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Joseph Stalin led the country known as the Soviet Union for about 25 years. He made the Soviet Union into a world power, but he was known for his harsh rule. Early Life...

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Biography >>World War II for Kids

Joseph Stalin
by Unknown

Occupation: Leader of the Soviet Union

Born: December 18, 1878 in Gori, Georgia

Died: March 5, 1953 Kuntsevo Dacha near Moscow, Russia

Best known for: Fighting the Germans in WW2 and starting the Cold War

Biography:

Joseph Stalin became leader of the Soviet Union after the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, died in 1924. Stalin ruled up until his own death in 1953. He was known as a brutal leader who was responsible for the deaths of over 20 million people.

Where did Stalin grow up?

He was born in Gori,Georgia (a country just south of Russia) on December 18, 1878. His birth name was Losif Jughashvili. Stalin's parents were poor and he had a rough childhood. At the age of 7 he got the disease smallpox. He survived, but his skin was covered in scars. He later went to seminary to become a priest, however, he was expelled for being a radical.

The Revolution

After leaving the seminary, Stalin joined up with the Bolshevik revolutionaries. This was an underground group of people that followed the communist writings of Karl Marx and were led byVladimir Lenin. Stalin became a leader within the Bolsheviks. He led riots and strikes and even raised money by robbing banks and other crimes. Soon Stalin became one of Lenin's top leaders.

In 1917, theRussian Revolution took place. This was when the government led by the Tsars was overthrown and Lenin and the Bolsheviks came into power. Russia was now called the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin was a major leader in the government.

Lenin's Death

Stalin as a young man
from the book "Josef Wissarionowitsch Stalin-
Kurze Lebensbeschreibung"

In 1924 Vladimir Lenin died. Stalin had been General Secretary of the Communist Party since 1922. He had been growing in power and control. After Lenin's death, Stalin took over as sole leader of the Soviet Union.

Industrialization

In order to strengthen the Soviet Union, Stalin decided that the country should move away from agriculture and become industrialized. He had factories built through the country. These factories would help the Soviet Union to fight the Germans in World War II.

Purges and Murder

Stalin was one of the most brutal leaders in world history. He had anyone that didn't agree with him killed. He also caused famines in areas of the country so people he wanted dead would starve. Throughout his rule he would order purges where millions of people he thought were against him would be killed or put into slave labor camps. Historians aren't sure how many people he had killed, but they estimate between 20 to 40 million.

World War II

At the start ofWorld War II, Stalin formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler and Germany. However, Hitler hated Stalin and the Germans made a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. In order to fight off the Germans, Stalin joined the Allies of Britain and the United States. After a terrible war, where many on both sides died, the Germans were defeated.

After World War II, Stalin set up puppet governments in the Eastern European countries that the Soviet Union had "freed" from Germany. These governments were ran by the Soviet Union. This started the Cold War between the two world superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Interesting Facts

He got the name Stalin while he was a revolutionary. It comes from the Russian word for "steel" combined with "Lenin".

Before Lenin died he wrote a Testament where he recommended that Stalin be removed from power. Lenin referred to Stalin as a "course, brutish bully".

Stalin created the Gulag slave labor camp. Criminals and political prisoners were sent to these camps to work as slaves.

Before he had the name Stalin, he used the name "Koba". Koba was a hero from Russian literature.

Stalin's right hand man was Vyacheslav Molotov.

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Kids learn about the biography of Joseph Stalin, leader of the communist Soviet Union during World War II and beyond.

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Introduction
(1879-1953). One of the most ruthless dictators of modern times was Joseph Stalin, the despot who transformed the Soviet Union into a major world power. The victims of his campaigns of political terror included some of his followers. His original Georgian name was Ioseb Dzhugashvili. In 1912 he took the alias of "Stalin," from the Russian word stal, meaning "steel."

Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, a village in Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire, on December 18 (December 6 according to the Old Style calendar), 1878. (Stalin's birth was traditionally held to be December 21 [December 9, Old Style], 1879. Evidence uncovered after the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, points to December 18, 1878, as his actual birth date.) Stalin's father was Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a poor shoemaker who drank heavily and beat the boy savagely. His mother, a peasant's daughter, took in sewing and washing to help support the family. When Stalin was an infant, he caught smallpox, which left him pockmarked for life.

Stalin attended a church school in Gori from 1888 to 1894. He then moved to the Tiflis Theological Seminary to be educated for the priesthood. He was more interested in communism, however, than in theology, and the seminary expelled him in 1899 for revolutionary activity. He remained in the city of Tiflis (now Tbilisi), working briefly at one job after another. He soon joined the Tiflis branch of the Russian Social Democratic party.

Stalin then became a paid agitator, trying to incite revolt against the tsar. He edited illegal pamphlets and helped distribute them secretly. He organized strikes among the factory workers in Tiflis. Stalin's ability won the attention of party leaders, and they sent him to form a communist organization in Batumi, a large port on the Black Sea.

Stalin's revolutionist activities brought his first arrest in 1902. He was exiled to Siberia in 1903 but soon escaped. From 1902 to 1913 Stalin was arrested seven times for revolutionary activity, undergoing repeated imprisonment and exile. Like his fellow revolutionaries, he adopted one alias after another in order to evade arrest. He first called himself Koba, after a legendary Georgian hero. Later he changed his name to David, Soso, Chiijikov, Nijeradze, and, finally, Stalin.

Stalin Joins the Bolsheviks
In 1903 the Social Democratic party split into two factions. The more militant faction, headed by Vladimir Lenin, called itself the Bolsheviks. The other faction, opposed to Lenin's creed of violence, was the Mensheviks. Stalin believed in Lenin's policy, and so he joined the Bolsheviks. He became a party leader in his native Transcaucasia. He attended secret Bolshevik meetings in Tammerfors (now Tampere, Finland) in 1905; in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1906; and in London, England, in 1907.

At these meetings Stalin's iron zeal and organizing ability won Lenin's high regard, and the two men worked together closely. In 1912 Lenin made Stalin a member of the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee. Meanwhile, Stalin briefly edited the newly founded Bolshevik newspaper Pravda (Russian: "Truth"). Going to St. Petersburg, Stalin organized a Bolshevik group in the Duma, the parliament of tsarist Russia.

In 1913 Stalin was arrested once again and was exiled to the grim Turukhansk region of Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. For the first time he failed to escape. In March 1917, however, the beginning of the Russian Revolution led by Aleksandr Kerensky freed all political prisoners, and Stalin returned to St. Petersburg, where he helped Lenin prepare the final plans for the history-making Bolshevik revolution. Stalin's name seldom appears in records of the revolution, for he remained in the background as an administrator. His work was largely responsible for the success of the bloody October Revolution in 1917.

During the civil war in 1918-20 following the revolution, Stalin served as political commissar with Bolshevik armies on several fronts. At that time political commissars were entrusted with military duties, and Stalin showed exceptional ability as a strategist and tactician. In 1918 he directed the successful defense of the vital city of Tsaritsyn against the White Army. Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad in his honor in 1925, though the name was later changed to Volgograd as part of an effort in the 1950s and '60s to downgrade Stalin's importance. In 1921 Stalin led the invasion that won his homeland, Georgia, for the communists, as the Bolsheviks now called themselves. The next year Stalin became Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and he methodically assumed increasing power.

Some of Stalin's unscrupulous methods worried even Lenin, who wrote, "Stalin is too rough." Stalin, however, was undisturbed by criticism. Grimly he undermined his rival Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Union's war minister and Lenin's former close associate. In 1925, a year after Lenin's death, Stalin forced Trotsky to resign as war minister and in 1927 expelled him from the party. Determined to eliminate the minority Trotskyite influence, Stalin exiled Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929 and had him assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Having dealt with the opposition, Stalin was then supreme ruler. In a drive to industrialize and modernize the Soviet Union, he launched the first in a series of five-year plans in 1928. Stalin ordered the collectivization of farms. When peasants resisted, he ordered the state to seize their land and possessions. Well-to-do farmers, called kulaks, especially resented collectivization. Determined to root out all opposition, Stalin showed no mercy to the rebellious kulaks, and thousands were shot, exiled, or placed in concentration camps and worked to death under atrocious conditions. In 1932-33 the collectivization of farms created a famine in Ukraine that eliminated some 10 million peasants through death by starvation.

Beginning in 1934, Stalin's ruthless methods again drew world attention. To consolidate his place as supreme dictator, he conducted a series of purges. Claiming that a number of Red Army officers and scores of old Bolsheviks were "plotting against the state," Stalin had them executed. Many of them were men who had helped Stalin in his drive to power. Members of the arts, the academic world, and the legal and diplomatic professions also lost a high proportion of victims to Stalin's policies, as did the Soviet population at large. Stalin's political victims were numbered in the tens of millions.

Pact with Germany
In August 1939 Stalin startled the world again when he brought the Soviet Union into a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany. One month later Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. The nonaggression pact permitted the Soviets to annex eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania as well as attack Finland-all without German opposition. Stalin extended Soviet borders into outlying buffer areas.

In May 1941 Stalin made himself premier of the Soviet Union, replacing Vyacheslav Molotov. In June the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany. Stalin took command of the army and reorganized industry.

In high-level meetings in 1943 at Tehran, Iran, and early in 1945 at Yalta, Ukraine, Stalin issued inflexible terms to his allies, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain and President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States. Later in 1945, at Potsdam, Germany, Stalin made a pact with U.S. President Harry Truman on the reconstruction of defeated Germany. He then defiantly broke the terms of the accord.

After the war's end, Stalin seemed to be determined to make the Soviet Union dominant in Europe and to impose communism on the world. Through purges and other relentless measures, he forced communist governments on eastern Europe and sought to gain control of Italy and France. In the United Nations and in Allied councils, his obstructionist policy blocked efforts to establish a lasting peace. The Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948-49 that stopped all rail, road, and water communications with the West threatened a third global war.

The End of the Stalin Myth
Many of the dates and facts of Stalin's personal life remain uncertain. He was married in about 1904 to Ekaterina Svanidze, a native of Georgia. She died in 1907 of tuberculosis. Their son, Jacob, whom Stalin treated with contempt, died in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. In 1919 Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who committed suicide in 1932. They had a daughter, Svetlana, and a son, Vasily, a Soviet air force officer. Vasily died in 1962. In 1967 Svetlana, who used her mother's maiden name, defected to the United States. (She returned to the Soviet Union for two years, 1984-86.)

Joseph Stalin died suddenly on March 5, 1953, in Moscow. So unexpected was his death that suspicions of foul play were voiced. However, four days after his death, his embalmed body was entombed alongside that of Lenin in Moscow's Red Square.

In February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, then first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, addressed the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress in secret session. He devoted three hours to the systematic destruction of Stalin's image as a public hero. Among other charges, Stalin was now accused of wanton slaughter during the prewar purge trials; of being abnormally suspicious of associates; of causing thousands of unnecessary casualties during World War II by incompetently interfering with Red Army campaigns; and of failing to keep in personal touch with provincial areas. Above all, he was denounced for having paraded himself as a savior.

Efforts to destroy the Stalin image (called de-Stalinization) were suspended for a time in late 1956 while Stalin's own strong-arm methods were ruthlessly used to suppress a revolt in Hungary. At the 22nd Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1961, the denunciation of Stalin was resumed. Before that session was adjourned, Stalin's body had been removed from Red Square and was reburied within the Kremlin walls among the graves of lesser Soviet heroes. Stalin's name was removed from public buildings, streets, and factories, and the city of Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.

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(1879-1953). One of the most ruthless dictators of modern times was Joseph Stalin, the despot who transformed the Soviet Union into a major world power. The victims of his...

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Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?

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A timeline of Stalin’s life, the man that oversaw the war machine that helped defeat Nazism and who was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century.

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Joseph Stalin

Stalin was a brutal dictator who was responsible for the death of millions. He held power in an iron fist until his death in 1953. He did anything he thought necessary to keep his power.

Early Years

Stalin's official records show that he was born on December 6, 1878 but in his biography it states he was born on December 21, 1879. It is believed that Stalin had the dates changed himself but no one is sure why he did it.

Stalin had a difficult childhood and was often beaten by his father and his mother. Stalin was recognized as being very intelligent and did very well in school. He was well-behaved at school but would often get in fights on the street.

Stalin got into a number of fights and he was determined to be the best, toughest fighter at the school. When he was faced with a stronger opponent, Stalin would do whatever was necessary to win and would often resort to tactics that the other children would not. When he was fifteen years old, he entered the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary. It was here that he first showed his interest in radical ideas regarding social and economic reform.

Stalin left the seminary when it was time for the final examinations but he refused to write the exams. He left the seminary and although he claimed he was kicked out for spreading Marxist ideas, it was actually his decision to leave.

Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party

Stalin joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party shortly after leaving the seminary and became involved in a number of activities designed to promote Marxist thought. He ended up being arrested and was sent to prison in 1902 and then exiled to Siberia. Stalin quickly made plans to escape and after eight attempts, he was successful.

While Stalin was exiled in Siberia, the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party split into two factions. One faction, the Bolsheviks, were led by Lenin and the other faction, the Mensheviks, were led by Julius Martov.

In 1905, a political demonstration led to a massacre which was blamed on the czar of Russia. This massacre was followed by numerous strikes and protests and political parties were now able to operate without fear of arrest.

In 1905, the czar promised to make a number of reforms which would have led to an elected parliament but Stalin and the other Bolsheviks were not interested in an election. They wanted an armed uprising and a dictatorship by the proletariat.

Stalin continued his revolutionary activities and ended up being arrested a number of times and sent to Siberia. He escaped each time he was arrested. In 1912, while exiled in Siberia, he was contacted by Lenin and informed that he had been chosen to join the Central Committee. He promptly escaped from Siberia but he was soon arrested again after Stalin organized and began to publish the newspaper Pravda.

The cycle of arrests and escapes continued until 1917. When Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, a provisional government was put in place. The Bolsheviks (including Stalin) at first wanted to support the new government, but Lenin was able to convince them that they should push for the government's overthrow.

The October Revolution

Although hesitant at first, Lenin, with the support of Stalin, was able to convince the party's Central Committee to attempt the overthrow of the government. On October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks began the revolution with the seizure of communications as well as government buildings. The country descended into civil war with the Bolsheviks, which became known as the Red Army, on one side and the White Army on the other. The White Army was made up of various factions which supported the monarchy, capitalism and other forms of socialism.

During the civil war, Stalin was given command of the Red Army's forces in different areas. Stalin ruled each area he controlled with an iron fist and did not hesitate to throw his forces into battle with the White Army with little thought to the survival of his soldiers. Stalin believed that numerical superiority was the key to winning and he didn't care if the Red Army suffered a high casualty rate as long as he was able to defeat the White Army forces.

When he was transferred to the Western Front, he used terror and violence to ensure people followed his orders. He held public executions and was even known to burn down houses of people he thought were traitors.

