All language subtitles for The.Dictators.Playbook.Series.1.Part.5.Francisco.Franco.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

(male narrator) August 2017.

In Valladolid, Spain.

A mass grave is revealed.

It is just one
of more than 2000

mass burial sites
across the nation.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
According to Amnesty
International,

Spain has the highest number

of mass graves in the world
after Cambodia.

(narrator)
This is the legacy
of General Francisco Franco,

victor of the Spanish Civil War.

After taking control
of the country in 1939,

he secures his hold
on the nation

by unleashing a wave of violence
against his countrymen.

(Paul Preston)
There were probably
20,000 people executed

after the civil war,
after the end of hostilities.

It's a regime of terror.

(narrator)
Within 6 years, Adolf Hitler
will take his own life.

Benito Mussolini will be
swinging from his heels.

But Franco will rule Spain
with ruthless efficiency

for almost 40 years.

(Paul Preston)
Franco was someone who never
lost a minute's sleep

over the crimes that
were committed in his name.

(narrator)
What drove this general
to wage war on his people,

destroy his country's
new democracy,

and establish Europe's
longest dictatorship?

[loud cheering]

(woman)
Dictatorships have had
an incredible impact

in the past century.

These dictators ended up
learning from one another.

(man)
They're all different, but
many use the same tactics.

(woman) The use of terror.
(man) Propaganda.

(woman) Control the elites.
Create an enemy.

Cult of personality.
(man) Use violence--

These are tools that dictators
use to stay in power.

[loud
cheering]

(narrator)
The roots of Francisco Franco's
dictatorship

lie within deep divisions
in the Spanish nation

and within his own family.

Born in 1892,

Franco is the 7th generation
of a naval dynasty.

For almost 2 centuries,

his family has sailed for
the legendary Spanish fleet.

Francisco dreams
of joining them.

But it's not to be.

In 1898, when Franco is 6,

Spain goes to war
with the United States

over control of Cuba.

Spain's navy is devastated.

When the Spanish-American war
ends, the country has lost Cuba,

Puerto Rico, and almost
all of its empire.

It is a wrenching and
humiliating amputation.

There was an identity crisis
if you didn't have an empire.

it was a cultural political
trauma

for families related to the
military, for the military

and the political elites,
for the government.

(narrator)
As Spain's empire
falls to pieces,

so does Franco's homelife.

His father, Nicolas Franco
is a naval officer,

and a notorious man about town,

known for his womanizing
and drinking.

(Paul Preston) I think a lot of
Franco's problems derived,

of course, from the family
dynamic.

His father despised him,

he had two brothers,
and his father

massively preferred
the other two.

Franco's mother was
a very strict Catholic.

Franco was the mommy's boy.

These two things I think created
a sense of vulnerability,

but also a sense that he had
to prove himself.

(narrator)
Franco will adopt his mother's

deeply conservative vision
of Spain

and devote his life
to making it a reality.

Yet he also wants
to please his father,

and that means a career
in the military.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
The problem with Franco was

that he really wanted
to be in the navy.

The Naval Academy was closed

because Spain has lost
most of its fleet in the war

so he has to settle
for infantry,

which was far less prestigious.

(narrator) 1907...

Franco enters the Toledo
military academy

determined to be an officer.

Small for his age

and conspicuous
for a high-pitched voice,

he endures severe bullying.

(Paul Preston)
Well, Franco was
a very small person

and one of the ways in which he
coped with being in the army

was by creating
a series of myths,

and throughout his whole life,

Franco was a bit like
the Wizard of Oz,

he was somebody who hid behind
a series of masks.

(narrator)
When Franco graduates in 1910

his ambitions define him
as much as his uniform.

Spain's military class
is obsessed

with restoring
the nation's prestige.

For a young officer,
the best place to start is

in one of Spain's remaining
colonial outposts, Morocco.

in Spain, in the peninsula,

if you were an army officer,
promotion was incredibly slow.

It was dead man's shoes.

Franco chose to go to Africa

because it was the best place
to get quick promotion.

[machine-gun fire]

(narrator) 1912...

