Dr. Strangelove
Banned
This is my oldest AH Project: a Timeline where the Spanish Civil War never happened and the weak Spanish democracy somehow managed to survive and did not become a fascist or communist dictature. This is tough, and bordering implausibility, but doable. Three years ago, I wrote a Timeline in Othertimelines.com with this same idea. The results can be seen here and here. Yes, I already know it sucks, and that saying it is “poorly researched” would be a great understatement, not to mention the wanking tone and the poor english. But there was some potential on the idea of a democratic Spain collaborating with the Allies, so I have decided to start it again from scratch, with a better grammar, non-timeline format, and as little silliness as I can.
NO SPANISH CIVIL WAR TIMELINE- 1936
Excerpt from “Francisco Franco and July 1936: myth, truth, agenda”, by Ian Gibson, Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1974
…traditionally overshadowed by the 1934 revolution, the November 1936 Falangist uprising and the Great Independence War[1], the stillborn July 1936 military coup is regarded as an obscure factoid by most historians, interesting only as being the last specimen in a formerly cherished Spanish political tradition; the pronunciamiento, or military coup.
It has been only after vital files and reports have been declassified that historians have been able to look in detail at the 1936 conspirators’s plans and realize the true extent of their designations to overthrow the Republic’s democratically elected government. Upon reading previously classified documents, ranging from private letters to military trial acts, I have realized that the 1936 conspiration was perhaps the Republic’s pivotal point; the moment where Spain’s still weak and newborn democracy could have been defeated by either fascist or Stalinist[2] totalitarianism. In this book I will try to prove that it is due to this almost unknown conspiracy, and not to the November Uprising, that the united political movement to strengthen the Republic’s democratic leanings which would guide Spain through the War towards today’s prosperity came into being.
…. He is already widely regarded as a hero due to his actions and death during the War, which somehow compensate his brutal treatment of Asturias’ revolutionaries in 1934, but in this book I will try to prove that his greatest service to Spain was his role on foiling the 1936 conspiracy. It is most surprising that a man with his military conservative background agreed to cooperate with what he saw as a quasi communist government. Let’s face it: Francisco Franco Bahamonde was not the untarnished hero of democracy that propaganda has led us to believe. Even assuming that his actions in 1934 were a consequence of political pressure by Lerroux’ conservative government[3], it is obvious that his unlikely collaboration with the Frente Popular government to foil the July Plot was not due to some idealistic wish to save democracy, but to a very material prosaic wish to gain the government’s favour and be called back to Madrid from the position in the Canarias to which he had been relegated for political reasons.
[1]This is the name TTL’s Spaniards give to the Second World War
[2]There is a good reason for Gibson not to say communist, which will become clear as the TL unfolds.
[3] Francisco Franco and his African troops repressed the 1934 socialist uprising in Asturias against the conservative government with unusual brutality, with cases of rebels being raped, castrated or tortured. In TTL’ Franco is a hero of the Republic, so his actions in the 1934 uprising are usually played down or presented as direct orders of the government.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands. June 23rd, 1936.
Francisco Franco closed the envelope, gave it to his aide with instructions to send it to Madrid and, now alone in his office, started to ponder. He felt now relieved of a great weight. His colleagues were exerting a great pressure on him to join them. Spain was at the brink of disaster, they said. Socialists in the government, widespread violence in the streets, churches being burned, peasants taking over land. Spain was becoming ungovernable, and it was the army’s duty to restore order and save the Republic[1].
He owed nothing to the new government. In fact, he had every possible reason to scorn the Frente Popular[2]: it was after they won the February election that he had been commissioned to Canarias, an isolated position where he could be kept at bay in case he was up to something. The new president Azaña had decommissioned him from his office at the Zaragoza Academy in 1931. Prime Minister Casares was trying to give his native Galicia an Autonomy Statute that would break Spain even more. He had no reasons to appreciate the elected government.