Stalin never actually became involved with the fighting himself. His method of fighting was to give the orders and let the troops do the actual fighting. He had no military experience or the desire to learn military strategy but he still insisted that he had to be in sole command of the forces in any area he was assigned to.

The Red Army won the civil war by the end of 1919 and Lenin wanted to expand the revolution into Poland. The Red Army attacked but the Polish forces were able to stop the invasion at Warsaw.

Lenin and StalinLenin and Stalin

Lenin and Stalin were often at odds about the direction the Central Committee should take although at other times, Lenin seemed to rely on Stalin. Lenin was worried that Stalin was trying to concentrate too much power into his hands. Lenin wanted Stalin to remain in the Central Committee but did not want him to hold the position of General Secretary.

When Lenin died in early 1924, Stalin began to solidify his power by replacing people within the party with people who were loyal to Stalin. Stalin was also able to get two of his main rivals, Trotsky and Zinoviev, expelled from the party.

Solidifying Power

Stalin started implementing a number of initiatives that were aimed at creating a communist state. He forced farmers to give up their grain and forced farms into collectives. He arrested industry officials and charged them with sabotage. The officials were beaten until they confessed their guilt. The Central Committee began to develop the first of many Five-Year Plans that would set quotas for industry output. Stalin created labour camps and sent anyone who was against him to the camps. He sent priests, traders and other people to the camps. He also held show trials to intimidate anyone who was sympathetic to the arrested individuals.

Stalin had control of the party and refused to let anyone criticize either himself or his policies. Criticism was considered treason and a personal betrayal. Party members who criticized Stalin were often arrested and kicked out of the party. Religion was outlawed and many churches were closed down. Private printing presses were no longer allowed to operate and travel to other countries was severely limited.

The Great Terror

The Great Terror was a purge of party members that Stalin viewed as rivals or not loyal enough. People were arrested and executed or sent to the labour camps. Stalin had complete control over the Central Committee and anyone who did not readily agree to his wishes was immediately replaced. Stalin would give quotas regarding how many people needed to be arrested and how many had to be sent to the labour camps. Between the years 1937 and 1938, around one and a half million people were arrested. Only two hundred thousand of the people who were arrested were released. The rest of the arrested were sent to labour camps or executed.

World War II

Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Germany which Stalin used to increase the territory under his control. Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland and brought Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia under his control.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. At first, Stalin didn't believe that Hitler broke the treaty but realized it was a reality when the German ambassador delivered a declaration of war to the Soviet government.

Hitler's forces advanced quickly into the Soviet Union and even though Stalin was made Supreme Commander on July 10, 1941, Stalin didn't publicize this because he did not want to accept responsibility for the defeats the country faced.

Stalin would not listen to his commanders and he often ordered his forces to hold all territory, even when it would have been better to retreat. The army was not allowed to retreat unless specifically ordered to by the government. Any commander who retreated without orders faced severe punishment and any soldier who retreated was shot.

Stalin ordered all resources to be used to manufacture goods for the war and within six months, the Soviet Union had fifteen thousand aircraft and thirteen thousand tanks at its disposal. When the Germans were ready to attack Moscow, Stalin refused to leave the city and motivated the army and civilians to hold off the German attack although the Soviet forces suffered massive casualties.

Stalin started to listen to his military commanders more but he still did not trust them. He kept them under surveillance and had their living quarters bugged.

The Soviet forces were able to withstand the German invasion and were able to launch a counterattack into Germany. Stalin ordered a quick assault in an effort to gain as much territory as possible and the Soviets soon had the German army on the run.

Allied Meetings

Stalin met the other leaders of the Allied forces a number of times. The first meeting of the big three (Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill) occurred in 1943 (in Tehran) and then again in 1945 (at Yalta). At these meetings the strategy of winning the war was discussed as well as how post-war Germany would be governed and how Europe would be divided up after the war. Stalin was able to use the competing interests of the other Allied leaders to negotiate beneficial terms.

Stalin's forces moved into Berlin in 1945 which resulted in the German surrender.

After the War

The alliance between Stalin and the other Allied powers quickly broke down after the war. Stalin disagreed with the Marshall Plan (a plan to use funds to help rebuild countries after the war) and viewed it as a way of undermining his control in Eastern Bloc countries.

The Western powers became focused on containing Stalin although they did accept that a number of countries were already under communist control. In 1948, Stalin put Berlin under a blockade and the Allied powers were forced to fly in needed supplies. In 1949, Stalin created Comecon which was to stand in opposition to NATO.

Death

On February 28, 1953, Stalin had a party at his house and did not go to bed until 4:00 a.m. He went to bed and gave orders that he not be disturbed. In the morning, Stalin never showed and as the day progressed, there was no sign of Stalin. His guards were worried but too scared to disobey Stalin's orders. They were too scared to open the door to check on him. When a package arrived from the Central Committee in the late evening, the guards were forced to open the door and found Stalin lying on the floor.

He had suffered a stroke and died four days later on March 5, 1953.

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Joseph Stalin - World War 2 - History for Kids

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Stalin was a brutal dictator who was responsible for the death of millions. He held power in an iron fist until his death in 1953. He did anything he thought necessary to keep his power. Early Years Stalin's official records show that he was born on December 6, 1878 but in his biography it states ...

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Joseph Stalin (or Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; 18 December 1878 - 5 March 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. He replaced Vladimir Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin was a totalitarian ruler, and stayed in power by removing anyone he thought might be a threat to him. His ideas and policies turned the Soviet Union into a powerful, modern nation, the largest on Earth. It also led to the deaths of millions of people. His form of government was later called Stalinism.

Stalin invaded Poland on 18 September 1939. In the subsequent World War II, Stalin stayed neutral but signed a peace deal with Germany's leader Adolf Hitler. He then led a bloody war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The end of the war saw Stalin gain control of all Eastern Europe including part of Germany. There, a series of loyal Marxist-Leninist single-party states were set up, extending his power and determining the Soviet Union's position as a superpower.

Stalin's name

Stalin was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili, or Iosif Dzhugashvili. He adopted the name "Stalin" later

In Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин - Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; born Джугашвили - Dzhugashvili

In Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი - Ioseb Jughashvili

Ioseb Vissarionovich Jugashvili was born in a small one room house in Gori, Georgia. His father made and fixed shoes. His father was often drunk and used to hit his wife and his son until his death in a fight in 1890. Joseph had smallpox when he was young. This left his face scarred. Later, photographs were often changed to hide the scars. His left arm was also shorter because of an accident. He was educated at the Gori church school. Stalin studied to be a priest at a seminary (school for priests) in Tbilisi. He was an active student reading many books, especially books that were not allowed by the seminary. This included books by Karl Marx. He joined a Marxist group in 1898, the Mesame Dasi, or Group Three.

Revolutionary

He left school in 1899 and got a job at the Tbilisi Physical Institute. He joined groups that were trying to start a revolution to remove the Tsar. They wanted a different type of government. The police raided his house in 1901 while hunting for people who opposed the government. Stalin escaped but went into hiding so the police could not find him. He organized anti-government activities such as May Day marches and protests. He became a Bolshevik. He supported a violent revolution, and did not support the Mensheviks. The secret police caught him in April 1902 and exiled him without trial to Siberia. He lived in the village of Novaya Uda.

He soon escaped from Siberia. This led to many later claims that he was a police spy. The arrest of another Bolshevik, Stephan Shaumyan, a rival of Stalin, increased these beliefs. At the end of 1905, he went to a meeting in Finland and met Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Lenin was not what Stalin had expected. The government arrested and exiled Stalin several times in the next ten years. This increased his power in the Bolshevik party and he was elected to the Central Committee of the party in 1912. He was promoted to a position at St.Petersburg.

Stalin was a member of the Bolshevik Party, but did not do much in the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was writing and editing Pravda, the party newspaper. He had a number of organizational jobs in the Communist Party. In 1922 he became General Secretary. He was able to give jobs to people he liked in the Communist Party. These supporters helped him become the leader after Vladimir Lenin died in 1924.

Collectivization

Stalin tried to collectivize farms. Collectivization meant taking the land from owners of all farms and joining it into large farms run by the government. Communist officials then let farmers work the new farms and told them to turn the harvest over to the government. They did not work well. Because they were not paid much money, and whatever they grew went to the state, the workers did not try their best. The best farming worked on very small bits of land given to the peasants to grow what they liked. On these pieces of land, farmers could keep what they grew. In 1938 these parts of land were 4% of Soviet farmland. However, they grew 20% of its produce.

World War II

Stalin cooperated with Hitler before World War II. In 1939 they made the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and agreed to divide Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet "spheres of influence."

Later on, in 1941, Hitler turned against Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union, trying to conquer it. After the Operation Barbarossa invasion, the USSR began working with the Western Allies to defeat Germany. In the end, Germany lost, but the USSR had more casualties than any other country during the war.

When World War II was over, the Soviet army occupied many countries in Europe, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and part of Germany, imposing Marxism- Leninism on these countries. This was done against the wishes, and over the protests, of the American and British governments.

Stalin continued to rule over the Soviet Union until he died. He also militarized Russia by focusing the country's time and energy towards weapons, vehicles, and the armed forces.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953. It was officially said to be because of a stroke. In 2003, however, a group of Russian and American historians said that they believed Stalin had been poisoned with warfarin, possibly by the men who took over the government after Stalin died.

Led by Lavrentiy Beria, these were Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov. Nikita Krushchev later began a process called "De-Stalinization", which meant taking apart much of the political system that Stalin made. Stalin was denounced as a tyrant. After outsmarting and defeating his rivals, Krushchev established a personal control over the government comparable to Stalin's own, even if he never went as far in murdering millions of people.

Stalin is a very controverisal figure in history. Many historians see him as a ruthless dictator, while others praise him as the Father of the Soviet State. He has been criticized for his role in the Holodomor. A recent poll in Russia (2008) listed him as the third most popular person in Russian history. In 2006, a poll stated that almost half the adults in Russia thought Joseph Stalin was a good person.

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Joseph Stalin (or Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; 18 December 1878 - 5 March 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. He replaced Vladimir Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin was a totalitarian ruler, and stayed in power by removing anyone he thought might be a threat to him.

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How did Hitler rise to power? - Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard

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Adolf Hitler ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. He called himself Führer (Leader). Hitler believed that Germans were born to rule over other peoples. This led to World War II....

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Explore the life of Adolf Hitler, the man most responsible for the devastation of the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust.

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Adolf Hitler served in the German army in World War One, and in 1919 joined the German Workers' Party. This would go on to become the Nazi Party.

After a failed attempt to take over Germany in 1923, the Nazi Party took advantage of the impact of the Great Depression in 1929 to win public support.

Hitler was appointed German Chancellor in January 1933.

did not emerge for the first time when Hitler and the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. Prejudice and hostility towards Jewish people had existed for centuries throughout Europe and beyond. This frequently led to violence against Jewish communities, and to laws that against Jewish people. Across many different countries, Jews were stopped from doing particular jobs, or forced to live in specific areas. Jewish people were also sometimes made to wear badges or items of clothing to show that they were Jewish.

Throughout history, Jewish communities were forced to leave their countries, and had to find a new place to live. Lies were also spread about Jewish people, and they were wrongly blamed for disasters such as plagues.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, he acted on this antisemitic prejudice, which had existed for a very long time, and underpinned his ideas.

To find out more about Jewish life in pre-war Europe, read this guide.

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria, in 1889. Growing up, he aspired to be an artist. He applied to Art College in Vienna on two occasions, but was unsuccessful. Struggling to make a living, he lived in a shelter for homeless men in Vienna and earned money by painting portraits.

Hitler moved to Munich in 1913 and joined the German army when war broke out in 1914.

During World War One, Hitler was wounded twice and awarded several medals. In October 1918, he was temporarily blinded by mustard gas. While he was in hospital, he heard that Germany had surrendered. Hitler claimed that he cried upon hearing this news. He was angry, feeling that the German army had been betrayed by their government.

After the war, the army sent Hitler to Munich to spy on the German Workers' Party, an emerging political group. Hitler attended some of their meetings and found he agreed with many of their ideas. In September 1919, he decided to join the group, which was led by Anton Drexler.

Hitler was a good public speaker, and helped the small political party to gain supporters. In 1920, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party, which became known as the Nazi Party. The main beliefs of the Nazi Party were antisemitism, racism, , and strong hostility towards other political systems, including , and .

By 1921, Hitler had taken over the leadership of the party. They had a 25-point programme, containing ideas including:

Destroying the Treaty of Versailles.

Preventing Jewish people from being German citizens.

Introducing new laws on immigrationimmigration Coming to live permanently in a foreign country. .

By 1923, the Nazi Party was gaining support. Germany was struggling to recover from World War One and the harsh terms that the Treaty of Versailles had inflicted upon them. Hitler believed that if he started an uprising, known in German as a 'Putsch', people would join him and he would be able to overthrow the government.

On the morning of 9 November, Hitler marched through the streets of Berlin. The police had been tipped off and Hitler fled. He was arrested on 11 November. Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg prison, but was released after just 9 months.

While in prison, Hitler wrote a book, Mein Kampf ( My Struggle), in which he set out his ideas for the future of Germany, as well as many of his antisemitic ideas. This included his racist belief that Jews should be stripped of German citizenship, and the false idea that German people were part of a so-called , and therefore to so-called 'inferior' races, including Jewish people, and . He wrongly alleged that Jewish businesses and banks hoarded wealth, forcing others to live in poverty. These ideas were largely ignored by the German until the mass unemployment caused by the .

Nazi Party electoral graph

On Hitler's release from prison, the Nazi Party struggled. They were unsuccessful in elections and their ideas were not appealing.

In 1929, the Great Depression caused a worldwide economic crash which gave Hitler an opportunity. There were 6 million people unemployed in Germany. Hitler took advantage of the economic problems and blamed them on Jewish people, who were a tiny minority - less than 1% of the German population. The Nazis also blamed the Treaty of Versailles and the actions of foreign countries. Nazi posters claimed that Hitler would be able to find solutions to Germany's economic problems. These ideas were popular and the Nazis started to win seats in the .

Hitler understood the importance of propaganda. He made lots of speeches and travelled round Germany to meet people, trying to show that he understood their problems.

Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933. This role was the second highest political position in Germany.

On 27 February 1933, there was a fire in the Reichstag building. This was just four weeks after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor, and right before another election was due to take place. A Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside. He confessed to starting the fire. However, exactly who started the fire is still debated by historians today.

On 5 March 1933, Reichstag elections were held. Despite the Nazis' attempts to blame communists for the Reichstag fire, they still did not win a majority. This meant Hitler would not be able to rule as he wanted, as new laws he proposed could be outvoted by other parties in the Reichstag.

On 23 March 1933, the Nazis passed the Enabling Act, giving Hitler the right to make laws on his own without a vote in the Reichstag. The vote needed two thirds of the Reichstag to vote in favour to change the constitution in this way. Hitler had Communist Party members of the Reichstag arrested, so they were unable to vote, and intimidated other opposition members to stop them voting against the law.

