A preliminary issue: Italy, Spain and the war for the New European Order

On the eve of ‘Operation Barbarossa’ in 1941, all territories of continental Europe were gathered under the flag of the swastika, with the exception of Britain and the countries that had declared their neutrality. In some cases, they were ‘satellites’; in other cases, they were territories directly under German civilian or military administration; there were also numerous annexations and several German protectorates were instituted. Given the situation, it is not surprising that many began to believe in the imminent realisation of a radically new continental configuration. Among them were the Partito Nazionale Fascista and the Falange leaders, who were determined to play more than a secondary role in the postwar order established by National Socialism. A new Europe was expected to arise from the ashes of the ‘old Europe’ thanks to the purifying violence of the Second World War – a war that neither Rome nor Madrid were able to contemplate initially.

Italy was experiencing several difficulties. The autarchic policy was proving a failure. The ‘reappearance of the Empire on the fateful hills of Rome’ entailed a significant pauperisation of national resources without bringing significant benefits; rather, it left the country completely isolated at the international level.Footnote ⁴ The intervention in the Spanish Civil War further aggravated the situation, leaving Italy financially and militarily exhausted. In addition, there was a general lack of preparation by large military units, the defence of the borders against the French was insufficient, and the means were inadequate. The fact that national public opinion was ‘unanimous in detesting the Germans’ and not favourable to Italy's participation in a war in which the country had nothing to gain and everything to lose completed the picture (Ciano Reference Ciano, D'Andrea and Welles1946, 148 and 247).

Mussolini was fully aware of this situation. At the outbreak of the conflict on 1 September 1939, he adopted a position of non-belligerence. The decision to enter the war alongside the German ally was taken nine months later with absolute unscrupulousness. To a certain extent, it was a binding decision to which several factors contributed. Among them was the ‘conception of “honour”’ of the Duce (De Felice Reference De Felice1981, 697), who told Ciano of his frustration in April 1940, saying it was ‘humiliating to sit on my hands while others were writing history.’ Mussolini was convinced that it was ‘too late to ditch Germany’ and that remaining neutral would have downgraded Italy ‘for a century as a great power and for eternity as a fascist regime’. ‘To make a people great,’ he stated, ‘it is necessary to take it into combat’. This was precisely what the head of the blackshirts did. Fulfilling the commitments made to the Reich, Italy had to ‘be alongside Germany’ in that moment (Ciano Reference Ciano, D'Andrea and Welles1946, 145 and 246–251).

Ultimately, it was a political calculation that pushed Mussolini to intervene in the conflict on 10 June 1940, rather than solidarity with his ally. After the French defeat, even though he was aware of the inefficiency of the army and the general lack of preparation in the country, the Duce became convinced that he had no choice but to enter the war. In May 1940, he told General Soddu that they had to make war not when they were ready, but when they had to (Soddu Reference Soddu1948, 59). Addressing military summits, Mussolini emphasised the necessity that forced him to enter the conflict. This choice fell within the logic of the agreement reached with the Reich. Nonetheless, undeniably, the Duce's fascination with the myth of a ‘new civilisation’ contributed to his interventionist decision (De Felice Reference De Felice1981, 309). Beyond differences between Fascism and National Socialism, the two movements had a common ground: they both were in ‘clear antithesis with all the other concepts of contemporary civilisation’ of which bourgeois democracy and Bolshevism were direct expressions.Footnote ⁵ So, motivated also by this conviction, Mussolini ended his hesitation and joined Germany on the battlefield, certain that a new civilisation – of which they must be the bearers – was about to emerge.

