Chapter 5: Franco and the Military
Early career: 1920s
"The decisive victory of the left in the parliamentary elections of 1936, followed by the decline in public order and the incipient collapse of parlia- mentary and constitutional government, provoked widespread apprehen- sion and fear among the middle and upper classes and in the conservative north. Some in the extreme right began to plot rebellion within no more than a fortnight of the political change, yet most conservative sectors seemed paralyzed, and months of conflict and disorder passed before a coherent revolt began to take shape. Only during its final phase did the leader who eventually emerged from the process as its dominant figure commit himself to it completely."
"The drastic reduction in admissions to the naval officers corps during the first part of the century made it impossible for Paco and Ramón to follow in the path of their predecessors. Paco gained entrance instead to the Infantry Academy at Toledo and became a cadet at the age of fourteen, the youngest and also one of the smallest of the new officer candidates. At Toledo Franco would grow to his adult height of slightly more than five feet four inches and prove himself as a determined, hard-working cadet, though his performance was not at all distinguished (he graduated 251st in a class of 312).?"
"Franco was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1910 at the age of seventeen. His original request for assignment to combat service in the Spanish zone of Morocco was denied, presumably because of his age and lack of a particularly distinguished record, but eighteen months later he was sent there; it was the only path to rapid promotion within the Spanish Army. Francos first tour of duty in Morocco lasted more than four years, from 1912 to 1916. He displayed courage, discipline, and determination in his first skirmishes with hostile native kabyles and went through a number of encounters without a scratch. The style of the Spanish africanistas (officers in Morocco) was often a rather careless one that relied on guts and toughness much more than on planning and technique. Franco's calm self-control, practical and impersonal attitude, courageous example, and insistence on order and discipline enabled him to become an effective platoon and then company commander despite his youth. He was more resourceful as a combat leader than his record might have indicated, and he became one of the minority of officers who tried to deal seriously with maps, fortifications, and the technical preparation of armed columns. In- stead of carousing with cards, wine, and whores, as many of his comrades did, Franco devoted himself to work.* He was finally seriously wounded in the abdomen on June 29, 1916, while leading troops in action near Ceuta.
It was already becoming well known that Franco’s courage was equaled only by his ambition. Officers in the Spanish Army who suffered major wounds in combat were routinely granted promotion; when this was at first denied Franco because of his youth, he did not rest until his petition was carried all the way to the king. He was finally promoted to the rank of major before his twenty-fourth birthday, a breathtaking rise in the bloated, seniority-dominated Spanish officer corps of the period, making him its youngest jefe (senior officer)...Franco was twice recommended for promotion during the intense fighting of 1921-22, but this was impossible until after his thirtieth birthday. In 1923 he was made commander of the Legion""
"As a child he had lived through the disaster of 1898 at Spains leading naval base, and as a mature officer had witnessed another national humiliation in Morocco in 1921. Hence Franco showed a special concern for patriotic spirit and pride and for devotion to national honor."
"Francos personal reputation was further enhanced among his troops by the legend that he had twice postponed his marriage to serve combat duty; combat was something that most Spanish officers of the period avoided at all costs."
"Franco played a major role in the decisive Moroccan campaigns of 1924-25 that broke the back of the native insurgency. He led the first assault wave in the landing on the northern coast of the stronghold of the Riffi leader Abdul Karim that was possibly the largest successful amphibious operation under fire in military history to that date. The legend of Francos baraka (good luck) became more strongly established than ever; legionnaires and other veterans claimed they were never defeated when Franco was in command. At barely thirty-three years of age he was promoted to brigadier, reportedly the youngest general on active duty in any European army"
"For the next two years Franco was assigned command of the first brigade of the garrison in Madrid, giving him an opportunity to gain some knowledge of the capital's politics and culture, meet a new branch of elite society, read more widely, and improve his professional contacts and education."
"Franco at that time was not experienced in large-scale military com- mand and organization nor did he have advanced technical training. He had a great deal of small and medium-unit combat experience, of course, and organized a new officer training school that stressed military fundamentals, logistics, and basic organization, with a strong emphasis on professional and patriotic mystique."