The law was passed by 444 votes to 94. The 81 Communist Party members of the Reichstag were not counted in the total, so Hitler achieved the two thirds that he needed. The passing of the Enabling Act meant there was no political opposition to stop Hitler passing any laws he wanted.

In August 1934, President Hindenburg died. Hitler combined the roles of Chancellor and President into one position, making himself Führer, or 'leader'. This completed his move from Chancellor to dictator.

More on World War Two and the Holocaust

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Rise of Hitler and the Nazis - World War Two and the Holocaust - KS3 History - homework help for year 7, 8 and 9. - BBC Bitesize

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(1883–1945). As prime minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943, Benito Mussolini hoped to lead his country to greatness. He was the founder of fascism, a form of government in…

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Learn about the biography of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and fascist who ruled Italy and allied with Adolf Hitler during World War II.

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(1883–1945). Driven by the spirit of conflict, Benito Mussolini was many things during his turbulent life—teacher, laborer, editor, soldier, politician, and revolutionary.…

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Royal Italian Army

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini KSMOM GCTE (29 July 1883 - 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist. He was also the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 until 1943. He was the leader of the National Fascist Party.

Benito Mussolini was named after Benito Juarez, a Mexican opponent of the political power of the Roman Catholic Church, by his anticlerical (a person who opposes the political interference of the Roman Catholic Church in secular affairs) father. Mussolini's father was a blacksmith. Before being involved in politics, Mussolini was a newspaper editor (where he learned all his propaganda skills) and an elementary school teacher.

At first Mussolini was a socialist, but when he wanted Italy to join the First World War he was thrown out of the socialist party. He 'invented' a new ideology, Fascism, much out of Nationalist and Socialist views.

Rise to power and becoming dictator

In 1922, he took power by having a large group of men, " Black Shirts," march on Rome and threaten to take over the government. King Vittorio Emanuele III gave in, allowed him to form a government, and made him prime minister. In the following five years, he gained power, and in 1927 created the OVRA, his personal secret police force. Using the agency to arrest, scare, or murder people against his regime, Mussolini was dictator of Italy by the end of 1927. Only the King and his own Fascist party could challenge his power.

Fascism as practiced by Mussolini

Mussolini's form of Fascism, "Italian Fascism"- unlike Nazism, the racist ideology that Adolf Hitler followed- was different and less destructive than Hitler's. Although a believer in the superiority of the Italian nation and national unity, Mussolini, unlike Hitler, is quoted "Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today".

Mussolini wanted Italy to become a new Roman Empire. In 1923, he attacked the island of Corfu, and in 1924, he occupied the city state of Fiume. In 1935, he attacked the African country Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia). His forces occupied it in 1936. Italy was thrown out of the League of Nations because of this aggression. In 1939, he occupied the country Albania. In 1936, Mussolini signed an alliance with Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany.

Fall from power and death

In 1940, he sent Italy into the Second World War on the side of the Axis countries. Mussolini attacked Greece, but he failed to conquer it. In 1943, the Allies landed in Southern Italy. The Fascist party and King Vittorio Emanuel III deposed Mussolini and put him in jail, but he was set free by the Germans, who made him ruler of the Italian Social Republic puppet state which was in a small part of Central Italy. When the war was almost over, Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland with his mistress, Clara Petacci, but they were both captured and shot by partisans. Mussolini and Clara's dead bodies was hung upside-down on a pole at a gas station in the village of Mezzegra, dispalyed so everyone could see them.

After death

After the war, several Neo-Fascist movements have had success in Italy, the most important being the Movimento Sociale Italiano. His granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini has outspoken views similar to Fascism.

Interesting facts about Benito Mussolini

He was the youngest Prime Minister in Italy's history.

Mussolini gradually dismantled any forms of democratic government to make himself dictator of Italy. This made him Europe's first fascist dictator in the 20th Century.

Mussolini spoke four languages, English, German, French and Italian.

Mussolini wanted Italy to become a new Roman Empire.

His nickname was "Il Duce," which is Italian for "The Leader."

He was a bully in his childhood and stabbed others at school.

His Italian army in World War II wasn't very good.

For a short time he was a school teacher and a journalist.

Mussolini was discharged from the army after a bomb exploded in his trench and shards of metal injured him.

Images for kids

The platform of Fasci italiani di combattimento, as published in "Il Popolo d'Italia" on 6 June 1919

Mussolini and the Quadrumviri during the March on Rome in 1922: from left to right: Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono,

From 1925, Mussolini styled himself Il Duce (the leader).

Cover of 13 May 1940 issue of Newsweek magazine, headlining: "Il Duce: key man of the Mediterranean".

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Royal Italian Army Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini KSMOM GCTE (29 July 1883 - 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist. He was also the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 until 1943. He was the leader of the National Fascist Party.

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Mussolini was the founder of Fascism and leader of Italy from 1922 to 1943. He allied Italy with Nazi Germany and Japan in World War Two.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Predappio in northern central Italy. His father was a blacksmith. Employment prospects in the area were poor so in 1902 Mussolini moved to Switzerland, where he became involved in socialist politics. He returned to Italy in 1904, and worked as a journalist in the socialist press, but his support for Italy's entry into World War One led to his break with socialism. He was drafted into the Italian army in September 1915.

In March 1919, Mussolini formed the Fascist Party, galvanising the support of many unemployed war veterans. He organised them into armed squads known as Black Shirts, who terrorised their political opponents. In 1921, the Fascist Party was invited to join the coalition government.

By October 1922, Italy seemed to be slipping into political chaos. The Black Shirts marched on Rome and Mussolini presented himself as the only man capable of restoring order. King Victor Emmanuel invited Mussolini to form a government. Mussolini gradually dismantled the institutions of democratic government and in 1925 made himself dictator, taking the title 'Il Duce'. He set about attempting to re-establish Italy as a great European power. The regime was held together by strong state control and Mussolini's cult of personality.

In 1935, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and incorporated it into his new Italian Empire. He provided military support to Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Increasing co-operation with Nazi Germany culminated in the 1939 Pact of Steel. Influenced by Hitler, Mussolini began to introduce anti-Jewish legislation in Italy. His declaration of war on Britain and France in June 1940 exposed Italian military weakness and was followed by a series of defeats in North and East Africa and the Balkans.

In July 1943, Allied troops landed in Sicily. Mussolini was overthrown and imprisoned by his former colleagues in the Fascist government. In September, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies. The German army began the occupation of Italy and Mussolini was rescued by German commandos. He was installed as the leader of a new government, but had little power. As the Allies advanced northwards through Italy, Mussolini fled towards Switzerland. He was captured by Italian partisans and shot on 28 April 1945.

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Read a short biography about the life of Benito Mussolini - the founder of Fascism and Hitler's WW2 ally.

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History Brief: Benito Mussolini Gains Power in Italy

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Fascism Lesson for Kids - Video | Study.com

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Fascism is the political viewpoint that one’s nation and race are superior to all others. Learn about the rise of fascist dictators in Europe in…

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Francisco Franco was the ruler of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. He was known as a dictator because he ruled with absolute power. Early Life Franco was born on…

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(1892–1975). Unlike many other modern dictators, Francisco Franco was soft-spoken and religious. He began his long reign as the dictator of Spain in 1939. Francisco Franco…

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Francisco Franco Bahamonde ( Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko βa.aˈmonde]; 4 December 1892 - 20 November 1975) was a Spanish military general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title . This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship.

Born in Ferrol, Galicia, into an upper-class military family, Franco served in the Spanish Army as a cadet in the Toledo Infantry Academy from 1907 to 1910. While serving in Morocco, he rose through the ranks to become a brigadier general in 1926 at age 33, which made him the youngest general in all of Europe. Two years later, Franco became the director of the General Military Academy in Zaragoza. As a conservative and monarchist, Franco regretted the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931, and was devastated by the closing of his academy; nevertheless, he continued his service in the Republican Army. His career was boosted after the right-wing CEDA and PRR won the 1933 election, empowering him to lead the suppression of the 1934 uprising in Asturias. Franco was briefly elevated to Chief of Army Staff before the 1936 election moved the leftist Popular Front into power, relegating him to the Canary Islands. Initially reluctant, he joined the July 1936 military coup, which, after failing to take Spain, sparked the Spanish Civil War.

During the war, he commanded Spain's African colonial army and later, following the deaths of much of the rebel leadership, became his faction's only leader, being appointed Generalissimo and head of state in 1936. He consolidated all nationalist parties into the FET y de las JONS (creating a one-party state) and developed a cult of personality around his rule by founding the Movimiento Nacional. Three years later the Nationalists declared victory, which extended Franco's dictatorship over Spain through a period of repression of political opponents. His dictatorship's use of forced labor, concentration camps and executions led to between 30,000 and 50,000 deaths. Combined with wartime killings, this brings the death toll of the White Terror to between 100,000 and 200,000.

During World War II he maintained Spanish neutrality, but supported the Axis-whose members Italy and Germany had supported him during the Civil War-damaging the country's international reputation in various ways. During the start of the Cold War, Franco lifted Spain out of its mid-20th century economic depression through technocratic and economically liberal policies, presiding over a period of accelerated growth known as the " Spanish miracle". At the same time, his regime transitioned from a totalitarian state to an authoritarian one with limited pluralism. He became a leader in the anti-Communist movement, garnering support from the West, particularly the United States. As the dictatorship relaxed its hard-line policies, Luis Carrero Blanco became Franco's éminence grise, whose role expanded after Franco began struggling with Parkinson's disease in the 1960s. In 1973, Franco resigned as prime minister-separated from the office of head of state since 1967-due to his advanced age and illness. Nevertheless, he remained in power as the head of state and as commander-in-chief. Franco died in 1975, aged 82, and was entombed in the Valle de los Caídos. He restored the monarchy in his final years, being succeeded by Juan Carlos, King of Spain, who led the Spanish transition to democracy.

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born on 4 December 1892 in the Calle Frutos Saavedra in El Ferrol, Galicia, into a seafaring family. He was baptised thirteen days later at the military church of San Francisco, with the baptismal name Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo.

After relocating to Galicia, the Franco family was involved in the Spanish Navy, and over the span of two centuries produced naval officers for six uninterrupted generations (including several admirals), down to Franco's father Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araújo [es] (22 November 1855 - 22 February 1942).

His mother, María del Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade (15 October 1865 - 28 February 1934), was from an upper-middle-class Roman Catholic family. Her father, Ladislao Bahamonde Ortega, was the commissar of naval equipment at the Port of El Ferrol. Franco's parents married in 1890 in the Church of San Francisco in El Ferrol. The young Franco spent much of his childhood with his two brothers, Nicolás and Ramón, and his two sisters, María del Pilar and María de la Paz. His brother Nicolás was a naval officer and diplomat who married María Isabel Pascual del Pobil. Ramón was an internationally known aviator and a Freemason, originally with leftist political leanings. He was also the second sibling to die, killed in an air accident on a military mission in 1938.

Franco's father was a naval officer who reached the rank of vice admiral ( intendente general). When Franco was fourteen, his father moved to Madrid following a reassignment and ultimately abandoned his family, marrying another woman. While Franco did not suffer any great abuse by his father's hand, he would never overcome his antipathy for his father and largely ignored him for the rest of his life. Years after becoming dictator, under the pseudonym Jaime de Andrade, Franco wrote a brief novel called Raza, whose protagonist is believed by Stanley Payne to represent the idealised man Franco wished his father had been. Conversely, Franco strongly identified with his mother (who always wore widow's black once she realised her husband had abandoned her) and learned from her moderation, austerity, self-control, family solidarity and respect for Catholicism, though he would also inherit his father's harshness, coldness and implacability.

Military career

Main page: Military career and honours of Francisco Franco

Rif War and advancement through the ranks

Francisco followed his father into the Navy, but as a result of the Spanish-American War the country lost much of its navy as well as most of its colonies. Not needing any more officers, the Naval Academy admitted no new entrants from 1906 to 1913. To his father's chagrin, Francisco decided to try the Spanish Army. In 1907, he entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo. At the age of fourteen, Franco was one of the youngest members of his class, with most boys being between sixteen and eighteen. He was short and was bullied for his small size. His grades were average; though his good memory meant he seldom struggled academically, his small stature was a hindrance in physical tests. He graduated in July 1910 as a second lieutenant, standing 251st out of 312 cadets in his class, though this might have had less to do with his grades than with his small size and young age. Stanley Payne observes that by the time civil war began, Franco had already become a major general and would soon be a generalissimo, while none of his higher-ranking fellow cadets had managed to get beyond the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Franco was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in June 1912 at age 19. Two years later, he obtained a commission to Morocco. Spanish efforts to occupy the new African protectorate provoked the Second Melillan campaign in 1909 against native Moroccans, the first of several Riffian rebellions. Their tactics resulted in heavy losses among Spanish military officers, and also provided an opportunity to earn promotion through merit on the battlefield. It was said that officers would receive either la caja o la faja (a coffin or a general's sash). Franco quickly gained a reputation as an effective officer.

In 1913, Franco transferred into the newly formed regulares: Moroccan colonial troops with Spanish officers, who acted as elite shock troops. In 1916, aged 23 with the rank of captain, Franco was shot in the abdomen by guerilla gunfire during an assault on Moroccan positions at El Biutz, in the hills near Ceuta; this was the only time he was wounded in ten years of fighting. The wound was serious, and he was not expected to live. His recovery was seen by his Moroccan troops as a spiritual event - they believed Franco to be blessed with baraka, or protected by God. He was recommended for promotion to major and to receive Spain's highest honour for gallantry, the coveted Cruz Laureada de San Fernando. Both proposals were denied, with the 23-year-old Franco's young age being given as the reason for denial. Franco appealed the decision to the king, who reversed it. Franco also received the Cross of Maria Cristina, First Class.

On 22 October 1923, Franco married María del Carmen Polo y Martínez-Valdès (11 June 1900 - 6 February 1988). Following his honeymoon Franco was summoned to Madrid to be presented to King Alfonso XIII. This and other occasions of royal attention would mark him during the Republic as a monarchical officer.

Disappointed with the plans for a strategic retreat from the interior to the African coastline by Primo de Rivera, Franco wrote in the April 1924 issue of Revista de Tropas Coloniales ( Colonial Troops Magazine) that he would disobey orders of retreat given by a superior. He also held a tense meeting with Primo de Rivera in July 1924. According to fellow africanista, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, Franco visited him on 21 September 1924 to propose that he lead a coup d'état against Primo. In the end, Franco complied with Primo's orders, taking part in the retreat of Spanish soldiers from Xaouen [es] in late 1924, and thus earning a promotion to colonel.