Moroccan rebels have launched
a violent campaign

to force the Spanish out.

Lieutenant Franco is assigned
to Spain's Army of Africa,

a battalion of native Moroccans
used for the fiercest fighting.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
Going to Africa, he was lucky.

If he didn't get killed,

meant the possibility
of rapid promotion.

This is what Franco
and many other officers did--

they became high-ranking
officers within a few years...

if they survived.

(narrator)
The Army of Africa has a name

for young officers
like Franco...

"the Betrothed of Death."

Of the first 42 officers
assigned to the unit in 1912,

only 7 are alive in 1915.

And one of them is Franco.

While fighting with the Army of
Africa, he employs a tactic

that will come to define
his dictatorship.

Terror is the indiscriminate
and arbitrary use of force

that can incite fear
in the hearts of people.

These acts of terror are public.

They're meant to be public;
they're meant to seen.

The experience in Morocco,
the experience of colonial war,

which is war without limits,

completely wild war
against civilians

where torture and mass killings
are allowed,

these definitely shaped
his character.

(narrator)
His unit becomes infamous
for its bloodthirsty tactics.

They cut the ears and the noses
of the Moroccan rebels,

and they take pictures of
themselves with these trophies.

This is a brutal war,

and this is where this man is
finding his personality,

who he is.

(Paul Preston)
Obviously it would be impossible

to know that Franco arrived
as a young soldier in Africa

determined that one day he would
be the dictator of Spain.

It wasn't like that.

But very soon we can see lots
and lots of pieces of evidence

of just how calculating he was.

(narrator)
Franco learns that fear
can be useful with subordinates

as well as enemies.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
One of his soldiers refused
to eat his lunch one day

and threw it back in the face
of one of the officers.

Franco had that soldier shot,

and he forced the rest
of the battalion

to parade past the corpse of
this dead soldier

to remind them of the need
for discipline.

(narrator)
Terror is his tactic, and
the Army of Africa is his tool.

One day he will use both to
seize ultimate power in Spain.

But in 1916, he is a young
officer testing his limits

and building a reputation
for bravery.

To be courageous,
you need to know fear.

You need to have
the imagination to know

what you're
letting yourself in for,

and Franco, in my view,
was empty inside.

He had, seems to have had
little or no emotion,

so when it's said, "Franco
is a man who knew no fear,"

I believe that,
I believe he knew no fear,

and that to me, for what it's
worth, is not courage.

(narrator)
In June, Franco's unit makes

a frontal assault
on insurgents trenches.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
This is very dangerous.

And the sharpshooters, of
the rebels target officers.

(narrator)
Leading from the front,
Franco takes a bullet.

His unit loses 56
of its 133 men.

And Franco is
very nearly one of them.

At the time, an abdominal wound
is often a death sentence.

Against all odds,
he makes a full recovery

and is promoted to major.

To his Moroccan troops,
Franco's survival is a sign.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
They started to say
that he had "baraca"--

like a sort of blessing,
good luck.

So they follow him blindly.

(narrator)
For Franco, it's confirmation
that his life has a purpose.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
That adulation persuaded him

that he was someone special,
that he'd been chosen

perhaps by providence,
perhaps by God, to help Spain.

(Paul Preston)
In a very famous interview
he said,

"Without Africa, I do not know
how to understand myself."

(narrator)
Franco's African experience is

also an opportunity
to enhance his reputation.

In Morocco you have this group
of embedded journalists

who are quite pro war,
who are there to promote,

to make popular the cause of the
war among the Spanish public.

They have been sent by
the newspapers from Madrid,

from Barcelona,
from the provinces,

and they are looking for heroes.

(Paul Preston)
Very early on, he began
to cultivate journalists,

say from about 1916 onwards,

there are more and more
articles about him.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
He became very political
as well.

Because there is, one thing is
the officer in combat

and then the officer who tells
the story of the combat.

And something that Franco
learned very early is

how to please the press
with the right stories.

(Paul Preston)
The national right-wing
newspaper

starts to refer to him
as "el ace de la legion,"

the ace of the legion.

(narrator)
In 1926,

Franco is promoted
to brigadier general.

