Spain soon became a major destination for postwar German tourism. This is especially relevant taking into account that tourism is not only one of the most powerful tools for shaping cultural imaginaries but was also a key diplomatic instrument for the Franco dictatorship.¹¹

[…]

The emphasis placed on the figure of Charles V as the epitome of the alleged Spanish–German friendship also played another particularly important rôle: it helped minimize the importance of the much more recent alliance between Franco and Hitler.

The memory of [Third Reich] collaborationism had to be “whisked away as a parenthesis or blank historical space” according to Carlos Sanz, “so that it would not interfere in an idealized ‘traditional Spanish–German friendship’ that would have its roots in the times of Charles V—now celebrated […] as precursor and paladin of the ‘Christian West.’”³⁴

The imperative need to bury the recent past under layers of the distant past becomes easier to understand if we bear in mind that, according to reports analyzed by Birgit Aschmann, it was still common in 1950s Spain that “any German man” was greeted with the fascist salute as a sign of friendship.³⁵

Such displays shocked German observers and diplomats, who helplessly noted the “undeniable admiration that the Third Reich arouses in Spain,” to the extent that for the average Spanish citizen, “the existence of a federal president as the highest representative of the German State was, even in 1960, ‘largely unknown.’”³⁶

[…]

Among the sources consulted, it is striking, first of all, that most of the documents in which the monastery is mentioned were written by authors that are directly associated with the rehabilitation of the Franco dictatorship in the German public opinion.

Of particular note among these are Werner Schulz, who reported on it in several of his articles in Merian (a popular travel magazine of the time in the FRG);⁴² Heinz Barth, who, even before the end of World War II, had published an article entitled “Yuste,” in which he wrote wistfully about the Europe of the past;⁴³ and Otto Roegele, who covered the Monastery of Yuste in his Diary of a trip to Spain in the mid‐1950s.⁴⁴

Werner Schulz and Heinz Barth have been identified as two of the main correspondents who contributed to disseminating a pro‐Franco perception among the German public throughout the 1950s.⁴⁵

(Emphasis added.)

Click here for events that happened today (September 27).

1864: Andrej Hlinka, Slovakian fascist, was born.
1938: Franz Halder and other Wehrmacht officers set September 29, 1938 as the launch date of their revolt should Berlin lead the Third Reich into a war over the Sudetenland crisis. In the early afternoon, the Third Reich’s Chancellery moved several divisions to the German–Czechoslovakian border. In the late afternoon, it called for a military parade on the Unter den Linden boulevard in Berlin to rouse a patriotic sentiment; Berlin citizens responded coolly, however. Apart from that, the Third Reich passed law to revoke licenses to practice law for all Jewish attorneys, effective November 30, 1938; thereafter Jewish attorneys could only act as ‘consultants’ for other Jews on matters of law.
1939: Berlin ordered its top military leaders to begin planning for a war in the west, with a target launch date of November 12, 1939. The generals would complain that the date was too soon. As well, Reinhard Heydrich became the head of Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and the Dachau concentration camp temporarily closed until February 18, 1940 for use of training SS units; prisoners of Dachau transferred to Mauthausen.
1940: The European Fascists and Japanese Imperialists signed the Tripartite Pact. On the other hand, Julius Wagner‐Jauregg, Fascist eugenicist, dropped dead. At 0900 hours that day, eighty Axis bombers escorted by one hundred fighters flew over Kent toward London, but most of the bombers turned back near Maidstone and Tonbridge; some got through and released their bombs over London. Between 1200 and 1230 hours, three hundred Axis aircraft, mostly fighters, conducted a sweep and engaged in dogfights near London; a score of bombers within this group were able to bomb London. By the end of the day, the Axis lost twenty‐one bombers and thirty‐four fighters. Overnight, the Axis bombed London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Nottingham.
1941: The Axis and its collaborators exterminated 23,000 Jews at Kamenets‐Podolsk, Ukraine, and the Jager Report (issued on December 1, 1941) noted that the Axis slaughtered 989 Jewish men, 1,636 Jewish women, and 821 Jewish children in Eysisky, Lithuania (for a total of 3,446 people). Additionally, Axis submarine U‐201 attacked Allied convoy HG‐73 north of the Azores islands, sinking two merchant ships and the antiaircraft ship HMS Springbank; thirty‐two folk died but two hundred one survived. On the other hand, the Axis garrison at Wolchefit Pass in Ethiopia surrendered to British King’s African Rifles regiment, and Axis troops in plain clothes infiltrated the north gate of the walled city of Changsha, Hunan Province, China, but failed to complete their sabotage mission.
1942: Luftwaffe unit III./KG 4 (flying He 111 bombers) flew its last bombing sortie over Stalingrad. The unit would soon be transported out of its base in Morozovsk, Russia for the German Reich to undergo glider towing training. As well, Axis troops landed on Kuria, Gilbert Islands.
1943: One of the Axis officials in Rome demanded that the Jewish community pay one hundred pounds of gold within three dozen hours or three hundred Jews would become prisoners. The Vatican would open its treasury to help the Jews reach the required amount. Meanwhile the Wehrmacht started to withdraw all forces out of Ukraine to defensive positions on the west side of the Dnieper River, and Italy’s Axis occupation administration arrested thousands of rioters in Naples.
1944: Armeegruppe E withdrew from western Greece, and the Kassel Mission (which aimed to destroy the factories of the engineering works of Henschel & Sohn, which built tracked armoured vehicles and their associated infrastructure) resulted in the largest loss by a USAAF group on any mission in World War II.
2006: Helmut Kallmeyer, a chemist involved in Action T4, died.