Franco led the first wave of troops ashore at Al Hoceima (Spanish: Alhucemas) in 1925. This landing in the heartland of Abd el-Krim's tribe, combined with the French invasion from the south, spelled the beginning of the end for the short-lived Republic of the Rif. Franco was eventually recognised for his leadership, and he was promoted to brigadier general on 3 February 1926, making him the youngest general in Europe at age 33, according to Payne and Palacios. On 14 September 1926, Franco and Polo had a daughter, María del Carmen. Franco would have a close relationship with his daughter and was a proud parent, though his traditionalist attitudes and increasing responsibilities meant he left much of the child-rearing to his wife. In 1928 Franco was appointed director of the newly created General Military Academy of Zaragoza, a new college for all Spanish army cadets, replacing the former separate institutions for young men seeking to become officers in infantry, cavalry, artillery, and other branches of the army. Franco was removed as Director of the Zaragoza Military Academy in 1931; when the Civil War began, the colonels, majors, and captains of the Spanish Army who had attended the academy when he was its director displayed unconditional loyalty to him as Caudillo.

During the Second Spanish Republic

Franco was a subscriber to the journal of Acción Española, a monarchist organisation, and a firm believer in a supposed Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy, or contubernio (conspiracy). The conspiracy suggested that Jews, Freemasons, Communists, and other leftists alike sought the destruction of Christian Europe, with Spain being the principal target.

In 1932, the Jesuits, who were in charge of many schools throughout the country, were banned and had all their property confiscated. The army was further reduced and landowners were expropriated. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of its own. In June 1933 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (Our Dearly Beloved), "On Oppression of the Church of Spain", in which he criticised the anti-clericalism of the Republican government.

The elections held in October 1933 resulted in a centre-right majority. The political party with the most votes was the Confederación Español de Derechas Autónomas ("CEDA"), but president Alcalá-Zamora declined to invite the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, to form a government. Instead he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. Despite receiving the most votes, CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year. After a year of intense pressure, CEDA, the largest party in the congress, was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The entrance of CEDA in the government, despite being normal in a parliamentary democracy, was not well accepted by the left. The Socialists triggered an insurrection that they had been preparing for nine months. The leftist Republican parties did not directly join the insurrection, but their leadership issued statements that they were "breaking all relations" with the Republican government. The Catalan Bloc Obrer i Camperol (BOC) advocated the need to form a broad workers' front, and took the lead in forming a new and more encompassing Alianza Obrera, which included the Catalan UGT and the Catalan sector of the PSOE, with the goal of defeating fascism and advancing the socialist revolution. The Alianza Obrera declared a general strike "against fascism" in Catalonia in 1934. A Catalan state was proclaimed by Catalan nationalist leader Lluis Companys, but it lasted just ten hours. Despite an attempt at a general stoppage in Madrid, other strikes did not endure. This left the striking Asturian miners to fight alone.

With this rebellion against legitimate established political authority, the socialists also repudiated the representative institutional system as the anarchists had done. The Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga, an Azaña supporter, and an exiled vocal opponent of Francisco Franco is the author of a sharp critical reflection against the participation of the left in the revolt: "The uprising of 1934 is unforgivable. The argument that Mr Gil Robles tried to destroy the Constitution to establish fascism was, at once, hypocritical and false. With the rebellion of 1934, the Spanish left lost even the shadow of moral authority to condemn the rebellion of 1936."

At the start of the Civil War, López Ochoa was assassinated. Some time after these events, Franco was briefly commander-in-chief of the Army of Africa (from 15 February onwards), and from 19 May 1935, on, Chief of the General Staff.

1936 general election

Main page: 1936 Spanish general election

At the end of 1935, President Alcalá-Zamora manipulated a petty-corruption issue into a major scandal in parliament, and eliminated Alejandro Lerroux, the head of the Radical Republican Party, from the premiership. Subsequently, Alcalá-Zamora vetoed the logical replacement, a majority center-right coalition, led by the CEDA, which would reflect the composition of the parliament. He then arbitrarily appointed an interim prime minister and after a short period announced the dissolution of parliament and new elections.

Two wide coalitions formed: the Popular Front on the left, ranging from Republican Union to Communists, and the Frente Nacional on the right, ranging from the centre radicals to the conservative Carlists. On 16 February 1936 the elections ended in a virtual draw, but in the evening leftist mobs started to interfere in the balloting and in the registration of votes, distorting the results. Stanley G. Payne claims that the process was blatant electoral fraud, with widespread violation of the laws and the constitution. In line with Payne's point of view, in 2017 two Spanish scholars, Manuel Álvarez Tardío and Roberto Villa García published the result of a major research work in which they concluded that the 1936 elections were rigged, a view disputed by Paul Preston, and other scholars such as Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz, who denounces their conclusions as revisionist "classic Francoist anti-republican tropes".

On 19 February, the cabinet presided over by Portela Valladares resigned, with a new cabinet being quickly set up, composed chiefly of members of the Republican Left and the Republican Union and presided over by Manuel Azaña.

José Calvo Sotelo, who made anti-communism the focus of his parliamentary speeches, began spreading violent propaganda-advocating for a military coup d'état; formulating a catastrophist discourse of a dichotomous choice between "communism" or a markedly totalitarian "National" State, and setting the mood of the masses for a military rebellion. The diffusion of the myth about an alleged Communist coup d'état as well a pretended state of "social chaos" became pretexts for a coup. Franco himself along with General Emilio Mola had stirred an anti-Communist campaign in Morocco.

At the same time PSOE's left-wing socialists became more radical. Julio Álvarez del Vayo talked about "Spain's being converted into a socialist Republic in association with the Soviet Union". Francisco Largo Caballero declared that "the organized proletariat will carry everything before it and destroy everything until we reach our goal". The country rapidly descended into anarchy. Even the staunch socialist Indalecio Prieto, at a party rally in Cuenca in May 1936, complained: "We Spaniards have never seen so tragic a panorama or so great a collapse as in Spain at this moment. Abroad, Spain is classified as insolvent. This is not the road to socialism or communism but to desperate anarchism without even the advantage of liberty."

On 23 February, Franco was sent to the Canary Islands to serve as the islands' military commander, an appointment perceived by him as a destierro (banishment). Meanwhile, a conspiracy led by General Mola was taking shape.

In June 1936, Franco was contacted and a secret meeting was held within La Esperanza forest on Tenerife to discuss starting a military coup. An obelisk (which has subsequently been removed) commemorating this historic meeting was erected at the site in a clearing at Las Raíces in Tenerife.

Outwardly, Franco maintained an ambiguous attitude until nearly July. On 23 June 1936, he wrote to the head of the government, Casares Quiroga, offering to quell the discontent in the Spanish Republican Army, but received no reply. The other rebels were determined to go ahead con Paquito o sin Paquito (with Paquito or without Paquito; Paquito being a diminutive of Paco, which in turn is short for Francisco), as it was put by José Sanjurjo, the honorary leader of the military uprising. After various postponements, 18 July was fixed as the date of the uprising. The situation reached a point of no return and, as presented to Franco by Mola, the coup was unavoidable and he had to choose a side. He decided to join the rebels and was given the task of commanding the Army of Africa. A privately owned DH 89 De Havilland Dragon Rapide, flown by two British pilots, Cecil Bebb and Hugh Pollard, was chartered in England on 11 July to take Franco to Africa.

The coup underway was precipitated by the assassination of the right-wing opposition leader Calvo Sotelo in retaliation for the murder of assault guard José Castillo, which had been committed by a group headed by a civil guard and composed of assault guards and members of the socialist militias. On 17 July, one day earlier than planned, the Army of Africa rebelled, detaining their commanders. On 18 July, Franco published a manifesto and left for Africa, where he arrived the next day to take command.

A week later the rebels, who soon called themselves the Nationalists, controlled a third of Spain; most naval units remained under control of the Republican loyalist forces, which left Franco isolated. The coup had failed in the attempt to bring a swift victory, but the Spanish Civil War had begun.

From the Spanish Civil War to World War II

Franco rose to power during the Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936 and officially ended with the victory of his Nationalist forces in April 1939. Although it is impossible to calculate precise statistics concerning the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, Payne writes that if civilian fatalities above the norm are added to the total number of deaths for victims of violence, the number of deaths attributable to the civil war would reach approximately 344,000.

The war was marked by foreign intervention on behalf of both sides. Franco's Nationalists were supported by Fascist Italy, which sent the Corpo Truppe Volontarie and by Nazi Germany, which sent the Condor Legion. Italian aircraft stationed on Majorca bombed Barcelona 13 times, dropping 44 tons of bombs aimed at civilians. These attacks were requested by General Franco as retribution against the Catalan population. Similarly, both Italian and German planes bombed the Basque town of Guernica at Franco's request. The Republican opposition was supported by communists, socialists, and anarchists within Spain as well as the Soviet Union and volunteers who fought in the International Brigades.

The first months

Following the pronunciamiento of 18 July 1936, Franco assumed the leadership of the 30,000 soldiers of the Spanish Army of Africa. The first days of the insurgency were marked by an imperative need to secure control over the Spanish Moroccan Protectorate. On one side, Franco had to win the support of the native Moroccan population and their (nominal) authorities, and, on the other, he had to ensure his control over the army. His method was the summary execution of some 200 senior officers loyal to the Republic (one of them his own cousin). His loyal bodyguard was shot by Manuel Blanco. Franco's first problem was how to move his troops to the Iberian Peninsula, since most units of the Navy had remained in control of the Republic and were blocking the Strait of Gibraltar. He requested help from Benito Mussolini, who responded with an offer of arms and planes. In Germany Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr military intelligence service, persuaded Hitler to support the Nationalists; Hitler sent twenty Ju 52 transport aircraft and six Heinkel biplane fighters, on the condition that they were not to be used in hostilities unless the Republicans attacked first. Mussolini sent 12 Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 transport/bombers, and a few fighter aircraft. From 20 July onward Franco was able, with this small squadron of aircraft, to initiate an air bridge that carried 1,500 soldiers of the Army of Africa to Seville, where these troops helped to ensure rebel control of the city. Through representatives, he started to negotiate with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy for more military support, and above all for more aircraft. Negotiations were successful with the Germany and Italy on 25 July and aircraft began to arrive in Tetouan on 2 August. On 5 August Franco was able to break the blockade with the newly arrived air support, successfully deploying a convoy of fishing boats and merchant ships carrying some 3,000 soldiers; between 29 July and 15 August about 15,000 more men were moved.

The Communist International immediately started to organize the International Brigades, volunteer military units which included the Garibaldi Brigade from Italy and the Lincoln Battalion from the United States. The International Brigades were usually deployed as shock troops, and as a result they suffered high casualties.

In early August, the situation in western Andalucia was stable enough to allow Franco to organise a column (some 15,000 men at its height), under the command of then Lieutenant-Colonel Juan Yagüe, which would march through Extremadura towards Madrid. On 11 August Mérida was taken, and on 15 August Badajoz, thus joining both nationalist-controlled areas. Additionally, Mussolini ordered a voluntary army, the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) of fully motorised units (some 12,000 Italians), to Seville, and Hitler added to them a professional squadron from the Luftwaffe (2JG/88) with about 24 planes. All these planes had the Nationalist Spanish insignia painted on them, but were flown by Italian and German nationals. The backbone of Franco's air force in those days was the Italian SM.79 and SM.81 bombers, the biplane Fiat CR.32 fighter and the German Junkers Ju 52 cargo-bomber and the Heinkel He 51 biplane fighter.

Hitler's policy for Spain was shrewd and pragmatic. The minutes of a conference with his foreign minister and army chiefs at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on 10 November 1937 summarised his views on foreign policy regarding the Spanish Civil War: "On the other hand, a 100 percent victory for Franco was not desirable either, from the German point of view; rather were we interested in a continuance of the war and in the keeping up of the tension in the Mediterranean." Hitler distrusted Franco; according to the comments he made at the conference he wanted the war to continue, but he did not want Franco to achieve total victory. He felt that with Franco in undisputed control of Spain, the possibility of Italy intervening further or of its continuing to occupy the Balearic Islands would be prevented.

By February 1937 the Soviet Union's military help started to taper off, to be replaced by limited economic aid.

Rise to power

The designated leader of the uprising, General José Sanjurjo, died on 20 July 1936 in a plane crash. In the nationalist zone, "political life ceased". Initially, only military command mattered: this was divided into regional commands ( Emilio Mola in the North, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano in Seville commanding Andalucia, Franco with an independent command, and Miguel Cabanellas in Zaragoza commanding Aragon). The Spanish Army of Morocco was itself split into two columns, one commanded by General Juan Yagüe and the other commanded by Colonel José Varela.

From 24 July a coordinating , the National Defence Junta, was established, based at Burgos. Nominally led by Cabanellas, as the most senior general, it initially included Mola, three other generals, and two colonels; Franco was later added in early August. On 21 September it was decided that Franco was to be commander-in-chief (this unified command was opposed only by Cabanellas), and, after some discussion, with no more than a lukewarm agreement from Queipo de Llano and from Mola, also head of government. He was, doubtlessly, helped to this primacy by the fact that, in late July, Hitler had decided that all of Germany's aid to the Nationalists would go to Franco.

On 1 October 1936, in Burgos, Franco was publicly proclaimed as Generalísimo of the National army and Jefe del Estado ( Head of State). When Mola was killed in another air accident a year later on 2 June 1937 (which some believe was an assassination), no military leader was left from those who had organised the conspiracy against the Republic between 1933 and 1935.

Military command

Although both Germany and Italy provided military support to Franco, the degree of influence of both powers on his direction of the war seems to have been very limited. Nevertheless, the Italian troops, despite not always being effective, were present in most of the large operations in large numbers. Germany sent insignificant numbers of combat personnel to Spain, but aided the Nationalists with technical instructors and modern matériel; including some 200 tanks and 600 aircraft which helped the Nationalist air force dominate the skies for most of the war.

Franco's direction of the German and Italian forces was limited, particularly in the direction of the Condor Legion, but he was by default their supreme commander, and they declined to interfere in the politics of the Nationalist zone. For reasons of prestige it was decided to continue assisting Franco until the end of the war, and Italian and German troops paraded on the day of the final victory in Madrid.

The Nationalist victory could be accounted for by various factors: the Popular Front government had reckless policies in the weeks prior to the war, where it ignored potential dangers and alienated the opposition, encouraging more people to join the rebellion, while the rebels had superior military cohesion, with Franco providing the necessary leadership to consolidate power and unify the various rightist factions. His foreign diplomacy secured military aid from Italy and Germany and, by some accounts, helped keep Britain and France out of the war.

The rebels made effective use of a smaller navy, acquiring the most powerful ships in the Spanish fleet and maintaining a functional officer corp, while Republican sailors had assassinated a large number of their naval officers who sided with the rebels in 1936, as at Cartagena, and El Ferrol. The Nationalists used their ships aggressively to pursue the opposition, in contrast to the largely passive naval strategy of the Republicans.

Not only did the Nationalists receive more foreign aid to sustain their war effort, but there is evidence that they made more efficient use of such aid. They augmented their forces with arms captured from the Republicans, and successfully integrated over half of Republican prisoners of war into the Nationalist army. The rebels were able to build a larger air force and make more effective use of their air force, particularly in supporting ground operations and bombing; and generally enjoyed air superiority from mid-1937 onwards; this air power contributed greatly to the Nationalist victory.