But he was a soldier, and no matter how much he could scorn a civilian, leftist government he still felt insecure towards the prospective of outright rebellion. That was why he still hadn’t given a definite answer to the rest of the generals’ clique, even after some of them came to Tenerife to ask him in person to join. He wanted to join them, he wanted to take a decisive pass to save Spain from the spiral of terrorism, Marxism and separatism that it was falling on, but he didn’t like the idea of failing and ending up shot or in exile. He knew that his comrades[3] were starting to think that he was bluffing. He knew that Queipo had mockingly nicknamed him as Miss canarias 1936[4]. That was why he had wrotten that letter to Casares[5] explaining the situation and asking for a settlement. His conscience was now quiet. If Casares gave a positive answer, there was still hope. If he didn’t, he could join the plot knowing that he had done everything he could to settle things peacefully.
Four days later, a letter arrived to Franco’s office. It had a Prime Minister’ s office letterhead. The same day, Francisco Franco took a plane to Madrid.[6]
[1]In the first days of OTL’s civil war, the rebels claimed it was just a temporary measure to save the Republic, not an attempt to destroy it.
[2]The coalition of leftist and anarchist forces that had won the February 17th parliamentary election.
[3]After Niceto Alcalá Zamora was forced to step down his position as President of the Republic and Manuel Azaña was elected on May 5th, a group of generals including Emilio Mola, José Sanjurjo, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano and others started to plot a military rebellion to bring order to the country, either via a military dictatorship, a fascist regime or a restoration of the monarchy. In OTL the coup led to a 3 year civil war.
[4]Historical
[5]Santiago Casares Quiroga, President of the Council of the Spanish Republic [not to be confused with the office of President of the Republic. He was the equivalent of a Prime Minister]. Despite leading a coalition of all kinds of leftist parties; from center-left to anarchists, he was a quite moderate man.
[6]This is the POD. In our timeline Franco wrote a letter to Casares telling him that he could quell the army discontent, but Casares never answered and Franco joined the conspiracy in early July. In TTL, Casares gives him a positive answer and Franco is called back to Madrid to discuss matters.
Excerpt from “Francisco Franco and July 1936: exposing the myth, exposing the truth”, by Ian Gibson, Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1974
..Franco travels to Madrid on the evening of June the 28th and meets Casares Quiroga the next morning. According to witnesses, they were reunited for more than two hours, but no detailed account of the meeting is to be found. In Casares’ usually detailed diaries, the meeting is sarcastically noted as “June 28th: chatter with Cerillita[1]”, but no further details are given. However, instead of returning to Tenerife that same day, Franco remained in Madrid. The next day, he and Casares would meet again, together with other members of the government. Again, no detailed accounts of the meeting are known, but it could be assumed that a direct link between these meetings and Franco’s designation as Director of the Zaragoza Officer Academy in September 1936 can be drawn.
...However, when Franco returned to Tenerife the 1st of July, he still wasn’t sure of what path to take. In a letter he received upon returning, Mola told him that they would keep their plans regardless of his intervention. The letter ends with an ominous insinuation of what can happen to him if the Movement triumphs:
[letter comes here][2]
…Rumours of a military coup were, of course, widespread, and a few of them were actually accurate. After all, a military uprising is hardly something easy to disguise. Prior to Franco’s involvement, the government already suspected that some officers might be up to something. In July 9th, General Batet Mestre met with Mola at his headquarters in Pamplona and bluntly asked him if he had something to do with any uprising preparations. Mola denied it. [3]
…The government’s decision to send Mola to Navarra, which they regarded as a backwater place far from Madrid, had the unintended effect of putting him in the middle of the core of Spanish Carlism. Immediately after arriving to Pamplona in March, Mola started contacts with carlist leaders for their collaboration in an eventual uprising, that he knew couldn’t succeed without support from the carlist militias. However, while Mola wanted a temporary military government under the Republic, the carlists didn’t want anything short of a catholic reactionary monarchy, and that discrepancy made an unpassable rift between Mola and carlist leader José Fal Conde.
…In early July, military intelligence was aware that some generals were preparing an uprising. The government knew that the likelihood of a coup was very high since election day, but in the first week of July, the government was fully aware that some generals were preparing something.
