Meetings between dictators are unlikely to be joyous occasions for the rest of us, but occasionally such meetings are unpleasant for at least one of the participants, and such was the case with the notorious October 1940 meeting between Franco and Hitler on a train stationed at Hendaye on the Franco-Spanish border. It was the only time they met.
Hitler had of course given Franco decisive help during the civil war; the raid on Guernica by Nazi bombers had become (and remains) for many one of the defining images of modern warfare (thanks in part to Picasso’s 1937 painting). Hitler could thus reasonably feel he was due payback from Franco.
The dictators will have been well aware of each other’s agendas and the possibility of disastrously conflicting interests. Most notably, Franco will have been keen to acquire France’s colonial territories in northern Africa, which Hitler’s ally, Vichy France, equally certainly would not want to give up.
The meeting was thus meant to decide the extent to which Franco’s fascist Spain would help Hitler’s Germany during WWII and it remains a much-debated encounter. It has been argued, for example, that Hitler may not even have really wanted Spain as a full-blown partner: Spain had a large army but was still weak from the aftermath of the Civil War, and if Spain came in on Hitler’s side but was then overrun by the Allies, the Nazis would face a strategic nightmare. Hitler may well have believed Spanish neutrality was the best bet for him, and wanted to keep Franco out.
Franco subsequently liked to claim that he had deliberately kept Spain out of the war despite Hitler’s entreaties; but some historians argue that Franco wanted in, as in 1940 Hitler looked a winner. This is a busy little niche of modern history and the question will likely be never settled. We do know it was a very hard bargaining session, and Hitler later declared that he would rather have three or four teeth pulled than go through another negotiating session with Franco.
What Happened Next
Unlike Hitler and Franco, the train in which they met still exists, as a museum piece. After the meeting, Franco maintained a cautiously informal neutrality that became less cautious and more pro-Allies as the war progressed. In 1943 he finally declared Spain’s full neutrality, a blatant display of realpolitik. When the war ended and the Cold War began, Franco found western powers perfectly willing to accept him as an associate ally (his dispatch of volunteers – the ‘Blue’ division – to fight the Russians did him no harm in some post-war quarters (the volunteers were recalled to Spain in 1943). Franco does have one thing in his favour: he protected Sephardic Jews (descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492) throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. A Spanish fascist passport meant immediate protection in Europe throughout the war, and Franco’s policy may have saved the lives of over 45,000 Jewish refugees.