The Spanish Military and Warfare from 1899 to the Civil War by José Vicente Herrero Pérez

Author:José Vicente Herrero Pérez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

An Academy for a Dictatorship?

Much has been made of French War Minister André Maginot’s visit in October 1930 by laudatory histories of the Saragossa academy (often written by military authors) and Franco’s hagiographers. The French politician, whose trip’s purpose was just to bestow a French military award on Franco, declared that the academy’s organization was ‘perfect, and amongst all the military schools in Europe [the Saragossa academy] is doubtless the most modern one’. 69 However, the French historian Bartolomé Bennassar wonders how Maginot reached such conclusion after a visit which was brief (13.45 a.m. to 16.30 p.m.) and superficial (after discounting speeches, other formalities, and the lunch, there only was enough time left for a swift tour of the main building and a parade of the officer candidates). Moreover, Maginot’s own military credentials were limited (those of a former reservist sergeant). In short, an underqualified observer saw no more than polished drill and well-kept installations in a rush. Was this enough to assess the real quality of professional training in a European military academy? Bennassar doesn’t think so; neither does the present author.

An alternative explanation advanced by Bennassar is that Maginot based his judgement on reports of the French military attaché; unfortunately, it cannot be corroborated because the records of this period hold in the French army’s archives are incomplete. 70 Whatever the truth, the noteworthy point is that Bennassar seems to be the first author who applied the historical method to check the accuracy of Maginot’s words. Non-judgemental historians of the academy or Franco worshippers accept readily the latter at face value. 71 But even those who adopt a critical stance seem to rate arbitrarily Maginot as a major expert in military professional matters and, as a result of his association with the French debacle of 1940, use his words to question the Saragossa academy syllabus’ suitability for modern warfare. 72

Maginot’s visit exemplifies how prejudiced the judgments on the General Military Academy have tended to be as a consequence of the later course of Spanish history and Franco’s role in it. Nonetheless, the Saragossa academy had already raised disapproving views in its time, although it was too short-lived to generate too much critical literature from contemporaries. If hostility from the learned corps was to be expected, hostility from within the infantry corps was less so. But Enrique Ruiz-Fornells—an infantryman and a reputable staff officer and military essayist who was appointed undersecretary of the War Ministry in 1930—strongly opposed the academy because it might threaten his arm’s relative position within the army (a personal antipathy to Franco himself influenced his opinions as well). 73 Ruiz-Fornells’ view is peculiar in the light of the faculty’s arm ratios overall: 42% of the teaching staff belonged to the infantry, in contrast with 14% belonging to the artillery. 74

It is also curious that negative assessments about the academy’s syllabus fell into two entirely opposed types. Jesús Pérez Salas , a future senior commander in the Republican army , wrote (after the Civil War) that

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