







































Aisthesis      Volume 16,  20251

Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik 
Propaganda in World War II Spain  

by Rachael F. Jenness

 Contemporary perspectives o!en con"ate 
antisemitism and Nazism; however, the Nazis 
are certainly not the only regime in history to 
persecute Jewish people. #e Spanish Inquisition 
(1470s-1853) and the Reconquista of the Iberian 
Peninsula (711-1492) were perhaps the second- and 
third-most famous persecutions of the Jews. #ese 
events resulted in the forced conversion, exile, or 
execution of Jews across the Iberian Peninsula. By 
the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, historical 
anti-Jewish policies ensured that few Jews remained 
in Spain.1 It is curious, then, that in 1936, anti-Jewish 
sentiment was once again on the rise in Spanish 
society. Franco’s golpe de estado saw a far-right, 
antisemitic regime come to power, one that would 
o$er little help to the Jewish community during the 
Holocaust. 
 #e foremost vehicle of this prejudice was 
the Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Conspiracy—the 
idea that an international Jewish community was 
attempting to destroy Spain from within under the 
guise of Freemasonry and Communism.2 Under this 

1 Stephen Mayeaux, "Limpieza de Sangre: Legal 
Applications of the Spanish Doctrine of 'Blood Purity,'" in 
Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress (blog), (Library 
of Congress, 2021); leyes de limpieza de sangre, or blood 
purity laws, were created to separate Jews and Muslims 
from Catholics despite the forced conversion of the former. 
#e Old Christians were those that had been Catholic 
long before Isabella I and Ferdinand II reconquered the 
Iberian Peninsula, and they remained at the top of the 
social order. New converts, or conversos, were those that 
had agreed to convert rather than be banished or killed. 
#ey were still viewed with suspicion and believed to be 
secretly practicing Judaism. #eir status as New Catholics 
made them second-class citizens as compared to the Old 
Catholic faithful. 
2 Paul Preston, Architects of Terror: Paranoia, Conspiracy, 
and Anti-Semitism in Franco’s Spain (London: William 
Collins, 2023), Preface; according to Paul Preston, a more 
accurate translation of this term would be “the %lthy 
Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik concubinage.”  

con"ation, Freemasonry threatened the control of 
the Catholic Church through its secrecy and radical 
secular ideals, and therefore the very foundation of 
Spanish society. Francoist Spain’s political philosophy 
of National Catholicism exacerbated a return to 
anti-Jewish and anti-Masonic tendencies, further 
resulting in a favorable view of the Nazi regime. As 
World War II grew into a full-scale con"ict, La bestia 
judeomasonica was an important symbol used by 
both German and Spanish governments to tie their 
enemies into a single international threat.3 #ere was 
indeed a “beast” threatening Spanish liberty but it 
was German, not Jewish, in origin. #e use of Judeo-
Masonic propaganda was a purposeful decision to 
create and expand Spanish sympathy with the Nazis 
and to unite factions within the Spanish political 
system against a common enemy that could be 
easily eradicated. As Spain walked the line between 
neutrality and belligerence, Franco’s far-right Falange 
prepared society to be receptive to Nazi political and 
racial ideologies, turning the anger and frustration 
of the Spanish Civil War into a vehicle of hate.
 At the beginning of WWII, there were 
approximately six thousand Jews and a similar 
number of Freemasons living in Spain.4 Compared 
to an overall population of twenty-%ve million total 
Spaniards, Jews and Freemasons combined made 
up less than one percent of the population. Gustavo 
Perednik, an Argentinian scholar who specializes in 
Spanish history, suggests that “#e modern Judeo-
phobic myth of Jewish World domination should be 
meaningless in a country devoid of Jews for almost 
half a millennium,” but the opposite was true.5 #e 
lack of personal knowledge of Jewish communities 

3 Álvaro Ceballos, “El Marxismo de Régimen,” (Alicante: 
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2008), 1. 
4 Javier Domínguez Arribas, “#e Judeo-Masonic Enemy 
in Francoist Propaganda (1936-1945),” in Global Anti-
Semitism: A Crisis of Modernity, (Brill, 2013), 257-258.
5 Gustavo D. Perednik, "Naive Spanish Judeophobia," 
Jewish Political Studies Review 15, no. 314 (2003): 103.



Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Propaganda in World War II Spain 

Aisthesis      Volume 16,  20252

and customs escalated anti-Jewish sentiment. #e 
Franco regime then used pre-existing prejudices 
against these already ostracized populations to create 
fear and anger towards these groups and to control 
the perception of the “Spanish Jew.” #e Falange 
maintained that Jewish conversos had been biding 
their time since the Reconquista to rise up against 
Catholics. Under the Falange, the Spanish Civil War 
was reframed as a crusade against heretics that once 
again threatened the Patria (Fatherland), a modern-
day Reconquista for the good of Spain.6

 Franco did not start out his regime with 
antisemitic policies. Rather, they were incorporated 
into his political philosophy as he began to see 
the hand of the Masons, who he believed were 
a sect of the international Jewish community, in 
every aspect of the Republican Le!. #ese ideas 
were further justi%ed by the failure of the Second 
Republic of Spain to ful%ll its promises to the 
people. #is conspiracy created a state of paranoia 
that followed Franco throughout his regime. His 
actions as the dictatorial head of state mirrored this 
anxious, fearful state of mind. Within his regime, 
those close to him adopted and spread the news of 
a conspiracy working to destroy Spanish society, 
an idea which closely mirrored Germany’s “stab-
in-the-back theory,” or the idea that Jewish people 
had brought down the country from within. #e fact 
that the Second Republic strayed away from Catholic 
in"uence and emphasized freedom of religion 
seemingly con%rmed Franco’s suspicions that the 
Republican Le! had become a slave of Judaism.7 He 
demonized anyone who allied themselves with the 
le!, claiming it was “paradoxical that they should be 
called Spaniards,” in a speech directed at the Foreign 
Press.8 #ese ideas were further exasperated by those 
within his circle that were sympathetic to the Nazi 
Regime as it grew in power and in"uence.

6 Samuel O’Donaghue, “Carlos Barral + the Struggle for 
Holocaust Consciousness in Franco’s Spain,” History and 
Memory 30, no. 2 (2017): 117-119. 
7 Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice: Repression in Madrid a!er 
the Spanish Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 
2005), 200.  
8 "Declarations of Franco to the Foreign Press" (transcript), 
Documentos Inéditos Para la Historia de Generalissimo 
Franco, ed. [Fundacion Nacional Francisco Franco], vol. 
1 (Madrid: Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco:1992), 
184. Translated by Rachael Jenness.

 #e Nationalist victors had the liberty to de%ne 
the Spanish Civil War with impunity. When Franco 
rose to power, the war was reframed as a con"ict 
not over the type of government but the type of 
Spain the country wanted. Indoctrination of this 
view was present at all levels of society, especially 
among the youth. Even “[t]he National school 
curriculum of 1939 stipulated that primary school 
children be taught that the military rebellion of 
July 1936 was inevitable a!er the Second Republic 
handed over Spain to a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy 
and International Socialism and Comintern.”9 #e 
Falange worked to train the next generation to believe 
that Jews and Communists were responsible for the 
horrible con"ict the country had undergone, and 
would continue to destroy Spanish society if given 
the chance. #is propaganda had a drastic impact on 
how Spain treated its Jewish community far into the 
future. Ramón Serrano Suñer, as the head of Franco’s 
propaganda apparatus, could control the narrative 
internally and did so with a clear purpose: to force 
the subjugation of any element that threatened 
Nationalist rule or spoke out against fascism. As a 
strong proponent of Nazi policy, he contributed 
signi%cantly to the mission of the Nazis to spread 
antisemitic propaganda throughout Spain, believing 
that the two regimes shared ideological threads that 
could not be ignored. 
 Although Spain did not enter World War II 
o&cially, it remained neutral in name only. Despite 
the country’s status as non-belligerent, Franco sent 
supplies, aid, and resources over the German border 
while de"ecting Allied demands and attacking British 
and American propaganda. A cocktail of legislation, 
government-controlled media, and the unimpeded 
circulation of Nazi propaganda exacerbated existing 
racial prejudice that worked in favor of both Spanish 
Nationalist and Nazi goals. Non-governmental 
speeches and popular literature similarly echoed 
these sentiments. #e Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy 
became such a signi%cant part of Spanish popular 
discourse that “[t]he war against Bolshevism satis%ed 
many Spaniards who now saw Germany engaged in 
a con"ict analogous to their own civil war.”10 Spanish 

9 Julius Ruiz, "Fighting the International Conspiracy: 
#e Francoist Persecution of Freemasonry 1936-1945," 
Politics, Religion, Ideology 12, no. 2 (2011): 181.
10 Raymond L. Proctor, Agony of a Neutral: La Division 
Azul (Moscow, ID: Idaho Research Foundation, 1974), 
115.



Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Propaganda in World War II Spain 

Aisthesis      Volume 16,  20253

society became so saturated with the conspiracy 
that the Jews appeared to be behind every historical 
downfall that Spain had su$ered, regardless of the 
fact that a strong Jewish community had not existed 
in the country for almost half a century.
 #e most signi%cant Nazi sympathies in Spanish 
society lay within the extreme-right ruling party of 
the Falangists, who were the main disseminators 
of German propaganda in Spain. Álvaro Ceballos, 
who studied Spanish Marxism during the Franco 
regime, argues this propaganda ful%lled the purpose 
of repressing the organized labor movement and 
creating a balance of power between con"icting 
elements in di$erent far-right factions of the regime.11 
#e parties on the right then coalesced into a single 
force that was indicative of the ideal Spaniard. #e 
regime’s aid in the dissemination of Nazi propaganda 
operated as a way to repay the deuda de sangre from 
the Spanish Civil War to Germany. Paul Preston, 
the foremost scholar on Francoist Spain, posits that 
“anti-Semitism became a major element of Falangist 
discourse by way of emulating and currying favor 
with the Nazis.”12 Ramón Serrano Suñer was one of 
these advocates of German attitudes and one of the 
more radical elements of the Falange. He o!en worked 
with Josef Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda, 
to shape the dissemination of misinformation across 
both countries.13 With consent and support from 
Serrano Suñer, the Nazi party had weaseled its way 
into mainstream Spanish media. 
 #e American Ambassador to Spain, CJH 
Hayes, states that “[i]n the Spanish press and over 
the Spanish radio and through the Spanish postal 
system, favoritism was shown to Axis, as against 
Allied, news and propaganda.”14 #e Germans even 
had their own radio station in Salamanca created 
during the Spanish Civil War, while the Aberwher, 
the German military intelligence apparatus, was 
given free rein to operate in Spain. Collaborating 
with Goebbels, Serrano Suñer ensured that the 
common Spaniard had a Germanophilic rather than 

11 Ceballos, “El Marxismo del Régimen,” 2.  
12 Preston, Architects of Terror, 5.  
13 Robert H. Whealey, “#e Spanish Holocaust and the 
Coverup that Lasted a Generation,” (History News Net-
work: Feb. 26), 6.
14 Carlton J. H. Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain (New 
York: #e Macmillan Company, 1945), 70.

an Anglophilic perspective. He publicly boasted 
that “during his three-year period of control, he had 
kept the Spanish press continuously subservient to 
German interests.”15 His oversight ensured that only 
favorable views of Germany could be published in the 
press, contributing to the wide proliferation of Nazi 
ideology. Articles from Das Reich were circulated 
throughout Spanish newspapers uno&cially 
controlled by the Franco regime. #e Falange 
also ran cartoons from Der Sturmer furthering 
antisemitic and anti-Communist propaganda.16 In 
contrast, British and American propaganda, or any 
other rhetoric that emphasized the Allied cause, was 
counteracted %ercely by both the Nazis in Spain and 
the Spanish government.17 #ere was no doubt that 
the Falange sympathized with the Nazi cause. 
      Propaganda about Spain worked in favor of the Nazis 
in Germany as well. Goebbels used the Spanish Civil 
War to incite fear of social revolution in Germany 
and claim that a civil war would be imminent if the 
“Jewish Problem” was not solved. Goebbels’ diaries 
emphasized the importance of Spain for German 
military support abroad, speci%cally because of its 
in"uence over Latin America. His obsession with 
Spanish news and events exposed how essential 
Spanish cooperation was to the Nazis.18 Unfortunately 
for Hitler and Mussolini, Franco was a fair-weather 
friend, interested primarily in what the Axis could 
do for Spain rather than what his country could do 
for their cause. 
 #e constant bombardment of Germanophilic 
propaganda greatly impacted the Spanish population. 
Despite the fact that Spain had just %nished its own 
war, its soldiers became motivated once again to join 
in an ideological crusade. #e amount of people who 
volunteered to %ght with Germany on the Russian 
front shows just how e$ective Judeo-Masonic 
propaganda was. As part of the Division Azul, forty-
thousand Spanish citizens were sent to %ght on the 
Russian Front as a supplement to Germany’s forces. 
#is group was made up of volunteers who believed 
15 Sir Samuel Hoare, Complacent Dictator, (New York: 
Alfred A Knopf, 1947), 90. 
16 Preston, Architects of Terror, 19.  
17 Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 72. 
18 Robert H. Whealey, “Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goeb-
bels Looks at the Spanish Civil War,” "e Historian 61, no. 
2, (Taylor & Francis: 1999): 348.



Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Propaganda in World War II Spain 

Aisthesis      Volume 16,  20254

an Axis victory would further enhance Spain’s legacy. 
As described by Raymond Proctor, “...the call went 
out to organize the Spanish “Blue Division'', at which 
time Serrano Suñer publicly acknowledged Spain’s 
deuda de sangre and promised prophetically to 
“replay blood for blood, friendship for friendship.’”19 
#is demonstration of Spanish solidarity with the 
Nazis, despite Franco’s cautious foreign policy, 
revealed Spain’s true ideological alliances during the 
Second World War. Franco believed that committing 
o&cially to the war would likely put Spain in a 
compromising position because of its post-civil-war 
vulnerability, but did not hesitate to send his citizens 
to %ght and die in a foreign war that he believed was 
ideologically similar to the one that had ensured his 
rise to power. 
 In conjunction, several radical writers informed 
Spanish opinion on Freemasons and Jews, the 
most in"uential of which were the priest Juan de 
Tusquets and the poet Jose Maria Peman. #e 
former wrote ten volumes of a diatribe against Jews, 
claiming that “Freemasonry was a Jewish creation, 
a weapon of English imperialism, and responsible 
for the bloodshed” in Russia.20 He based his fear of 
the Jewish community on the %ctional work, "e 
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which portrayed 
Freemasonry as a sect of international Jewry. His 
writings were so widely published that he was 
invited to an anti-Freemason convention in 1933 
and hired by the Francoist government to hunt down 
Freemasons and con%scate their property. Tusquets 
saw Germany as a model for the future of Spain 
and expressed this vehemently a!er visiting Dachau 
in 1934.21 He was later elected by Serrano Suñer to 
publish what appeared to be the church’s views on 
the current Spanish ideological con"ict. Another 
work he in"uenced was a newspaper called Pelayos, 
which aimed to indoctrinate the younger generation 
against the Spanish Le!. Along with indoctrination 
in schools, his writings were extremely important in 
spreading Judeo-Masonic propaganda through the 
use of popular and widely accessible media. 
 Jose Maria Peman penned another of the 
most in"uential works that propagated the Judeo-
Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy. His most important 

19 Proctor, Agony of a Neutral, 25.
20 Preston, Architects of Terror, 35.
21 Preston, Architects of Terror, 85.

contribution was La poema de la bestia y la angel, 
which portrayed the Spanish Civil War as “the 
battle between Satan and God, who had chosen 
Spain to be the last defender of Western Civilization 
against the threat of ‘the red and Semitic East.’”22 
Drawing on Tusquets' work, he similarly stressed 
how deep Jewish in"uence ran in Spanish society, 
and that Freemasonry and Communism were 
the brainchildren of international Jewry. Peman 
and Tusquets were convinced it was their duty to 
warn Catholics about the dangers of their Jewish 
neighbors.23

 #e works of these two writers during the Spanish 
Civil War belied the revival of a dangerous political 
trend in Spanish society: the tendency to con"ate 
the international Jewish community with all of 
Spain’s enemies. #ey asserted that, even though the 
Republican forces had been defeated, the ideological 
battle was not over and the only way to save Spain 
was with the “destruction of Jews, Freemasons, and 
socialists…in other words, of the entire le! of the 
political spectrum.”24 Judeo-Masonic propaganda 
helped the Francoist government control the 
narrative and change the attitudes of society towards 
the Republican le! and any who aligned ideologically 
with their ideas.  
 #e clergy were also virulently antisemitic. 
#e Spanish clergy demonized Jews as Christ-
Killers and viewed them with extreme suspicion, 
although the Inquisition had removed the majority 
of Jews from the country. Franco’s strong Catholic 
connections informed his suspicion towards Jews, 
to such an extent that even the Church grew wary 
of his rhetoric. His ruling philosophy of National 
Catholicism was simply another form of justi%cation 
for the subjugation of political and racial minorities, 
as he believed “Spain was to be free of International 
Jewry…to return to its destiny at the right hand 
of God.”25 #is language was indicative of Spain's 
goals and mirrored German rhetoric which elevated 
national destiny as a concept beyond the physical 
nation to the divine. While Spain did not directly 
have imperial goals during World War II, they 

22 Preston, Architects of Terror, 125.
23 Preston, Architects of Terror, 71.
24 Preston, Architects of Terror, 7.
25 Preston, Architects of Terror, 71.



Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Propaganda in World War II Spain 

Aisthesis      Volume 16,  20255

considered the puri%cation of the regime to be an 
empire of the spirit.26 
 In 1940, the Franco regime passed La Ley para 
la Represión de Francmasonería y Comunismo, which 
targeted prominent Freemasons and hauled them 
before a Special Tribunal to be tried for treason. An 
unclear de%nition of Freemasonry and Communism 
created the space to indiscriminately prosecute 
anyone who was not part of Franco’s patria. #e 
patria, on the contrary, had an extremely narrow 
de%nition:

those who embraced Spanish tradition and 
Catholic values. All the rest—Jews, arch-
heretics, Protestants, Communists, Moors, 
Encyclopaedists, Francophiles, Freemasons, 
Krausists, liberals, Marxists—were and are 
a dissenting minority beyond nationality. 
Outside and against the Fatherland is the 
Anti-Fatherland.27

 
 While the law only speci%ed Freemasonry 
and Communism as prosecutable minorities, the 
actual application of the law saw many others 
condemned because of their political leanings. 
Because the regime believed that both Freemasonry 
and Communism were the manifestation of Jewish 
in"uence, Jews did not need to be speci%ed in these 
laws to be persecuted. Additionally, because the law 
provided Franco with the legitimate authority to %re, 
imprison, or execute enemies of the regime, he and 
his government were able to apply it to whomever 
they wished. 
 #is was not the only measure that the Spanish 
government took against Jewish communities. 
In 1941, Franco ordered the country’s governors 
to “prepare a %le of every foreign and domestic 
Jew residing in his province.”28 #is list provided 
information on political and personal a&liations, 
their commercial activities, and if they posed a 
security threat. He later handed the list over to 
Heinrich Himmler, and German Schutzsta#el o&cers 
were allowed into Spain to keep tabs on Spanish Jews. 

26 Preston, Architects of Terror, 113.
27 Preston, Architects of Terror, 102.
28 Stanley G. Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany 
and World War II, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
2008), 215. 

Similarly, the property of Sephardic Jews in Spain 
was con%scated and given to non-Jewish Spaniards.29 
While antisemitism in World War II-era Spain 
never reached Holocaust proportions or amounted 
to mass executions, this action implies that the 
political climate in Spain would not have prevented 
the eventual murder of its remaining Jews. O&cial 
government communiques echoed these sentiments 
while simultaneously attempting to downplay Spain’s 
antisemitic attitudes to the international community 
and emphasize Spanish “neutrality.” Chillingly, 
Preston speculates based on these documents that 
“only a shortage of Jews prevented a more antisemitic 
policy.”30

 So why was there no Spanish Holocaust? #e 
climate in Spain was ripe for a similar event, and 
Spanish sentiment and policy were eyeing that same 
path. #e answer became clear around 1943 when 
it appeared that Germany was losing the war—
the hourglass was running out of sand, and it was 
time to jump ship. Near the end of World War II, 
Spanish government policy began to distance itself 
from both Falange and Nazi in"uence. In doing 
so, Franco performed a complete about-face in his 
political opinions to appear more favorable to the 
United Nations, which Spain wanted to join. #e 
shi! in political philosophy is most apparent starting 
in 1943, when Spain pulled the Division Azul from 
Germany and disbanded it. Allied pressure caused 
Franco to limit supplies and other aid to Hitler. 
Eventually, he stopped authorizing the refueling 
and repair of German submarines in Spanish ports. 
#e Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy and underhanded 
measures of the Franco government, however, did 
not disappear even a!er the war. Freemasonry and 
any activity connected to it remained a prosecutable 
criminal o$ense in Spain until 1964. To appear more 
favorable to the United Nations, however, the focus 
of the conspiracy shi!ed away from a Jewish problem 
to a le!-wing enemy in the early 60s.
 Francisco Franco would later claim that Spain 
had been the savior of the Jewish people during the 
horrors visited upon them by the Nazis and that his 
country had maintained total neutrality throughout 
the con"ict. His “post-war doublethink” successfully 
convinced his own citizens and the international 

