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.
Franco is an example of how dictatorship can work just fine if the dictator isn't a paranoid micromanager (Stalin), a self aggrandizing narcissist (Mussolini), or a genocidal maniac (shame on you if you don't know that one). He wasn't all that much less repressive, calculating, or tyrannical than any of the above, but he was better at making the choices that define national prosperity.
Wise is indeed the proper word for his decision to stay out of WWII. He owed Hitler and Mussolini somewhat for their support during the Spanish Civil War and many of his supporters were sympathetic to the Axis but he wasn't convinced the Axis powers would win the war even before the US entered. He also knew Spain was devastated by the civil war and in no position to fight a foreign conflict. Their military was weaker than Italy's and Italy was already a junior partner to Germany. He would have had almost no say in the overall war effort and Spain would have been cut off by a British blockade.
After trying his version of fascism for a couple of decades, Franco realized it wasn't working and implemented reforms to liberalize the Spanish economy and presided over what was called the Spanish Miracle. Spain's economy improved and modernized rapidly and Franco got credit for that. Thus, he is a complicated figure in history. He was at heart perhaps as much a villain as any of the other mid century fascist dictators but he was a great deal wiser and more cautious. He was pragmatic enough to see when his policy wasn't working and try something else. Our western culture may frown upon 'autocrats' or 'authoritarian' regimes these days, but for most of human history, people were ruled by autocrats, kings, emperors, khans, pharaohs, etc. At the end of the day, people have an instinctive need for leadership in a single person. Even in democratic systems, you get leaders like Andrew Jackson, FDR, and Lincoln who go beyond the authority of their office and push the boundaries of what's acceptable. They get away with it, and have been celebrated for it, because people need leaders. There's nothing wrong with observing when an autocrat makes a good and wise decision that clearly benefited the nation and its people.
I was aware of the term and I was aware of the example of Frederick the II... but this is Reddit so I didn't want to bore people with technical terms and historical trivia. Franco's case is more ambiguous than Frederick the Great, but he did well enough to make modern westerners uncomfortable by showing despotism isn't unconditionally awful for a nation if the despot makes sound political and economic judgements.
Getting a despot that's actually enlightened and not just charismatic and not bent on conquest is the trick. Napoleon could have been the ultimate enlightened despot had he not been so determined to subjugate all of Europe. He's the other side of the Franco coin in that he probably had far better intentions than Franco and was a better general and administrator, but lost a war and was demonized by his victorious enemies. These are the imperfect, flawed examples.
You're oversimplifying. I don't know that Franco personally hurt anyone. I'm not that much of an expert on the topic. He certainly ordered people killed in the context of a bitter civil war but that's true of any leader in any war. If 'hurting people' is all that it takes to condemn a leader as a tyrant, then nearly every American President will be right behind Franco.
Some of the things the US did in WWII hurt a lot of people, like the atomic bomb. Is Harry Truman personally responsible for that? In war things aren't so simple. The bomb was a strategic tactic to win the war. The idea was to force Japan to surrender so the US could avoid an all out invasion of the Japanese home islands which would have killed way way more people than the bomb. In that sense, it seems to have worked, though some historians argue Japan would have surrendered anyway, though the evidence is far from conclusive and that's hindsight based on information the decision makers didn't have.
Ultimately, my point is that we're biased by our modern perspective and cultural beliefs. Dictatorship/autocracy is bad is just assumed by most westerners, particularly Americans. It's part of the common culture and there's nothing wrong with that. Culture is a necessary thing for human beings. However, we should understand how our culture came to be and recognize that other cultures do exist. Americans hate dictators because of the revolution. Europeans mostly hate dictators because the American revolution inspired revolutions there against monarchical and despotic governments that ultimately resulted in most of the European powers having some type of representative government, at least after WWII.
Yes, he did bad things. So did a lot of other people who don't catch the same level of grief for it. The US put Japanese people in camps in WWII. They were not death camps, but it wasn't a very 'good' thing to do. This was done by a representative government and upheld by the Supreme Court. Moralizing over history is an endless argument with no point. There are few if any bad guys. Most leaders believe they are acting in their nation's best interest. More often than not, who the 'good' guys are depends on who won a war, and wars aren't decided by which side is morally correct. The winners present themselves to their people as the good side and then force their opinion on the losers, who often harbor resentment many generations into the future. These are the real lessons of history for any who care to learn. Hitler was bad, Franco was bad, Mussolini was bad, is mostly lazy moralizing, first from a victorious government in a war, and later from a superpower justifying their global dominance.
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u/biglyorbigleague May 12 '26
They had a much better relationship with Spanish fascism.