"By the end of the 1920s Franco the military hero had also become part of the political establishment. "
Leading to coup: 1930s
"The process of concession and liberalization had gotten entirely out of control, and it may well have been from this experience that Franco learned, as some of his biographers suggest, that authority once assumed should never be set aside or reduced, lest its entire structure erode. He himself instinctively sprang to the defense of the monarchy; at the time of the first minuscule Republican military revolt at Jaca in December 1930, Franco immediately mobilized his cadets and sent them out to bar the road south to the rebels.
Within three months the new Republican regime closed the Academia General Militar as militarist and elitist and tending to form the wrong esprit de corps. In a notable farewell speech to his cadets, the outgoing director made clear his loyalty to the monarchy while urging officers to strict discipline under the new regime."
"The Spanish Army was a major target of Republican reformism. Manuel Azana, the new minister of war, was determined to shake up Army organization and above all to create a new set of institutional and political relationships, to put the Army in its proper place. On one occasion, with his usual rhetorical excess, he called it trituración (pulverizing). A main concern was the hypertrophy of the officer corps, whom a very generous policy of voluntary retirement at virtually full pay reduced by 37 percent in little more than a year, from about 22,000 to less than 12,400.'* Promotions carried out by the dictatorship were revised but not drastically revoked, and Franco kept his brigadiership, though not the same place on the seniority list. An attempt was made at democratization and a special new structure created for NCOs, but the basic framework of the officer corps did not change. There was no genuine structural reorganization but rather a new combination of basic units into a broader system of “organic divisions.” For 1932 basic military expenses were reduced by more than 15 percent, though that was more than balanced by the costs of the new retirement system. The supply of military equipment, always poor, deteriorated further.
The Army had not moved a finger to preserve the monarchy and in general was not hostile to the Republic at its inception. Within less than a year, however, that attitude began to change as a result of the sectarian character of Republican administration, growing political and social dis- order, and the adversary attitude gratuitously adopted toward the military. The reforms probably had little effect on the military capacity of the armed forces, and in fact the voluntary retirement system may have worked against the Republic’s political interests, for there is impressionistic evidence that the more liberal officers tended disproportionately to resign their commissions.”
A handful of officers began to plot against the new regime as early as the autumn of 1931. Franco, who avoided direct association with politics and acted as if he paid no attention to such affairs, was definitely not one of them. Though a monarchist at heart, he was respectful of the established order, and during these years not unwilling to achieve a modus vivendi with a responsible Republican liberalism. "
"Franco steadfastly refused involvement in such machinations, despite his hostility to the new regime, for he fully grasped their superficiality and futility. He was in turn rewarded by being named military commander of the Balearic Islands district"
"The electoral victory of the center-right near the end of 1933 drastically altered the political situation and was personally quite advantageous to Franco. With his brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Súñer a CEDA deputy and a key leader in its youth movement (JAP)"
"the new war minister, promoted him to major general (general of division, in the Spanish nomenclature) in March 1934."
From the end of 1933 Franco was able to spend more and more time on leave in Madrid, where he had retained the home originally occupied in 1926. It was there that his mother died rather suddenly of a lung infection in February 1934 at not quite seventy years of age. As the months passed, Francos contacts with center-right politicians increased; for the first time in his career, he was on the verge of becoming an overtly political general, identified with national conservative policies.”"
"The revolt broke out on the morning of October 5, and within less than twenty-four hours the government had installed Franco in the Ministry of War as special technical advisor in charge of coordinating its suppression."
"Franco had thus been catapulted by events and political connections into the role of key figure of the Spanish Army. Under the center-right administration, he had ironically become the “number-one general of the Republic,” "
"In May 1935 the power of the CEDA increased as Gil Robles moved into the government as minister of war. For the cedista leader, this was the most important cabinet post except prime minister, for it provided opportunity to strengthen the armed forces and guarantee their bulwark against the revolutionary left. "
"Gil Robles was convinced that the military were no danger to solid conservative interests but that they in turn required proper leadership to protect Spanish institutions from subversion. Within a matter of days he named Franco chief of the Army's General Staff to supervise the strengthening and reorganization of Spains forces. "
"Under Gil Robles and Franco a series of new appointments placed the Army once more under the direction of conservative professionals earlier relieved of command or shunted aside. Somewhat more was spent on combat equipment and preparation for direct action. General Emilio Mola, former commander- in-chief in Morocco and the Monarchys last director general of security (in charge of police and constabulary), expelled from the officer corps by the Republic, had been restored to rank and was now placed in charge of preparing a new plan for combat mobilization. By July a new three-year Spanish rearmament program had been approved by the government. Moreover, Franco began to keep records on political attitudes among off- cers and on the percentage of rank-and-file recruits affiliated with leftist organizations (around 25 percent, as it turned out)."
