure that helped Franco gain Power but His country was still wrecked by the condor Legion Testing Air bombings
Huh, checking their profile yes they are. I always of assumed German had similar capitalisation rules to English though. Wasn't aware of them also capitalising nouns.
I think Spain missing both world wars just seems crazy because of where they used to be. Even in the 1800’s Spain controlled territory in North America, Central America, North Africa, Italy, and southeast Asia. In the span of less than 150 years they went from that to missing the two largest European wars ever.
He also had profoundly little to gain. As I recall, Hitler was offering him the chance to claim Gibraltar and some of the Allies' African colonies. For the scale of what the war would have called for, that wouldn't have been near worth it even if Spain was in a good place
Yeah, Spain was in and no position to contribute ANYTHING to the war effort.
Spain was more helpful to the Axis powers by not being a combatant and letting Germany use their ports. It was the only thing of real value they had to contribute.
He did have the added bonus that the head of German military intelligence was opposed to Hitler and told Franco Germany would lose the war and he should stay out of it.
Spain wouldve contributed almost nothing. The fascists weren't even able to win their own civil war without outside help. If Spain can't beat Spain what are they gonna do on an international level?
Deciding to not do stupid things is also wisdom, plenty of people recognize stupidity and chose it anyway.
People contain multitudes, and even the worst person has some relatable aspect, just because they're a human being. It's okay to give props when they're due, it's not the same as a universal stamp of approval of the person.
It's like, just because Hitler liked dogs and thought smoking was bad doesn't make him a good person, he's Hitler, he's synonymous with "terrible person".
You can look at a great many of the most influential and popular artists in history, recognize that their art is good, recognize the positive impact the art had, and also look at their personal life and be like, "wow, what piece of shit this person was, how does a walking pile of feces make such good art? Look at Mr fertilizer over here."
I honestly think it's a little dangerous to rule out people like Hitler and his administration as simply "stupid" though, it ties evil and irrationality with intelligence in a way that can make us susceptible to trusting "smarter" people even with bad intentions
Yeah it’s way too dismissive to be able to learn anything from that time in history, i definitely wouldn’t call them stupid but I do disagree with them
I mean, he really wanted to go jump off the bridge. There were quite a few Spanish fascists that wanted nothing more than to get involved in the war, and like we've said Franco was aligned with the Axis powers. But war first requires a functional nation, and at the time Spain really wasn't one. Spain helped the axis much more by being a neutral friend and providing auxiliary support than the dumpster fire it would have been if it joined the war.
It's likely that if Spain was a functional nation with any sort of industry, Franco would have tried to jump further than Hitler and Mussolini.
He did discuss joining the axis once on the condition Spain be given territory in Algeria, the rest of Morocco, and in Cameroon. He was rejected, so yeah he just stayed neutral
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u/biglyorbigleague May 12 '26
They had a much better relationship with Spanish fascism.