Representations of Germany in Spain During World War II. a Microhistorical Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT This text analyses the pro-German propaganda conducted in Spain during World War II. To this end, and in the first instance, the article provides a broad contextualization of the cultural, political, military and economic links that existed between Spain and Germany prior to the war. Moreover, it analyses ideas around Europe that had developed prior to 1933, as predecessors to the project that Germany constructed during World War II, and that were transmitted in the form of propaganda through the press. After this context is discussed, the text focuses on its main subject in order to expose and explain the pro-German propaganda that appeared in a local newspaper in the Basque Country (Pensamiento Alavés in the city of Vitoria), linking its appearance, characteristics, and dissemination with the dynamics of the space in which it was developed: a city in which the German factor had had a marked presence from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.