Franco's Blue Division Celebrates
MOWRER, RICHARD SCOTT
Franco's Blue Division Celebrates By Richard Scott Mowrer Madrid Thirteen years have passed since Hitler's Third Reich was swept away, but in this corner of Europe remnants of the Axis days...
...With casualties mounting, there were many replacements...
...In the months prior to the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, American and British pressure on Spain to withdraw the Blue Division from the war increased steadily and was finally successful...
...It was made up of volunteers, mainly Falangists, and left Spain in July 1941...
...One has the impression Spain couldn't care less...
...Referring to World War II, Arriba said: "In that blazing inferno we sought to destroy the antiquated ideas of a definitely outmoded bourgeois epoch...
...Memorial services were held, there was a veterans' banquet in Madrid and a flow of messages of congratulations from persons of prominence, such as the Ministers of Justice, Marine, Air, Labor and Agriculture...
...The notion that maybe there was something reprehensible in a comrades-in-arms relationship with the Nazis is dismissed with the argument that in the war the democrats allied themselves with the Communists...
...The Blue Division was formed within days of Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union...
...Maybe they will understand us and maybe they won't—not that we care very much," commented the Falange's Arriba recently...
...Later it participated in the siege of Leningrad...
...The Blue Division veterans no longer wear the German field-gray uniform, of course, but Spain is the only place in the world where the Iron Cross with swastika is still officially worn...
...and Ramon Serrano Suner, General Franco's brother-in-law who was Foreign Minister until the tide of war turned in favor of the Allies...
...This year, the 17th anniversary of the formation of the Blue Division was given more than usual publicity...
...Thus, the Blue Division, which fought alongside the Germans on the Russian front in World War II, lives on as a veterans' organization which periodically airs the ideals for which it went to war...
...We have a feeling that if the world of tomorrow wants to be saved it will have to raise aloft the same banner of fatherland and revolution that called all Europe to battle [in the last war...
...On the contrary, there is indignation and bitterness at the "incomprehension" of those who hold it against Spain that the Blue Division fought alongside Hitler's legions...
...On October 12, it took over a front line sector in the Novgorod region...
...the secretary-general of the Falange...
...The 15,000-man division was supplemented by a Blue Squadron of 76 airmen...
...Clearly glorification of the Axis days—as distinct from honoring the memory of the war dead—is not calculated to facilitate Spain's entry into the North Atlantic alliance, some of whose members retain vivid memories of the Nazi occupation...
...Past association with the Germans in World War II is glorified today in terms of fighting Communism...
...Remorse about the Blue Division's role is utterly lacking...
...It survives as the Blue Division's insignia: The black Teutonic cross with the swastika in the center is superimposed on a field of red and gold with the word Espana beneath it...
...Franco's Blue Division Celebrates By Richard Scott Mowrer Madrid Thirteen years have passed since Hitler's Third Reich was swept away, but in this corner of Europe remnants of the Axis days still crop up from time to time—more often than not with official approval...
...According to General Esteban Infantes, who commanded the Blue Division in the later phases of the war, casualties amounted to 14,000, including nearly 5,000 dead...
Vol. 41 • September 1958 • No. 31