The Republicans were subject to disunity and infighting, and were hampered by the destructive consequences of the revolution in the Republican zone: mobilisation was impeded, the Republican image was harmed abroad in democracies, and the campaign against religion aroused overwhelming and unwavering Catholic support for the Nationalists.

Political command

On 19 April 1937, Franco and Serrano Súñer, with the acquiescence of Generals Mola and Quiepo de Llano, forcibly merged the ideologically distinct national-syndicalist Falange and the Carlist monarchist parties into one party under his rule, dubbed Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS), which became the only legal party in 1939.

Unlike some other fascist movements, the Falangists had developed an official program in 1934, the "Twenty-Seven Points". In 1937, Franco assumed as the tentative doctrine of his regime 26 out of the original 27 points. Franco made himself jefe nacional (National Chief) of the new FET ( Falange Española Tradicionalista; Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx) with a secretary, Political Junta and National Council to be named subsequently by himself. Five days later on 24 April the raised-arm salute of the Falange was made the official salute of the Nationalist regime. Also in 1937 the Marcha Real ("Royal March") was restored by decree as the national anthem in the Nationalist zone. It was opposed by the Falangists, who associated it with the monarchy and boycotted it when it was played, often singing their own anthem, Cara al Sol (Facing the Sun) instead. By 1939 the fascist style prevailed, with ritual rallying calls of "Franco, Franco, Franco."

Franco's advisor on Falangist party matters, Ramón Serrano Súñer, who was the brother-in-law of his wife Carmen Polo, and a group of Serrano Súñer's followers dominated the FET JONS, and strove to increase the party's power. Serrano Súñer tried to move the party in a more fascist direction by appointing his acolytes to important positions, and the party became the leading political organization in Francoist Spain. The FET JONS failed to establish a fascist party regime, however, and was relegated to subordinate status. Franco placed the Carlist Manuel Fal Condé under house arrest and imprisoned hundreds of old Falangists, the so-called "old shirts" ( camisas viejas), including the party leader Manuel Hedilla, to help secure his political future. Franco also appeased the Carlists by exploiting the Republicans' anti-clericalism in his propaganda, in particular concerning the "Martyrs of the war". While the Republican forces presented the war as a struggle to defend the Republic against fascism, Franco depicted himself as the defender of "Catholic Spain" against "atheist communism".

The end of the Civil War

Although Germany had recognised the Franco Government, Franco's policy towards Germany was extremely cautious until spectacular German victories at the beginning of the Second World War. An early indication that Franco was going to keep his distance from Germany soon proved true. A rumoured state visit by Franco to Germany did not take place and a further rumour of a visit by Goering to Spain, after he had enjoyed a cruise in the Western Mediterranean, again did not materialise. Instead Goering had to return to Berlin.

During the Civil War and in the aftermath, a period known as the White Terror took place. This saw mass executions of Republican and other Nationalist enemies, standing in contrast to the war-time Red Terror. Historical analysis and investigations estimate the number of executions by the Franco regime during this time to be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead.

Stanley G. Payne says the total number of all kinds of executions in the Republican zone added up to about 56,000, and that those in the Nationalist zone probably amounted to at least 70,000, with an additional 28,000 executions after the war ended. Recent searches conducted with parallel excavations of mass graves in Spain by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica), ARMH) estimate that more than 35,000 people killed by the nationalist side are still missing in mass graves.

Julián Casanova Ruiz, who was nominated in 2008 to join the panel of experts in the first judicial investigation, conducted by judge Baltasar Garzón, of Francoist crimes, as well as historians Josep Fontana and Hugh Thomas, estimate deaths in the White Terror to be around 150,000 in total. According to Paul Preston, 150,000 wartime civilian executions took place in the Francoist area, as well as 50,000 in the Republican area, in addition to approximately 20,000 civilians executed by the Franco regime after the end of the war. According to Helen Graham, the Spanish working classes became to the Francoist project what the Jews were to the German Volksgemeinschaft.

According to Gabriel Jackson and Antony Beevor, the number of victims of the "White Terror" (executions and hunger or illness in prisons) between 1939 and 1943 was 200,000. Beevor "reckons Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The ' red terror' had already killed 38,000." Julius Ruiz concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain."

Despite the end of the war, Spanish guerrillas exiled in France, and known as the Maquis", continued to resist Franco in the Pyrenees, carrying out sabotage and robberies against the Francoist regime. Several exiled Republicans also fought in the French resistance against the German occupation in Vichy France during World War II. In 1944, a group of republican veterans from the French resistance invaded the Val d'Aran in northwest Catalonia, but were quickly defeated. The activities of the Maquis continued well into the 1950s.

The end of the war led to hundreds of thousands of exiles, mostly to France, but also to Mexico, Chile, Cuba, and the United States. On the other side of the Pyrenees, refugees were confined in internment camps in France, such as Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where 12,000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions (mostly soldiers from the Durruti Division). The 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs were divided into four categories: Brigadists, pilots, Gudaris and ordinary "Spaniards". The Gudaris (Basques) and the pilots easily found local backers and jobs, and were allowed to quit the camp, but the farmers and ordinary people, who could not find relations in France, were encouraged by the French government, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification" according to the Law of Political Responsibilities.

After the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy France regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other "undesirables", they were sent to the Drancy internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. 5,000 Spaniards thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who had been named by the Chilean President Pedro Aguirre Cerda special consul for immigration in Paris, was given responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping more than 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old cargo ship, the Winnipeg.

World War II

Some historians argue that Franco made demands he knew Hitler would not accede to, in order to stay out of the war. Other historians argue that Franco, as the leader of a destroyed and bankrupt country in chaos following a brutal three-year civil war, simply had little to offer the Axis and that the Spanish armed forces were not ready for a major war. It has also been suggested that Franco decided not to join the war after the resources he requested from Hitler in October 1940 were not forthcoming.

Franco allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to fight in the German Army against the Soviet Union (the Blue Division), but forbade Spaniards to fight in the West against the democracies. Franco's common ground with Hitler was particularly weakened by Hitler's attempts to manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco's fervent commitment to defending Catholicism. Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining rights in Spain.

According to some scholars, after the Fall of France in June 1940, Spain did adopt a pro-Axis stance (for example, German and Italian ships and U-boats were allowed to use Spanish naval facilities) before returning to a more neutral position in late 1943 when the tide of the war had turned decisively against the Axis Powers, and Italy had changed sides. Franco was initially keen to join the war before the UK could be defeated.

In the winter of 1940 and 1941, Franco toyed with the idea of a "Latin Bloc" formed by Spain, Portugal, Vichy France, the Vatican and Italy, without much consequence. Franco had cautiously decided to enter the war on the Axis side in June 1940, and to prepare his people for war, an anti-British and anti-French campaign was launched in the Spanish media that demanded French Morocco, Cameroon and Gibraltar. On 19 June 1940, Franco pressed along a message to Hitler saying he wanted to enter the war, but Hitler was annoyed at Franco's demand for the French colony of Cameroon, which had been German before World War I, and which Hitler was planning on taking back for Plan Z. Franco seriously considered blocking allied access to the Mediterranean Sea by invading British-held Gibraltar, but he abandoned the idea after learning that the plan would have likely failed due to Gibraltar being too heavily defended. In addition, declaring war on the UK and its allies would no doubt give them an opportunity to capture both the Canary Islands and Spanish Morocco, as well as possibly launch an invasion of mainland Spain itself. Franco was aware that his air force would be quickly defeated if going into action against the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Navy would easily be able to destroy Spain's small navy and blockade the entire Spanish coast to prevent imports of crucial materials such as oil. Spain depended on oil imports from the United States, which were almost certain to be cut off if Spain formally joined the Axis. Franco and Serrano Suñer held a meeting with Mussolini and Ciano in Bordighera, Italy on 12 February 1941. However, an affected Mussolini did not appear to be interested in Franco's help due to the defeats his forces had suffered in North Africa and the Balkans, and he even told Franco that he wished he could find any way to leave the war. When the invasion of the Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941, Franco's foreign minister Ramón Serrano Suñer immediately suggested the formation of a unit of military volunteers to join the invasion. Volunteer Spanish troops (the División Azul, or "Blue Division") fought on the Eastern Front under German command from 1941 to 1944. Some historians have argued that not all of the Blue Division were true volunteers and that Franco expended relatively small but significant resources to aid the Axis powers' battle against the Soviet Union.

Spanish neutrality during World War II was publicly acknowledged by leading Allied statesmen. In November 1942, US President Roosevelt wrote to General Franco: "...your nation and mine are friends in the best sense of the word." In May 1944, Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons: "In the dark days of the war the attitude of the Spanish Government in not giving our enemies passage through Spain was extremely helpful to us.... I must say that I shall always consider that a service was rendered...by Spain, not only to the United Kingdom and to the British Empire and Commonwealth, but to the cause of the United Nations." According to the personal recollection of US Ambassador to Spain Carlton Hayes, similar gratitude was also expressed by the Provisional French Government at Algiers in 1943. Franco placed no obstacles to Britain's construction of a large air base extending from Gibraltar into Spanish territorial waters, and welcomed the Anglo-American landings in North Africa. Spain did not intern any of the 1,200 American airmen who were forced to land in the country, but "gave them refuge and permitted them to leave."

After the war, the Spanish government tried to destroy all evidence of its cooperation with the Axis. In 2010, documents were discovered showing that on 13 May 1941, Franco ordered his provincial governors to compile a list of Jews while he negotiated an alliance with the Axis powers. Franco supplied Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazis' Final Solution, with a list of 6,000 Jews in Spain.

On 14 June 1940, Spanish forces in Morocco occupied Tangier (a city under international control) and did not leave until the war's end in 1945.

After the war, Franco allowed many former Nazis, such as Otto Skorzeny and Léon Degrelle, and other fascists, to seek political asylum in Spain.

Treatment of Jews

Franco had a controversial association with Jews during the WWII period. He made anti-Semitic remarks in a speech in May 1939, and made similar remarks on at least six occasions during World War II. In 2010, documents were discovered showing that on 13 May 1941, Franco ordered his provincial governors to compile a list of Jews while he negotiated an alliance with the Axis powers. Franco supplied Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazis' Final Solution, with a list of 6,000 Jews in Spain.

Contrarily, according to Anti-Semitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution (2005):

Throughout the war, Franco rescued many Jews. ... Just how many Jews were saved by Franco's government during World War II is a matter of historical controversy. Franco has been credited with saving anywhere from approximately 30,000 to 60,000 Jews; most reliable estimates suggest 45,000 is a likely figure.

Spain provided visas for thousands of French Jews to transit Spain en route to Portugal to escape the Nazis. Spanish diplomats protected about 4,000 Jews living in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. At least some 20,000 to 30,000 Jews were allowed to pass through Spain in the first half of the War. Jews who were not allowed to enter Spain, however, were sent to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp or deported to France. In January 1943, after the German embassy in Spain told the Spanish government that it had two months to remove its Jewish citizens from Western Europe, Spain severely limited visas, and only 800 Jews were allowed to enter the country. After the war, Franco exaggerated his contributions to saving Jews in order to improve Spain's image in the world and end its international isolation.

After the war, Franco did not recognize Israeli statehood and maintained strong relations with the Arab world. Israel expressed disinterest in establishing relations, although there were some informal economic ties between the two countries in the later years of Franco's governance. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967, Franco's Spain was able to utilise its positive relationship with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab world (due to not having recognised the Israeli state) to allow 800 Egyptian Jews, many of Sephardic ancestry, safe passage out of Egypt on Spanish passports. This was undertaken through Francoist Spain's Ambassador to Egypt, Angel Sagaz, on the understanding that emigrant Jews would not immediately emigrate to Israel and that they would not publicly use the case as political propaganda against Nasser's Egypt. On 16 December 1968, the Spanish government formally revoked the 1492 Edict of Expulsion against Spain's Jewish population.

Franco personally and many in the government openly stated that they believed there was an international conspiracy of Freemasons and Communists against Spain, sometimes including Jews or "Judeo-Masonry" as part of this. While under the leadership of Francisco Franco, the Spanish government explicitly endorsed the Catholic Church as the religion of the nation state and did not endorse liberal ideas such as religious pluralism or separation of Church and State found in the Republican Constitution of 1931. Following the Second World War, the government enacted the "Spanish Bill of Rights" ( Fuero de los Españoles), which extended the right to private worship of non-Catholic religions, including Judaism, though it did not permit the erection of religious buildings for this practice and did not allow non-Catholic public ceremonies. With the pivot of Spain's foreign policy towards the United States during the Cold War, the situation changed with the 1967 Law on Religious Freedom, which granted full public religious rights to non-Catholics. The overthrow of Catholicism as the explicit state religion of Spain and the establishment of state-sponsored religious pluralism would be realized in Spain in 1978, with the new Constitution of Spain, three years after Franco's death.

Spain under Franco

Main page: Francoist Spain

Franco was recognised as the Spanish head of state by the United Kingdom, France and Argentina in February 1939. Already proclaimed Generalísimo of the Nationalists and Jefe del Estado ( Head of State) in October 1936, he thereafter assumed the official title of " Su Excelencia el Jefe de Estado" ("His Excellency the Head of State"). He was also referred to in state and official documents as "Caudillo de España" ("the Leader of Spain"), and sometimes called " el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la Hispanidad" ("the Leader of the Last Crusade and of the Hispanic heritage") and " el Caudillo de la Guerra de Liberación contra el Comunismo y sus Cómplices" ("the Leader of the War of Liberation Against Communism and Its Accomplices").

On paper, Franco had more power than any Spanish leader before or since. For the first four years after taking Madrid, he ruled almost exclusively by decree. The "Law of the Head of State," passed in August 1939, "permanently confided" all governing power to Franco; he was not required to even consult the cabinet for most legislation or decrees. According to Payne, Franco possessed far more day-to-day power than Hitler or Stalin possessed at the respective heights of their power. He noted that while Hitler and Stalin maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, this was not the case in Spain in the early years after the war - a situation that nominally made Franco's regime "the most purely arbitrary in the world".

This changed in 1942, when Franco convened a parliament known as the Cortes Españolas. It was elected in accordance with corporatist principles, and had little real power. Notably, it had no control over government spending, and the government was not responsible to it; ministers were appointed and dismissed by Franco alone.

On 26 July 1947, Franco proclaimed Spain a monarchy, but did not designate a monarch. This gesture was largely done to appease the monarchists in the Movimiento Nacional ( Carlists and Alfonsists). Franco left the throne vacant, proclaiming himself as a de facto regent for life. At the same time, Franco appropriated many of the privileges of a king. He wore the uniform of a Captain General (a rank traditionally reserved for the King) and resided in El Pardo Palace. In addition he began walking under a canopy, and his portrait appeared on most Spanish coins and postage stamps. He also added "by the grace of God", a phrase usually part of the styles of monarchs, to his style.