At 33, he is the youngest
general in all of Europe.

The bullied little cadet is
a certified war hero.

Africa has given him
the respect he craves,

and the tactics that will mark
his rise to power.

But now,
at the peak of his career,

a tide of political change could
destroy his dreams for Spain.

[loud explosions]

The convulsions
of the First World War

and the Russian revolution
of 1917

have transformed
European society.

By contrast with its
enduring monarchy,

Spain seems tradition bound.

The population is largely rural,
and the Catholic church

a powerful force, but even here,
change is brewing.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
The country was industrializing.

The country was becoming
more urban.

There were huge pockets
of poverty.

Very strong social inequalities,

and the political system
was problematic.

(narrator)
The gap between rich and poor

is a faultline that divides
Spanish society.

Those who have knew what
they had,

and they knew how to go about
keeping it,

whereas all those who wanted
to change things

all had very different ideas.

(narrator)
Inspired by Russia's
Communist Revolution,

many turn to socialism,
which is

sweeping countries like France
and Germany.

Others look to the Fascism
of Benito Mussolini's Italy.

Some blame the Catholic Church

for complicity in maintaining
an oppressive status quo.

(Paul Preston)
You go into Spanish churches,

and they have, you know,
gold altars and so on.

In places where the people
were starving,

this created huge hatred.

(narrator)
Anarchists want to tear down
the existing power structure.

So all of this is happening
and for people like Franco

and traditionalists, those kind
of related to the military,

this is really absolutely beyond
the pale,

this is not what they
want, they are looking back

to an imperial Spain of
centuries gone

where there was hierarchy,
where people knew their place.

(narrator) April 1931.

Support for the monarchy
is plummeting.

Facing a possible insurrection,

the Spanish King
agrees to step down.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
King Alfonso XIII

steps down in 1931 because
the country rejects him.

(Helen Graham)
He didn't have the support

of sufficient numbers
of old Spain.

There was an awful lot of
animus against Alfonso the 13th

not against the monarchy so much
but against him personally.

So there's a sense of new
constituencies

knocking on the door
of an old system

and wanting some kind of
representation.

(narrator)
Within months
a new republic is formed

and a left-leaning government
established.

A new constitution guarantees

a free press
and regular elections.

Every Spanish adult,
man or woman, can vote.

But not everyone is celebrating
this tide of change

(Paul Preston)
Franco has an idea
of the authentic Spain.

It's Catholic,
it protected property,

it protected
the sanctity of marriage,

all of these things were
challenged by the left.

(narrator)
The left threatens
his vision of Spain.

Soon he'll have the opportunity
to strike back.

November, 1933.

Spain swings to the right

as a coalition of conservative
parties wins the next election.

Franco, the hero of Africa,
is promoted to major general.

But almost a year later,

socialists and anarchists
stage a massive strike

in the coal-rich region
of Asturias in the Northwest.

The right-wing government
turns to Franco,

who welcomes the chance
to restore order.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
Communists and socialists

offended him in a way,
automatically.

He was very religious,
very Catholic.

He saw people on the left
as atheists,

who did not believe in God.

(narrator)
To warn the left against
further acts of rebellion,

he turns to a tactic used
by other would-be strongmen.

(Dan Slater) So for Franco,
terror is a form of
communication.

You don't have to attack every
single person

who belongs to these
organizations--

if you used terror against
some of them,

it sends the signal that anyone
whose loyalty goes

to these leftist movements is
going to be in trouble.

[loud gunshot]

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
He ordered troops from
the Army of Africa

to go to Asturias.

By doing that, he knows that
it's going to take there

troops that are
ruthless, very violent.

(narrator)
Franco's troops round up
more than 3000 Spaniards

and gun them down.

(Paul Preston)
That was a symbol
of his ruthlessness.

He had the coast bombarded
by the Spanish Navy,

he had the mining villages
bombed by the Spanish Air Force.

(narrator)
30,000 prisoners are transported

to colonial territories outside
Spain to serve their sentences.

He did what he had been doing
in Africa.

It was mass repression.

It was colonial war basically.