The situation was more complex in Spain. After the Civil War, the country had to be completely rebuilt. Bombing had destroyed many cities, the country's social fabric was severely torn apart, the population was in misery, and the economy was in a shambles due to heavy military spending. When the Second World War began, it was inconceivable for the country to take part in the fighting, and the new government led by Francisco Franco could only declare Spain's neutrality. Undoubtedly, it was a benevolent neutrality. The generalísimo, though not officially engaging in war operations, never hid his sympathy for those who had helped him defeat the republican troops of the Frente Popular. The close relationship between Madrid, Rome and Berlin was public knowledge. Even more so when – in light of the Wehrmacht's victories on the western front and Italy's entry in the conflict – Franco decided, on 12 June 1940, to shift to a stance of ‘non-belligerence’ and provide, albeit indirectly, technical and logistical support to the Axis.Footnote ⁶

Falangists favoured a decisive entry into the war and were determined to gain a prominent role for their country on the world stage. They put pressure on the caudillo for Spain to assume its ‘historical responsibilities of an international character’ (Ramiro Ledesma Ramos 2004, 161).Footnote ⁷ According to them, Madrid had to align with the Axis powers, with which the Francoist nation was united through an ‘everlasting friendship’ by virtue of ‘the blood shed in common’ and the ‘community of renovating ideologies’ (Asensio Reference Asensio1940, 1). After all, the collaboration between Franco, Mussolini and Hitler had already proven fruitful in the Spanish Civil War, when troops sent by Rome and Berlin were decisive in allowing the generalísimo to get the better of his republican enemies. In the Falangists'eyes, ‘the first battle of Europe, the first victory of the New Order, was won in Spain.’Footnote ⁸ Thus, once the Civil War was over, it appeared logical and necessary to them to face the second great battle for the salvation of the continent alongside the Führer and the Duce: a battle that was no longer a ‘war between nationalities or antagonistic economies, but between competing political and social ideas.’Footnote ⁹

Certainly, domestic political factors influenced Falangist support for war mobilisation. Alignment with the Axis would have allowed the camisas azules to occupy the national scene as a hegemonic force, reducing the scope for action of other components of the regime with whom they were competing for power (Ruiz Carnicer Reference Ruiz Carnicer1998, 684–685). Nevertheless, they mainly sought to capitalise on foreign policy opportunities for their country, and, in this regard, their expectations perfectly matched Franco's, since the Axis expansionist plans fed his immoderate ambition.

Diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Germany fit in this context. Their management was entrusted to Ramón Serrano Suñer, president of the Falange's Junta Política since August 1939 and Foreign Minister from October 1940. Considered the ‘spokesman of Spanish incorporation in the Axis military enterprise’ (Delgado Gomez-Escalonilla Reference Delgado Gomez-Escalonilla1992, 162), he tried to convince Hitler and Ribbentrop of the advantages to the Axis powers of the involvement of Madrid in the conflict, but his attempts quickly proved unsuccessful. Despite the failure of official negotiations with Germany, Spanish involvement in the war continued to be as ambiguous as significant, as the role of the División Azul in Operation Barbarossa demonstrates. Created in June 1941 by the cuñadísimo and the Falangist hierarchs Dionisio Ridruejo and Manuel Mora-Figueroa with Franco's placet, the División Azul was composed of about 47,000 people, among them enthusiastic Falangists, civilian volunteers, Spanish army commanders and senior government officials who left Spain to fight the ‘Bolshevik enemy’ alongside the Nazis in Soviet territory (Núñez Seixas Reference Núñez Seixas2016, 59–69). Ultimately, this body represented the ‘symbolic means to mitigate the Falangist disappointment for Spain's failure to decisively join the World War’. Through their participation in the División Azul, Falangist leaders wanted to show the world their ‘close affinity’ with the Axis, with the clear intention of ‘maintaining a favourable attitude towards the New Order progressively adopted in almost all the continent’ (Delgado Gomez-Escalonilla Reference Delgado Gomez-Escalonilla1992, 166). As an anonymous article in the journal Escorial stated in August 1941:

The camisas azules continued to believe firmly in the need for an alignment with Rome and Berlin, as well as in the revolutionary project of a completely fascistised Europe – something they wanted so enthusiastically that they were willing to pay for it with their blood.

The arbiters of the new Europe?