Franco initially sought support from various groups. His administration marginalised fascist ideologues in favour of technocrats, many of whom were linked with Opus Dei, who promoted economic modernisation.

Franco adopted Fascist trappings, although Stanley Payne argued that very few scholars consider him to be a "core fascist". Regarding the regime, the Oxford Living Dictionary uses Franco's regime as an example of fascism, and it has also been variously presented as a "fascistized dictatorship", or a "semi-fascist regime". Francisco Cobo Romero writes that, besides neutering left-wing advances by using an essentially antiliberal brand of ultranationalism, "in its attempt to emulate Fascism, Francoism resorted to the sacralization and mystification of the motherland, raising it into an object of cult, and coating it with a liturgic divinization of its leader".

All in all, some authors have pointed at a purported artificialness and failure of FET JONS in order to de-emphasize the Fascist weight within the regime whereas others have embedded those perceived features of "weak party" within the frame of a particular model of "Spanish Fascism". However, new research material has been argued to underpin the "Fascist subject", both on the basis of the existence of a pervasive and fully differentiated Fascist falangist political culture, and on the importance of the Civil War for falangism, which served as an area of experience, of violence, of memory, as well as for the generation of a culture of victory. Under the perspective of a comparative of European fascisms, Javier Rodrigo considers the Francoist regime to be paradigmatic for three reasons: for being the only authoritarian European regime with totalitarian aspirations, for being the regime that deployed the most political violence in times of rhetorical peace, and for being the regime deploying the most effective "memoricidal" apparatus.

Political repression

According to Preston's estimates, Franco's forces killed about 420,000 Spaniards in the theatre of war, through extrajudicial killings during the Civil War, and in state executions immediately following its end in 1939. The first decade of Franco's rule following its end saw continued repression and the killing of an undetermined number of political opponents. In 1941 the prison population of Spain was 233,000, mostly political prisoners. According to Antony Beevor, recent research in more than half of Spain's provinces indicates at least 35,000 official executions in the country after the war, suggesting that the generally accepted figure of 35,000 official executions is low. Accounting for unofficial and random killings, and those who died during the war from execution, starvation and disease in prison, the total number is probably closer to 200,000.

By the start of the 1950s Franco's state had become less violent, but during his entire rule, non-government trade unions and all political opponents across the political spectrum, from communist and anarchist organisations to liberal democrats and Catalan or Basque separatists, were either suppressed or tightly controlled with all means, up to and including violent police repression. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) trade unions were outlawed, and replaced in 1940 by the corporatist Sindicato Vertical. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) were banned in 1939, while the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) went underground. The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) went into exile, and in 1959 the ETA armed group was created to wage a low-intensity war against Franco.

The Catholic Church was upheld as the established church of the Spanish State, and it regained many of the traditional privileges which it had lost under the Republic. Civil servants had to be Catholic, and some official jobs even required a "good behavior" statement by a priest. Civil marriages which had taken place in Republican Spain were declared null and void unless they had been confirmed by the Catholic Church. Divorce was forbidden.

Most country towns and rural areas were patrolled by pairs of Guardia Civil, a military police force for civilians, which functioned as Franco's chief means of social control. Larger cities and capitals were mostly under the jurisdiction of the Policia Armada, or the grises ("greys", due to the colour of their uniforms) as they were called.

Student revolts at universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s were violently repressed by the heavily armed Policía Armada (Armed Police). Plain-clothed secret police worked inside Spanish universities. The enforcement by public authorities of traditional Catholic values was a stated intent of the regime, mainly by using a law (the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes, Vagrancy Act) enacted by Azaña. The remaining nomads of Spain (Gitanos and Mercheros like El Lute) were especially affected.

The Spanish colonies and decolonisation

Spain attempted to retain control of its colonies throughout Franco's rule. During the Algerian War (1954-62), Madrid became the base of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a right-wing French Army group which sought to preserve French Algeria. Despite this, Franco was forced to make some concessions. When French Morocco became independent in 1956, he surrendered Spanish Morocco to Morocco, retaining only a few cities (the Plazas de soberanía). The year after, Mohammed V invaded Spanish Sahara during the Ifni War (known as the "Forgotten War" in Spain). Only in 1975, with the Green March, did Morocco take control of all of the former Spanish territories in the Sahara.

In 1968, under pressure from the United Nations, Spain granted Equatorial Guinea its independence, and the following year it ceded Ifni to Morocco. Under Franco, Spain also pursued a campaign to force a negotiation on the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, and closed its border with that territory in 1969. The border would not be fully reopened until 1985.

Economic policy

The Civil War ravaged the Spanish economy. Infrastructure had been damaged, workers killed, and daily business severely hampered. For more than a decade after Franco's victory, the devastated economy recovered very slowly. Franco initially pursued a policy of autarky, cutting off almost all international trade. The policy had devastating effects, and the economy stagnated. Only black marketeers could enjoy an evident affluence.

On the brink of bankruptcy, a combination of pressure from the United States and the IMF managed to convince the regime to adopt a free market economy. Many of the old guard in charge of the economy were replaced by technocrats ( technocrata), despite some initial opposition from Franco. The regime took its first faltering steps toward abandoning its pretensions of self-sufficiency and towards a transformation of Spain's economic system. Pre-Civil War industrial production levels were regained in the early 1950s, though agricultural output remained below prewar levels until 1958. The years from 1951 to 1956 were marked by substantial economic progress, but the reforms of the period were only sporadically implemented, and they were not well coordinated. From the mid-1950s there was a slow but steady acceleration in economic activity, but the relative lack of growth (compared to the rest of Western Europe) eventually forced the Franco regime to allow the introduction of liberal economic policies in the late 1950s. During the pre-stabilization years of 1957-1959, Spanish economic planners implemented partial measures such as moderate anti-inflationary adjustments and incremental moves to integrate Spain into the global economy, but external developments and a worsening domestic economic crisis forced them to adopt more sweeping changes. A reorganisation of the Council of Ministers in early 1957 had brought a group of younger men, most of whom were educated in economics and had experience, to the key ministries. The process of integrating the country into the world economy was further facilitated by the reforms of the 1959 Stabilization and Liberalization Plan.

When Franco replaced his ideological ministers with the apolitical technocrats, the regime implemented several development policies that included deep economic reforms. After a recession, growth took off from 1959, creating an economic boom that lasted until 1974, and became known as the " Spanish miracle".

Concurrent with the absence of social reforms, and the economic power shift, a tide of mass emigration commenced to other European countries, and to a lesser extent, to South America. Emigration helped the regime in two ways. The country got rid of populations it would not have been able to keep in employment, and the emigrants supplied the country with much needed monetary remittances.

During the 1960s, the wealthy classes of Francoist Spain experienced further increases in wealth, particularly those who remained politically faithful, while a burgeoning middle class became visible as the "economic miracle" progressed. International firms established factories in Spain where salaries were low, company taxes very low, strikes forbidden and workers' health or state protections almost unheard of. State-owned firms like the car manufacturer SEAT, truck builder Pegaso, and oil refiner INH, massively expanded production. Furthermore, Spain was virtually a new mass market. Spain became the second-fastest growing economy in the world between 1959 and 1973, just behind Japan. By the time of Franco's death in 1975, Spain still lagged behind most of Western Europe but the gap between its per capita GDP and that of the leading Western European countries had narrowed greatly, and the country had developed a large industrialised economy.

Succession

In the late 1960s, the aging Franco decided to name a monarch to succeed his regency, but the simmering tensions between the Carlists and the Alfonsoists continued. In 1969, Franco formally nominated as his heir-apparent Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón, who had been educated by him in Spain, with the new title of Prince of Spain. This designation came as a surprise to the Carlist pretender to the throne, Prince Xavier of Bourbon-Parma, as well as to Juan Carlos's father, Juan de Borbón, the Count of Barcelona, who had a better claim to the throne, but whom Franco feared to be too liberal.

However, when Juan Carlos asked Franco if he could sit in on cabinet meetings, Franco would not permit him saying that "you would do things differently." Due to the spread of democracy, excluding the Eastern Bloc, in Europe since World War II, Juan Carlos could or would not have been a dictator in the way Franco had been.

By 1973, Franco had surrendered the function of prime minister ( Presidente del Gobierno), remaining only as head of state and commander in chief of the military.

As his final years progressed, tensions within the various factions of the Movimiento would consume Spanish political life, as varying groups jockeyed for position in an effort to win control of the country's future. The assassination of prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco in the 20 December 1973 bombing by ETA eventually gave an edge to the liberalizing faction.

Main page: Military career and honours of Francisco Franco#Awards

Death and funeral

As soon as news of Franco's death was made public, the government declared thirty days of official national mourning. On 22 November Juan Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain. There was a public viewing of Franco's body at the funeral chapel opened in the Royal Palace; a mass and a military parade were held on the day of his burial.

A mass and a military parade took place on the day of his burial, 23 November 1975. As the cortège with Franco's body arrived at the Valley of the Fallen, some 75,000 rightists wearing the blue shirts of the Falangists greeted it with rebel songs from the civil war and fascist salutes.

The major European governments, who condemned Franco's regime, declined to send high-level representatives to his funeral. Some of the few foreign dignitaries and government representatives who attended were: Nelson Rockefeller, Vice President of the United States, Lord Shepherd, Leader of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom ( Harold Wilson caused controversy within the Labour Party by sending him to represent the UK Government), Prince Rainier III of Monaco, King Hussein of Jordan, Imelda Marcos, First Lady of the Philippines and the wife of Ferdinand Marcos, dictator of the Philippines, Hugo Banzer, military dictator of Bolivia, and Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, for whom the Spanish Caudillo was a role-model. It was made clear to Pinochet that he was not welcome at Juan Carlos's coronation.

Following Franco's funeral, his widow Carmen Polo supervised the moving of crates of jewely, antiques, artworks, and Franco's papers to the family's various estates in Spain or to safe havens in foreign countries. The family remained extremely rich after his death. Polo had a room in her apartment in which the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with forty columns of twenty drawers, some containing tiaras, necklaces, earrings, garlands, brooches and cameos. Others contained gold, silver, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, topazes, and pearls, but the most valuable jewels were kept in bank vaults.

Exhumation

On 24 August 2018, the Government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez approved legal amendments to the Historical Memory Law stating that only those who died during the Civil War would be buried at the Valle de los Caídos, resulting in plans to exhume Franco's remains for reburial elsewhere. Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo Poyato stated that having Franco buried at the monument "shows a lack of respect ... for the victims buried there". The government gave Franco's family a 15-day deadline to decide Franco's final resting place, or else a "dignified place" would be chosen by the government.

On 13 September 2018, the Congress of Deputies voted 176-2, with 165 abstentions, to approve the government's plan to remove Franco's body from the monument.

Franco's family opposed the exhumation, and attempted to prevent it by making appeals to the Ombudsman's Office. The family expressed its wish that Franco's remains be reinterred with full military honors at the Almudena Cathedral in the centre of Madrid, the burial place he had requested before his death. The demand was rejected by the Spanish Government, which issued another 15-day deadline to choose another site. Because the family refused to choose another location, the Spanish Government ultimately chose to rebury Franco at the Mingorrubio Cemetery in El Pardo, where his wife Carmen Polo and a number of Francoist officials, most notably prime ministers Luis Carrero Blanco and Carlos Arias Navarro, are buried. His body was to be exhumed from the Valle de los Caídos on 10 June 2019, but the Supreme Court of Spain ruled that the exhumation would be delayed until the family had exhausted all possible appeals.

On 24 September 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the exhumation could proceed, and the Sánchez government announced that it would move Franco's remains to the Mingorrubio cemetery as soon as possible. On 24 October 2019 his remains were moved to his wife's mausoleum which is located in the Mingorrubio Cemetery, and buried in a private ceremony. Though barred by the Spanish government from being draped in the Spanish flag, Francisco Franco's grandson, also named Francisco Franco, draped his coffin in the nationalist flag. According to a poll by the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, 43% of Spanish people approved of the exhumation while 32.5% opposed it. Opinions on the exhumation were divided by party line, with the Socialist party strongly in favour of the exhumation as well as the removal of his statue there. There seems to be no consensus on whether the statue should simply be moved or completely destroyed.

In Spain and abroad, the legacy of Franco remains controversial. The longevity of Franco's rule, his suppression of political opposition, and his government's effective propaganda sustained through the years have made a detached evaluation difficult. For almost 40 years, Spaniards, and particularly children at school, were told that Divine Providence had sent Franco to save Spain from chaos, atheism, and poverty. Historian Stanley Payne described Franco as being the most significant figure to dominate Spain since Philip II, while Michael Seidman argued that Franco was the most successful counterrevolutionary leader of the 20th century.

A highly controversial figure within Spain, Franco is seen as a divisive leader. Supporters credit him for keeping Spain neutral and uninvaded in World War II. They emphasize his strong anti-communist and nationalist views, economic policies, and opposition to socialism as major factors in Spain's post-war economic success and later international integration. Abroad he had support from Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer and many American Catholics, but was strongly opposed by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

The American conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr was an admirer of Franco, and praised him effusively in his magazine, National Review, where the staff were also ardent admirers of the dictator. In 1957, Buckley called him "an authentic national hero", who "above others", had the qualities needed to wrest Spain from "the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihilists", i.e., from the democratically elected government of the country.

Conversely, critics on the left have denounced him as a tyrant responsible for thousands of deaths in years-long political repression, and have called him complicit in atrocities committed by Axis forces during World War II due to his support of the Axis governments.

When he died in 1975, the major parties of the left and the right in Spain agreed to follow the Pact of Forgetting. To secure the transition to democracy, they agreed not to have investigations or prosecutions dealing with the civil war or Franco. The agreement effectively lapsed after 2000, the year the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica) was founded and the public debate started. In 2006, a poll indicated that almost two-thirds of Spaniards favoured a "fresh investigation into the war".

Franco served as a role model for several anti-communist dictators in South America. Augusto Pinochet is known to have admired Franco. Similarly, as recently as 2006, Franco supporters in Spain have honoured Pinochet.

Spaniards who suffered under Franco's rule have sought to remove memorials of his regime. Most government buildings and streets that were named after Franco during his rule have been reverted to their original names. Owing to Franco's human-rights record, the Spanish government in 2007 banned all official public references to the Franco regime and began the removal of all statues, street names and memorials associated with the regime, with the last statue reportedly being removed in 2008 in the city of Santander. Churches that retain plaques commemorating Franco and the victims of his Republican opponents may lose state aid. Since 1978, the national anthem of Spain, the Marcha Real, does not include lyrics introduced by Franco. Attempts to give the national anthem new lyrics have failed due to lack of consensus.

In Spain, a commission to "repair the dignity" and "restore the memory" of the "victims of Francoism" ( Comisión para reparar la dignidad y restituir la memoria de las víctimas del franquismo) was approved in 2004, and is directed by the social-democratic deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega.