But for the first time
it was colonial war

that was applied
in the metropolis.

It was not longer war
against the Moroccans,

it was war against
the Spaniards.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
It was not just an opportunity
to prove himself militarily,

there was also an element
of politics in that.

So it was kind of his first
taste of politics--

a chance for him
to prove himself

in a sphere that was beyond
the purely military.

(Paul Preston)
It also gave him the conviction

that he was the man
that could save Spain

from all these challenges
from the left.

(narrator)
Franco suppresses the uprising.

But his tactics trigger
a political explosion.

Left-wing parties are appalled
by his brutality.

They band together
into a coalition

called the Popular Front.

On February 16, 1936,

Spaniards go to the polls
once again.

The pendulum swings,

and the right-wing government
is ejected.

The Popular Front emerges with
a majority in parliament.

It's a disaster for Franco,
but the worst is yet to come.

Worried about a military coup,

the Popular Front sidelines
key right-wing generals.

Franco himself is banished
to one of Spain's

last colonial possessions--
the Canary Islands,

100 kilometers
off the coast of Africa,

and 2000 kilometers from Madrid.

The minister of war
decides that

to keep these guys out of
trouble, they will be posted

far away where they can do
the least damage.

(narrator)
In exile, the generals watch
as Spain's new leaders

steer the nation to the left.

Even worse, they learn
that left-wing extremists

have been torching churches
and executing priests.

To save Spain, the exiled
generals plot a coup

and they ask Franco
to take a leading role.

But a military coup is
the ultimate gamble.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
He was cautious about getting
involved in this uprising.

He'd seen other similar attempts
at military rebellions fail.

He was worried that
that would happen again.

(narrator)
If the coup fails, Franco
will be executed as a traitor.

For days, he deliberates.

He has a wife,
he has a child.

He has a career.

But circumstances
will force his hand.

On July 13, 1936,

José Calvo Sotelo, a leading
right-wing politician,

is assassinated in Madrid.

(Paul Preston)
What clinched it for Franco,

what made the difference was
the murder of José Calvo Sotelo.

(Helen Graham)
He is murdered whilst

in the custody
of republican police.

The funeral for Calvo Sotelo
is turned into

a kind of show of strength;
in a sense, it is the trigger.

(narrator)
For Spaniards on the right,

the assassination is an outrage.

For Franco and the generals,
it's the final straw.

July 18, 1936.

Wearing civilian clothes,

Franco secretly boards a plane
that will carry him to Africa.

The coup is on.

Franco was given the
responsibility for Morocco

because of his track record as

a major player in the colonial
history of Spain.

(narrator)
His mission-- lead the Army
of Africa into Spain.

it's the beginning
of a bloody struggle

between bitter enemies--
the right-wing nationalists

against the left-wing
republicans.

Franco gets the Army of Africa
to support the coup.

Now he has to get them to Spain.

But transporting
thousands of men

and their equipment across
the Strait of Gibraltar

would be
a massive undertaking...

even in peacetime.

And for Franco, there's
an added complication.

The Spanish Navy has refused
to join the coup,

and its ships are patrolling
the strait.

(Helen Graham)
The army of Africa is

basically trapped
in North African territory.

So the Strait's
very effectively blocked;

speed is of the essence.

(narrator)
Franco needs planes to jump
the Strait and join the fight.

Audaciously, he turns
to a pair of strongmen--

Adolf Hitler
and Benito Mussolini.

They leap at the chance
to use Spain

as a testing ground
for new weapons and tactics.

Making some 800 flights,

German and Italian air force
planes take 14,000 men

across the Mediterranean
into Spain.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
So without the help
of the fascist powers,

the army of Africa would have
had a very tough time.

(Helen Graham)
This is seen as the first major
airlift in modern history,

and absolutely crucial to
the coup on mainland Spain.

(narrator)
Franco's airlift astonishes
his Republican enemies

and advances his status
among his coconspirators.

While other generals fight
across Spain,

he begins a merciless
advance north towards Madrid.

(Helen Graham)
The Army of Africa's
a killing machine, and it's

up against a civilian population
in the south of Spain.

There is no army.