Given the context in which blackshirts and blueshirts articulated their ideas on the new continental order, what was the role that fascists and Falangists imagined for their respective countries in postwar Europe? In Italy, the initial reflections of PNF leaders on this topic emerged in the early 1930s, once the regime was internally consolidated. At this stage, as Monica Fioravanzo (Reference Fioravanzo, Bauerkämper and Rossoliński-Liebe2017, 245) has stressed, fascist plans for the Neuordnung Europas were sketchy, to be defined better once the alliance with Germany was signed and, even more, once the Second World War had begun. Nevertheless, from the beginning it was clear that the blackshirts wanted a central role for Italy in the new European framework. They envisaged working side-by-side with Nazi Germany, to which Rome was linked through ‘active and living solidarity’.Footnote ¹¹ It was a ‘very high mission’ that only two ‘spiritually rich peoples’ could realise. According to party ideologues, these were the Italian and German peoples, ‘recreated by the purifying wave of their respective national revolutions’ and ‘strengthened in the awareness of the maturity achieved and in a common destiny of imperial grandeur’ (Masotti Reference Masotti1941, 2).

In the opinion of some fascist theorists, Rome and Berlin would reaffirm the ‘irrepressible destiny of vital ethnic organisms to expand among, to dominate, to influence all minor powers, by eliminating … the pretensions and ambitions of small nationalities’, which had been the cause of abuses of power and disorder in the postwar period (Orano Reference Orano1940, 22). It was necessary to create a ‘system of international coexistence that [would establish] equally for all, more effective guarantees of justice, security and peace.’Footnote ¹² For this purpose, the two nations – bearers of ‘civilisation and progress’ – would be ‘ready to cooperate with all other peoples of goodwill’. The latter, in turn, should show respect for the fascist and Nazi ‘necessities’ and ‘legitimate needs’, a formulation that concealed the imperialist ambitions of Italy and Germany, who wanted to extend their political and economic supremacy across the continent.Footnote ¹³

Specifically, the fascist strategists of the new geopolitical order were confident that the conquest of Ethiopia and the annexation of Albania were only the ‘beginnings’ of the ‘transposition’ and the ‘ideal and territorial dilatation’ of the homeland (Orano Reference Orano1940, 22). They therefore began to sketch out boundaries in the Mediterranean basin and Middle-Europe to separate the future Italian sphere of influence from the German, even if Germany remained vague about this division (Perrone Reference Perrone2016, 7–9). The living space of each power would comprise a ‘small space’, including the territory where the people of the imperial powers lived, and a ‘large space’ composed of the territories subject to the direct dominion of the civilising race (Villari Reference Villari1941, 50–53). Individual states would disappear by being incorporated into the two large powers, which would assume leading roles and tolerate no interference.

In fact, before the outbreak of the war, Italy had begun to harbour suspicions about its ally. Mussolini's initial hopes regarding the existence of an equal relationship between the fascist and Nazi powers soon gave way to doubts and fear regarding German methods of domination. The first alarm bells rang with the annexation of Austria, a move that the Duce had initially opposed, and of which he had not even been informed by his ally until it was accomplished. With the war, the relationship between the two Axis powers became more and more unbalanced in favour of Germany, to the point that, especially after the French capitulation, it became apparent that ‘Nazi expansion was a project of unlimited and exclusive domination in which Italy would have had, at most, a subordinate role’ (Rodogno Reference Rodogno2003, 78). Nonetheless, the blackshirts never ceased to claim their rightful place in the future European order, and so did the blueshirts in Spain who – similar to the Italian fascists – greeted with joy the projects concerning the creation of the New European Order, believing that Spanish participation in military operations would automatically confer on Madrid the role of an arbiter after the war.

According to national syndicalist theorists, Spain would be called, together with Germany and Italy, to ‘forge the future of the continent.’Footnote ¹⁴ The three ‘creative peoples’ would take over Europe and create a sort of ‘tripartite imperium’ based on a ‘superior total order’ that would block ‘the path to decadence’ and restore ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ to the world.Footnote ¹⁵ As the historian José Antonio Maravall wrote in 1940:

Falangists had already made this explicit in their party programme in 1934, which stated: ‘We demand for Spain a pre-eminent place in Europe.’Footnote ¹⁷ Ultimately, Europe was the ‘international field of the new Spanish action’ and the Falange an ‘army of a new order’ that Spain had to ‘communicate to Europe and to the world’. Following this path, ‘the most European of all peoples’ would have finally regained the guiding function that it deserved ‘because of its history and importance.’Footnote ¹⁸ As Antonio Tovar, one of the main people responsible for the propaganda of the regime, declared in September 1939:

The reference to the founder of the Spanish Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, is significant because it was he who first proclaimed the role that Spain would assume on the world stage. ‘The democratic idea offered by the League of Nations is already decaying internationally,’ he declared in 1934, adding that the world was tending ‘again to be directed by three or four racial entities. Spain [could be] one of these three or four’ (José Antonio Primo de Rivera 1976, 306). Bearing this in mind, party leaders claimed for their country a prominent place in the future continental ‘fascist prominence’; a place that they felt they fully deserved, thanks to their ‘fundamental contribution to a victory that began to take shape in Europe on the same day that Spain's victory became a reality in Spanish fields.’Footnote ¹⁹

If both fascists and Falangists coincided in demanding a central role for their states in the New Order, at the same time they would have contributed to its realisation in their own particular way. PNF ideologues stressed Italian spiritual and cultural superiority as an essential element for the creation of the New Order. They rejected an exclusive focus on force, clearly alluding to the German politics of domination (Fioravanzo Reference Fioravanzo, Bauerkämper and Rossoliński-Liebe2017, 252). They wanted to realise the ‘reconstruction of humanity’ through the diffusion of the ‘universal principles of the fascist doctrine’ and the spread of the fascist ‘spiritual entity.’Footnote ²⁰ Thus, they proclaimed fascism as ‘the lowest common denominator of the European West’ and saw ‘European Fascism’ as the ‘only remedy to a chaos that threaten[ed] the foundations of Western civilisation’ (Palazzi Reference Palazzi1934, 79–80). After all, according to party theorists, Italian Fascism had played a leading role in developing an alternative political system compared to those prevailing in contemporary civilisation, since, as Berto Ricci (Reference Ricci1934, 578) wrote, it was an ‘Italian revolution that became universal.’ The same conviction is found in the reflections of Giuseppe Bottai (Reference Bottai1941, 15), who wrote:

The theme of the relationship between the fascist nation and Europe was clearly brought into focus by Mussolini himself, who was convinced that ‘every nation [would have] “its” fascism’ soon, ‘a fascism adapted to the peculiar situation of that particular people’. For him there would never be

In summary, as Bottai (Reference Bottai1941, 15) emphasised, ‘the universality of fascism had set itself beyond [the Italian] boundary’. The history of Italian Fascism had become ‘an essential moment in European history’ and in the history of all humanity (Maraviglia Reference Maraviglia1930, 216–217). As a consequence, the Europe of tomorrow would inevitably be fascist ‘in the logical development of events’, since the old continent would survive the crisis it experienced only by taking inspiration from ‘littorian Italy’, which would confer ‘a new social sense, a tone of life, [and] the moral secret of discipline and harmony.’Footnote ²² The regions subject to the control of Rome – organised hierarchically taking into account the degree of social evolution and the productive capacity of each people – would be based on the values of fascist Italy, identified by Bottai (Reference Bottai1941, 9) as follows:

These principles were already consolidated in the peninsula. Ultimately, the PNF was determined to impart them to the entities within the fascist imperial community.

For their part, Falangists envisaged participating in the new continental order by spreading Spanish imperial values and the Catholic tradition, which were considered the constitutive elements of hispanidad (Janué i Miret 2018, 99–101). More specifically, the blueshirts intended to contribute to the New European Order in two ways. First, they wanted to mediate between Europe and the former Hispanic colonies, with the clear intent of supporting the Axis cause in those territories and preventing the Latin American countries from falling under US influence. Opposing the motto ‘hispano para los hispanos’ (Spanish for the Spanish) to ‘Monroeism’, Falangists incited Latin peoples to rebel against ‘Yankee domination’ and showed them the way to salvation via a rapprochement with Spain and, consequently, with the Axis.Footnote ²³ According to party theorists, Spain would be ‘the faithful representation’ of Nazi-Fascist Europe – ‘leader of the world’ – in South America.Footnote ²⁴ They declared that Madrid would act as a bridge between the two continents by virtue of the visceral bond they believed still existed between Spain and its ancient dominions.

