Franco A Concise Biography eBook Gabrielle Ashford Hodges
Download As PDF : Franco A Concise Biography eBook Gabrielle Ashford Hodges 
General Francisco Franco came to prominence during the days of David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson and was able to cling to absolute political power until his death in 1975. Over his fifty-year career, he became one of the four dictators who changed the face of Europe during the twentieth century.
Franco joined the Spanish Army when he was barely fifteen years old. In 1926 he became the youngest general in Europe and, driven by an astonishing sense of his own greatness, was recognized as sole military commander of the Nationalist zone during the Spanish Civil War. His ambition was always to hold on to the power that he had secured. In practice, this meant winning the Spanish Civil War and surviving the fall of the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini and the international isolation that followed their defeat.
But behind the military heroics and dexterous political footwork lay an insecure and vengeful man, wracked by contradictory impulses. Although fueled by a single-minded determination to succeed, he was full of self-doubt. A bold and sometimes inspirational soldier in Africa, he became an indecisive, hesitant military commander during the Civil War. Filled with a burning conviction that his destiny was bound up with the medieval kings of Spain and God Himself, he appeared shy, withdrawn, and humble. Ruthlessly intent on wiping out all political opposition, he denied heatedly that he was a dictator. A stubborn man, he could be remarkably flexible when it came to safeguarding his power.
Gabrielle Ashford Hodges' psychological biography considers Franco's mental state, as well as his political motivation. In doing so, it succeeds admirably in getting under the skin of Europe's most enduring dictator.
Franco A Concise Biography eBook Gabrielle Ashford Hodges
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Franco A Concise Biography eBook Gabrielle Ashford Hodges Reviews
It seems to me the author strains too much to paint Franco as a simpleton. For instance, he will tell you in detail why his strategy was foolish but fails to explain why it worked. Still, the book told me much about the man I didn't know. I'd say it is worth the time and money to read.
This study of Francisco Franco, the little man with the high voice who ruled Espana with an iron fist, is a fascinating portrait of how power operates. The author has the unfortunate tendency, now very fashionable in modern biography, of psychoanalyzing the subject. Whether or not you believe his contention that the boy/man was formed by the unresolvable tensions between a libertine, cold-hearted father and an all-loving Catholic mother, there is no doubt that as a young soldier, hell bent for glory in Northern Africa, Franco showed exceptional military ability, and acted bravely, in many a dangerous situation. As a politician, handed a divided and wounded country to run, he also displayed an uncanny ability to keep all the warring internal factions--from the military establishment to the Fascists to the Monarchists and the rest--under his control, often by convincing each camp that he held their best interests at heart. The truth appears to be that he apparently had no real program, no enduring philosophy other than his obsessive need to hold on to his own power at all cost. He believed, as do many tyrants, that God had ordained him to rule with the particular mission of saving his country from godless communism. During the civil war he called upon Hitler and Mussolini for assistance, but when that relationship soured, and it looked certain that the Axis would be defeated in the Second World War, the man was then perfectly willing to turn to the United States for help in return for air-bases. Pragmatic, opportunistic? Yes. In some way this book is a classic How-To-Do-It. How to stay in power.
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