…the interception of a letter between Mola and Fal Conde on July 7h gave more substance to rumours. Even when the letter’s content was ambiguous, the fact a General wrote to a carlist leader was worrying enough.
…In July 11th Franco travelled to Madrid again to meet Casares. The meeting was long and tense. Franco would not return to Tenerife until August when the situation had changed irrevocably.
Excerpt from Political Violence in the Early Republic, by Juan Casal, Ed. Galaxia, La Coruña, 1993.
…the murder of Calvo Sotelo was no doubt the worst incident of political murder in a time where there were such incidents almost in a weekly basis. As the leader of the rightist opposition at the Congress, Calvo was despised by everyone in the leftist spectrum, and his aristocratic manners and upbringing, monarchist and reactionary[4] views ,and his oratorical talent only made matters worse. When his body was found in July 14th at a Madrid cemetery, political tension grew to an unbearable level. It is known that the plotters of the July conspiracy took this event as a sign that they had to act immediately…
Excerpt from “Francisco Franco and July 1936: exposing the myth, exposing the truth”, by Ian Gibson, Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1974
..the rest is known: In the morning of July 16th, up to 14 generals and dozens of other officers were detained in their headquarters all over Spain by the Military Police and the Guardia de Asalto.[5] Between them were generals Mola, Queipo, Goded, and other members of the clique. Some tried to oppose resistance and there were armed incidents between the military and the MP at Pamplona, Mallorca and Melilla, but by the afternoon of the 16th of July, the conspiracy was beheaded.
[1]”lil’ match”. Franco’s nickname due to his low height and big head.
[2]In OTL by early july Franco had finally joined the conspiracy. In TTL, his continued ambiguity and his travel to Madrid have angered Mola, who writes him an angry letter which ironically pushes Franco more to the government’s field.
[3]This happened in OTL, but on July 16th, when it was too late to stop the uprising. In TTL, with Franco’s information (actually little more than calculated insinuations, but enough to make Casares suspect), the government is already aware that some generals are preparing something by early July.
[4]In TTL’s Spain, reactionary means anything from the extreme right, not only properly reactionary politics.
[5]A paramilitary police corps created in 1931. It was seen as a tool of the republicans and leftists and was dissolved in OTL in 1939.
From left to right: President Manuel Azaña, PM Santiago Casares Quiroga, and generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola.
NO SPANISH CIVIL WAR TIMELINE- 1936
Excerpt from “Francisco Franco and July 1936: myth, truth, agenda”, by Ian Gibson, Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1974
…traditionally overshadowed by the 1934 revolution, the November 1936 Falangist uprising and the Great Independence War[1], the stillborn July 1936 military coup is regarded as an obscure factoid by most historians, interesting only as being the last specimen in a formerly cherished Spanish political tradition; the pronunciamiento, or military coup.
It has been only after vital files and reports have been declassified that historians have been able to look in detail at the 1936 conspirators’s plans and realize the true extent of their designations to overthrow the Republic’s democratically elected government. Upon reading previously classified documents, ranging from private letters to military trial acts, I have realized that the 1936 conspiration was perhaps the Republic’s pivotal point; the moment where Spain’s still weak and newborn democracy could have been defeated by either fascist or Stalinist[2] totalitarianism. In this book I will try to prove that it is due to this almost unknown conspiracy, and not to the November Uprising, that the united political movement to strengthen the Republic’s democratic leanings which would guide Spain through the War towards today’s prosperity came into being.
…. He is already widely regarded as a hero due to his actions and death during the War, which somehow compensate his brutal treatment of Asturias’ revolutionaries in 1934, but in this book I will try to prove that his greatest service to Spain was his role on foiling the 1936 conspiracy. It is most surprising that a man with his military conservative background agreed to cooperate with what he saw as a quasi communist government. Let’s face it: Francisco Franco Bahamonde was not the untarnished hero of democracy that propaganda has led us to believe. Even assuming that his actions in 1934 were a consequence of political pressure by Lerroux’ conservative government[3], it is obvious that his unlikely collaboration with the Frente Popular government to foil the July Plot was not due to some idealistic wish to save democracy, but to a very material prosaic wish to gain the government’s favour and be called back to Madrid from the position in the Canarias to which he had been relegated for political reasons.