Recently the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARHM) initiated a systematic search for mass graves of people executed during Franco's regime, which has been supported since the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party's (PSOE) victory during the 2004 elections by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government. A Ley de la memoria histórica de España (Law on the Historical Memory of Spain) was approved on 28 July 2006, by the Council of Ministers, but it took until 31 October 2007, for the Congress of Deputies to approve an amended version as "The Bill to recognise and extend rights and to establish measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship" (in common parlance still known as Law of Historical Memory). The Senate approved the bill on 10 December 2007.

Official endeavors to preserve the historical memory of Spanish life under the Franco regime include exhibitions like the one held at the Museu d'Història de Catalunya (Museum of Catalan History) in 2003-2004, titled "Les presons de Franco". This exposition depicted the experiences of prisoners in Franco's prison system, and described other aspects of the penal system such as women's prisons, trials, the jailers, and prisoners' families. The Museum no longer maintains its online version of the exhibition.

The accumulated wealth of Franco's family (including much real estate inherited from Franco, such as the Pazo de Meirás, the Canto del Pico in Torrelodones and the Casa Cornide [es] in A Coruña and its provenance have also become matters of public discussion. Estimates of the family's wealth have ranged from 350 million to 600 million euros. While Franco was dying, the Francoist Cortes voted a large public pension for his wife Carmen Polo, which the later democratic governments kept paying. At the time of her death in 1988, Carmen Polo was receiving a pension of over 12.5 million pesetas (four million more than the salary of Felipe González, then head of the government).

In popular media

Cinema and television

Raza or Espíritu de una Raza (Spirit of a Race) (1941), based on a script by "Jaime de Andrade" (Franco himself), is the semi-autobiographical story of a military officer played by Alfredo Mayo.

Franco, ese hombre (That man, Franco) (1964) is a pro-Franco documentary film directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia

The movie Dragon Rapide (1986) deals with the events previous to the Spanish Civil War, with the actor Juan Diego playing Franco

Argentine actor José "Pepe" Soriano played both Franco and his double in Espérame en el cielo (Wait for Me in Heaven) (1988).

Ramon Fontserè played him in ¡Buen Viaje, Excelencia! (Bon Voyage, Your Excellency!) (2003).

Manuel Alexandre played Franco in the TV movie 20-N: Los ultimos dias de Franco (20-N: The Last Days of Franco) (2008)

Juan Viadas played Franco in Álex de la Iglesia's movie Balada triste de trompeta (The Last Circus) (2010)

The first-season episode "Cómo se reescribe el tiempo" of the Spanish television series El Ministerio del Tiempo (2015) sets events around Franco's October 1940 meeting with Adolf Hitler at Hendaye. Franco is portrayed by actor Pep Mirás.

At the end of the movie La reina de España (The Queen of Spain), Franco, played by Carlos Areces, is spat on in the face by the fictional Macarena Granada (Penélope Cruz), a Spanish Hollywood star who has returned to Spain to film a movie during Franco's reign.

French singer-songwriter and anarchist Léo Ferré wrote "Franco la muerte", a song he recorded for his 1964 album Ferré 64. In this highly confrontational song, he directly shouts at the dictator and lavishes him with contempt. Ferré refused to sing in Spain until Franco was dead.

Literature

Franco is a character in CJ Sansom's book Winter in Madrid

...Y al tercer año resucitó (...And On the Third Year He Rose Again) (1980) describes what would happen if Franco rose from the dead.

Franco is featured in the novel Triage (1998) by Scott Anderson.

Franco is the centrepiece of the satirical work El general Franquisimo o La muerte civil de un militar moribundo by Andalucian political cartoonist and journalist Andrés Vázquez de Sola.

Franco features in several novels by Caroline Angus Baker, including Vengeance in the Valencian Water, visiting the aftermath of the 1957 Valencia floods, and Death in the Valencian Dust, about the final executions handed down before his death in 1975.

In Spanish: Francisco Franco para niños

Military career and honours of Francisco Franco

Language politics in Francoist Spain

List of dictators in modern times

Symbols of Francoism

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

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With his country torn between left and right, Francisco Franco devoted his life to a deeply conservative vision of Spain. Trained in colonial warfare, he was prepared to fight for that vision with deadly force. He joined a military coup, fought ruthlessly in the Spanish Civil War, and emerged as the dictator of Spain.

For almost 40 years, Franco worked to transform the country into a bastion of tradition. Siding with the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarchy, he saw liberals and socialists as enemies to be suppressed at any cost. As his forces gained ground during the Civil War, they executed tens of thousands of Spaniards suspected of loyalty to the other side. Even after winning the war, Franco continued this campaign, murdering and imprisoning thousands more.

The Road to Dictatorship

As a young army officer, Franco was sent to fight a colonial war in Morocco, where he learned the brutal style of warfare that would mark his career.

At 33, Franco was the youngest general in all of Europe. During the Civil War he built his image as a military leader; before long, he was named "Generalissimo"-a general among generals.

During the Civil War and later, as the ruler of Spain, Franco was single-minded in his drive to decimate the Spanish left. Under his regime, if a leftist woman had a baby while imprisoned, the child was taken and raised in a "properly Spanish" home.

Dig Deeper: Succession

Like many dictators, Franco faced a problem towards the end of his life: who would take over when he died? He wanted a successor who would carry on his vision of Spain as a deeply conservative Catholic country, and thought he had found that person in Juan Carlos I, a member of the Spanish royal family. In 1969, he named Juan Carlos as his successor, certain that the future king would keep Spain on its authoritarian path. But Franco badly misjudged his chosen successor. After the dictator's death, Juan Carlos turned out to be a reformer. The constitution was rewritten, Spain transitioned to a democratic system, and elections were held soon after.

Spain's nearly seamless transition to representative democracy was extraordinary. But in the effort to ensure a peaceful process, the crimes committed by Franco's regime were largely swept under the rug. In 2007, the Law of Historical Memory was passed to bring justice to the families of those killed under Franco. And today, at sites across the country, the bodies of his victims are still being exhumed.

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With his country torn between left and right, Francisco Franco devoted his life to a deeply conservative vision of Spain. Trained in colonial warfare, he was prepared to fight for that vision with deadly force. He joined a military coup, fought ruthlessly in the Spanish Civil War, and emerged as the dictator of Spain.

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The Gaddafi Cabinet's initial and more urgent challenges included the formation of new structures after the old constitution was dismantled. There was no significant popular resistance among the people of Libya to the new regime, but Gaddafi thought it necessary to mitigate all political crises and challenges that the representatives of the old regime could possibly pose.

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Since the toppling and ultimate death of former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, change is the watchword in Libya.

A new prime minister has been named, a new transitional government is imminent, and new portraits of fallen martyrs replace pictures of Gaddafi in public spaces.

But perhaps one of the most crucial changes is happening in more discreet locations - in schools, all across the country.

Over his more than four decades of dictatorship, Gaddafi used the country's schools to get his ideology into the minds of his citizens.

From primary to university level, Libya's national curriculum is now being cleansed of Gaddafi's far-reaching influence.

"We don't want anything that signifies him - neither his name, his family, nor his symbols and signature green color," said Mohammed Sawi, director of the National Curriculum Reform Office, which is based in Tripoli

It's a newly formed team of 160 experts charged with rewriting curriculum throughout Libya's entire public school system.

For now, the Libyan experts are doing an initial, rapid purge of the most flagrant pro-Gaddafi elements in schools. It's a stop-gap solution until Libya's transitional period ends and a new government is elected in eight months. Then, according to Sawi, the larger task of long-term revision will start.

"There are no foreign experts because what we are doing is provisional, for one year," Sawi said. "After that, experts will be brought in from abroad and we will do an international conference to see what we can do in term of broader changes to the curriculum."
Getting Rid of Subjects

For now, the easiest change is getting rid of subjects like Al-Mujtama Al-Jamahariya, the study of the "Green Book" - Gaddafi's core treatise on politics and civic life.

But beyond that, many remaining subjects require severe changes. Gaddafi, a strident anti-colonialist, refused to allow what he considered "Western" symbols - for instance, "cm" for centimeters and "kg" for kilogram. Hatem Mhenni, a member of the reform committee, said all symbols in Libyan education will be changed to meet international norms.

"We changed all the symbols that were in Arabic before into Latin script," Mhenni said. "We corrected many spelling errors and technical errors as well."

History, which had amounted to glorifying Gaddafi and his regime, is being rewritten from scratch. Until that's done, the subject has been suspended from the national curriculum.

Subjects like geography would seem less problematic. But education reformer Mahmoud al Chawadi said maps in Libyan schoolbooks were used to confuse rather than inform the students.

"Gaddafi was afraid that the students or their parents could revolt at any time, so it was important that they feel far from each other," Chawadi said. "So in the maps, he created a big separation between east and west Libya - a vast, impenetrable desert - to disorient people and make sure they felt divided, not united."

Officials have said that schools won't have a more Islamic bent, though they will add a subject called Islamic Consciousness. But like everything else in Libya now, it's hard to predict how schooling will shake out until the constitution is written and a new government is chosen.

But these days, the Ministry of Education's eyes are set on more immediate goals: the new, temporary curriculum and textbooks set to roll out to an estimated one million Libyan students by January 14th.

Until then, classes continue at places like the Rixos Technical High School in Tripoli.
Larger Education Goals

The school's principal, Brahim Al Hajaji, said the larger goal of removing the false ideas and mentalities cultivated through more than four decades of Gaddafi indoctrination may take quite a long time.

"I think a lot about the future of the students and the children of this country," said Al Hajaji. "The big challenge is the little kids who love Gaddafi and don't know why they love him."

17-year-old Epthal Abu Bakker said whenever she used to criticize Gaddafi, other kids would tease her and beat her. Now the power has changed, and Epthal can express her opinions without danger.

"We have to know, the children have to know, what they missed before," Epthal said. "About the grandparents, the old people, how they were. We have to know why Gaddafi came, why he did all that."

With the dictator gone, Libya's future is uncertain - the country is awash in weapons, and the revolutionaries are finding it hard to be good politicians.

But in the country's schools, the horizon is relatively bright - assuming the country's political journey continues smoothly.

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Caesar returned to Italy in January of 49 bce and made himself dictator. Five years of civil war between Caesar's forces and the supporters of the popular general Pompey followed. Pompey fled to Egypt and died there before Caesar could catch him. But Caesar continued to fight and win battles against Pompey's supporters.

When he returned to Rome, Caesar pardoned his old enemies and gained many supporters. Not everyone trusted Caesar, however. Many wanted Rome to be a republic governed by a group of people rather than a dictatorship led by one man alone. Sixty senators agreed to a plan to kill Caesar on March 15 (the "Ides of March" in the Roman calendar), 44 bce. Among them was Caesar's friend Marcus Junius Brutus.

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Caesar returned to Italy in January of 49 bce and made himself dictator. Five years of civil war between Caesar's forces and the supporters of the popular general Pompey followed. Pompey fled to Egypt and died there before Caesar could catch him. But Caesar continued to fight and win battles against Pompey's supporters.

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Gaius Julius Caesar (July 100 BC - 15 March 44 BC) was a military commander, politician and author at the end of the Roman Republic.

Caesar became a member of the First Triumvirate, and when that broke up, he fought a civil war against Pompey the Great. Winning the war, Caesar became Roman dictator for life. He was killed by his enemies in Rome.

Later rulers of Rome called themselves "Caesar" and this title was later copied as " Kaiser" and " Tsar ".

Julius Caesar was born in Italy around July 100 BC. The exact date is not known.

At sixteen he was the head of his family, and soon came under threat as Lucius Cornelius Sulla became Roman dictator.

Sulla set about purging Rome of his enemies. Hundreds were killed or exiled, and Caesar was on the list. His mother's family pleaded for his life; Sulla reluctantly gave in, but stripped Caesar of his inheritance. From then on, lack of money was one of the main problems in his life. Caesar joined the army, and left Rome.

On the way across the Aegean Sea, Caesar was kidnapped by pirates and held prisoner. He maintained an attitude of superiority throughout his captivity. When the pirates thought to demand a ransom of twenty talents of silver, he insisted they ask for fifty. After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and imprisoned them. He had them crucified on his own authority, as he had promised while in captivity-a promise the pirates had taken as a joke. As a sign of leniency, he first had their throats cut. He was soon called back into military action.

On the way up

On his return to Rome, he was elected as military tribune, a first step in a political career. He was elected quaestor for 69 BC. His wife Cornelia died that year. After her funeral, Caesar went to serve his quaestorship in Spain. p100 On his return in 67 BC, he married Pompeia (a granddaughter of Sulla), whom he later divorced. In 63 BC he ran for election to the post of Pontifex Maximus, as high priest of the Roman state religion. He ran against two powerful senators; there were accusations of bribery by all sides. Caesar won comfortably, despite his opponents' greater experience and standing.

After his praetorship, Caesar was appointed to govern Roman Spain, but he was still in considerable debt and needed to pay his creditors. He turned to Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome's richest men. In return for political support, Crassus paid some of Caesar's debts and acted as guarantor for others. Caesar left for his province before his praetorship had ended. In Spain he conquered two local tribes, was hailed as by his troops, and completed his governorship in high esteem. Though he was due a 'triumph' in Rome, he also wanted to stand for Consul, the most senior magistracy in the Republic. Faced with the choice between a triumph and the consulship, Caesar chose the consulship. After election, he was a consul in 59 BC.

The First Triumvirate

Caesar took power with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus. These three men ruled Rome and were called the Triumvirate.

Caesar was the go-between for Crassus and Pompey. They had been at odds for years, but Caesar tried to reconcile them. Between the three of them, they had enough money and political influence to control public business. This informal alliance, known as the First Triumvirate (rule of three men), was cemented by the marriage of Pompey to Caesar's daughter Julia. Caesar also married again, this time to Calpurnia, who was the daughter of another powerful senator.

Caesar proposed a law for the redistribution of public lands to the poor, a proposal supported by Pompey, by force of arms if need be, and by Crassus, making the triumvirate public. Pompey filled the city with soldiers, and the triumvirate's opponents were frightened.

Caesar's Gallic War

With the agreement of his partners, Caesar became the governor of Gallia ( Gaul). Gaul is the area which is today's Northern Italy, Switzerland, and France.

Caesar was the commander of the Roman legions during the Gallic War. The war was fought on the side of Rome's Gallic clients against the Germans, who wanted to invade Gaul. It was also to extend Rome's control of Gaul. Caesar's conquest of Gaul extended Rome's territory to the North Sea. In 55 BC he conducted the first Roman invasion of Britain. Caesar wrote about this eight-year war in his book De Bello Gallico ('About the Gallic Wars'). This book, written in Latin, is an important historical account.

These achievements got him great military power, and threatened to eclipse Pompey. The balance of power was further upset by the death of Crassus in 53 BC.

Caesar's civil war

In 50 BC, the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome because his term as governor had finished. Caesar thought he would be prosecuted if he entered Rome without the immunity enjoyed by a magistrate. Pompey accused Caesar of insubordination and treason.

