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Exploitation, fascist violence and social cleansing: a study of Franco's concentration camps from a comparative perspective

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13507486.2012.697871

1469-8293

Javier Rodrigo,

Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics

Abstract One of the most noticeable topics within recent Spanish historiography is the analysis of processes of mass violence. Salient among these were the Franco concentration camps, a violent re-educational system made up of more than 180 camps, 104 of which were permanent. The camps operated from 1936 until 1947, under the control of Franco's army, with its corresponding regime of forced labour and exploitation of prisoners of war. Half a million Spaniards and Europeans experienced first hand the Spanish version of the fascist concentration-camp system. This article offers an analysis of the inside history of Franco's concentration camps and then locates them comparatively within a theoretical and empirical Fascist model of internment, exploitation and violence. Keywords: concentration campsSpanish Civil Warfascismviolencecomparative history Notes 1. CitationRodrigo, Los campos de concentración franquistas; CitationRodrigo, Cautivos. 2. No references, however, to a larger-scale or international bibliography, nor to comparative frameworks, nor even the slightest theoretical concern are present in some of the most recent general histories of the Spanish Civil War, such as CitationRanzato, L'Eclissi della democrazia; CitationBennassar, La guerre d'Espagne et ses lendemains; CitationBeevor, The Battle for Spain. Some examples of problematic and comparative theoretical approaches can be seen in CitationRodrigo, 'Retaguardia y cultura de guerra, 1936–39.' 3. On wars, large-scale conflicts and massive death, see CitationSlim, Killing Civilians; CitationBourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century warfare; CitationGelarch, Extremely Violent Societies. Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World. 4. On Europe as the mirror for brutalisation of politics and warfare in Spain, see CitationRodrigo, 'Retaguardia: un espacio de transformación.' On Africa and the colonial experience, see CitationGonzález Calleja, 'La cultura de guerra como propuesta historiográfica: una reflexión general desde el contemporaneísmo español'; CitationBalfour, Deadly Embrace; CitationPreston, El Holocausto español and especially 'Los teóricos del exterminio,' 71—92. Also on the colonial mind-set of some of the Francoist officers, see CitationPreston 'The Answer lies in the Sewers: Captain Aguilera and the Mentality of the Francoist Officer Corps.' 5. On jails, see CitationSabín, Prisión y muerte en la España de postguerra; CitationVinyes, Irredentas. Las presas políticas y sus hijos en las cárceles de Franco; CitationAssociació Catalana d'Expresos Polítics. Notícia de la negra nit. Vides i veus a les presons franquistes (1939–1959); Vinyes, Irredentas. Las presas políticas y sus hijos en las cárceles de Franco; CitationCenarro, 'La institucionalización del universo penitenciario franquista'; CitationHernández, La prisión de Ventas: de la República al franquismo, 1931–1941; CitationGómez Bravo, El exilio interior: Cárcel y represión en la España franquista, 1939–1950. 6. On Francoist terror as genocide, despite the lack of comparative approach and literature from outside Spain in their works, see CitationEspinosa, 'Julio de 1936. Golpe militar y plan de exterminio.' 7. CitationArendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. 8. The historiographic evolution of the topic is described in CitationPreston, The Politics of Revenge. Fascism and the Military in 20th century Spain; CitationJuliá, Víctimas de la guerra Civil; CitationCasanova, Morir, matar, sobrevivir. La violencia en la dictadura de Franco; CitationSevillano, Exterminio. El terror con Franco; CitationGraham, The Spanish Civil War: a Very Short Introduction; CitationRodrigo, Hasta la raíz. Violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura franquist; CitationPrada, La España masacrada. La represión franquista de guerra y posguerra; Preston, El Holocausto español. Odio y exterminio en la Guerra Civil y después. 9. CitationRodrigo, '"Our Fatherland was Full of Weeds". Violence during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Dictatorship.' 10. CitationKramer, Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. 11. CitationChickering, 'La Guerra Civil española en la era de la Guerra Total.' Also CitationRanzato, 'Guerra civil y guerra total en el siglo XX.' 12. CitationPreston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge. 13. On forced labour in Spain, see CitationBadia, Els camps de treball a Catalunya durant la guerra civil (1936–1939). This is possibly the only monograph published to date on the treatment of POWs in Republican territory. This is, therefore, a subject on which there is an insufficient and inadequate bibliography, not enough to venture, for the moment, a comparative analysis of both concentration-camp or forced-labour systems. See also CitationAcosta, et al. , El canal de los presos (1940–1962). Trabajos forzados: de la represión política a la explotación económica; CitationMendiola and Beaumont, Esclavos del franquismo en el Pirineo. La carretera Idal-Vidángoz-Roncal (1939–1941); CitationRodríguez, 'Los espacios de reclusión en Galicia. Prisiones y campos de concentración.' 