29 Payne, Franco and Hitler, 222.
30 Preston, Architects of Terror, 18. 



Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Propaganda in World War II Spain 

Aisthesis      Volume 16,  20256

community of Spain’s wartime neutrality.31 Franco 
rewrote his collaboration in World War II and 
presented himself as a benign ruler who had done 
all in his power to save European Jews. He scrubbed 
Spanish-German collaboration from the record 
and attempted to bury communications between 
himself and Hitler. Allied Intelligence saved some 
of this collaboration from the pyre, but were unable 
to prevent Franco from fooling the rest of the world 
into believing Spanish neutrality.
 While Spain did accept Jewish refugees into the 
country during WWII, the attitude towards Jewish 
refugees was complacent at best and downright 
insidious at worst. #roughout the war, only ten 
thousand Jews were issued Spanish passports. #e 
actual number of refugees allowed into the country 
is estimated by the Spanish government to have 
been close to forty thousand, although historians 
agree that this is likely an exaggerated assessment to 
make the country appear more charitable.32 While 
the number of refugees is contentious, it is generally 
agreed upon that Spain did provide sanctuary for 
several Jews. However, the atmosphere in Spanish 
society suggests that Spain was no more friendly to 
the Jews than its German neighbor. Many Spaniards 
today believe that Spain owes no moral debt to the 
Jews because it accepted refugees during the war, 
an astonishing statement considering the history of 
Jewish persecution in Spain.33 #e moral debt of Spain 
to its Jews extends far beyond the acceptance of a few 
refugees in a time of need. Holocaust consciousness 
in Spain remains practically non-existent because of 
Francoist censorship and similarly prevents many 
Spaniards today from recognizing their country’s 
role.34

 Further, many Spaniards are not aware that 
twenty-three thousand of their own citizens were 
sent to concentration camps.35 Franco was distinctly 
aware of these Spaniards and their su$ering, but 
his abhorrence of the le! prevented him from 
31 O’Donaghue, “Carlos Barral + the Struggle for Holo-
caust Consciousness in Franco’s Spain,” 132.
32 Ruiz, Franco's Justice, 197-202.
33 Perednik, "Naive Spanish Judeophobia," 17.  
34 O’Donaghue, "Carlos Barral + the Struggle for Holo-
caust Consciousness in Franco’s Spain,” 133.
35 Whealey, “#e Spanish Holocaust and the Cover-up 
that Lasted a Generation,”1.

intervening. #ere is speculation that these camps 
were a convenient means for Franco to dispose of any 
remaining political enemies without appearing to be 
complicit in their execution.36 Few survivors of these 
camps returned to Spain a!er the war, and there was 
little, if any, literature produced that implied Franco’s 
hand in their destruction—strict censorship quelled 
any mention of the su$ering of Spanish Republicans 
in comparison to Germany’s Jews. 
 Ultimately, “[i]n its attitude towards the Jews and 
the Jewish question, the Franco Regime displayed a 
kind of split personality, but there can be no doubt 
about the anti-Jewish philosophy of Franco, the 
Falange and the church.”37 With this supposition, 
Gustavo Perednik accurately describes the policy of 
Francoist Spain towards Jews "eeing the #ird Reich’s 
in"uence. Francoist Spain can best be described as 
opportunistic and non-committal in o&cial policy, 
but no amount of historical brainwashing can rinse 
the dictatorship’s hands of Spanish blood or erase 
their moral alliance with Nazi Germany. Spanish 
fascism was the un%nished business of World War 
II—one that many people are blissfully ignorant of. 
Regardless, when the dust cleared at the fall of the 
#ird Reich, Francisco Franco was neither friend 
nor foe to the Nazis—he was simply Franco. 
      

36 O’Donaghue, "Carlos Barral + the Struggle for Holo-
caust Consciousness in Franco’s Spain," 143.
37 Perednik, "Naive Spanish Judeophobia," 11.



Friend, Foe, or Franco? Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik Propaganda in World War II Spain 

Aisthesis      Volume 16,  2025

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7