[1]This is the name TTL’s Spaniards give to the Second World War
[2]There is a good reason for Gibson not to say communist, which will become clear as the TL unfolds.
[3] Francisco Franco and his African troops repressed the 1934 socialist uprising in Asturias against the conservative government with unusual brutality, with cases of rebels being raped, castrated or tortured. In TTL’ Franco is a hero of the Republic, so his actions in the 1934 uprising are usually played down or presented as direct orders of the government.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands. June 23rd, 1936.
Francisco Franco closed the envelope, gave it to his aide with instructions to send it to Madrid and, now alone in his office, started to ponder. He felt now relieved of a great weight. His colleagues were exerting a great pressure on him to join them. Spain was at the brink of disaster, they said. Socialists in the government, widespread violence in the streets, churches being burned, peasants taking over land. Spain was becoming ungovernable, and it was the army’s duty to restore order and save the Republic[1].
He owed nothing to the new government. In fact, he had every possible reason to scorn the Frente Popular[2]: it was after they won the February election that he had been commissioned to Canarias, an isolated position where he could be kept at bay in case he was up to something. The new president Azaña had decommissioned him from his office at the Zaragoza Academy in 1931. Prime Minister Casares was trying to give his native Galicia an Autonomy Statute that would break Spain even more. He had no reasons to appreciate the elected government.
But he was a soldier, and no matter how much he could scorn a civilian, leftist government he still felt insecure towards the prospective of outright rebellion. That was why he still hadn’t given a definite answer to the rest of the generals’ clique, even after some of them came to Tenerife to ask him in person to join. He wanted to join them, he wanted to take a decisive pass to save Spain from the spiral of terrorism, Marxism and separatism that it was falling on, but he didn’t like the idea of failing and ending up shot or in exile. He knew that his comrades[3] were starting to think that he was bluffing. He knew that Queipo had mockingly nicknamed him as Miss canarias 1936[4]. That was why he had wrotten that letter to Casares[5] explaining the situation and asking for a settlement. His conscience was now quiet. If Casares gave a positive answer, there was still hope. If he didn’t, he could join the plot knowing that he had done everything he could to settle things peacefully.
Four days later, a letter arrived to Franco’s office. It had a Prime Minister’ s office letterhead. The same day, Francisco Franco took a plane to Madrid.[6]
[1]In the first days of OTL’s civil war, the rebels claimed it was just a temporary measure to save the Republic, not an attempt to destroy it.
[2]The coalition of leftist and anarchist forces that had won the February 17th parliamentary election.
[3]After Niceto Alcalá Zamora was forced to step down his position as President of the Republic and Manuel Azaña was elected on May 5th, a group of generals including Emilio Mola, José Sanjurjo, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano and others started to plot a military rebellion to bring order to the country, either via a military dictatorship, a fascist regime or a restoration of the monarchy. In OTL the coup led to a 3 year civil war.
[4]Historical
[5]Santiago Casares Quiroga, President of the Council of the Spanish Republic [not to be confused with the office of President of the Republic. He was the equivalent of a Prime Minister]. Despite leading a coalition of all kinds of leftist parties; from center-left to anarchists, he was a quite moderate man.
[6]This is the POD. In our timeline Franco wrote a letter to Casares telling him that he could quell the army discontent, but Casares never answered and Franco joined the conspiracy in early July. In TTL, Casares gives him a positive answer and Franco is called back to Madrid to discuss matters.
Excerpt from “Francisco Franco and July 1936: exposing the myth, exposing the truth”, by Ian Gibson, Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1974
..Franco travels to Madrid on the evening of June the 28th and meets Casares Quiroga the next morning. According to witnesses, they were reunited for more than two hours, but no detailed account of the meeting is to be found. In Casares’ usually detailed diaries, the meeting is sarcastically noted as “June 28th: chatter with Cerillita[1]”, but no further details are given. However, instead of returning to Tenerife that same day, Franco remained in Madrid. The next day, he and Casares would meet again, together with other members of the government. Again, no detailed accounts of the meeting are known, but it could be assumed that a direct link between these meetings and Franco’s designation as Director of the Zaragoza Officer Academy in September 1936 can be drawn.