It was basically meeting
peasants with farm implements.

Every time they arrive
at a destination,

or indeed just en route,
they just massacre people.

Franco's forces soon reach
the city of Badajoz,

near the Portuguese border.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
He encouraged his officers

to be extremely brutal,
often savage,

when they were
waging their campaigns.

When they took a town
in the Civil War,

a few hours
after the taking of that town

there would be
absolute carnage.

(Paul Preston)
Basically the left wingers
who were captured

were rounded up and then
they were machine-gunned.

(narrator)
In the Badajoz Massacre

some 4000 suspected leftists
are murdered.

And it's not an isolated event.

In retaliation, some republican
extremists turn on the church.

Priests and other clergy
are executed

for siding
with the nationalists.

There is this kind of
mass attack

on anyone who is symbolically
representative of the church.

Because the ecclesiastical
hierarchy backs the coup.

(narrator)
Spain is split.

The coup has ignited a battle
for the soul of the nation.

Franco believed that he should
do whatever was possible,

whatever was at his disposal,

to eliminate the left and their
ideology.

(narrator)
His ruthlessness is not limited
to his enemies.

Officers who failed to support
the coup are executed,

including his own cousin
and childhood playmate.

To show mercy is
to show weakness.

The future dictator is preparing
his path to power.

(Paul Preston)
At the very beginning

while the other generals
were mainly concerned

with how they went about
winning the war,

Franco would set up a press
office whose main purpose was

to project Franco
in the world's press as

the leader of the military coup,
which at that stage he wasn't.

[speaking Spanish]

(narrator)
To claim the leadership,

he calls for a meeting
of the top brass.

September 21, 1936.

Franco's fellow generals fly in

from every sector
of Nationalist Spain

to a temporary airstrip
near Salamanca.

(Paul Preston)
The really big thing
on Franco's side,

in the quest for power,
was the fact

that he was the commander
of the African Army.

Franco had been instrumental

in securing the help of Hitler
and Mussolini.

(Helen Graham)
So they basically saw him
as somebody

who could unite them all

and keep them together
for the duration of the war.

(narrator)
The other generals vote
to make Franco

the commander in chief
of the armed forces.

Although he is ranked 23rd
in seniority, no one else has

the combination
of combat experience,

political savvy,
and connections.

Franco is now the generalissimo,
the first among generals,

a major step on his road
to power.

The cunning with which
he got to be dictator,

the cunning with which he rose
to the top is very evident.

(narrator)
But for now Franco only
controls parts of Spain.

To rule it all he will need
the support

of the pillars
of Spanish society.

And to earn it, he will use
a key tactic

from the dictator's playbook.

The Achilles heel of any
dictatorship is the elites

and whether or not
they support them.

And that's why dictators,
so early on,

want to get control over
their elites.

They want to ensure that they're
completely loyal to them.

(Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal)
There were 2 or 3 sectors

whose consent was
crucial for his survival.

This was the church, it was the
military,

and it was the higher classes:

the aristocracy and the
industrialists.

(narrator)
With the support
of the military assured,

Franco sets his sights
on the pillar

of traditional Spanish
society... the Catholic Church.

[loud explosion]

September, 1936.

Rather than advance on the
republican stronghold of Madrid,

Franco pivots to Toledo.

[loud explosions]

There, a small group of
nationalist soldiers

is besieged in the city's
ancient fortress, the Alcázar.

Although Toledo has
no strategic value,

it has something more important.

It is the historic center
of Spanish Catholicism.

Franco decides to detour

to relieve the siege
of the military fortress.

It is particularly seen as

a symbol
of imperial Christian Spain.

(narrator)
Franco's forces crush
the Republican Army

in Toledo and take the town.

Franco personally wasn't there
when Toledo was relieved,

however, he was there
the next day.

The newsreel cameras were there
to see Franco arrive

in order to be able to project
to the world this view

that Franco was the hero
who had saved Toledo.

[male newsreel announcer]
Franco greeted as the savior
of 1900 men, women, and children

who held out
in this shattered fortress

and in caverns underneath.

(Paul Preston)
He projected himself
as a major world figure.

