Spain - Franco's Army
After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, a majority of the officers remained to fight in the Republican forces, as much from a sense of obligation to the legitimate government as on ideological grounds. Their units usually stayed intact and followed them. Many remained with the forces controlling the areas in which they found themselves. More conservative officers tended to join the Nationalist forces of the rebellion. The Republican forces controlled the larger share of the land, including the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, at the beginning of the war. Their troops often fought superbly; however, their leaders were less effective than those of the Nationalist army, which also had the better disciplined of the army's fighting units (those that were based in Morocco) and better organized international support, primarily from Germany and Italy. Moreover, in Franco they had by far the most gifted combat leader.
At the outset of the war, the Nationalists controlled most of the highlands of the north, much of the western part of the country, and a part of Andalusia (Spanish, Andalucia) in the south. The Republicans controlled the northern coast and most of the country east of Madrid, including all of Catalonia (Spanish, Cataluna; Catalan, Catalunya). It became apparent that the war was to be a long struggle, when Franco's forces from Andalusia advanced to the Madrid area in the early months of the war but failed to take the city.
In subsequent campaigns, the Nationalist forces expanded the areas they held to include most of the northern, the southern, and the western portions of the country. During the last year, they drove a wedge between the Republican forces in Madrid and Catalonia, decisively defeated those in Catalonia, and seized Barcelona. Forces in Madrid could no longer be supplied. The city and the Republican cause were surrendered in March 1939.
Franco's victorious troops had by then been molded into a powerful and well-equipped army, organized into sixty-one divisions. Its strength compared favorably with other European armies on the eve of World War II. The country's energies, however, were spent. It soon became apparent that a force of that size was not needed to maintain order and that it could not be supported under the prevailing economic conditions. By 1941 demobilization had brought the army down to twenty-four divisions in peninsular Spain. Its offensive capability was already depleted; with only one motorized division, it was rapidly becoming out of date.
Franco avoided being drawn into World War II, although a volunteer Spanish unit known as the Blue Division served with German forces on the Soviet front between August 1941 and October 1943. Fully outfitted and financed by Germany, it fought almost entirely in the Leningrad sector. The 40,000 volunteers who served in the Blue Division swore allegiance to the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, rather than to Franco or to Spain.
By 1947 the strength of the Spanish Army was estimated at 422,000 men under arms, plus a semi»military Civil Guard of 60,000 and an Armed Police of 25,000. This force was more than suf?cient to maintain the internal security of the country and to guard the frontier. The Army was hindered by a lack of modern equipment; training was seriously curtailed by the acute shortage of gasoline. The Spanish munitions industry produces sufficient small arms for the present size of the Army, but production of artillery and heavy weapons was completely inadequate. Although it was increasingly threatened by poor economic conditions, the Franco government was supported by the Police, the Army, and the Church.
Government expenditures customarily exceeded revenue, the de?cit for 1947 amounting to 1 billion pesetas. About 47% of the budget was consumed by the armed forces and security police. Any effort, therefore, by General Franco to check national inflation by balancing the budget would involve the reduction of the military establishment, upon the maintenance of which his own tenure so much depended. Largely upon the basis of this Army support, plus the generally felt fear of political change and renewed civil war, Franco remained in power.
Although the economy had recovered to pre-Civil War levels by 1951, the army was ill-trained and poorly equipped, lacking modern armaments and transport. Substantial United States assistance after the signing of the Pact of Madrid in 1953 helped to reverse the deterioration and contributed to a slow improvement in quality. World War II-vintage tanks and artillery were introduced into the army, new and refurbished ships were supplied to the navy, and the air force was equipped with modern jet aircraft.
By the late 1950s, the army, while distressed at the loss of Morocco and the threats to Spanish presidios and colonial territory in North Africa, realistically wanted to keep Spain’s commitments within its power limitations and to avoid foreign commitment of more than a token force of Spanish troops.
By 1960 the US had plans to equip two Spanish infantry divisions and one or two mountain divisions and to effect some modernization of the Spanish army. At that time US Defense Secretary Gates thought it would be necessary to continue military program in Spain indefinitely. The Spanish army was a well-disciplined force but had no capability for effective military operations outside Spain.
The Spanish Armed Forces remained firmly under General Franco’s control and the regime continued to rely on their support and influence, principally that of the Army, to assure the maintenance of political stability. Basically, these forces have a capability only for maintaining internal security, for conducting a limited delaying action against a modern well-equipped force and for defending Spanish possessions in North Africa against attacks by forces from the neighboring states. All three of Spain’s Armed Services have shown marked improvement as a result of U.S. aid, but were still far from having a satisfactory capability for defense. The predominance of obsolete equipment, the limited prospects of obtaining large numbers of modern weapons, the low level of education and lack of technical experience of Spanish manpower, and the extremely limited capability of Spain’s economy to support a modern military force, forecast a continued reliance by Spain on outside assistance to maintain the level of effectiveness which had been achieved since 1953.
An important reorganization of the army in 1965 grouped it into two distinct categories: an intervention force organized to protect against external threats, and a territorial defense army divided into nine regional garrisons. Both forces were deployed in such a way that they were available to protect against internal disorder rather than to defend the country's borders. The strongest units of the intervention force were concentrated around Madrid, in the center of the country; others were assigned to the nine military regions under captains general into which the country was divided, in such a manner as to maximize security against regional dissidents.
Until the Spanish Civil War, the range of acceptable political beliefs among army officers remained quite broad. One result of the conflict was that the most conservative officers tended to join the Nationalist forces. More than 10,000 Nationalist officers who had survived the war, or who had been commissioned during its course, decided to stay on as regulars. The officer corps was completely purged of those who had fought on the losing side. The army leadership during the next three decades thus was drawn from the group that had been the most conservative and the most closely identified with Franco's political ideology.
High-ranking soldiers were appointed by Franco to important state bodies and served in the Cortes. (Under the 1978 Constitution, officers are required to resign their commissions to run for parliamentary office.) Over one-third of the ministers in post-1939 cabinets had backgrounds as career officers. The ministers of the army, the navy, and the air force were invariably professional military, as was the minister of interior, who was responsible for internal security. Many officers also served in civilian ministries and in other agencies, in companies owned by the government, and on the boards of directors of leading private companies. Nevertheless, as modernization of the economy proceeded, the main functions of government fell increasingly under the control of civilian technocrats. The influence of the military in the final stages of the Franco regime was limited primarily to the prime minister and to the armed forces ministerial portfolios. In spite of its prominent representation in the ministries and in the industries connected with defense, the military establishment had little success in persuading Franco to earmark for it the resources needed to overcome the obsolescence of the armed forces.
The more senior officers remained extremely conservative, violently opposed to the left, and suspicious of any broadening of political expression. Certain military reforms were advanced by Diego Alegria, the army commander who took office in 1970. He aimed at more selective enlistments, at rationalization of troop deployments, and at promotion by merit rather than by seniority. Alegria's program was undermined, however, by right-wing commanders, who secured his removal in 1974.
In 1972 a secret society of younger army officers, the Democratic Military Union (Union Militar Democratica--UMD) grew quickly, numbering 300 in 1975 when many of its members were arrested and court-martialed. Most of the reforms they proposed--the unification of the three service ministries, a restriction in the scope of the military justice system, reductions in the length of obligatory military service, curbs on the military intelligence system, and a less prominent role for the captains general of the nine military regions--were adopted after Franco's death.
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