"Approximately a year earlier Franco, as special advisor, had rejected proposals for a coup after several leading leftists had been amnestied. In the more dramatic circumstances of December 11, 1935, he restated his position, saying that the Army was too divided to be employed in a political coup, an apprecia- tion which was entirely correct. The caretaker cabinet that governed Spain for the next two months reassigned many of the top commanders recently appointed but left the scrupulous Franco in his post as chief of staff."
"Though one general tried to rouse the Madrid garrison to di- rect revolt, Franco refused once more to act except on authorization from his constitutional superiors. His only initiative was to request them to de-clare a temporary state of martial law to maintain public order until the electoral process had been fully completed and certified,” which they re- fused to do. A new Left Republican government under Azana took over within two more days."
"Franco was neither an extremist nor a catastrophist. Agreeing to some extent with José Antonio, he pointed out that technically only the most moderate sector of the Popular Front was represented in the government, that the left was divided, and that the worst might be avoided. Thirty years later he reminisced: “I always said to my companions, ‘While there remains any hope that the Republican regime can still prevent anarchy or will not surrender itself to Moscow, we must support the Republic, which was accepted by the king first, by the monarchist government afterward, and then by the Army.”
The military policy of the new administration was to cut back the re- armament program and switch many of the top commands, removing the more conservative officers and placing reliable Republicans or liberals in most of the top posts. Franco was demoted to military commander of the Canary Islands, with headquarters in Tenerife."
"A secret, primarily rightist association, the Unión Militar Española, had existed among the officer corps of the Army since the winter of 1933-34. It was neither uniform nor tightly organized but consisted of a decentralized network of cells and groups that often had little mutual as- sociation. For some, the UME was simply a patriotic officers’ association to protect the integrity of the military and defend the Fatherland, while for others it was a rightist political organization designed to combat and defeat the left in any way possible. The Junta Central of the UME in Ma- drid endeavored to supervise the association and by 1935 was looking into the possibility of an eventual military revolt, but with little success. The Popular Fronts victory stimulated UME affiliation, and a circular dis- tributed toward the end of March claimed that the UME had enrolled 3,436 officers on active duty, 2,131 NCO’s and troops, and 1,843 officers either in the Reserve or retired.” If these figures were correct—and they may not be far off—they indicated that more than a third of the officers on active duty were associated with the UME. Yet the UME remained amorphous, without tight organization or general agreement, and many of its members seem to have considered it more a professional than a political organization.”
The very small leftist sector of the armed forces had organized its own Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA) to counter the UME"
"he Falange had begun to conspire seriously against the Republican system during the preceding year, though its only plan for armed insurrection (in the late spring of 1935) had to be abandoned as hopeless. Like Franco, José Antonio Primo de Rivera responded to the leftist victory with caution. Though his movement preached catastrophism, he was not entirely convinced that all was lost politically, and he was more determined than ever that his followers not fall into the clutches of the extreme right, who had always sought to use them as shock troops for political violence. The national Falangist leadership in Madrid was, however, arrested by the government in mid-March on the grounds of inciting to sedition and violence, and most of its top members never regained freedom. Though the charges brought against them were at least in part substantiated, leaders of all the revolutionary left groups could have been similarly prosecuted with equal justification. This was but one aspect of the partisanship of Popular Front rule, and left the Falangists with little choice but to join forces with the right in revolt. That was made the easier because party membership began to grow very rapidly after the leftist victory, as disillusioned Catholic youth abandoned the CEDA in droves to join the militant fascists.
By April 1936 conspiracy against the government abounded on the right. UME groups were plotting all over Spain with little in the way of coordination, the right-wing Junta of Generals sat in Madrid trying ineffectually to coordinate whatever efforts it could, leaders of Renovación Espanola were inciting the military to action, the Carlists had formed their own Supreme Carlist Military Junta across the border in St. Jean de Luz, and the Falangists were also beginning separately to prepare for ac- tion."