Paul Preston - Franco

This was entirely understandable. Franco needed the Falange both as a mechanism for the political mobilization of the civilian population and as a way of creating an identification with the ideals of his German and Italian allies. However, if the charismatic José Antonio Primo de Rivera were to have turned up at Salamanca, Franco could never have dominated and manipulated the Falange as he was later to do. After all, since before the war, José Antonio had been wary about too great a co-operation with the Army for fear that the Falange would simply be used as cannon fodder and fashionable ideological decoration for the defence of the old order. In his last ever interview, with Jay Allen, on 3 October, published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 9 October and in the News Chronicle on 24 October 1936, the Falangist leader had expressed his dismay that the defence of traditional interests was being given precedence over his party’s rhetorical ambitions for sweeping social change. 83 Even taking into account the possibility that José Antonio was exaggerating his revolutionary aims to curry favour with his jailers, the implied clash with the political plans of Franco was clear. In fact, Allen told the American Ambassador, Claude G. Bowers, that José Antonio’s attitude was defiant and contemptuous rather than conciliatory and that he had been obliged to cut short the interview ‘because of the astounding indiscretions of Primo’. 84

Franco, as something of a social climber, might have been expected to admire the dashing and charismatic socialite José Antonio who was after all son of the dictator General Primo de Rivera. However, despite the efforts of Ramón Serrano Suñer over the previous six years, their relationship had never prospered. José Antonio had come to regard Franco as pompous, self-obsessed and possessed of a caution verging on cowardice. Their relationship had definitively foundered in the spring of 1936, during the re-run elections in Cuenca when José Antonio had vehemently opposed the general’s inclusion in the right-wing list of candidates. Franco had never forgiven him.

For some time before his elevation to the overall leadership of the Nationalist side, Franco had been considering plans to subordinate the various political strands of the Nationalist coalition to a single authority. In late August, he had told Messerschmidt that the CEDA would have to disappear. In his conversation on 6 October with Count Du Moulin-Eckart, the new Head of State had informed his first diplomatic visitor that his main preoccupation was the ‘unification of ideas’ and the establishment of a ‘common ideology’ among the Army, the Falange, the monarchists and the CEDA. He confided in his visitor his cautious belief that ‘it would be necessary to proceed with kid gloves’. Given his own essential conservatism and the links of the elite of the Nationalist coalition with the old order, such delicacy would indeed be required. Unification could only be carried out at the cost of the political disarmament of the ever more numerous and vociferous Falange. Such an operation would be easier to perform if the Falangist leader were not present.

Early attempts to liberate José Antonio were initially approved by Franco. His grudging consent was given for the obvious reason that to withhold it would be to risk losing the goodwill of the Falange which was providing useful para-military and political assistance throughout the rebel zone. The first rescue attempt had been the work of isolated groups of Falangists in Alicante. Then in early September, when the Germans had come to see the Falange as the Spanish component of a future world political order, more serious efforts were made. German aid came from the highest levels on the understanding that the operation was approved by General Franco something for which there were precedents.

Franco had already intervened personally with the Germans to get help for the rescue of the family of Isabel Pascual de Pobil, the wife of his brother Nicolás. Thanks to the efforts of Hans Joachim von Knobloch, the German consul in Alicante, eighteen members of the Pasqual de Pobil family were disguised as German sailors and taken aboard a ship of the German Navy. The efforts to free the Falangist leader hinged largely on the co-operation of German naval vessels anchored at Alicante and of von Knobloch. Knobloch co-operated with the rash and excitable Falangist Agustín Aznar in an ill-advised scheme to get Primo de Rivera out by bribery which fell through when Aznar was caught and only narrowly escaped. An attempt was made on von Knobloch’s life and shortly after he was expelled from Alicante by the Republic on 4 October. 85

On arriving at Seville on 6 October, von Knobloch and Aznar renewed their efforts to liberate José Antonio. Von Knobloch elaborated a scheme to bribe the Republican Civil Governor of Alicante while Aznar prepared a violent prison break-out. They were received in Salamanca by Franco who, after thanking von Knobloch for securing the escape from Alicante of the family of his brother Nicolás, gave his permission for them to continue their efforts. However, that verbal permission obscured the fact that his backing was less than enthusiastic. While von Knobloch returned to Alicante to implement his scheme, Franco informed the German authorities that he insisted on a number of conditions for the continuation of the operation. These were that efforts be made to rescue José Antonio without handing over any money, that if it was necessary to give money then the amount should be haggled over, and that von Knobloch should not take part in the operation. These strange conditions considerably diminished the chances of success but the Germans in Alicante decided to go ahead. Franco then issued even more curious instructions. In the event of the operation being a success, total secrecy was to be maintained about José Antonio being liberated. He was to be kept apart from von Knobloch, who was the main link with the Falangist leadership. He was to be interrogated by someone sent by Franco. He was not to be landed in the Nationalist zone without the permission of Franco. He informed the Germans that there existed doubts about the mental health of Primo de Rivera. The operation was aborted. 86

A further possibility for Primo de Rivera’s release arose from a suggestion by Ramón Cazañas, Falangist Jefe (chief) in Morocco. He proposed that an exchange be arranged for General Miaja’s wife and daughters who were imprisoned in Melilla. Franco apparently refused safe-conducts for the negotiators although he later agreed to the family of General Miaja being exchanged for the family of the Carlist, Joaquín Bau. The Caudillo also refused permission for another Falangist, Maximiano García Venero, to drum up an international campaign to save José Antonio’s life. 87 Similarly, Franco sabotaged the efforts of José Finat, Conde de Mayalde, a friend of José Antonio. Mayalde was married to a granddaughter of the Conde de Romanones and he persuaded the venerable politician to use his excellent contacts in the French government to get Blum to intercede with Madrid on behalf of Primo de Rivera. Franco delayed permission for Romanones to go to France until after the death sentence was announced. 88

José Antonio Primo de Rivera was shot in Alicante prison on 20 November 1936. Franco made full use of the propaganda opportunities thereby provided, happy to exploit the eternal absence of the hero while privately rejoicing that he now could not be inconveniently present. The news of the execution reached Franco’s headquarters shortly after it took place. 89 It was in any case published in the Republican and the French press on 21 November. Until 16 November 1938, Franco chose publicly to refuse to believe that José Antonio was dead. The Falangist leader was more use ‘alive’ while Franco made his political arrangements. An announcement of his death would have opened a process whereby the Falange leadership could have been settled at a time when Franco’s own position was only just in the process of being consolidated. The provisional leader of the Falange, the violent but unsophisticated Manuel Hedilla, made the tactical error of acquiescing in Franco’s manoeuvre. The first news of the execution coincided with the Third Consejo Nacional of the Falange Española y de las JONS in Salamanca on 21 November but Hedilla failed to make an announcement, out of a vain hope, built on a hundred rumours, that by some subterfuge or other, his leader had survived. Thereafter, Franco would have to deal only with a decapitated Falange. 90