14. Official sources can be found in military archives (mostly in Ávila), mainly produced by the ICCP and the Francoist Ministry of the Army. The system of forced labour is also described in the military and civil documents of the Ministries of Labour and Government. Additionally, in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs there is much documentation relating to foreign internees in the Spanish camps. All the information here comes from the Ávila military archive, mostly from the Jefatura de Movilización, Instrucción y Recuperación, the Cuartel General del Generalísimo, and the Ministerio del Ejército files, for Civil War and post-war periods, respectively. 15. Paradoxically, very little historical literature has addressed the issue of the construction of the Valley of the Fallen. Among the few existing highlights is the work of the journalist CitationSueiro, El Valle de los Caídos. 16. CitationGallego, 'Fascismo, antifascismo y fascistización. La crisis de 1934 y la definición política del periodo de entreguerras.' 17. On Fascist violence and political culture, see CitationWoodley, Fascism and Political Theory: Critical Perspectives on Fascist Ideology. 18. CitationGraham, 'The Spanish Civil War, 1936–2003: the Return of Republican Memory.' The idea of salvation was very present in Fascist literature in Spain. See CitationRodrigo, 'Santa Guerra Civil. Identidad, relato y (para)historiografía de la Cruzada.' See in the same volume CitationGallego, 'Construyendo el pasado. La identidad del 18 de julio y la reflexión sobre la historia moderna en los años Cuarenta.' On Fascist ideology and identity in Spain, see also CitationSaz, España contra España. Los nacionalismos franquistas. 19. Taken from Ávila general Military Archive, Cuartel General del Generalísimo, Armario 1, Legajo 16, Carpeta 3. On the Catholic Church and the Rebels, see CitationRaguer, La pólvora y el incienso. La Iglesia y la Guerra Civil española (1936–1939). 20. CitationCenarro, 'Memories of Repression and Resistance: Narratives of Children Institutionalized by Auxillio Social in Postwar Spain'; CitationPinto, 'Indoctrinating the Youth of Post-War Spain: a Discourse Analysis of a Fascist Civics Textbook.' 21. Vallejo's hypothesis is in CitationVallejo Nágera, 'Biopsiquismo del fanatismo marxista.' Conclusions, in CitationVallejo Nágera, La locura y la guerra. Psicopatología de la guerra española. See CitationBandrés and Llavona, 'La psicología en los campos de Concentración de Franco'; CitationÁlvarez, 'Eugenesia y fascismo en la España de los años treinta'; CitationHuertas, 'Una nueva Inquisición para un Nuevo Estado: psiquiatría y orden social en la obra de Antonio Vallejo Nágera'; CitationRichards, 'Morality and Biology in the Spanish Civil War: Psychiatrists, Revolution and Women Prisoners in Málaga.' 22. On otherness and its images, see CitationUgarte, La nueva Covadonga insurgente. Orígenes sociales y culturales de la sublevación de 1936 en Navarra y el País Vasco; CitationNúñez Seixas, 'Nations in Arms against the Invader: on Nationalist Discourses during the Spanish civil war'; CitationNúñez Seixas, ¡Fuera el invasor! Nacionalismos y movilización bélica en la Guerra Civil española, 1936–1939. 23. Ávila general Military Archive, Cuartel General del Generalísimo, Armario 1, Legajo 16, Carpeta 3. 24. CitationTraverso, A ferro e fuoco. La guerra civile europea 1914–1945. 25. CitationGriffin, The Nature of Fascism. 26. CitationGentile, Le religioni della politica. Fra democrazie e totalitarismi; CitationSaz, 'Religión política y religión católica en el fascismo español'; CitationStephenson, 'Inclusion: Building the National Community in Propaganda and Practice'; CitationEbner, Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy. 27. On the culture of violence and submission, see CitationRichards, A Time of Silence. Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936–1945; CitationCobo and Ortega, 'Muerte purificadora y regeneración patria. La visión sublimada de la guerra civil y la legitimación de la violencia desde la España nacionalista, 1936–1939.' 28. On the idea of national Fascist community in Spain, see CitationMorente, Dionisio Ridruejo. Del fascismo al antifranquismo, in particular page 226. On the construction of Fascist national communities: CitationFalasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy; CitationFritzsche, Germans into Nazis and CitationFritzsche, Life and Death the Third Reich. 29. Among a long list of memorial literature, see the examples in CitationElstob, Spanish Prisoner; CitationLeiva, El nombre de dios, de España y de Franco. Memorias de un condenado a muerte; CitationMugueza, De Euskadi al campo de exterminio (memorias de un gudari); CitationTorres, Mis tres años de prisionero; CitationSorribas, Cridaré Visca Catalunya Lliure!; CitationAgudo, Memorias (la tenaz y dolorosa lucha por la libertad, 1939–1962); CitationGeiser, Prisoners of the Good Fight. Americans against Franco Fascism. 30. Gelatelly and Kiernan, The Spectre of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective; CitationBaldissara and Pezzino, Crimini e memorie di guerra. Violenze contro le popolazioni e politiche del ricordo; CitationTotten and Parsons, Century of Genocide. Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts; CitationLangbehn and Salama, German Colonialism. Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany. 31. CitationZimmerer, Zeller, and Neather, Genocide in German South-West Africa: the Colonial War (1904–1908) in Namibia and its Aftermath. 