(Helen Graham)
He has an ambition

and is clearly looking beyond
the war to a political phase,

to a phase of being in control
of Spain beyond the war.

(narrator)
When the coup began, Franco was
just one of many generals.

Now, he has established
his reputation

as a military mastermind

and the savior
of Spanish Catholicism.

Just imagine, mid-July 1936,

you are a general semi-isolated
from your colleagues.

Two months afterwards, you are
the head of the main army

of the rebels with no rival
for powers

and about to take Madrid.

He cannot believe his luck.

Must be God!

What other explanation?

(narrator)
October 1936

Nationalist forces control
the western half of Spain.

But much of the nation remains
under the control

of the Republican Popular Front.

To rule the country,
Franco must take

its political, financial,
and administrative center.

To convince all Spaniards,

and to convince the rest of
the world that he had won,

he needed to take Madrid.

(narrator)
For weeks, Franco throws
everything at the capitol--

artillery...

aerial bombardment...

frontal attacks.

[machine-gun fire]

The city won't fall.

The republic basically
concentrates its forces

in Madrid,
and as long as it can prevent

Madrid being encircled,
it can survive.

(narrator)
Soon Franco's drive to take
Madrid gets even harder,

as his enemies gain
a powerful new ally.

The Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalin has agreed

to arm the republic and its
left-wing government.

(Helen Graham)
When it's clear that Franco

began to be able
to take Madrid,

the Soviet Union offers
to support the republic.

(narrator)
What was meant to be
a quick coup d'etat

is now a full-blown civil war.

[speaking Spanish]

(narrator)
He has conquered large swaths
of Spanish territory

but Franco's domination is
far from complete.

In many of the regions
he now controls,

half of his fellow citizens
are against him.

He is determined
to vanquish them all.

While the Nationalist Army
continues its battles,

Franco sets out to eliminate
civilian opposition

in the land he has seized.

To do this, he employs another
tactic of dictatorship.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
Franco wanted to defeat
the Left,

but he also wanted
to eliminate them.

He wanted to make sure

that there was no vestige left
of that ideology.

(narrator)
Franco creates the Supreme Court
of Military Justice--

a vast bureaucracy dedicated

to prosecuting those
who oppose him.

And you were open to prosecution
if you had any connections

with republican politics
or sympathies.

So people can be brought
before military courts

for activities
that go back to 1934.

They apply the military code
to their enemies

by accusing those who defended
the republic

of the crime of rebellion

which is what the Francoists
have committed.

(Helen Graham)
There must be a social
cleansing of all the elements

in society who have allowed
the republic to exist

and who are now our enemies.

Silvia Navarro's grandfather
was one of those enemies.

[speaking
Spanish]

(narrator)
Jose Antonio Marco Viedma

was a prominent businessman

in the city of Calatayud...

and a republican.

(Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal)
All dictators use violence
against their people.

In the case of Spain the scale

of intersocial violence
is unique.

Most victims, like 99%,
were Spaniards,

and this is interesting because
Franco was actually

perceiving at least half of
Spain as not properly Spanish.

So you can inflict this terrible
violence to your own people,

if you consider they are not
actually your own people,

that they are,
in a way, foreigners.

(narrator)
City by city, town by town,

Franco's forces arrest not just
Popular Front leaders

and party faithful, but anyone
with republican sympathies.

(Helen Graham)
it's not just a tactic
for a military campaign,

it's a form of political
readjustment,

removing the kind of people
that made the republic possible,

this would be never
possible again.

It's a form of
social engineering,

(narrator)
As the war progresses,

Franco intensifies his attacks
on civilians.

His allies in the German
and Italian air forces

begin to obliterate towns
and villages.

Guernica, Durango,

Barcelona, Madrid.

(Helen Graham)
The idea was that
you would terrorize

and demoralize
a civilian population

and this would be a crucial
instrument of war.

It's the war against civilians,
waged with the new technology.

(narrator) 1939.

As Spain tears itself apart,
Europe braces for war.

[crowd cheering]

Conserving its resources
for the coming conflict,

the Soviet Union withdraws
its support of the Republic.

