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For king & country and against the Riffs, he campaigned through twelve years in North Africa—cruel, callous colonial war that almost cost his life (a grave stomach wound)—and gained swift steps up the ladder of promotion. At 23, he was El Commandantin—The Little (5 ft. 3 in.) Major. At 34, he was Spain's youngest general.
For king & country, he was training "gentlemen cadets" at Saragossa Military Academy when King Alfonso XIII, in 1931, bowed to the bloodless verdict of a popular election and hurried into exile, leaving Spain to the republicans. To Franco, parliamentary democracy was as foreign as military force was familiar. When the new government closed his academy as a "hotbed" of reaction, the General publicly lamented the passing of the monarchist flag ("kiss its rich folds . . . a chill of emotion running through your bodies and your eyes beclouded at the thought of the glories it embodies").
Sent to Majorca as Military Governor of the Balearics (in effect, a political banishment), he was recalled in 1934 by the Rightist Government dominated by Catholic Leader José Maria Gil Robles. Bloodily he crushed a bloody Leftist revolt in Asturias. When the Left came back in 1936, Franco was again packed off—this time as Commander General of the Canaries. There, in conspiratorial contact that reached to Rome and Berlin, he waited for the coup that would destroy the Republic.
Way of Conspiracy. The No. 1 conspirator against the Republic was General José Sanjurjo. As a trusted subordinate (Sanjurjo affectionately called him "Franquito"), Franco was assigned to lead the army of rebellion in Africa and southern Spain. In the hot, fitful days of July 1936, the exile disguised himself by shaving his mustache, donning mufti and spectacles; secretly he flew off to Morocco. There he exulted to his tough Foreign Legionnaires and Moors: "Now we are on our way." Suddenly Sanjurjo died in a plane crash. Less than three months after the Putsch began, Franco became Generalissimo of all Nationalist forces and of the long march across the peninsula.
The Generalissimo put his trust, as ever, in God; but he also turned to the atheist Mussolini and the pagan Hitler. As the civil war which was to be the proving ground of World War II drew to its close in early 1939, Count Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary that Franco had been promised more Axis troops and arms for "the final blow at Valencia and Madrid. . . . The situation in Catalonia is good. Franco improved it with a very painstaking and drastic housecleaning. Many Italians [presumably of the Loyalist Garibaldi Battalion] also were taken prisoner: anarchist and communist . . . The Duce . . . ordered that they all be shot,, adding, 'Dead men tell no tales.' "
Way of All Flesh. In World War II Franco's star ran a wishful and wary course. Smilingly he shook hands with Hitler at the border of defeated France. Glowingly he wrote: "Dear Führer . . . I stand ready at your side . . . and decidedly at your disposal, united in common historical destiny. . . ." He paid back* the 400 million marks that had helped finance his rise to power. He sheltered U-boats in Spanish harbors, Italian planes in the Balearics, sent a Blue Division to fight the Russians.