32. One of the best books on the general history of concentration camps, and its relationships both with the changes within the 'art' of war in the twentieth century and with State political violence, is CitationKaminsky, Konzentrationslager 1896 bis heute. 33. CitationKotek and Rigoulot, Le Siècle des Camps. They follow the tradition inaugurated by CitationRousset, L'univers concentrationnaire. 34. CitationRodrigo, 'Espejos deformantes. Explotación y limpieza social: hacia un modelo concentracionario fascista.' 35. CitationMann, The Dark Side of Democracy. Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. 36. CitationBartov, Murder in our Midst. The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation; CitationBecker, 'Le deportazioni dai territori occupati.' 37. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 45. 38. On barbarisation, see CitationMosse, Toward the Final Solution. A History of European Racism and CitationBartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–1945, German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare. See also CitationHerbert, Hitler's Foreign Workers. Enforced Foreign Labour in Germany under the Third Reich; CitationNeier, 'War and War Crimes'; CitationGribaudi, Le guerre del Novecento. 39. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction. 40. Like most of the Fascist camps, they were not exclusively devoted to extermination: the death of approximately three million people in the Gulag archipelago, as against the 18 million who passed through it, indicates that forced labour, even though carried out in the harshest of conditions that in many cases easily surpassed those of the Fascist camps, did not symbolise a practice of systematic, supraindividual and preventive extermination – compared to other Stalinist policies that openly practised extermination, such as dekulakisation or famine in Ukraine; the Gulags were not so much devoted to extermination as to brutal re-education. CitationBacon, The Gulag at War. Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archive; CitationApplebaum, GULAG. A History; CitationDavies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger. Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933. 41. Aly, 'CitationPlanning Intelligentsia and Final Solution'; CitationWachsmann, Hitler's Prisons. Legal Terror in Nazi Germany; CitationFeldman and Seibel, Networks of Nazi Persecution. Bureaucracy, Business and the Organization of the Holocaust; CitationAllen, The Business of Genocide. The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps. 42. CitationGellately, Backing Hitler. Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. See also CitationAly and Heim, Architects of Annihilation. Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction; Aly, Citation Final Solution: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews ; CitationHerbert, National Socialist Extermination Policies. Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies; CitationBrowning, The Origins of the Final Solution. The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Of course, see CitationFriedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, Citation 1939 –1945; CitationHilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews; CitationSofsky, The Order of Terror: the Concentration Camp. 43. CitationKallis, Genocide and Fascism. The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe, 19. CitationKallis, 'The 'Regime-Model' of Fascism. A Typology.' 44. CitationMarcuse, Legacies of Dachau. The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001. The best works on this topic belong to CitationWachsmann, 'The Policy of Exclusion: Repression in the Nazi State, 1933–1939.' 45. The Italian Jews experienced a deportation process that ended up with the same percentages of deaths as in France: a quarter of the Jewish population: CitationMayda, Storia della Deportazione dall'Italia, 1943–1945; CitationMatard-Bonucci, L'Italia fascista e la persecuzione degli ebrei; CitationDi Sante, I campi di concentramento in Italia. Dall'internamento alla deportazione (1940–1945); CitationCapogreco, I campi del Duce. L'internamento civile nell'Italia fascista (1940–1943); CitationCapogreco, Renucci. Un campo di concentramento in riva al Tenere (1942–1943). 46. CitationDi Sante, Italiani senza onore. I crimini in Jugoslavia e i processi negati (1941–1950); CitationKersevan, Lager italiani. Pulizia etnica e campi di concentramento fascisti per civili jugoslavi 1941–1943; CitationCapogreco, 'Internamento e deportazione dei civili jugoslavi.' 47. CitationNagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and the Others. A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania; CitationSolonari, Purifying the Nation. Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-allied Romania. 48. CitationMazower, Hitler's Empire. Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. 49. CitationCosta Pinto, Os Camisas Azuis. Ideologia, elites e movimentos fascistas em Portugal, 1914–1945. On Greek camps under Metaxas and during the Civil War, see CitationVoglis, Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners in Greece in the Civil War, 1945–1950. Also CitationVoglis, 'Between Negation and Self-Negation: Political Prisoners in Greece, 1945–1950.' 50. Ranzato, Guerre fratricide. Le guerre civili in etá contemporanea and CitationMazower, Dark Continent. Europe's Twentieth Century. 51. CitationPaxton, 'The Five Stages of Fascism.' 52. Kallis, Aristotle. Genocide and Fascism.