By February, what's left of the
Popular Front's army collapses.

[loud cheering]

(narrator) March 27.

Franco's forces parade
through Madrid.

After the loss of half a million
lives, the civil war is over.

Three years after crossing
the Strait of Gibraltar,

Francisco Franco is
the dictator of all Spain.

In the nationalist regions,

victory celebrations echo
into the dawn.

In what were once
republican regions,

people are fleeing
for their lives.

(Paul Preston) Large numbers of
people had fled Madrid.

I mean, thousands upon thousands
of people fled to the coast

hoping to be able to get away.

Victory gives Franco
the opportunity

to complete his transformation
of Spanish society.

(Helen Graham)
The war is not really ending

with the end
of the battlefield phase,

but becoming basically a war
against the defeated.

(narrator)
He launches another wave of
targeted arrests and killings

of anyone with connections
to the old government.

(Dan Slater)
It's very much to send a signal

to anyone who opposed
the church,

anyone who was a socialist,
anyone who joined

the organizations
of the political left.

(narrator)
Beyond Spain's borders,

the Second World War
burns across Europe.

To the outside world,
Spain is officially neutral.

But within, the dictator's war
against his people

is just getting started.

In the course of 3 years,

nearly one quarter
of a million people

are imprisoned...
28,000 are executed.

(Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal)
This was essential in Franco's
strategy

because he had to
completely exterminate

all opposition to his regime

so that he could rule
for the next 40 years.

As he transforms
Spanish society,

he turns to another tactic
of dictatorships.

Indoctrination is largely a
process of preventing people

from hearing alternative
narratives.

It's a way of giving substance
to fear

and reminding people
of the risks of life

without the regime that is
currently in power.

People were obliged to think

what the regime
wanted them to think.

There was total control
of the education system,

there was total control
of the media.

(Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal)
Indoctrination in the Franco
regime is quite unique

in that it systematically used

the procedures
of Catholic indoctrination.

So there was even a catechism
that was used

to tell very young children
about Franco,

about the regime,
about how good this was.

(narrator)
For Franco, indoctrination
cannot begin soon enough.

In prison, if a republican woman
is pregnant,

she is allowed
to carry her baby to term.

Then the child is taken

and placed in a properly
Spanish family.

(Emilio Silva)
They went to the prisons

and they kidnapped the babies
from the republican woman,

because they say the woman
can provoke

the transmission of the
democracy for the children.

And then take the children
and put the children

in Catholic institutions
or Catholic families.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
They say that Franco is
the man chosen by God,

and that he's there
doing God's will.

The children at the time in
religious and lay schools

are being taught
that Franco's life

is like the life of Christ.

Catholicism was key to the
entire ideology of the regime.

The idea was, we are
going to torture you,

we are going to kill you,

but we are doing that because
you are evil,

and we are doing this because
we need to redeem you,

that it is for your own good,

because we want you to go
to heaven, and for that

you have to be punished,
you have to suffer.

So there were these ideas
of sin and redemption

that was so Catholic,
and that were so Spanish.

(narrator) 1945.

Hitler commits suicide.

Mussolini is executed.

The Second World War is over.

But Spain's dictator remains.

Franco's fortunes are helped by
a shift in the political winds.

As the Cold War between the U.S.
and the Soviet Union begins,

Franco's extreme anti-communism
makes him an ally of the West.

(Helen Graham)
By the 1950s,
Eisenhower visits Spain,

and Franco presents himself as

the kind of sentinel
of the west,

this anti-communist warrior who
can keep the continent safe.

Franco has free rein to
continue his state of terror.

There were hundreds of thousands
of Republicans

that were in jail.

(narrator)
But there are
pockets of resistance.

University student
Nicolas Sanchez

is one of the resistors.

After taking part
in a peaceful demonstration,

he is arrested and sentenced
to 6 years in prison.

To deal with prisoners
like Nicolas Sanchez,

Franco uses
a classic dictator's tool.

(Fathali Moghaddam) Well,
there's 2 functions of gulags.

One is creating fear.

A second function
of these gulags is

that they want certain people
out of the way

and they want to use them
as examples

of what could happen to you
if you step out of line.