In this regard, the head of the Foreign Service of the Falange, Ximénez de Sandoval (Reference Ximénez de Sandoval1937, 193), wrote: ‘Once our race was poured into twenty American peoples, it would be absurd to ignore the force of blood.’ His words seemed to echo what the leader of the Jons, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos (Reference Ledesma Ramos1931, 1), stated: ‘Our role in America is not – nor is it equivalent to – that of a friendly people, since we will always be obliged to be something more. We are them, and they will always be us.’ These declarations were the prelude to national syndicalist claims to overseas territories, put forth in the Fe de las Jons programme of 1934. ‘Regarding the countries of Latin America’, the third point asserted, ‘we will tend to the unification of culture, economic interests and power.’ Spain had always been the ‘spiritual axis of the Hispanic world’, and, in the light of this special and preferential tie, Falangist Spain would pave the way for the Nazi-Fascist revolution across the Atlantic Ocean.Footnote ²⁵

In the New European Order, Spain's role was not confined to that of a mediator between Europe and the Latin world. The blueshirts were convinced that the country would act as a link between Nazism and Catholicism for the continent's spiritual reconstruction. Ruiz Carnicer (Reference Ruiz Carnicer1998, 684) emphasised that some Falangist representatives – drawing on the ideas of the prophet of Spanish Fascism, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, who reconciled fascist ideology with the militant exaltation of Catholicism – saw in Christianity ‘the only way to recover the unity of the continent [which was] compatible with a German victory.’ According to them, ‘without Catholicism there [was] no Europe’ and it was the destiny of Spain to promote its diffusion.Footnote ²⁶ After all, in Spain Catholicism had played a fundamental role in the birth and consolidation of the national state as well as of its empire. Therefore, the Falangists – who proclaimed themselves successors of that nation and empire – could do nothing other than incorporate, at least in part, a religious element in their ideological universe. Thus, in the early 1930s, even loyal supporters of the secular and totalitarian state such as the founders of the Jons, Ledesma Ramos and Redondo Ortega, acknowledged that the greatness of the country was historically linked to its Catholic essence. In 1933, it was Giménez Caballero who declared that Fascism represented the ‘new Catholicity in the world.’Footnote ²⁷

After unification with traditionalists in April 1937 and the rise of anti-clerical republican fury – which gave the sense of a ‘crusade’ to the Civil War – Falangist references to Catholicism increased exponentially. From then on, the party attempted even more, not without difficulty, to integrate religion into its political thought while committing itself to retaining its revolutionary character (Saz Reference Saz Campos2003, 203 and 220). José Pemartín – who became head of the Secondary Education National Service in 1938 – argued that Catholicism was the ‘fundamental national ideology’ of the Falange (Reference Pemartín1937, 81). Similarly, party historian and philosopher, Pedro Laín Entralgo, identified it as the ‘spiritual centre that gives meaning and transcendent virtue’ to the revolutionary Falangist action.Footnote ²⁸ The Catholic element in the doctrine of the camisas azules was a peculiarity of the Spanish fascist identity; a badge of honour for some Falangist ideologues that restated their originality compared to other contemporary fascist movements.Footnote ²⁹ By virtue of this originality, the blueshirts were convinced that their contribution was essential to the implementation of the new continental order, and that they would therefore become ‘the founders of a European era’, together with Italy and Germany.Footnote ³⁰

The cultural and ideological roots of fascist and Falangist Europeanism

The preceding analysis calls for a reflection on the revolutionary scope of the plans of the blackshirts and the blueshirts for the New European Order. The total and all-encompassing nature of these projects concerned not only the geopolitical and socio-economic spheres but also the cultural sphere.

It is precisely in the culture and in the ideology of Fascism and Falangism that the foundations for the two movements’ Europeanism were laid. The comparative analysis has highlighted that two shared understandings created the basis for the plans of the camicie nere and the camisas azules for the Neuordnung Europas. The first was the absolute aversion towards Bolshevism, socialism and liberal democracy. By the end of the 1930s, both fascists and Falangists were convinced that Europe had been gravely weakened by the ‘anti-systemic’ proletarian revolution and Russian imperialism, on the one hand, and by the ‘agnostic liberalism’, ‘destructive classism’ and ‘immoral capitalism’ of the English and French matrix, on the other.Footnote ³¹ These ideologies, considered the cause of the moral decay of society, were synonymous with division and represented threats to the blackshirts and the blueshirts. The fascist and Falangist revolutions had already annihilated them in their respective countries. Therefore, it is not surprising that, to party ideologues, the battle for the New European Order appeared to be the continuation of the struggles the PNF and the Falange had faced within their national borders. Bolshevism, socialism and liberal democracy had been successfully fought and eliminated internally: now they had to be defeated internationally.

