Combatientes fascistas de España: La División Azul a través de los estudios culturales
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Date
2021-09-13
Authors
Tejada Lopez, Macarena
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Gradually in Spain, the Blue Division—a volunteer corps of 47,000 sent by the Spanish fascist government to fight alongside Hitler in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front (Novgorod-Leningrad area) between October 1941 and October 1943—has been acquiring increasing visibility in popular literature. This mini-boom is better understood within a broader context that spans back to the "memory boom" of the 2000s, which in Spain counted with the support of the socialist government of Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2011). His efforts to recuperate the historical memory and the unearthing of crimes during Francoism also drove the ex-Divisioners to share their experiences in the Russian campaign, since, ultimately, their stories also belong within the complex historical memory of World War II Spain and Europe. Combatientes Fascistas de España examines the memoirs and war diaries that three key Divisioners, Dionisio Ridruejo, José Martínez Esparza, and José Luis Gómez Tello, penned in the 1940s and 1950s, to address how their racial and ideological positions inform their observations of the confrontation between the Other (the Russians, the East) versus Us (the Spaniards, the West); and to explore questions of gender identity related to the soldier as the model of masculinity under fascism. This project additionally deconstructs the only two feature films directed by exdivisioners Pedro Lazaga (1954) and Falangist José María Forqué (1956) from the standpoint of the political economy of cinema, an approach that understands films as a marketable product. The cinematic sections of this project address how the Francoist State financed cinema to elevate the anti-Communist discourse during the Cold War. My study of imaginative filmic and autobiographical works about the Blue Division contributes to a piece of European history that illuminates—beyond historiography—the Hispano-Nazi collaboration and the performance of Spanish fascist masculinities in World War II. Moreover, it contributes to the cultural production of the Cold War period by studying how Francoism borrowed from the social capital inherent to the novels, memoirs, and films of the Blue Division in order to shore up the anti-Communist ideological foundation that fueled and permitted the protraction of the Franco regime: the longest-lived dictatorship in 20th century Europe.
This dissertation builds on previously published material.
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Keywords
Biografía, Division Azul, Fascismo, Franquismo, Masculinidad, Segunda Guerra Mundial