(Nicolas Sanchez)
There were also concentration
camps that were used

to build fortifications,
railroads,

dams-- that was heavy work.

(narrator)
Franco uses slave labor to build

a massive monument to
the victory of his regime.

He calls it
the Valley of the Fallen.

(Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal)
Most of the people who worked

in the Valley of the Fallen
were political prisoners.

For each year they worked in
the Valley of the Fallen,

they did not have to spend
5 years in prison.

They were given the choice,

but it is not
that they liked to be there,

it is that the other option
was much worse.

(narrator)
In 1959, after almost 20 years
of hard labor,

the dictator's tribute
to himself is finished.

The monumental scale
is an indication of their

overweening desire to control
the societies that they rule.

But it is a reflection of an
aspiration to some kind of

eternal influence in the future
of their own countries.

(narrator)
Not only is the monument
complete,

so is Franco's domination of
Spanish politics and society.

To hold a political opinion is
to commit a crime.

(Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal)
That prevented people from
entering politics,

because politics were associated
with conflict and with war.

The main success
of this strategy was

associating politics
with danger,

and it was very successful
until at least the late 1960s.

(narrator)
Franco has achieved
what he set out to do.

He has frozen Spain in time.

His regime secure,
he cultivates the image of

a benign international statesman
and paternal sovereign.

(Paul Preston)
In later life, this dictator,

this mass murderer,
was projected

as the kind of grandfather
of his people.

(narrator)
After almost 30 years in power,

the patriarch faces
one last challenge:

who will rule Spain
when he dies?

1969.

Franco announces that
Juan Carlos, the grandson

of King Alfonso XIII,
will be his successor.

The dying dictator hopes
the new king

will keep Spain
locked in the past.

But when Franco dies
on November 20, 1975,

his regime dies with him.

Now king, Juan Carlos defies
Franco's final wish.

He moves to dismantle
the dictatorship

and restore Spain to democracy.

Less than 2 years later,
Spaniards hold

their first democratic election
in more than 40 years.

The results mirror
the election of 1936.

The left wing wins
by a narrow margin.

Franco's attempt to obliterate
socialism has failed.

But the consequences
of his dictatorship

haunt Spain to this day.

Over the past 10 years,
Spaniards have confronted

Franco's crimes
against humanity.

(Guy Hedgecoe)
According to Amnesty
International,

Spain has the highest number
of mass graves

in the world after Cambodia.

So there are all these unmarked
graves around the country,

and this issue
has not been resolved.

(Emilio Silva)
In Spain we have the names
and the orders of names

of 114,000 civilians
missing in mass graves.

For example, in Malaga,

in the south of Spain,

in the cemetery, there is

a group of graves with 4,300
people.

(Paul Preston)
There is considerable disquiet,

discomfort,
resentment about the fact

that there's never been
any real process

of seeking justice for those
who were murdered

during the civil war.

(Emilio Silva)
And I think our history is part
of the black box of Europe.

And we have to recover
the black box.

And we have to show the sounds,
sort of, in this black box.

(Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez)
The legacy is the emptiness

that he caused
in the Spanish society,

all the wealth,
the human wealth

and the material wealth
that the Spanish Civil War

and the brutal dictatorship cost
on the Spanish society.

So how do you evaluate that?

How do you fix that?

I don't have an answer.

(narrator)
Next time
on "The Dictator's Playbook."

(Lain Grahame)
Idi Amin made
a mark for himself.

(Mahmood Mamdani)
He tapped into something big.

(Alicia Decker)
He represented a fresh start.

(Mahmood Mamdani)
A future for Uganda.

(Alicia Decker)
Critics have written Amin off
as a buffoon,

but he was far more cunning.

A soldier, charismatic.

Distracting people
from their repression.

(Mariam Mufti)
In the 8 years he was in power,

almost 300,000 people
were massacred

He was ruthless,
which good soldiers are.

[orchestra plays in minor tones]

(man) To order "The Dictator's
Playbook" on DVD,

visit shopPBS.org

or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

This program is also available

on Amazon Prime Video.

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