The second common element at the roots of fascist and Falangist Europeanism was the ultra-nationalist foundation of the two movements and its natural evolution in an imperialist sense. The exaltation of the nation was a constant in the ideological universe of the generic fascist phenomenon (Griffin Reference Griffin1991, 32–39; Payne Reference Payne1996, 6–14; Mosse Reference Mosse1999, 11; Reichardt Reference Reichardt2002, 535–536; Eatwell Reference Eatwell2003, 14), of which the PNF and the Falange were national manifestations. So was the empire, considered the next evolutionary stage of the nation. For Fascism and Falangism, the nation was the ‘maximum social reality’ – to which everything else was subordinate – and the empire was its perfection, that is, the extraterritorial expression of its power, its enhancement and affirmation in the world.Footnote ³² Beyond the delusions of grandeur of some party figures, the discourse of the PNF and of the Falange on the empire was the physiological development of a totalitarian and authentically revolutionary political doctrine that – while trying to achieve the greatness of the nation – inevitably ended up seeking prestige even beyond the narrow territorial boundaries of the state. This was the reason for the expansionist aspirations that the blackshirts and the blueshirts tried to legitimise by proclaiming themselves the heirs of the most pure Italian and Spanish imperial tradition, not for ‘reactionary nostalgia’ or ‘antiquarian veneration’ but ‘according to political action to create the future’ (Gentile Reference Gentile2007, 48).

PNF theorists retrieved the myth of the Caesarean Roman empire and the colonialist tradition of the Risorgimento, declaring that the fascist nation – having ‘virtually the empire in itself’ – would bring ‘discipline wherever [there was] disorder and an evident or veiled rebellion’Footnote ³³ (Pavese Reference Pavese1938, 604–605). Falangist ideologues boasted a direct line of descent from the Catholic kings. With the renewed emblem of the yoke and arrows of Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon, they promised to restore national prestige and return to the people ‘the tension and dignity of empire’ it deserved (Tovar Reference Tovar1941, 10, 165–166). In so doing, they would realise that unidad de destino en lo universal (unity of destiny in the universal) so dear to the party founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who traced in the nation's history a harmony of purpose and a high endeavour that would again unite all Spaniards in the future as it had done in the past. It is evident that both the Italian and the Spanish fascists joyfully embraced the cause of the New European Order, since it looked like an exceptional opportunity for them to satisfy their imperialist goals.

These considerations make it possible to place PNF and Falange Europeanism in a transnational perspective. Fascism and Falangism shared the same ‘cultural revisionism’ (Ben Martin Reference Martin2016, 4) that constituted the bedrock upon which Nazi Germany and fascist Italy created their partnership. The anti-communist, anti-liberal and anti-democratic precondition was a common ideological and cultural feature of the three fascisms. They not only wanted to build a new political and economic order but also a cultural order, with the purpose of replacing what they considered the subversive and divisive ideas of European civilisation. They wished to give a fascist outlook to the culture of the continent.

Imperialism constituted another lowest common denominator between the blackshirts and the blueshirts. They shared the understanding that recreating the Italian and the Spanish empires was the only way to save their nations from the struggles that modernity had brought on them. Once again, this was not a cultural and ideological prerogative of Fascism and Falangism. On the contrary, it perfectly fits the concept of the ‘imperial nexus’ that – according to Daniel Hedinger (Reference Hedinger2017, 185) – bound Rome, Berlin and Tokyo in a ‘trans-imperial cooperation’ and gave ideological cohesion and strength to their alliance. Comparative analysis has highlighted the fact that PNF and Falange Europeanism can be understood, beyond their respective peculiarities, within broader transnational dynamics, testifying to the strong cross-national cultural and ideological connections within the Nazi-Fascist front.