Crossing the Rubicon

Caesar and his army approached Rome and crossed the Rubicon, a shallow river in north-east Italy, in 49 BC. It was the point beyond which no army was supposed to go. The river marked the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul to the north, and Italy proper to the south. Crossing the Rubicon caused a civil war. Pompey, the lawful Consul, and his friends, fled from Rome as Caesar's army approached.

Pompey managed to escape before Caesar could capture him. Caesar decided to head for Spain, while leaving Italy under the control of Mark Antony. Caesar made an astonishing 27-day route-march to Spain, where he defeated Pompey's lieutenants. He then returned east, to challenge Pompey in Greece. There, in July 48 BC, at Dyrrhachium Caesar barely avoided a catastrophic defeat. He then decisively defeated Pompey, at the Battle of Pharsalus later that year.

Dictator at last

In Rome, Caesar was appointed Dictator, with Mark Antony as his Master of the Horse (second in command). Caesar presided over his own election to a second consulship and then, after eleven days, resigned this dictatorship.

Late in 48 BC, he was appointed dictator again, with a term of one year. Caesar then pursued Pompey to Egypt, where Pompey was soon murdered. Caesar then became involved in an Egyptian civil war between the child pharaoh and his sister, wife, and co-regent queen, Cleopatra. Perhaps as a result of the pharaoh's role in Pompey's murder, Caesar sided with Cleopatra. He is reported to have wept at the sight of Pompey's head, which was offered to him by the pharaoh as a gift. In any event, Caesar defeated the pharaoh's forces in 47 BC and installed Cleopatra as ruler.

Caesar and Cleopatra celebrated their victory with a triumphant procession on the Nile in the spring of 47 B.C. The royal barge was accompanied by 400 additional ships, introducing Caesar to the luxurious lifestyle of the Egyptian pharaohs. Caesar and Cleopatra never married; Roman Law only recognized marriages between two Roman citizens. Caesar continued his relationship with Cleopatra throughout his last marriage, which lasted 14 years - in Roman eyes, this did not constitute adultery - and may have fathered a son called Caesarion. Cleopatra visited Rome on more than one occasion, staying in Caesar's villa, outside Rome across the River Tiber.

In 46 BC, Caesar defeated Cato and the remnants of Pompey's supporters in Africa. He was then appointed dictator for ten years. In two years he made numerous changes in Roman administration to improve the Republic. Many of these changes were meant to improve the lives of ordinary people. One example, which has lasted, was his reform of the calendar into the present format, with a leap day every four years. In February of 44 BC, one month before his assassination, he was appointed Dictator for life.

Assassination

On the Ides of March (15 March; see Roman calendar) of 44 BC, Caesar was due to appear at a session of the Senate. Mark Antony, fearing the worst, went to head Caesar off. The plotters expected this, and arranged for someone to intercept him.

According to Eutropius, around sixty or more men participated in the assassination. He was stabbed 23 times. According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal. The dictator's last words are not known with certainty, and are a contested subject among scholars and historians alike. The version best known in the English-speaking world is the Latin phrase Et tu, Brute? ('You too, Brutus?'). In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, this is the first half of the line: " Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar".

According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators; they, however, fled the building. Brutus and his companions then marched to the Capitol while crying out to their beloved city: "People of Rome, we are once again free!". They were met with silence, as the citizens of Rome had locked themselves inside their houses as soon as the rumour of what had taken place had begun to spread.

A wax statue of Caesar was erected in the forum displaying the 23 stab wounds. A crowd who had gathered there started a fire, which badly damaged the forum and the neighbouring buildings. In the ensuing chaos, Mark Antony, Octavian (later Augustus Caesar), and others fought a series of five civil wars, which would end in the formation of the Roman Empire.

The Roman empire and its emperors were so important in history that the word Caesar was used as a title in some European countries to mean emperor, even long after the Roman empire was gone. For example, Germany's emperor was called a up to the year 1919 AD and Russia's emperor was called a Tsar until 1917 AD.

Caesar as author

Caesar was a significant author.

The Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), campaigns in Gallia and Britannia during his term as proconsul; and

The Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War), events of the Civil War until immediately after Pompey's death in Egypt.

Other works historically attributed to Caesar, but whose authorship is doubted, are:

De Bello Alexandrino (On the Alexandrine War), campaign in Alexandria;

De Bello Africo (On the African War), campaigns in North Africa; and

De Bello Hispaniensi (On the Hispanic War), campaigns in the Iberian peninsula.

These narratives were written and published on a yearly basis during or just after the actual campaigns, as a sort of "dispatches from the front". Apparently simple and direct in style-to the point that Caesar's Commentarii are commonly studied by first and second year Latin students-they are in fact quite sophisticated, aimed at the middle-brow readership of minor aristocrats in Rome, Italy, and the provinces.

Based on remarks by Plutarch, Caesar is sometimes thought to have suffered from epilepsy. Modern scholarship is divided on the subject. It is more certain that he was plagued by malaria, particularly during the Sullan proscriptions of the 80s.

Caesar had four documented episodes of what may have been complex partial seizures. He may additionally have had absence seizures ( petit mal) in his youth. The earliest accounts of these seizures were made by the biographer Suetonius who was born after Caesar died. The claim of epilepsy is countered among some medical historians by a claim of hypoglycemia. This can cause seizures which are a bit like epilepsy.

In 2003, psychiatrist Harbour F. Hodder published what he termed as the "Caesar Complex" theory, arguing that Caesar was a sufferer of temporal lobe epilepsy, and that the symptoms were a factor in Caesar's decision to forgo personal safety in the days leading up to his assassination.

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This mid-1st-century-BC Roman wall painting in Pompeii is probably a depiction of Cleopatra VII as Venus Genetrix, with her son Caesarion as Cupid. Its owner Marcus Fabius Rufus most likely ordered its concealment behind a wall in reaction to the execution of Caesarion on orders of Octavian in 30 BC.

Marc Antony's Oration at Caesar's Funeral by George Edward Robertson

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Gaius Julius Caesar (July 100 BC - 15 March 44 BC) was a military commander, politician and author at the end of the Roman Republic. Caesar became a member of the First Triumvirate, and when that broke up, he fought a civil war against Pompey the Great.

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(also called Tol Saut, or Pol Porth) (1928-98), Cambodian political figure. One of the most reviled tyrants of the 20th century, Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, was held responsible for the deaths of nearly two million Cambodians during his rule from 1975 to 1979.

Born in 1925 in the Kompong Thom province of Cambodia, Saloth Sar-the man who would eventually take the name Pol Pot-emerged from humble peasant origins to become the leader of Cambodia's radical revolutionary Khmer Rouge party. Like many in the region then known as French Indochina, Saloth Sar began his political career fighting under Vietnamese independence leader Ho Chi Minh in the Indo-Chinese campaign against France.

In 1949, at the age of 20, Saloth Sar left Cambodia and traveled to Paris on scholarship to study radio technology. In Paris, he neglected his studies and devoted his time to radical student organizations, becoming further committed to the ideology of Communism, with which he first became acquainted during his period in the anti-French resistance. Following Ho Chi Minh and Chinese peasant Communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, Saloth Sar came to embrace a radical political ideology that blended aspects of agrarian, or rural-based, Marxism with the dogma of nationalism.

Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in 1953 to find a country far different from the one he had left only four years before. French rule was on the verge of collapse throughout Indochina, and Cambodia had received limited autonomy under the French. The following year, Cambodia won full independence following France's defeat in its war with Indochina, and an independent state was established under the Cambodian royal dynasty of King Norodom Sihanouk.

While working as a teacher to support himself, Saloth Sar secretly worked in the Cambodian radical underground to foment opposition to the monarchy of King Sihanouk. In 1960, Saloth Sar, along with other Cambodian communists, formed the Cambodian Communist party. King Sihanouk later dubbed this group the "Khmer Rouge," or Red Cambodians, a name which the party itself embraced. As a leader of this movement, Saloth Sar took the nom de guerre Pol Pot. In 1967, with Pol Pot firmly in charge of the organization, the Khmer Rouge began its military campaign against the Cambodian government, using guerrilla tactics developed and honed by Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh.

For 15 years the Khmer Rouge waged a protracted war against the Cambodian governments of King Norodom Sihanouk and, after Sihanouk was deposed in 1970, the United States-supported government of military general Lon Nol. In 1975, following the withdrawal of United States forces from neighboring Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge attacked and invaded the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, bringing the country under its control. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge governed the country with a ruthless and bloody hand. Nearly two million Cambodians were killed during the four-year experiment in peasant communism. Many died from starvation and disease during the Khmer Rouge government's attempt to collectivize agricultural production. Even more were killed by direct methods as the Khmer Rouge conducted purges of its own ranks and wantonly tortured and executed political opponents and so-called class enemies.

In 1979, conflicts between Cambodia and Vietnam led to a Vietnamese invasion. The Vietnamese army deposed Pol Pot's government and established a puppet government in its place. The Khmer Rouge fled to neighboring Thailand and, with the backing of the Thai government, established military bases on the southern Thai border. For 17 years the Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the various Cambodian governments, despite the fact that a supposed peace agreement was signed between all warring factions in 1991. Elections in 1993, which were boycotted by the Khmer Rouge, brought Norodom Ranaridah, the son of King Sihanouk, to power in a coalition government. In August 1996 the government announced that it would offer amnesty to any Khmer Rouge guerrillas who left Pol Pot's army and joined the government's forces. Approximately 4,000 members of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot's brother-in-law, accepted the government's offer, leaving fewer than 4,000 guerrillas under the command of Pol Pot.

These last vestiges of the once-powerful Khmer Rouge peasant army began to split apart, siding with the various rivals for power within the Khmer Rouge hierarchy and ultimately leading to the fall of Pol Pot in 1997. Unconfirmed reports stated that sharp disagreements had broken out between a Khmer Rouge faction loyal to Pol Pot and one loyal to his former defense minister, Son Sen. The power struggle between the two men culminated in Pol Pot's allegedly ordering the execution of Son Sen and 11 members of Son Sen's family on June 16, 1997. Following the executions, a 1,000-man force loyal to Son Sen turned against Pol Pot and pursued him and 300 loyal soldiers deep into the thick Cambodian jungle. After five days of pursuit, Pol Pot, ailing and abandoned by all but 15 soldiers, was apprehended by his former allies and followers near the town of Anlong Veng on the Cambodia-Thailand border.

Following the capture of Pol Pot, the Cambodian government stated its intention to have the former dictator tried by an international tribunal. The United States, which had been directly involved in the struggle against Pol Pot's forces in the 1970s, backed the Cambodian government's proposal to capture Pol Pot and try him before a world court on charges of genocide. However, the former dictator, held under house arrest by the Khmer Rouge, died of an apparent heart attack on April 15, 1998, before he could be brought to trial.

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(also called Tol Saut, or Pol Porth) (1928-98), Cambodian political figure. One of the most reviled tyrants of the 20th century, Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge...

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In the four years that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, it was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century.

The brutal regime, in power from 1975-1979, claimed the lives of up to two million people.

Under the Marxist leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge tried to take Cambodia back to the Middle Ages, forcing millions of people from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside.

But this dramatic attempt at social engineering had a terrible cost.

Whole families died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork.

Communist philosophy

The Khmer Rouge had its origins in the 1960s, as the armed wing of the Communist Party of Kampuchea - the name the Communists used for Cambodia.

Based in remote jungle and mountain areas in the north-east of the country, the group initially made little headway.

But after a right-wing military coup toppled head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, the Khmer Rouge entered into a political coalition with him and began to attract increasing support.

In a civil war that continued for nearly five years, it gradually increased its control in the countryside.

Khmer Rouge forces finally took over the capital, Phnom Penh, and therefore the nation as a whole in 1975.

During his time in the remote north-east, Pol Pot had been influenced by the surrounding hill tribes, who were self-sufficient in their communal living, had no use for money and were "untainted" by Buddhism.

When he came to power, he and his henchmen quickly set about transforming Cambodia - now re-named Kampuchea - into what they hoped would be an agrarian utopia.

Declaring that the nation would start again at "Year Zero", Pol Pot isolated his people from the rest of the world and set about emptying the cities, abolishing money, private property and religion, and setting up rural collectives.

Anyone thought to be an intellectual of any sort was killed. Often people were condemned for wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language.

Ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslims in Cambodia were also targeted.

Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres.

The most notorious of these centres was the S-21 jail in Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng, where as many as 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned during the regime's four years in power.

Hundreds of thousands of others died from disease, starvation or exhaustion as members of the Khmer Rouge - often just teenagers themselves - forced people to do back-breaking work.

Opening up

The Khmer Rouge government was finally overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops, after a series of violent border confrontations.

The higher echelons of the party retreated to remote areas of the country, where they remained active for a while but gradually became less and less powerful.

In the years that followed, as Cambodia began the process of reopening to the international community, the full horrors of the regime became apparent.

Survivors told their stories to shocked audiences, and in the 1980s the Hollywood movie The Killing Fields brought the plight of the Khmer Rouge victims to worldwide attention.

Pol Pot was denounced by his former comrades in a show trial in July 1997, and sentenced to house arrest in his jungle home.

But less than a year later he was dead - denying the millions of people who were affected by this brutal regime the chance to bring him to justice.

The UN helped establish a tribunal to try surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, beginning work in 2009.

Only three Khmer Rouge leaders have ever been sentenced.

In August 2014, Nuon Chea - considered Brother Number 2 to Pol Pot - and the regime's head of state Khieu Samphan were jailed for life for crimes against humanity.

In November 2018, the tribunal also found them guilty of genocide over the attempted extermination of the Cham and Vietnamese minorities.

It remains the first and only genocide conviction against the Khmer Rouge.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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Khmer Rouge

Active

1951-1999

Ideology

Autarky
Communism (until 1981)
Khmer nationalism

Political position
Far-left

Leader
Pol Pot

Headquarters
Phnom Penh

The Khmer Rouge was the name popularly given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name had originally been used in the 1950s by Norodom Sihanouk.

The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in the jungles of Eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese army, the Viet Cong and the Pathet Lao. Despite a massive American bombing campaign against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when in 1975 they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the government of the Khmer Republic.

Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan renamed the country as Democratic Kampuchea and immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. The regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the deaths of 1.5 to 3 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.

The Khmer Rouge regime was highly repressive. The genocide was in part the result of the regime's social engineering policies. Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria.

The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam entered Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge's forces.

The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand. The US and China and their allies, notably the Thatcher government, backed Pol Pot in exile in Thailand, providing the Khmers with intelligence, food, weapons and military training. The Khmer Rouge continued to fight the Vietnamese and the new People's Republic of Kampuchea government during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War which ended in 1989.

The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by a United Nations-backed court, which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign.

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Khmer Rouge Active 1951-1999 Ideology Autarky Communism (until 1981) Khmer nationalism Political position Far-left Leader Pol Pot Headquarters Phnom Penh The Khmer Rouge was the name popularly given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

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