...However, when Franco returned to Tenerife the 1st of July, he still wasn’t sure of what path to take. In a letter he received upon returning, Mola told him that they would keep their plans regardless of his intervention. The letter ends with an ominous insinuation of what can happen to him if the Movement triumphs:
[letter comes here][2]
…Rumours of a military coup were, of course, widespread, and a few of them were actually accurate. After all, a military uprising is hardly something easy to disguise. Prior to Franco’s involvement, the government already suspected that some officers might be up to something. In July 9th, General Batet Mestre met with Mola at his headquarters in Pamplona and bluntly asked him if he had something to do with any uprising preparations. Mola denied it. [3]
…The government’s decision to send Mola to Navarra, which they regarded as a backwater place far from Madrid, had the unintended effect of putting him in the middle of the core of Spanish Carlism. Immediately after arriving to Pamplona in March, Mola started contacts with carlist leaders for their collaboration in an eventual uprising, that he knew couldn’t succeed without support from the carlist militias. However, while Mola wanted a temporary military government under the Republic, the carlists didn’t want anything short of a catholic reactionary monarchy, and that discrepancy made an unpassable rift between Mola and carlist leader José Fal Conde.
…In early July, military intelligence was aware that some generals were preparing an uprising. The government knew that the likelihood of a coup was very high since election day, but in the first week of July, the government was fully aware that some generals were preparing something.
…the interception of a letter between Mola and Fal Conde on July 7h gave more substance to rumours. Even when the letter’s content was ambiguous, the fact a General wrote to a carlist leader was worrying enough.
…In July 11th Franco travelled to Madrid again to meet Casares. The meeting was long and tense. Franco would not return to Tenerife until August when the situation had changed irrevocably.
Excerpt from Political Violence in the Early Republic, by Juan Casal, Ed. Galaxia, La Coruña, 1993.
…the murder of Calvo Sotelo was no doubt the worst incident of political murder in a time where there were such incidents almost in a weekly basis. As the leader of the rightist opposition at the Congress, Calvo was despised by everyone in the leftist spectrum, and his aristocratic manners and upbringing, monarchist and reactionary[4] views ,and his oratorical talent only made matters worse. When his body was found in July 14th at a Madrid cemetery, political tension grew to an unbearable level. It is known that the plotters of the July conspiracy took this event as a sign that they had to act immediately…
Excerpt from “Francisco Franco and July 1936: exposing the myth, exposing the truth”, by Ian Gibson, Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1974
..the rest is known: In the morning of July 16th, up to 14 generals and dozens of other officers were detained in their headquarters all over Spain by the Military Police and the Guardia de Asalto.[5] Between them were generals Mola, Queipo, Goded, and other members of the clique. Some tried to oppose resistance and there were armed incidents between the military and the MP at Pamplona, Mallorca and Melilla, but by the afternoon of the 16th of July, the conspiracy was beheaded.
[1]”lil’ match”. Franco’s nickname due to his low height and big head.
[2]In OTL by early july Franco had finally joined the conspiracy. In TTL, his continued ambiguity and his travel to Madrid have angered Mola, who writes him an angry letter which ironically pushes Franco more to the government’s field.
[3]This happened in OTL, but on July 16th, when it was too late to stop the uprising. In TTL, with Franco’s information (actually little more than calculated insinuations, but enough to make Casares suspect), the government is already aware that some generals are preparing something by early July.
[4]In TTL’s Spain, reactionary means anything from the extreme right, not only properly reactionary politics.
[5]A paramilitary police corps created in 1931. It was seen as a tool of the republicans and leftists and was dissolved in OTL in 1939.
From left to right: President Manuel Azaña, PM Santiago Casares Quiroga, and generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola.