Sites of the Dictators: Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020 1003137407, 9781003137405

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SITES OF THE DICTATORS

This book explores the changing evolution of memory debates on places intimately linked to the lives and deaths of different fascist, para-fascist and communist dictators in a truly transnational and comparative way. During the second decade of the twenty-first century, a number of parallel debates arose in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, Austria and other European countries regarding the public management by democratic regimes of those sites of memory that were directly linked to the personal biographies of their former dictators. The ways in which each democracy deals with the dead bodies, mausoleums and birthplaces of the dictators vary considerably, although common questions occur, such as whether oblivion or re-signification is better, the risk of a posthumous cult of personality being established and the extent to which the shadow of the authoritarian past endures in these sites of memory. Using the concept of “sites of the dictators”, the author explains why it is so difficult to deal with some sites of memory linked to dead autocrats, as those places contribute directly or indirectly to humanizing them, making their remembrance more acceptable for the present and future generations, and discusses the potential of the “Europeanization” of these “dark” memories of the past. Exploring the imperatives of memory politics and how these are reconciled with local actors interested in exploiting the dictator’s remembrance, this book will be useful reading for students and scholars of history, politics and memory studies. Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (PhD, European University Institute, Florence, Italy) is professor of modern history at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. His fields of research are comparative nationalism and territorial identities, overseas migrations and the cultural history of war. His latest publications are (ed.) The First World War and the Nationality Question in Europe (Leiden/Boston, 2020) and The Spanish Blue Division (Toronto, 2022, forthcoming).

SITES OF THE DICTATORS Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945–2020

Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Xosé M. Núñez Seixas The right of Xosé M. Núñez Seixas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Núñez Seixas, Xosé M. (Xosé Manoel), 1966- author. Title: Sites of the dictators : memories of authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020 / Xosé M. Núñez Seixas. Other titles: Memories of authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020 Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020057881 (print) | LCCN 2020057882 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367684105 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367684112 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003137405 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Europe‐‐Politics and government‐‐1945- | Dictators‐‐Homes and haunts‐‐Europe‐‐History‐‐20th century. | Dictatorship‐‐Europe‐‐History‐‐20th century. | Collective memory‐‐Political aspects‐‐Europe. | Historic sites‐‐Political aspects‐‐Europe. | Memorials‐‐Political aspects‐‐Europe. | Dark tourism‐‐Europe. Classification: LCC D1058 .N86 2021 (print) | LCC D1058 (ebook) | DDC 940.5‐‐dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057881 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057882 ISBN: 978-0-367-68410-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-68411-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-13740-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by MPS Limited, Dehradun

CONTENTS

List of figures Foreword List of abbreviations 1

Introduction: Sites of memory, sites of dictators

vii ix xi 1

1.1 What are “sites of dictators”? An outline of a typology 9 1.2 The difficult management of the sites of dictators by democratic regimes 11 2

The sites of the fascist dictators

17

2.1 Germany: Between silence and re-signification 17 2.2 Austria: The Shadow of Hitler … and Dollfuss? 35 2.3 Italy: Post-fascist syncretism and anti-fascist pragmatism 50 3

The sites of the authoritarian and collaborationist dictators

75

3.1 Portugal: Official anti-Salazarism, local opportunism 76 3.2 The authoritarian fathers of the homeland 85 3.3 Traitors or pragmatic patriots? 93 4

Is Spain different? The many sites of the Caudillo 4.1 One valley, one mausoleum, one Caudillo 116 4.2 A summer court: Meirás 122

114

vi

Contents

4.3 Dealing with Franco’s memory sites in the twenty-first century 125 4.4 The little Caudillos: Falangist leaders and Franco generals 133 5

The sites of the communist dictators 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

140

Stalin: Between nostalgia and tourism 143 Albania: The pyramid of the red pharaoh 155 Romania: The Dracula syndrome 160 Yugoslavia: Tito, the nostalgia for unity 165

6

Epilogue: What should be done with the sites of dictators?

177

7

Bibliography

185

Index

199

FIGURES

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2

Führerbunker, Berlin (January 2020) Documentation Centre, Nuremberg (June 2017) NSDAP Headquarters (1925–1931), Schellingstraße, Munich Cenotaph of General Alfred Jodl, Fraueninsel Hitler’s birthplace, Braunau am Inn Tomb of Alois and Klara Hitler, Leonding St. Engelbert’s Church, Hohe Wand, with memorial space dedicated to Dollfuss Monument to the fallen in the First World War and 1940–1945, Carrara San Giorgio, Padua Neo-fascist admirer raises his hand to Mussolini, Predappio (April 2012) Rally of neo-fascist nostalgists, cemetery of Predappio (April 2017) Tomb of Salazar, Vimieiro (Santa Comba Dâo) Birthplace of Salazar, Vimieiro (Santa Comba Dâo) Tomb of Marshall Pétain, Yeu Island Cover of Paris Match (3 March 1973) on the robbery of Pétain’s coffin Birth house of Jozef Tiso, Bytča Bust of Admiral Horthy, Temple of Return, Budapest Valley of the Fallen, Cuelgamuros (Madrid) Meirás Manor, Sada (A Coruña), July 2019 Demonstration at Meirás Manor, 19 November 2005 Stalin’s admirers, 21 December 2015, Moscow Homage to Stalin’s Tomb, Moscow, 21 December 2016

21 24 29 32 37 44 48 51 58 65 80 82 97 100 104 108 119 123 132 144 149

viii Figures

5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.1

Stalin’s admirers in front of the Stalin Museum, Gori (2011) Pyramid of Tirana, 2012 Nostalgists in front of Ceauseuscu’s birthplace, 2018 Museum Targoviste, execution site of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu (2019) Statue of Tito, House of Flowers, Belgrade Tito’s Tomb, House of Flowers, Belgrade Hồ Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi

153 156 162 164 167 170 179

FOREWORD

The first inspiration for this essay came from a fortuitous event. In November 2017, having returned to the University of Santiago de Compostela after spending five years at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, I was tasked by the Galician Regional Government with chairing the committee of experts at the request of the Galician Parliament, with the aim of studying the legal channels through which Meirás manor (Sada, A Coruña), summer residence of General Francisco Frnco, which continued to be owned by his descendants, might be transferred to public ownership. For seven months, a group of representatives from different academic institutions, as well as historians and lawyers, met periodically to analyze the historical and legal precedents of the case. The report, submitted in June 2018, served as a basis for the Galician Parliament to adopt days later a unanimous decision urging the Spanish Government to undertake legal action, with a view to returning Meirás to state property. The experiences accumulated during these months and further readings on similar cases in Europe revealed the existence of a transversal subject scarcely approached from a comparative outlook: the sites of the European dictators. In the collection of unpublished information, suggestions and materials, several friends and colleagues from different fields and countries, from Slovakia to Chile, contributed their disinterested help. Some offered detailed readings or incisive observations, others gave precise information on specific cases. Needless to say, errors or inaccuracies are the sole responsibility of the author. I wish to refer here to Bence Bari, Federica Bertagna, Miguel Cabo, António Costa Pinto, Bruno De Wever, Fernando Devoto, Àngel Duarte, Ágnes Eröss, José M. Faraldo, Henrike Fesefeldt, Marcello Flores, Filippo Focardi, Steven Forti, Annarita Gori, Emilio Grandío, Anton Hruboň, Kostis Kornetis, Stefano Petrungaro, Maurizio Ridolfi, Joan M. Thomàs, Matteo Tomasoni, Stefan Troebst, Enric Ucelay-Da Cal and Nicolás Uribe. Similarly, José M. Faraldo, Luiza Iordache, Ramón López Facal,

x

Foreword

Luis Velasco and Ramón Villares provided photos from their private collection to enhance the illustrations. The interest shown by Routledge, and in particular by its history editor, Robert Langham, contributed decisively to the publication of this English version of the book. The first and second waves of Covid-19 pandemic of spring and autumn 2020 turned the writing of this book not only into an exercise in introspection imposed by collective quarantine but also into a stimulating experience. A statement of normality amidst an exceptional situation, reminding us that at the opening of the third decade of the twenty-first century, (post)modern societies have still not overcome all their apocalyptic fears. Some of those fears, linked to the traumatic experiences of the World Wars, contributed in the past to establishing the power of most dictators whose memory is explored in this monograph. Let’s hope that they will not return in other guises. Xosé M. Núñez Seixas Os Anxeles-Brión (Galicia), November 2020

ABBREVIATIONS

ADMP

Association pour défendre la mémoire du maréchal Pétain (Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshall Pétain) AFD Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) ANPI Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (National Association of Partisans of Italy) BNG Bloque Nacionalista Galego (Galician Nationalist Bloc) CDS-PP Partido do Centro Democratico Social – Partido Popular (Portuguese Social Democratic Centre Party – People’s Party) CIEN Centro Interpretativo do Estado Novo (Interpretation Centre of the New State) CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Kommunistichieskaya partija Sovietskogo Soyuza) CRMHC Comisión pola Recuperación da Memoria Histórica da Coruña (Committee for the Recovery of the Historical Memory of A Coruña) Cs Ciudadanos (Citizens party) CSU Christlich-Soziale Union (Christian Social Union in Bavaria) DC Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy in Italy) ERC Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia) FPÖ Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Austrian Freedom Party) FSN Frontul Salvării Naţionale (National Salvation Front) DNSAP Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (German National Socialist Workers’ Party) FDJ Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) FE-JONS Falange Española de las JONS (Spanish Phalanx) Fidesz Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség (Hungarian Civic Alliance) FRG Federal Republic of Germany GDR German Democratic Republic

xii Abbreviations

ICV IU Jobbik JONS LMH MSI NDH NKVD NSDAP NPD NSB OAS ÖSP ÖVP PCI PCP PD PFR PIDE PiS PNF PP PS PSD PSOE RSI SED SNS SPD UPN USSR VF VMO VNV

Iniciativa per Catalunya-Verds (Initiative for Catalonia – the Greens) Izquierda Unida (United Left) Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Movement for a Better Hungary) Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (Councils of the NationalSyndicalist Offensive) Ley de Memoria Histórica (Historical Memory Law, Spain) Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia) Naródnyy Komissariat Vnútrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands) Organisation armée secrète (Secret Army Organization) Österreichische Sozialdemokratische Partei (Austrian Social-Democratic Party) Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People’s Party) Partito Comunista d’Italia (Italian Communist Party) Partido Comunista Português (Portuguese Communist Party) Partito Democratico (Democratic Party in Italy) Partito Fascista Repubblicano (Republican Fascist Party) Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (International and State Defense Police, Portugal) Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) Partido Popular (People’s Party in Spain) Partido Socialista (Socialist Party in Portugal) Partido Social Democrata (Social Democratic Party in Portugal) Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic) Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) Slovenská národná strana (Slovak National Party) Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) Unión del Pueblo Navarro (Navarrese People’s Union) Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Vaterländische Front (Fatherland Front) Vlaamse Militanten Orde (Order of Flemish Militants) Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (Flemish National Union)

1 INTRODUCTION: SITES OF MEMORY, SITES OF DICTATORS

Spain, 2019. Two events marked the return of the memory of Francoism to current affairs. On the one hand, the legal action taken by the state solicitor’s general office against the descendants of the former dictator Francisco Franco in July of the same year, in order to return the manor house or country palace owned by Franco in Meirás (Sada, A Coruña) to state ownership. On the other hand, the transfer in October of the dictator’s mortal remains from the mausoleum from the Valley of the Fallen to the family vault located in Mingorrubio state cemetery (El Pardo, Madrid). Both milestones seem to foreshadow the approaching end of Spanish exceptionality concerning the settling of scores with the dictatorial past. However, it is a process still subject to considerable vicissitudes, which partly depend on changes of parliamentary majorities and the political colour of governments. Undoubtedly, Spain continues to be different in more than one aspect from the Western European pattern of score settling with the dictatorial past, and the adoption of pro-active memory politics by public institutions. It is not so much the case if the specificities of the Spanish transition to democracy are taken into account, as well as the temporary mismatch (the dictatorship in Spain ended 30 years later than in other countries) in comparison with the democracies that followed the fascist or parafascist regimes in Western Europe in 1945. The pace of the putting into practice of memory policies by several of these States was also slow and contradictory, and in some cases did not begin to be effective until the 1980s. The degrees of intensity in the persistence of authoritarian legacies are also specific, according to each particular example. However, the problematic management of sites of (un)memory linked in an intimate manner to the dictator’s biography is not an exclusively Spanish phenomenon. In the great majority of democracies that succeeded totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Western Europe after 1945, and which were completed

2 Introduction: Sites of memory

by the “third wave” of democratization (which started in Southern Europe in 1974, continued in South America in the 1980s and culminated as of 1990 in EastCentral Europe), innumerable debates, uncertainties, sources of resistance and dilemmas regarding the sites of the dictators can be recorded.1 From the outset, some conceptual clarifications are required. The terms “dictator” and “dictatorship” are employed in this monograph in a flexible sense. If the dictators of ancient Rome were magistrates invested temporarily with absolute power, dictatorship is a form of government in which the capability for decision, and therefore absolute power, is placed in the hands of a single person, a leader, or those of a small group of people. As Vladimir I. Lenin wrote, “Dictatorship means […] power with no constraints, and rule by force, not of law”.2 The exercise of power by dictators may be arbitrary, based on coercion, and not respectful of any norms; however, dictatorships tend to settle their own legitimacy. Unlike democracies, there are no competitive elections: political pluralism is inexistent or very limited, as is also the mobilization of civil society. Only from above, through single parties and organizations depending directly on the pinnacle of power, can mass mobilization occur, in order to endorse or accompany the directions emanating from the top. Unlike the great majority of nineteenth-century forms of autocratic governance, from Bonapartisms to Latin American caudillismos, the dictatorships of the twentieth century were mostly characterized by their mid- and long-term aim at standardizing the entirety of the social body. Their devices were a single political party and mass organizations, state intervention, the control of the media and a defined worldview that served as an overall inspiration. At the head of a dictatorship was a leader whose legitimacy came from charisma. Drawing on the classic distinction established by the sociologist Juan J. Linz, authoritarian dictatorships granted less weight to ideology, did not entirely control the armed forces, the economy or public opinion and tolerated the existence of a limited political pluralism. On the contrary, totalitarian regimes, at least in the mid- and long term, would not allow the co-existence within their domain of autonomous spheres of power or levels of governance, from the army to social corporations and religious churches. They would also aim at a social engineering that was comprehensive in scope: a long-term utopia, in which society would be moulded according to a clear-cut ideological pattern.3 A greater variety of situations would therefore fit within that flexible concept of dictatorship. The cast would encompass temporary military dictatorships, with partial or complete suspension of constitutional rights, and those based on a single party and a fledgling ideological project, as well as paternalist autocracies, characterized by the pre-eminence of executive power under the charge of a charismatic ruler, but retaining a formally democratic political system. However, a dictatorship can often evolve from being one kind to another, begin as authoritarian presidentialism or with a military coup to become in time a project that is totalitarian in nature and determined to retain power.4 An essential figure in every dictatorship is the person at the top. The dictator, in the masculine: they were all men, although at times their spouses also undertook a

Introduction: Sites of memory

3

certain role in the exercise and practice of power.5 The person who was not held accountable, and did not have to give any explanations concerning his exercise of power to any higher authority. Still, several of them (such as Mussolini or Salazar) co-existed with traditional figures, whether kings or presidents of the Republic, who almost always possessed a representative or nominal role. But this was not a major constraint for the dictators’ unlimited rule. The main source of the dictator’s power is charisma. In the classic definition of Max Weber, charisma is a legitimization of non-bureaucratic and non-traditional power, establishing that a person is assumed to be invested with supernatural, superhuman or simply exceptional qualities that are not accessible to everyone. They could express themselves both through the “hypnotic” capability by a determined individual to generate unconditional adhesion and unleash passionate feelings in his followers, and through a specific person’s ability to establish a particular relationship with the sources of power. The charisma of an individual can therefore be associated with the role he/she performs, or with his/her privileged capacity to establish an exceptional relationship with his/her followers. However, in order to endure, even the most archetypal and charismatic power requires, sooner or later, a (bureaucratic) routinization, and/or they resort to complementary sources of traditional legitimation, such as the appeal to the fatherland, religion or, simply, the connection with the past: the recourse for history.6 An additional problem occurs with succession: what happens to the dictator’s charisma after his death? The body of the majority of the dictators inherited the role of the sovereign’s body in the Ancien Régime (Old Regime): the “king’s two bodies”, the physical and the symbolic, represented the right to rule and sovereignty, whose legacy was transmitted to his successor and guaranteed the continuity of the monarchy, and with it that of the entire political community.7 The royal and imperial dynasties until 1914/18 developed elaborate rituals through which succession occurred. The king’s body was buried in a crypt or vault, but now as simple remains deprived of their symbolic role. The funeral rite of the Hapsburg dynasty from the eighteenth century, each time that a deceased monarch or prince entered the vault of the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna, highlighted this quality. Only when an aide accounted that a “humble sinner” requested entry to the crypt, and not the emperor with all his bombastic titles, was the corpse admitted to the vault. The royal past is always collective. However, from 1917 on the abrupt end of the last pre-modern empires, and especially the Russian revolution, a new model of funeral rite for the head of state was introduced. The first was Vladimir I. Lenin, when he passed away in January 1924. The second was Dr. Sun Yat-sen, president of the young Chinese Republic, a year later. They were not dictators in the strict sense that would be current some years later: even Lenin, who despite imposing an iron dictatorship that disregarded any democratic control, and enjoying an undisputable authority, tended to act as a primus inter pares. However, their deaths, massively attended state funerals and the posthumous cult to their remembrance that was inaugurated by their regimes, marked a clear break with the old dynastic world of collective tombs and regal vaults.

4 Introduction: Sites of memory

They would also have their own secularized tumulus, which became the symbol of a new political legitimacy, putting an end to the dynastic monopoly of the royal pantheons. This can be clearly seen in the Soviet case. On the night following the death of Lenin, the government of the USSR tasked a renowned architect, the constructivist Aleksey V. Shchusev, with the design of a specific mausoleum. Shchusev sketched a cubic and staggered motif of great formal sobriety, which combined a message of eternity (the cube as a perennial geometrical metaphor) and secular classicism, taking its inspiration from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. He therefore created a provisional wooden design in 1924, which in 1929–1930 was substituted by another one, made of steel and concrete and covered in granite, after considering several models that oscillated between grandiosity and revolutionary sobriety. Inaugurated on 7 November 1930, on the anniversary of the revolution, the embalmed body of Lenin would be on permanent display within, with the intention of converting the site into a revolutionary pilgrimage centre. The early condemnations by the Bolsheviks of embalming as an obscurantist Christian practice, including Lenin’s criticisms towards the ‘canonization’ of dead revolutionaries and his own widow’s opposition to the project, were soon forgotten.8 The cult of Lenin’s body, alongside the codification of the term MarxismLeninism by his successor, Josef Stalin, to define it as the Marxist doctrine of the time of imperialism and war, was completed with the erection of statues in the central square of each soviet city, often re-using the plinths that in 1913 had been placed to erect the sculptures of tsar Nicholas II. In the following years, the cult of the Bolshevik leader would follow many of the traditional guidelines that had oriented the worship of Russian saints and the figure of the tsar years before. Likewise, several museums were devoted to Lenin’s remembrance. Yet only on the occasion of the centenary of his birth (1970) was a great museum devoted to Lenin’s life inaugurated in the town where he was born, Ulianovsk (900 kilometres east of Moscow), as well as another one in the Siberian town Shushenskoye, where he lived for three years as an exile (1897–1900).9 Lenin’s cult undoubtedly set a precedent, a pattern that would be reproduced in subsequent decades. Whether his regime would continue or die with him, the modern autocrat’s body possessed the foundational vocation of setting a new order, and marking a new beginning. It was equally the depositary of a transferred and secularized sacredness, which could range from thaumaturgical qualities up to the ability attributed to his images of bringing luck to a home, avoid misfortune and cause unusual, almost miraculous events.10 It was a question of his own charisma, anointed by extraordinary powers, which he continued to exercise after death in the background, often for decades, upon public opinion, social mindsets and the memory politics of the democracies that followed him. This transfer was possible only within specific cultural and social frameworks, in which the charisma of autocrats established a fluid and lasting interaction with the “active centres” of social order, the points at which ideas and institutions intersected, attending to

Introduction: Sites of memory

5

concerns and craving for legitimacy from the bottom up, but also shaping them from above. Ultimately, the “genius” or charisma of the dictator also depended on the extent to which his followers were able to ascribe him that exceptional quality, and were prepared to do so.11 In this sense, it could be stated that if kings, heads of government or of state attribute their charisma to the continuity of a role and an institutional position, dictators are always, by definition, exceptional people. For this reason, they depend above all else upon the brilliance of their personality, their leadership skills and even “hypnotic” qualities. But those qualities, and therefore that charisma, are also consciously crafted from above. They may be the result of an attribution to their leadership of exceptional qualities, in accordance with the cultural and social context in which dictators exercise power. The twentieth-century dictatorship is also a modern personality cult, forged in and for a mass society, whose source of legitimacy was national sovereignty, as well as direct contact with the people (or “the masses”), which become routinized through the massive spread of images and unquestioned slogans. This is facilitated by the unrestricted control of the media. Furthermore, and as occurred in several of the cases referred to in this book, the posthumous attribution of charisma to a dictator is favoured or strengthened by the circumstances of his death: assassination, exile, execution by an enemy, and so on.12 Last, but not least, charisma can be reinforced through the association between an individual and the destiny of a nation. If the dictator embodied moreover the foundation of an independent state, which was the culmination of a lengthy national mobilization, his figure was endowed with additional legitimization from the nation, and from nationalism as a political religion. He thus became a founding father, or a restorer of the homeland’s freedom. This category would transform him from autocrat into national hero for the generations to come after his death. After death, the dictator’s body could leave behind a broad literary and media footprint, or simply a lasting deposit in popular memory.13 However, this was always particularly linked with specific spaces: the place where he was born, private abodes where he lived and/or exercised his power or the sites where his remains lie. These might include his tomb, vault or mausoleum, a term that alludes originally to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the sumptuous sepulchre of King Mausolus from Halicarnassus in the fourth century BC. On occasions, this also encompasses the specific place where the autocrat died, above all if his death was violent and, therefore, could be interpreted as martyrdom for the cause, or for the homeland as a whole. This would bestow an even more sacralized aspect upon his memory: charisma endowed with heroism.14 Following the French historian Pierre Nora, who coined the term, sites of memory (lieux de mémoire) can be defined as all kinds of tangible and intangible entities, whether physical spaces, concepts (including expressions or terms), practices and objects which, through the wishes of specific actors and representatives of a community, become over the course of time a symbolic feature for that collective or specific community. They also serve as a bridge between

6 Introduction: Sites of memory

memory, the constantly diffuse and changing shared interpretation of the past, and history, the critical and scientific reconstruction of this at specific moments. While the discourse of memory commemorates and ascribes meanings to the past as a guide for the present and future, the narrative of history problematizes, demystifies and examines minutely, but does not necessarily canonize, venerates or penalizes. According to Nora, “a site of memory, in all senses of the term, ranges from the most material and specific object, and eventually with a geographical location, to the most abstract and intellectually constructed object”, like crystallization points of a collective remembrance.15 The significances ascribed to these sites of memory are not immutable. They can undergo great variation over time, or different tones according to the perspective of the authors, communities or factions of those communities that are linked to those sites. Neither the meanings of the sites of memory emerge from an immanent sediment of popular (or national) memory. Conversely, they are the result of a mindful elaboration by specific actors, ranging from institutions to social movements. Everyday interaction with a social space,16 or the possible lack of it, also determines the changing meanings of sites of memory, as well as their ability to survive or adapt to changing environments. A monument may not say anything to later generations; the way of looking at a mausoleum varies according to the historical moment when it is observed. The German sociologist Aleida Assmann has proposed therefore the more dynamic term of “memorial spaces”, defined by the interaction with social actors and institutions through rites and narratives.17 In these spaces, a public narrative on collective memory is condensed and projected, and disseminated from the state and public institutions. A cultural memory cannot impose itself, but coexists and interacts with a communicative memory, generated and transmitted by civil society, both in the semi-public and above all in the private and family sphere.18 The “sites of memory” category was originally conceived in order to conceptualize and understand the past and identity of the state, nation and society of France. This stirred up different criticism at the time: the work of Nora often contributed to creating new spaces of remembrance, which had been until then unnoticed by French society, and not only analyzed those in existence. The exporting of the concept to other geographical contexts also underwent different adaptations, and often excessive generalizations. It has been pointed out, therefore, that not only are nations or ethnic communities characterized by their own sites of memory. Memorial spaces can also be of a transnational nature, and shared by two or more national communities, with diametrically opposite meanings. They can refer to other types of collectives and groups of an ethnic, territorial, religious or gender nature, as well as to ideological families and political cultures, within a national or transnational scope.19 Within these spaces of remembrance, where memory and oblivion can crystallize, and which can equally symbolize and condense the way in which a community confronts its past, the memorial sites that recall recent traumatic pasts acquired special relevance. This was the case with the two World Wars of the

Introduction: Sites of memory

7

twentieth century. There are two dimensions that have taken on a special relevance in the meaning of specific sites of memory. On the one hand, armed conflicts and their correlates of mass death and destruction. On the other hand, dictatorships and their consequences, from human rights violations to invasions, colonial expansion and expressions of totalitarian rule.20 Undoubtedly, traumatic events such as the Holocaust of the European Jewry, civil wars and mass repression by dictatorships and colonial or occupying powers have also contributed in a decisive manner, since the 1940s, to establishing specific spaces of remembrance in Europe, as well as in other continents. A preferent, although not exclusive, subject of this attribution of meaning have been ruins and war cemeteries, as well as prisons, internment and concentration camps, places of execution and mass graves or memorials in remembrance of the dead. They are all spaces in which, preferably, those remembered are always the victims and the groups that were dominated, oppressed and eventually massacred by the dictators and their followers. From the end of the twentieth century, comparatively few debates occurred concerning whether these groups deserved or not to be noticed, recognized or commemorated. Disputes focus more on whether specific group or sub-groups should be included in the category of victims, the span of this category of victimhood and whether it is permissible or not to establish amongst the different groups of victims a categorization and a hierarchization (whether explicit or implicit). The often surprising second political life of dead bodies, paraphrasing the dictum of Katherine Verdery,21 as well as the symbolic meanings that the discovery, identification and management of the remains of victims of massacres and genocides can acquire in twentieth and twenty-first century societies, constitute in themselves an interdisciplinary field. This constitutes a specific section of the broader academic reflection on memory and oblivion of mass violence, encompassing the analysis of its dynamics and scenarios.22 The majority of dictatorships that endured for some time, from one decade to several, have also bequeathed to posterity other types of spaces that are difficult to manage for successor democracies. Works that are to differing degrees megalomaniacal, government buildings, monuments commemorating their heroes and victories, civil works and urban designs that would perpetuate social utopias and imaginaries linked to the aims of the autocratic regimes. Street names, and even towns, which evoked the heroes, the martyrs of the initial stages of a totalitarian movement, the founders, leaders or glorious deeds of a dictatorship, and which could follow preceding models of the politics of death,23 now conferring upon them new meanings. Or instead, monuments to the combatants fallen in the wars fought or instigated by those same dictatorships, which could also consist of the partisan resignification or appropriation of those already existing and referring to past conflicts whose memory was shared by the great majority of the population, such as (to refer to a recurring example) those fallen in the Great War of 1914–1918. Still, it was dead people who were presented as the heritage of the entire nation, assimilable to the fallen and heroes of past collective deeds now part

8 Introduction: Sites of memory

of the nation’s own story, and venerated as the subject of a shared grief, which would render them all the more difficult to resignify for democracies.24 In their great majority, the statues of dictators were removed from their pedestals following the end of their regime. Similarly, streets and squares were rebaptized, and the names of places and towns which evoked the dark times were modified. The majority of the symbols dating from those periods (seen now as bad times) were removed from official buildings that remained in public hands. In some countries, this process has been more radical, swift and systematic than in others. This depended in great extent on the specific type of transition from dictatorship to democracy that took place in each state, as well as the degree of continuity between pre-dictatorial and post-dictatorial elites. However, the childhood homes of dictators, often in private hands, as well as their tombs and mausoleums, their private residences or summer and winter palaces, often represented exceptions to the norm. They were places where the dictator’s ghost seemed to still be alive and casting his shadow upon the present, meaning unfinished business for the score-settling politics with the dictatorial past. They became often particularly sensitive places, which highlighted some of the deepest limitations and/or contradictions of the politics of memory undertaken by a democratic regime. This monograph aims at a comparative analysis of that particular category. It focuses on the specific spaces (both tangible and intangible, although in general of a physical nature: specific objects and spaces) in which the dictator’s body, his shadow and personal biography is projected. An embodied remembrance, in its most literal sense, and which is no longer transmitted through gestures or actions, but which is condensed into some remains, or into the memory of the interaction between the physical body and a specific intimate, family-based and everyday milieu.25 They are static places, symbolizing the beginning and the end, but also the stages of the apogee of the biography of a dictator. In their majority, they are birth homes, childhood homes, tombs and vaults, mausoleums, palaces or residences. Sometimes they are also modest private dwellings, which not always belong to the state. Furthermore, the intersection between two key dimensions of dictators’ power is crystallized in these sites of memory. On the one hand, their intimate, private and family sphere. Their facet of ordinary people, often emerging from the social core of the nation or community that they claimed to embody, with which many can identify. On the other hand, their charisma and public projection, invested with a missionary and sacred character, which was inherent to their personality cult whilst they were still alive. This cult and charisma do not disappear, as if by magic, following the autocrat’s death. Conversely, cult and charisma are often preserved by nostalgists and supporters, and even indirectly by some groups of “dark” tourists fascinated by the attraction of evil. But these qualities can also endure in a semi-conscious way in the memory of those generations socialized and brought up under the rule of the dictators, and often transmitted as a form of communicative memory to some sectors of the ensuing generations, even under the conditions of a full-fledged democracy.

Introduction: Sites of memory

9

These would be, therefore, the sites of the dictators. Memorial places or spaces whose management and resignification has turned, in the majority of examples analyzed here, into a laborious digestion or a permanent indigestion, when not into a melting pot of contradictions and changing interpretations, for democratic regimes that have succeeded dictatorships. At the same time, they offer us a different visual angle on the memories of authoritarian and totalitarian Europe from below, from the local sphere.

1.1 What are “sites of dictators”? An outline of a typology A starting question shall serve as point of departure. Why are sites of memory linked in a very intimate way to the personal biography of dictators, which I have deemed sites of dictators, so difficult to manage by the large majority of postdictatorial societies? The answer is threefold. First, there are many and very variegated objects, places or buildings that can become the personalized memorial space of a dictator, and therefore a centre of attraction, tribute and gathering for his supporters and those nostalgic for his rule. Second, as they are physical environments connected to the autocrat’s personal biography, they are also of a private nature and ownership, that is, they often belong to close or distant descendants of the dictator – from children or grandchildren to second- and third-degree relatives. This renders difficult the direct intervention by democratic states, which by definition are under the rule of law. Third, because in such environments, the figure, who from a distance is a tyrant or despot, is transformed almost unconsciously into an ordinary person, who lies within everyone’s reach once his environment is seen at close quarters. However, the shadow of the dictator’s charisma does not disappear from these places after death. Apart from mausoleums and palaces, the sites of the dictators are often dwellings, tombs and sites that are mostly modest and normal, where a figure that was (or became) special, or who was presented as such by his own propaganda, was born, lived, went to school, played with his friends, became ill, passed away and rests. Like everyone else. They are places where the exceptional becomes human and available, and the quasi-sacred becomes close and tangible. Within this variety, there is a wide range of sites of memory connected in an intimate manner with dictators which are repeated in the majority of cases analyzed in this study. For a tentative typology, they could be classified into five categories: First, the birth house or paternal home, or rather where childhood and/or adolescence was spent by the person who would then go on to become a supreme leader. A more or less renovated house, which was reinvented and reconstructed for posterity on more than one occasion. This is the case, amongst others, with Adolf Hitler, António de Oliveira Salazar, Benito Mussolini, Enver Hoxha, Joseph Stalin, Josip Broz Tito or Jozef Tiso. Unlike kings and princes, dictators could live and die in palaces, but they were not born in palaces. They came from a common

10

Introduction: Sites of memory

place, a town or a village, like many other people. Hence the crucial role in symbolic terms of their birth house and/or paternal home. Second, the private or semi-public tomb of the dictator. Examples of this would be Salazar, Stalin, Hoxha, Nicolae Ceauşescu and, up to a certain point, Mussolini. The place of burial can also be fictitious, or chosen by chance, when there is no certainty as to where the remains of the autocrat lie, as occurred with the tomb of Jozef Tiso until 2007. Third, the residences, area or spaces where the dictator spent a good part of his life, connected in general to his political and public activity. This would be the case of the headquarters of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei, NSDAP) in Munich, as well as the complex or alpine residence of Obersalzberg, which included amongst others the so-called Eagle’s Nest, a kind of second home for Hitler and his entourage of close aides. In the case of Mussolini, examples include his government headquarters from 1929 in the Venice Palace, which included his private apartment and a bunker, in addition to his private residence in the Torlonia Palace, in which he built another bunker for his exclusive use, and his summer residence in Rocca delle Caminate. In post-Soviet geography, further examples of this category are Stalin’s various summer residences or dachas, located in the Russian Federation and Georgia. Moreover, to these can be added some emblematic rooms, buildings or spaces, which possessed a special relevance and significance in the public addresses and speeches of dictators, the sites of their power. This would be the case, for example, with the Reichsparteitagsgelände complex in Nuremberg, the favourite backdrop of the Nazi Party’s mass rallies before the Second World War, immortalized by the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl in her classic work The Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935). Moreover, some residential or memorial spaces that were after bequeathed or dedicated to provosts and leading personalities of the dictatorship can sometimes be added. Fourth, mausoleums built or designed by the dictator for posterity (especially the case with Tito and Franco), or which were built after their death by their successors, relatives or admirers, such as the Hoxha pyramid. On occasions, they were also formally given the likeness of a vault or family crypt, such as in the case of the Mussolini family in San Cassiano (Predappio). Fifth, cult images or sites of cult included in churches or religious spaces, which were converted after the death of the dictator or autocrat into a space endowed with a special meaning. Here some examples could be mentioned, such as the socalled church of the return in Szabadság Tér (Liberty Square) in central Budapest, presided over in its atrium by a statue of the admiral and Hungarian leader Miklós Horthy; or the Saint Engelbert Church in Hohe Wand (Austria), devoted to the memory of Engelbert Dollfuss. As has been stated, sites of dictators are extremely malleable as objects of public and private remembrance, precisely because of their variegated and shifting nature. They are all susceptible to being turned into places where nostalgists, admirers and “dark tourists” can meet, as well as to becoming centres of attraction or authentic

Introduction: Sites of memory

11

emblems for the supporters of the dictators and/or upholders of their political legacy. They can range from Italian Neo-Fascists and German Neo-Nazis to Stalin’s admirers in the Russian Federation, and in the post-Soviet republics. But they may simply be tourists who feel attracted by the memory of dictatorships, their image and aesthetic dimension, popularized through the Internet, video games and other channels. Their visits often represent a tempting source of income in times of globalization and global crisis. Although this kind of tourism is often labelled with the epithet of “dark”, it also includes many history lovers, schoolteachers and students. All of this renders the legal and public management of these locations, as sites of the dictators, even more complex. A museum dedicated to a dictator in his birthplace can become a site of memory for those who feel identified with the legacy of the dictatorship, if the authorities do not take measures to resignify the site and turning it into a proper memorial space. Even if they do this, there exists the risk that nostalgists, mingling with tourists, the curious and school parties interpret the place in their own way, and impose their presence in a way that goes beyond the limits permitted by law. But even if this memorial space does not exist as such, as in Germany and Austria, cult spaces or places of alternative remembrance can emerge. In this case, their connection with the memory of the autocrat is indirect, imagined or simply invented. This was the case with the grave of Adolf Hitler’s parents in Leonding (Austria), or with the tomb of his fellow Nazi Rudolf Hess. In short, sites of memory do not always fall within set types. They are also constructed spatial categories, the result of the imagination of the followers and nostalgists of the dictators. Invented traditions can emerge from these new cults. However, when forced to deal with these spaces, democratic states tend to waver and delay, lagging behind events themselves.

1.2 The difficult management of the sites of dictators by democratic regimes The solutions provided for the public management of sites of dictators are almost as varied as there are countries or specific examples. Challenges are fairly similar in the case of fascist and authoritarian dictatorships from the inter-war period, from Italy to Spain and Germany. But there are also many commonalities in the case of the management of the legacy of communist dictatorships, in particular those, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hoxha’s Albania or Ceauşescu’s Romania, which were characterized by the central role played by the personality cult of an undisputable leader. This encompassed Stalinist and nationalist versions (Ceauşescu, and up to a certain point, Tito’s Yugoslavia), as well as pseudo-Maoist variants (Hoxha). Before examining them in greater depth, it is possible to establish some general patterns that are common to most cases analyzed in this study. First of all, dictators are the greatest perpetrators of their regimes. Although they did not get blood on their hands directly, almost all of them took criminal

12

Introduction: Sites of memory

decisions and exercized maximum responsibility for the violations of human rights perpetrated during their mandates. The destiny of those sites of memory connected to perpetrators, to the executioner’s body, poses a politically and ethnically controversial question, which is approached late with respect to those memorial spaces linked to the victims. This final category acquired a new ethical and symbolical importance after 1945 and, in particular, following the public trial in Jerusalem of the leading Nazi, Adolf Eichmann in 1960–1961. There is a relatively broad and established consensus, legitimized in good measure by international jurisprudence from 1946, as to who the victims are. However, it is far more complex to define, and delimit, who the perpetrators or aggressors are to differing degrees. How far does due obedience go, and where does conscious participation and proactive involvement in massacres begin? This is applied in the same way to those who collaborate with and assist dictators, those who often cited obedience to their superior in the chain of command as an attenuating circumstance of their crimes. The body of the dictator and sites where he was born and died, and where he resided, are imbued equally with his responsibility and a certain aura of sanctity. Guilt remains, and its burden is transferred to the surrounding environment; but this is also the case with fascination and charisma. Compassion with the dead body can lead to apology: the traditional argument that the dictator himself, like kings in the past, was good, but his subordinates or ministers distorted his intentions. This ambivalence often becomes a double-edged sword for democracies. Second, the management of physical spaces associated in a very personal way with the biography of dictators displays specific features. These are environments and buildings imbued with a highly symbolic and evocative strength, which can contribute in an indirect way to strengthening the past aura of fascist and communist dictators. This would be dangerous when dealing with the memory of ideologies and political cultures that conferred great relevance upon the cult of the leader. At the same time, it is almost inevitable that in these environments, the figure of the much-feared autocrat from the past becomes humanized and softened; its image even displays a face of normality. The remains of the dictator, in spite of how tyrannical and feared he may have been in life, evoke respect and compassion, if not devotion, when they are transferred to an urn or tomb. His birthplace, personal objects and presentation of his intimate surroundings contribute in an implicit way to making him appear a normal person, “one of us”.26 However, the management of these sites also tends to be consistent with the general characteristics and the specific evolution of the politics of memory implemented by each of the post-dictatorial political regimes. Third, it should be recalled that the discussion concerning the possible resignification of sites of dictators tends to focus not so much on the narratives and uses proposed (museums, visitor interpretative centres, thematic itineraries and “virtual museums”, charitable or beneficial uses, etc.), as on the where. This means, public debate often focuses on the physical surroundings in which museums and interpretation centres should be located, in order to avoid that these places,

Introduction: Sites of memory

13

regardless of the critical narrative that exhibitions may display, end up in a close association between the space visited and the cult of the autocrat. Post-dictatorial democracies always fear the possible emergence of centres of pilgrimage or cult to dictators, as a posthumous recreation of a founding myth. On their part, the inhabitants of places marked by an unwanted legacy, in being the birthplaces of dictators, rarely share the same stance concerning this uncomfortable remembrance. Whereas some wish to erase any association with the later career of one of their “distinguished” fellow countrymen, others see in this a golden opportunity to generate tourist resources, and position their town on the global stage. Others, often a minority, believe that the re-semanticization of these places is a civic and democratic duty, to be accomplished by the mindful involvement of the local citizenry. Fourth, there is a substantial difference between those sites of dictators, in particular tombs and mausoleums, being already created during the period of the autocrat’s rule, where his regime dies with him, and those created following his death by a successor. In the latter case, public management tends to be simpler (Stalin, Hoxha): a dictator’s successor does not always specifically wish for the memory of his predecessor to overshadow him. The fate of the site of the dictator takes on a lesser relevance within the continuity of his regime. There are exceptions, such as family dynasties, with North Korea being a good example; but also the founding fathers of the nation’s independence, restorers of lost statehood or creators of an enduring regime, whose memory tends to be shared, and not disputed, by later generations. Very often, they are not even seen as negative figures, but surrounded by an aura of ambiguity. When a dictatorship dies in an immediate or gradual manner with the dictator, a great deal depends on the type of subsequent shift to democracy: whether it was an agreed transition, or if a true revolutionary and/or democratic break took place, or rather an underhand continuity of power elites under a regime change. Even when there was a radical breakdown of the dictatorships, whether by a military defeat by external powers or due to the success of an endogenous revolution (the cases, respectively, in Germany and Portugal), some institutional and social spheres inevitably persisted, in which the continuities were greater than the ruptures. Therefore, some public interstices existed, where a certain tolerance endured towards the private memory of dictators. Fifth, it can be stated that after the end of the dictatorship, a first phase of forgetting, silence or uncomfortable tolerance tends to be followed by a second stage, in which an open debate in public opinion takes place concerning the management and uses of sites of dictators. In a third phase, the opportunity to undertake a pragmatic usage of those same spaces, with attention placed on tourism and the search for visibility on the global map of cultural and media events, is raised sooner or later. Usually, local and/or regional authorities make the first step to open this uncomfortable discussion: the touristic exploitation of the dictatorial past. This usually implies a resignification of the site of memory, as well as its historical contextualization, prior to its conversion into a public environment

14

Introduction: Sites of memory

to be visited by the general public. The long-term purpose of this transformation aims at educating the citizenry, shaping its democratic values and the social understanding of the past from a critical perspective. This also means preventing the site from becoming a cult and pilgrimage space for the adversaries of democracy. Sixth, wherever sites of memory were linked to the public profile of dictators, and were therefore state property, their re-conversion was not very problematic from the legal point of view, as the consensus of the political elites running the state sufficed. Something similar occurred when the autocrats were overthrown, tried and their property expropriated by the state, as an act of punishment or as redress for their victims. Nevertheless, the panorama is greatly complicated in those cases where the sites of dictators were houses, palaces or graves whose ownership belonged to the autocrat’s descendants, or private owners not linked to the dictator’s lineage. However, sooner or later the state authorities found legal ways to support their intervention, as displayed by the contrasting examples of Austria or Spain. Seventh, the significance granted to the sites of dictators is strongly related to the circumstances of the death of who was born, lived or lies in them. There are dictators who passed away when in power and due to natural causes, such as Salazar, Stalin, Franco, Tito or Hoxha. They were not held accountable during their lifetime for their crimes and misuse of power; and their death, sometimes preceded by physical decline and illness, humanized them in the eyes of many of their subjects, and even of many opponents. But this did not constitute a reparation for their victims, which became an unsettled issue for succeeding democratic governments. Other autocrats appeared in court with greater or lesser guarantees were condemned or executed, sometimes in public. In some cases, a picture of their corpses was made public, such as with Jozef Tiso or Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu. The person now seen as a tyrant was condemned, but was not for that reason demystified in the eyes of many of his followers or former minions. A third group of dictators was assassinated or executed in summary fashion, after falling into the hands of their opponents, such as Mussolini. Their bodies were similarly displayed and subject to derision for the purpose of discrediting them. However, such a solution does not demystify the dead dictator, but often angers his supporters, and deepens the medium-term division over his memory in public opinion.27 Finally, it should be recalled that where the democratic break with the dictatorship was explicit and abrupt, musealizations and re-semanticizations of inherited memorial spaces were much deeper and radical than in countries where the continuity of the elites was more manifest. However, some grey areas concerning the management of the sites of dictators also endured. What were the solutions debated and applied in each specific case? These will be addressed succinctly within the context of the European continent between the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. The numerous examples of Asian, African and Latin American autocrats will not be

Introduction: Sites of memory

15

included in this overview. This does not mean that between European debates and those that have taken place on other continents there have not been interactions and transfers. Those took place between close and interconnected cultural fields, like Spain, Portugal and Latin America. But they also occurred between ideological families, such as between the USSR, China, Vietnam and Cuba. What follows is a specific chapter on global history, seen through specific and often almost unknown sites. This shapes a peculiar part of the European memory landscape of the large twentieth century.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

See Huntington (1994) and Berg-Schlosser (2009). W.I. Lenin to Grigory Zinoviev, quoted by Sebestyen (2020: 547). Linz (2010). Besier (2006: 17–30). Only in one case did the wife of the dictator hold a relevant role in political terms. This was Elena Ceauşescu, who often appeared with her husband in representations of power and personality cult. However, it was Nicolae who held official positions and was always the highest figure in the hierarchy. In other cases, such as that of Nexhmije Hoxha (the widow of Enver Hoxha), Jian Qing (the fourth wife and widow of Mao Zedong) or Rachele Guidi (the widow of Benito Mussolini), their political or symbolic role acquired a greater presence following the death of their husbands. At times, they led factions of their nostalgic followers opposed to the political changes initiated by their successors or by democratic governments. See Mikkelsen (2018). Weber (2002: 193–204). See Kantorowicz (1957), as well as Kampmann & Papenheim (2009). See Schlögel (2017: 818–830), Tumarkin (1997: 165–251) and Sebestyen (2020: 588–595). Both the house where Lenin lived as a boy and other abodes inhabited by the family, as well as the memorial museum, are part of an entire tourist route, whose narrative is mostly acritical: see http://www.leninmemorial.ru/en/. The complex around the cabin where Lenin lived in Shushenskoye was converted in 1993 into a larger themed museum, dedicated to rural Siberian life. See http://www.shush.ru/. See the classic Bloch (1988). Some references to the transferral of sacredness between the attributes of kings and the qualities attributed to fascist dictators can be found in Passerini (1991) and Gentile (2007), as well as Kershaw (2011). See Geiger (1926/1927), Shils (1965) and Geertz (1977). For an overview more focused on the styles of fascist leadership and in the forms of charisma projected by the dictatorships of this nature, see Costa Pinto, Eatwell & Larsen (2007). On the Stalinist leadership cult, see different perspectives in Plamper (2012), for the case of Stalin, as well as a compilation of cases in Apor, Behrends, Jones & Rees (2004); a synthetic reflexion in Apor (2010) and Tumarkin (1997). Rasson (2020). Naumann (1984). P. Nora, “Présentation” and “Entre mémoire et histoire. La problèmatique des lieux”, in Nora (1984: 15–21, 23–43). In the classic sense coined by Pierre Bourdieu (1984). Assmann (1999). According to the classic definition by Jan Assmann (1992). See Saint-Gille (2007), as well as François & Schulze (2001) and Majerus (2014). Todorov (2002). Verdery (1999).

16

22 23 24 25 26

Introduction: Sites of memory

See Stepputat (2011), as well as Ferrándiz & Robben (2015). Casquete & Cruz (2009). Koselleck & Jeismann (1994). Connerton (1989). Some authors have opted, in a pervasive manner, to describe the dictators’ childhood, or rather to recreate their everyday environment through their diet. For example, see Chalmet (2012) and Szablowski (2020). 27 See Großbölting & Schmidt (2011), as well as Garibian (2016).

2 THE SITES OF THE FASCIST DICTATORS

2.1 Germany: Between silence and re-signification The first dominant paradigm of the politics of memory concerning the recent past in post-war Germany during the 1950s and 1960s was that of the enforced for­ getting of the dictator. Adolf Hitler was simply seen as an aberrant and exceptional case, a madman who had been able to deceive, together with his minions, the German people in their entirety, causing a “double catastrophe”, external and internal, as expressed by the German liberal historian, Friedrich Meinecke, in 1946, after his return from exile.1 Fortunately for the new rulers of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) founded in 1949 and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) established in the same year, the Nazi dictator owned few properties of his own. The Führer had inherited nothing from his parents, who possessed little. Neither did he favour his close and distant relatives with perks from power. Such was the case firstly with his sister Paula, who lived for years in Vienna and died in 1960 in Berchtesgaden (Bavaria), where her remains also lie,2 but also that of his two stepbrothers and five nephews. Apart from an abode in Munich and the alpine residence of the Berghof, as shall be seen, the most noteworthy of Hitler’s possessions were the author’s royalties to his work, Mein Kampf (1924/25), which generated an income into the millions owing to its high sales volume during the Third Reich period. Like the dictator’s other properties, they were confiscated by the Allied occupiers and transferred to the Free State (Land) of Bavaria. The transfer expired in 2015, on the 70th an­ niversary of the author’s death, as dictated by German copyright law (Urheberrecht). Moreover, the birthplace of the former Führer, the border town of Braunau am Inn, was located in Austrian territory, as was the case with other locations where he spent his childhood and teenage years before moving to Munich in 1913.3 And nor was there a tomb or mausoleum of the dictator, in the literal sense of the word.

18

The sites of the fascist dictators

Furthermore, some additional sites of memory that were also closely linked to his life once he was dictator and a military leader remained outside German ter­ ritory (Eastern or Western) after 1949. A paradigmatic example is the ruins of the command post and communications complex constructed in order for Hitler and his Staff to direct war operations against the USSR in Masuria (Eastern Prussia), the so-called Wolfsschanze or Wolf’s Lair. After its partial destruction in 1945, its ruins have remained in Polish territory following the post-war border re-ordering. The dilemmas posed by its conservation, tourist operation and resignification, therefore, do not concern the German State.4

2.1.1 Hitler’s Bunker: A coffin without a body? Unlike other countries, in post-war Germany there was no dictator’s body, al­ though a myth emerged regarding his supposed surviving of the battle of Berlin. After Hitler committed suicide with his newly married lover, Eva Braun, on 30 April 1945, around 3:15 pm, the bodies of both spouses, following Hitler’s pre­ vious instructions, were incinerated under the supervision of his personal assistant, Otto Günsche, in the garden located before the Berlin chancellery bunker’s emergency exit. The burnt corpses were buried in the same place and were dis­ covered there by a Red Army unit days later. The remains, handed over to the Soviet political police (NKVD), were subjected to an autopsy by Red Army medical staff. There were initial doubts, caused by the discrepancies between the versions of different survivors of the bunker interrogated by the Soviets (who stated that they had heard a shot), and the initial results of the medical ex­ amination, which suggested cyanide poisoning, as well as the different investiga­ tions by Soviet military intelligence and the NKVD. Nonetheless, the bulky report which was delivered to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin concluded that they were indeed the mortal remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. The Soviets kept secret, however, that the dead Führer’s remains were in their possession, and never released the photos. This gave rise in the West throughout the Cold War to all kinds of stories and rumours. Some authors even suggested the possibility that Hitler might have escaped alive, taking refuge in South America or in other locations.5 The opposite logic to that which would preside over the executions of the Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg trial (1946) and other subsequent processes was to release the photos of the bodies but not of their graves, in order to avoid the emergence of neo-Nazi sanctuaries and hoaxes re­ garding their fate. The reality was much more prosaic. The mortal remains of Adolf Hitler and his wife, after passing through several military intelligence sites, remained buried for years under the parade ground of a Red Army barracks in Magdeburg. In 1970, what remained of the dictator’s body, minus a fragment of his jaw (in the custody of Soviet military intelligence) and his cranium (conserved by the NKVD), was incinerated by order of the Kremlin, together with those of Eva Braun and Joseph and Marta Goebbels, who had also committed suicide in the bunker. All of their

The sites of the fascist dictators

19

ashes, mixed together, were poured unceremoniously from a bridge into the nearby River Ehle.6 In Germany itself, both West and East (until October 1990), the most symbolic sites associated closely with Adolf Hitler’s biography remained abandoned for decades. Most of them had been severely damaged by bombardment and street fighting. This situation was, moreover, in keeping with the long initial phase of the West German state’s politics of memory, which had succeeded the policies of “denazification” during the 1945–1949 period. It was a memory policy with different ups and downs, further characterized by broad concessions to the rem­ nants of the Nazi past, as well as by institutional and social silence regarding a large part of the legacy of the Third Reich. This was characteristic of the rule of the Christian Democrat chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1949–1963), as well as the first stages of the Social Democratic cabinet led by Willy Brandt (1969–1974).7 It was initially the case with the physical location where Adolf Hitler spent his final days. For some, it was a sort of gigantic hidden sarcophagus, which sym­ bolized the endurance of the buried ghosts of National Socialism for German posterity. The so-called Führerbunker was a solid complex of air-raid shelters lo­ cated at a depth of 8.5 metres, with 29 rooms and external 4-metre-thick concrete wall, which was added in 1944 to the already existing ones (forming the so-called Vorbunker), in the subsoil of the former Reich chancellor. The latter was annexed in turn to the New Reich Chancellery (Neue Reichskanzlei), designed by Hitler’s chief architect, Albert Speer, and constructed between 1938 and 1939. It was in this subterranean stronghold where the dictator spent the final ten days of April 1945, together with his faithful followers and assistants, until his suicide.8 The Soviet occupiers, once the task of meticulously exploring and photo­ graphing the location was completed, attempted in vain to blow up the bunker, but only managed to damage its interior walls, ventilation shafts and emergency exit. For several years, the complex’s exterior ruins, which following the division of the German capital remained in the Soviet sector, were subject to the curiosity of passers-by, the scene of children’s games and an uncomfortable reminder of the recent past. After an initial phase characterized by hesitancy, the GDR govern­ ment decided in 1959 to dynamite the remains of the New Chancellery down to the foundations. However, it was not possible to destroy the bunker’s outer walls. The ruins were covered by a pile of earth and rubble. After 14 years, the East German political police (the dreaded Staatssicherheit, or Stasi) investigated the in­ tricate network of the underground tunnels and discovered a part of Goebbels’s diaries in one of the compartments. From 1985, building of several blocks of housing, a car park and children’s park began in that area, located exactly above the entrance to the bunker. Although the attempts to completely destroy the foundations with dynamite proved unsuccessful once again, the Vorbunker was removed, together with rubble, and the tunnels were filled with sand to avoid possible escape attempts through them to West Berlin.9 After the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, some parts of the old chancellery bunker were opened to the public. However, the city authorities soon

20

The sites of the fascist dictators

decided to seal up the entrances with concrete, as the site had begun to attract those interested in and nostalgic for the Third Reich, as well as some Neo-Nazi groups. The Berlin Archaeology Office, determined to preserve the cultural heritage of the new German capital, requested the city Senate (government) in 1992 that some parts of the bunker be placed under protection, as they represented at a symbolic level the deep “layers” of German history. The proposal failed, owing in some degree to protests by the Jewish community. The fear of con­ verting the bunker into a sacred place for Neo-Nazi fanatics, or rather a “devo­ tional market” for dark tourists fascinated by the Third Reich, was a decisive factor. However, the Archaeology Office did stipulate that information boards should be placed in the park for visitors, in order to provide details concerning the historical significance of that site. But the debate was far from over.10 Seven years later, the workmen involved in the frenetic building activity in the area where the bunker was located – very close to the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdam Square, a focus of urban redevelopment of the capital of the united Germany – stumbled across new remains of Hitler’s labyrinthine refuge. Once again, the public debate on the convenience of placing findings under heritage protection, covering them or permitting visits returned. Some historians, such as the controversial American author Daniel Goldhagen, who at that time appeared regularly in the media, proposed placing the ruins under UNESCO protection and turning them into a site of international memory. In his view, as the Nazis’ crimes had not only affected Germany, and not even just Europe, the German authorities should be subject to the dictates of international organizations. Other voices preferred to literally bury the bunker, which was regarded as a subterranean spectre from the past which muddied the future architectural projects of the refounded capital. The planned construction on a large plot adjoining the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by Peter Eisenman and the firm Buro Happold, which was inaugurated in 2005, complicated the matter further. It was problematic to imagine that a memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism could co-exist with another dedicated to the highest perpetrators and located just a few hundred metres away. Finally, the remains of the bunker were sealed off. As in 1992, the fear of creating a sacred site for the Neo-Nazis, in times when the resurrection of the extreme right in the new federated states of the East, was cause for serious concern in German public opinion.11 A similar fate was met by other less important bunkers situated in the same area, such as that housing members of the Waffen SS division, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, charged with the protection of the Nazi leader.12 In 2003–2004, several accounts by survivors of the bunker were published, as well as the study by the writer and essayist Joachim Fest, Downfall (Der Untergang, 2003), which reconstructed in detail Hitler’s final days in his refuge, and was also based on documents from the Russian archives. To this can be added the film of the same name directed by the filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel, winner of several prizes and an Oscar nominee. All this contributed to putting once again the fate of

The sites of the fascist dictators

21

the remains of Hitler’s bunker, as well as other bunkers of former Nazi ministers, up for discussion. With the increasing influx of tourists to Berlin, especially from the start of the UEFA European Championship held in Germany in June and July of 2006, the Berliner Unterwelten e.V. association, dedicated to researching and highlighting the city’s underground history, was commissioned by the Senate of Berlin to install information plaques on the former site of the bunker in both German and English. Its objective was to exhibit a historical perspective in contrast to the space of the old memorial, in order to combat mythifications and biased interpretations by the extreme right that might convert the site into a Mecca of Neo-Nazi pilgrimage.

2.1.2 The sites of the Führer’s power During the 1950s and 1960s, various landmark sites of National Socialist monu­ mental architecture were also condemned to oblivion. In particular, in three cities of key relevance during the Third Reich. Berlin, capital of the Reich which was to endure a thousand years; Nuremberg, a city with Wagnerian associations and site of the NSDAP’s (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei) gigantic mass rallies, as well as the famous trials (November 1945–October 1946) of the leading Nazi war criminals; and Munich, where the Nazi party was founded and grew from 1919, where Hitler resided during the decisive years of his political life, and which during the Third Reich was officially baptized as the “capital of the movement” (Haupstadt der Bewegung). Historians, architects, local politicians and experts in historical heritage debated for decades what purpose to give these buildings, which were partly reduced to ruins due to wartime bombardments. The examples spanned a large number of grandiose buildings later designated for civil,

FIGURE 2.1

Führerbunker, Berlin (January 2020). ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

22

The sites of the fascist dictators

cultural or administrative use, and whose Nazi connections are hardly detectable today at first glance, such as the Art Museum (Haus der Kunst) in Munich, partly rebuilt over more than two decades ago, and the former Air Ministry in Berlin, which was put back into use, first by the GDR and after 1990 by the FRG, as a ministerial headquarters. However, the re-use of other architectural spaces was cause for a complex and prolonged debate. This was the case with the gigantic complex, whose purpose was, amongst others, to host from 1933 the Nazi Party conferences and rallies in Nuremberg, and the group of governmental buildings constructed around the centric King’s square (Königsplatz) in Munich. Both places had been highly af­ fected by bombing and remained in a state of near abandonment for several decades. The rivalries between the municipal administrations (particularly when they were held by the Social Democratic Party, SPD), and the state government of Bavaria, monopolized from the 1960s by the strongly conservative regional party Christian Social Union (CSU), contributed to the pace of the implementation of urban politics of memory being slower than in other German towns.13 The si­ tuation changed substantially only from 1979 to 1980, becoming a critically or­ iented and pro-active intervention, in accordance with the new directions of German memory politics. New vigour was added from the 1990s onwards. In Munich, the local, Bavarian and federal authorities harboured for decades endless doubts as to what to do with the site’s remains located in the Königsplatz. Its original purpose was to act as a headquarters for different Nazi party buildings and Nazi administration. It was a sort of hybrid between party quarter and gov­ ernment district. Part of the site, which had been heavily affected by allied bombing, was dynamited in 1947 by American units, who destroyed what re­ mained of the two small temples at the entrance to the square (built to honour Nazi “martyrs”), as well as the ruins of the former Brown House (Braunes Haus), a nineteenth-century palace acquired and restored in 1931 to act as the political headquarters of the NSDAP and several of its sections. After its demolition, the large stone plinths of the complex, as well as the granite cobblestones, were still visible, which were removed only in 1988. During the following decades, vegetation covered most of the square, which was re-named Square of the Victims of National Socialism; a debate arose whether to maintain the new urban biotope. Another part was turned into a free car park. Buildings such as the Führerbau (the Führer building) housed the Music and Drama School from the 1950s. The nearby building where the NSDAP administration had been located was transformed into the headquarters for different university institutes. Only from the 1970s did the Munich social democrats, running the mayor’s office, conceive the new project which took years to come to fruition. Its purpose was to restore what had been the original nineteenth-century design of the square, which dated back to the times of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.14 The urban redevelopment was not completed until the second decade of the twentyfirst century, and enabled the renaming of some sites. This was the case with the old Brown House, where a sober and modern three-storey building, the National

The sites of the fascist dictators

23

Socialism Documentation Centre (NS-Dokumentationszentrum) was built, being inaugurated in May 2015. Its permanent exhibition focuses not only on the rise of National Socialism from its humble beginnings but also the everyday life and development of local society in Munich during the Nazi period, paying particular attention to the victims of the regime.15 For its part, in Nuremberg was located the vast complex (25 square kilometres) of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds (Reichsparteitagsgelände). The site began to be developed in 1933 according to the plans of Albert Speer. It would have com­ prised a gigantic stadium with the capacity of 400,000 people, a practice ground for the German Army (Wehrmacht) and a two-kilometre long avenue to link together the different parts of the complex. Most of the facilities, as with the planned conference building, were not completed before 1944, with the excep­ tion of the Zeppelin Field, presided by a tribune inspired by the Pergamon Altar conserved in the eponymous museum in Berlin. Following the end of the Second World War, responsibility for the complex, which most of the allied bombs had left untouched (in contrast with the city centre), was returned to the Nuremberg town hall, which in the 1930s had do­ nated the ground for Speer’s monumental building plans. Initially, part of the site was abandoned to nature, and some buildings were put to practical use, without any reference to their previous history. The unfinished conference centre was used as a warehouse, exhibition centre and venue for trade fairs, amongst other pur­ poses: part of the available terrain was turned into a park. The planned practice and parade ground for the Wehrmacht, the Märzfeld – Mars/March field, a play on words for the god Mars and the month of March, to commemorate the reintroduction of compulsory military service by the Third Reich in March 1935 – was the site until 1960 for transit camps for displaced persons, as well as for German refugees from East-Central Europe. After this, the building of a housing complex and an industrial estate was planned. From 1973, the remains of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, like all National Socialist architecture monumental buildings, were declared as protected cultural heritage. This forced the town hall, determined until then to sell part of the complex to private investors, from the local football club to a shopping centre, to rethink its strategy. The local authorities then went on to seriously consider the resemanticization of the site, as various memorialist and local history associations had already claimed. The process was slow and contradictory, since the Nuremberg town hall was reluctant to maintain the gigantic structures that had been the quintessential fra­ mework of Nazi gatherings. Between 1985 and 2001, the building of the old rostrum of the Zeppelin Field, which also encompasses the lavish golden room (Goldener Saal), served as a permanent framework for the Faszination und Gewalt (Fascination and Violence) exhibition. Its purpose was to break down and analyze the mechanisms that National Socialism set in motion to seduce the will of the masses. A good part of the exhibition continued on the premises, in the manner of a permanent exhibition. All experts were won over by the project to turn the set

24

The sites of the fascist dictators

FIGURE 2.2

Seixas

Documentation Centre, Nuremberg (June 2017). ©Xosé M. Núñez

The sites of the fascist dictators

25

of buildings into an “educational site” on German history, which in turn was interwoven in a pacifist narrative and reflection on twentieth-century European history, which focused on the reconciliation between different countries.16 Therefore, in November 2001, in the north wing of the conference centre, a Documentation Centre (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände), together with a lake and concert hall, was inaugurated. The permanent exhibition reflects upon the meaning of the complex itself during the National Socialist period as well as the particular relationship between the city of Nuremberg and the history of Nazism. There are also frequent temporary exhibitions on different themes related with the history of the Third Reich. The debate on the fate of the Zeppelin Field rostrum and the remains of the field as a whole continued into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Some experts, such as the reputed historian of postwar memory, Norbert Frei, have suggested leaving part of the former complex in ruins, especially the Zeppelin Field, given its ominous significance and permanent invitation to remember it as a scene of Nazi mass rallies. He extended this stance to any other space evoking the Third Reich. According to Frei, the temptation to promote “memory tourism” represented in itself a risk for the preservation of historical memory’s critical discourses.17 On the contrary, other voices, including several architects, Nuremberg town hall and local history associations, which organize educational activities and guided tours to the Reichsparteitagsgelände, such as the Geschichte für Alle e.V. (History for Everyone) society, linked to the Regional History Institute, gave priority to a partial reconstruction of the architectural ensemble that would focus on the rostrum and interior rooms. A permanent exhibition and accurate historical contextualization would be included in this remodelling. To that end, they invoked the commitment of the coalition federal government of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in 2015, which explicitly identified the Nuremberg complex as one of the memory spaces that should be used and re-signified, in order to educate younger generations about the risks of totalitarianism.18 A similar polemic, between re-semanticization and oblivion or destruction, has developed since spring 2020 concerning Berlin’s Olympiapark, an equally vast site comprising the sports stadium, the adjacent Maifeld, an open-air theatre, a swimming pool and other buildings, all built for the 1936 Olympic Games and designed by Werner March under Speer’s supervision. The area was in part rebuilt in the 1950s, after the busts of Hitler, swastikas and other visible symbols of the Third Reich had been removed. Still, several names of buildings which still al­ luded to Nazi figures, as well as some neo-classical statues (the Boxer by Josef Thorak and the Rosseführer [rider with horse] by Josef Wackerle) sporting in theme and Nazi in taste, were left intact. The site was re-used by Berlin residents in a pragmatic way. In spite of remodelling undertaken for the Football World Cup in 2006, which also included 75 explanatory plaques and a multimedia area that contextualized the history of the Olympic park, several original inscriptions, as well as some statues, remain at the site.19

26

The sites of the fascist dictators

The former head of urban planning and historical heritage of the Senate of Berlin from 1996 to 2004, the social democrat Peter Strieder, proposed the re­ moval of some neo-classical statues and names from streets and squares from the site that evoke Nazi heroes. They should be placed in another explanatory con­ text, with some inscriptions and symbols erased. This contravenes the city’s plans to build a sports museum in that location. Several renowned Berlin architects, such as Hans Kollhoff and Volkwin Marg, responded by arguing that it would be more didactic for the new generations to leave the complex in its current state, adding a visitor interpretative centre to be located beneath the grandstand of the Olympic Stadium. The neo-classicism of the statues, stated Marg, was not a Nazi invention, but an opportunistic re-use. For that reason, it would be advisable not to focus the debate on a “dispute over statues”, but rather on the architectural ensemble.20

2.1.3 From the mountain court to the dictator’s abodes Some other sites of dictator were directly related to Hitler’s private sphere. This was the case with the set of buildings high up in the mountains of Obersalzberg, located in the Bavarian Alps and near the city of Berchtesgaden. The heavenly alpine precinct was used by Adolf Hitler from the end of 1923 in practice as a second residence, whose centre was the house which had been left to the NSDAP by the first political mentor of the Nazi leader at the beginning of the 1920s, the affluent anti-Semitic writer Dietrich Eckart. Already by the 1930s, the site had been turned into a centre of attraction for Nazi “pilgrims” who came to pay tribute and express their admiration for the Führer, who similarly received visits from schools and youth groups from the entire Upper Bavaria region. After 1935, the former Wachenfeld house, in which Hitler himself stayed, was enlarged and refurbished. This became the beginning of the set of buildings that would be called the Berghof (literally, “mountain farm”, although the name also perhaps played with the meaning of Hof as a king’s court), with representative and government functions. Other Nazi leaders, such as Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann, were assigned residences within the complex. An office of the Reich Chancellery was housed in Berchtesgaden in 1937, and in 1938, the Nazi Party gave Hitler a mansion at the mountain’s summit, the so-called Kehlsteinhaus or Eagle’s Nest. All this made up a kind of summer court for the dictator and his most intimate entourage of collaborators: what historian Heike Görtemaker calls the Berghof “society” or circle.21 The renovation of the whole complex was the work, once again, of Albert Speer. The Berghof was witness to important decisions, such as the invasion of the USSR or the annexing of Austria, and foreign statesmen and dip­ lomats were received there. Hotels for members and leaders of the NSDAP, as well as hostels for Nazi Party youth and female organizations, sprung up around it.22 After acting as a halfway house for the escape of different Third Reich Nazi leaders to other destinations, the Berghof was reached by allied bombs at the end of April 1945, and was occupied by American and French troops on 4 May.

The sites of the fascist dictators

27

After the end of the war and the founding of the FRG in 1949, the local authorities proceeded initially to condemn the recent past of the Berghof to ob­ livion. However, some businessmen attempted to profit from it, organizing visits for nostalgists, Neo-Nazi activists and dark tourists in general. Because of this, the command of the American troops stationed in the area decided to dynamite most of the buildings in the complex, although it left some standing in order to house their own officers and offices. Only the “Eagle’s Nest” residence, at the moun­ tain’s summit, was authorized to be used as a restaurant and tourist attraction. The remains of the complex were handed over to the state (Freistaat) of Bavaria by the American Army in 1995. Amongst these, and in addition to various ruins, the former hotel or Platterhof and an underground bunker may be highlighted. The Bavarian authorities then decided to renovate the complex and turn it into a re-signified site of memory. With this objective, a modern centre of doc­ umentation on National Socialism (NS-Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg), as­ sociated with the prestigious Institute of Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte) of Munich, was inaugurated in 1999 and enlarged in 2005. The documentation centre housed a permanent exhibition on the National Socialist period, which largely comprises materials related to the stays of Hitler and the Nazi elite at the Berghof, some of them sourced from private donations. The exhibition also explains to visitors the essential characteristics of the Nazi regime, and in particular its genocidal nature. Similarly, the Centre also hosts conferences on a regular basis, such as that dedicated in 2011 to the Täterorte, the sites of memory of the perpetrators, as well as conferences dedicated to remembering and analyzing the Nazi crimes, and different temporary exhibitions. The high number of visitors caused the Bavarian authorities to undertake a remodelling and expansion of the complex and the documentation centre, agreed by the Bavarian regional parlia­ ment (Landtag) in June 2013, the work on which should have been completed by mid-2020.23 The controversies concerning the former summer court of the Third Reich did not end there. In 2005, a group of Bavarian businessmen began construction of a five-star hotel at 200 metres from the memorial complex, with the objective of attracting all kinds of visitors. A debate ensued in German public opinion about what some media have named ironically the “Hitler Hotel”, as they regarded the conversion of a site of remembrance of the perpetrators into a tourist attraction as being in poor taste. Others, however, pointed out that there was no better way to demystify the space and remove from it all connotation of a Mecca of pilgrimage than to turn it into a tourist attraction like any other, favoured somewhat by the unquestionable beauty of the surroundings. The Bavarian government, through the indirect financing of the hotel project through a publicly owned bank, would have even attempted a “gentrification” of tourism in the area in order to prevent it becoming a sacred site for Neo-Nazis. In the construction and design of the es­ tablishment, minute care was taken to avoid evoking any sense of Nazi archi­ tecture, from showers to windows. In spite of its high expectations, the luxury

28

The sites of the fascist dictators

hotel has registered substantial losses since its opening, and is now under new ownership.24 Similarly, the putting on sale, at the beginning of 2020, of the much more modest hotel, Zum Türken, located within what was the Berghof complex and in operation since 1911 – the property, which had been expropriated by the Nazis, was returned to its owners following the war – has also triggered alarm in public opinion, concerned by the possibility of it being acquired by extreme right-wing owners. Different previous Neo-Nazi groups who stayed at the establishment would be cause for concern, as well as the odd case of ex-Waffen SS combatants whose ashes were scattered there by their relatives, as well as those of the Belgian collaborator Léon Degrelle in 1994, following his death in Spain. As a possible solution, its possible acquisition by a public institution has been mooted.25 Other possible sites of National Socialism (dis)memory experienced a different fate. After the end of the war, they were condemned to a radical damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory), even if they had previously been subject to sign­ posting or musealization by the Nazi state itself. This is the case with the NSDAP central headquarters, which between 1925 and 1931 was located in Munich in an interior courtyard of the building on 50 Schellingstraße, in the centrally located student quarter of Schwabing. That courtyard at the end of the 1920s was the location of one of the workshops of the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, where a young employee, Eva Braun, worked as an assistant, and with whom the Nazi leader began to go out in 1929. She later became his partner and fleetingly his wife before they both committed suicide. No plaque notifies the passer-by of the history of a location respected by the allies’ bombs. Only the remains on the lintel of the front door of what can be made out as having been a Nazi eagle, decapitated and without a swastika between its claws, hint at the previous history of the premises. Something similar occurs with the buildings in Munich that were the private places of residence of Hitler himself for a time (although only one was his property). These whereabouts were located successively at three addresses. First, 34 Schleißheimerstraße (1913–1914), before Hitler enlisted for the front in the First World War. Second, the 41 Thierschstraße (1920–1929), to where the NSDAP leader moved after being discharged from the army, and where he rented a room in a dwelling whose owner, paradoxically, was the Jewish citizen Hugo Erlanger, from whom the Nazi state seized the flat, which after several vicissitudes was finally returned to him in 1949.26 Finally, the luxury apartment located at number 16 on the second floor of the majestic Prinzregentenplatz, financed by the donations of the Munich party members and occupied by the Nazi leader with his niece, the young medical student Geli Raubal, from 1929. He ordered the room in which his niece shot herself in 1931 to be kept permanently closed. The dwelling was used after 1931 on his frequent visits to the Bavarian city when he was chancellor. Today, there are no plaques or signs that recall the recent past or which simply state who were the previous “illustrious” inhabitants of these residences, almost all

The sites of the fascist dictators

29

NSDAP Headquarters (1925–1931), Schellingstraße, Munich. ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

FIGURE 2.3

of them located in buildings which, by chance, survived the allied bombing of Munich. Occasionally, a tourist or nostalgist will stand in front of the buildings and take a photo. The old tenement belonging to the Nazi leader in the Prinzregentenplatz building, which from May 1945 was the headquarters of the American Army during the immediate post-war period,27 and went on to become the property of the Freistaat of Bavaria. A police station occupies Hitler’s former apartment today. Of the original furnishings, there is just a large wooden shelf built into the wall, which belonged to Hitler himself and housed his personal library. Some relevant meetings took place in this room, such as those with Benito Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier, leading to the Munich agreement of 6 September 1938, which determined the partition of Czechoslovakia. Currently, that shelf has a simply utilitarian purpose: it houses the trophies won by the sporting teams of the Bavarian police station employees.28

2.1.4 Hierarchs, martyrs and a replacement tomb A similar amnesia affects several lesser sites of memory, whose presence often went unnoticed by nostalgists, historians and public opinion in general. As well as the aforementioned case of Carinhall, the former manor of Hermann Göring, the dwelling of Eva Braun can also be mentioned. The former residence of Hitler’s girlfriend and her sister from March 1936 was located at 12 Delpstraße (formerly

30

The sites of the fascist dictators

Wasserburger Str.), in the Munich neighbourhood of Bogenhausen. In the postwar period, the house was acquired by private owners. In 2015, it was due to be demolished, with the purpose of selling the ground on which it stood. However, the town hall halted the transaction, alleging that the property was liable to be transformed into a site of memory, placing it under Denkmalschutz (the German equivalent of heritage protection), and turning it into a museum that would attract visitors to the neighbourhood. The experts’ report concluded months later that there were no good reasons for the house to deserve historic preservation. Two years later, a new private dwelling was built on the same property. This put an end to the regular visits by Neo-Nazis who took photographs of themselves in front of the house with gestures and salutes, their arms held high, which had led to complaints from local residents.29 The Nazi leaders who died in 1945 or after the end of the war (executed after being sentenced in Nuremberg, or who died after serving time in prison) were not buried in marked graves, precisely in order to avoid them becoming magnets for Neo-Nazi pilgrimage. Moreover, some who died before the end of the war un­ derwent a conscious damnatio memoriae by the Allies, and names and gravestones were removed from their burial sites, which were then flattened with earth. Thus, the flamboyant tomb of the armaments and ammunition minister, Fritz Todt, who perished in a plane crash in February 1942, was removed by the Allies from the Berlin Invalids’ Cemetery (Invalidenfriedhof). However, in August 2004, Todt’s daughter, Ilsebill Todt, requested the local government to restore and reinstate the gravestone of her father, in whom she only saw a builder of motorways and fortifications, without any involvement in Nazi atrocities. In spite of the public controversy, as there was evidence that Todt had been responsible for war crimes, the district council ended up replacing the gravestone. Some years later, however, it was removed again, in order to avoid the site becoming a centre of attraction for nostalgists. Today, only a bouquet of flowers on each anniversary of Todt’s death, laid by his descendants, decorates the place where Nazi minister’s remains are buried without any signage.30 The SS leader, architect of the “final solution” for the extermination of European Jews and governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, who was killed by the Czech resistance in 1942, had also been interred with martyr’s honours in the same Invalids’ cemetery. The gravestone and all markings for his grave were removed in the summer of 1945. In December 2019, there was a failed attempt to desecrate his remains after they were located by the perpetrators.31 The so-called martyrs of the Nazi movement before 1933, who were officially worshipped by the regime, suffered a different fate. The graves of the 22 members of the NSDAP fallen between 1931 and 1935, which were located in Berlin’s Luisenstadt cemetery (in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood), owing to the fanatic militancy of a protestant pastor, were similarly rendered anonymous in the postwar period, and their distinctive signage removed. Visitors do not receive any information on what the role of that cemetery was in the past.32

The sites of the fascist dictators

31

However, the most noteworthy martyr of the NSDAP is missing. Horst Wessel, a young member of the SA (Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers), was killed in February 1930 in a street fight. After his death, he was elevated to the level of a quintessential icon of Nazi propaganda; his name was used as the title of the Nazi Party’s most popular anthem. In 1945, the Soviet occupiers had destroyed most of the family burial tombstone in Berlin’s Saint Nicholas cemetery (Nikolaifriedhof, in the Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood), and the only left untouched part of the inscription refers to the father of the “martyr”, a protestant pastor. During the GDR period, the tomb went unnoticed, but from the end of the 1990s it became the centre of attraction for extreme right activists. In 2000, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of Wessel’s death, a Neo-Nazi group planned a mass rally which was banned by the authorities. A few days later, a left-wing group referring to themselves as the Freelance Buriers (Autonome Totengräber) defended the desecration of Wessel’s remains, stating they had thrown the martyr’s cranium into the River Spree; they even sarcastically invited his admirers to follow their leader there. Three years later, a new desecration took place, as well as several visits by small Neo-Nazi groups, who laid flowers on the tomb and were responsible for some incidents. In 2013, cemetery authorities decided to remove the tomb permanently in order to avoid further pilgrimages.33 A different fate awaited the tomb of Hitler’s first anti-Semitic mentor, Dietrich Eckart, who died suddenly 26 December 1923. His elegant posthumous dwelling place in the Altfriedhof (Old Cemetery) at Berchtesgaden enjoyed a limited period of veneration, and attracted frequent visits by NSDAP members until 1945. From the post-war period until 2018, the costs of its lease and maintenance were sus­ tained by anonymous donors. Since then, Berchtesgaden town hall has met these costs, since the cemetery as a whole is considered a heritage site. A report by the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre recommended its maintenance as a historic site, but also that visitors receive sufficient information on the person and his relevance in the development of National Socialism. As of the present, the tomb of Eckart, a little-known but crucial character in the early history of the NSDAP, has not become a Mecca for Neo-Nazi “pilgrims”.34 On the other hand, the cenotaph of General Alfred Jodl in Fraueninsel cem­ etery, on Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria, has been the cause of several disagreements at a local and regional level. Jodl, whose ashes were scattered in the River Isar, was condemned for war crimes in Nuremberg. However, an austere cenotaph with the date of his death and his military rank was placed on the family tomb between the gravestones of the general’s two wives. Until the beginning of the twenty-first century, the presence of the tomb went mostly unnoticed. Since 2014, several citizens on the island, as well as groups and artists committed to historical memory, such as Wolfram Kastner, led protests due to the presence of a gravestone re­ membering a war criminal, and submitted petitions to the town hall and the Bavarian parliament in response. In May 2020, persons unknown placed a slab on top of his gravestone, when the descendants of Jodl’s second wife did not provide a single shrine dedicated solely to the family. At the end of June 2020, the Bavarian

32

The sites of the fascist dictators

FIGURE 2.4

Cenotaph of General Alfred Jodl, Fraueninsel. ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

SPD parliamentary group submitted to the Landtag a bill to prohibit any type of cenotaph commemorating Nazi war criminals in Bavarian cemeteries. However, according to German law the final decision on this lies exclusively in the hands of local municipal authorities.35 The only tomb of a leading figure of the Third Reich that the Neo-Nazis and nostalgists were able to venerate for many years was that of Hitler’s secretary and lieutenant from the beginnings of the Nazi party, Rudolf Hess. After falling into the hands of the Allies as a result of a bizarre solo flight to Scotland in May 1941, the aim of which was for him to engage in his own peace talks with the British, Hess appeared as one of the accused at the Nuremberg trials. He was condemned

The sites of the fascist dictators

33

to life imprisonment in the Allied military prison of Spandau (Berlin), where another six Nazi leaders were also held, amongst them Speer. However, Hess became the sole inmate of the prison from 1966 until his suicide in August 1987. During this time, the prisoner became a living legend for Third Reich nos­ talgists and Neo-Nazis, a victim who would symbolize the supposed arbitrariness of the victors in 1945, unable to see in him a “martyr for peace”, who furthermore could not have participated in Germany’s crimes in Eastern Europe. According to the counterfactual argument put forward by the Neo-Nazis, Hess could have avoided the Soviet-German war and the ensuing extermination of European Jews if the Allies had listened to his proposals. In short, Hess was a “good Nazi”. After the suicide of its sole inmate, Spandau prison was demolished to its foundations: the remains were pulverized and scattered in the sea to avoid the former site being turned into a Nazi sanctuary in any way. Following the stipu­ lations of his will, the remains of Rudolf Hess were buried in the family tomb of his ancestors, which had been transferred in 1963 from Hof to the Baptist cem­ etery in Wunsiedel (Upper Palatinate), the home of his paternal family, following approval by the parish council. The burial took place in March 1988, but NeoNazi groups had been involved for months in organizing marches and running a propaganda campaign. Hess’ tomb, with the engraving Ich habe es gewagt! (I dared to do it!), became a pilgrimage site for hundreds of Neo-Nazi members every 17 August on the anniversary of his death. Their number increased from 120 in 1988 to 1,100 in 1990. Hess became a mobilizing myth for the fragmented Neo-Nazi political struc­ ture and also began to attract far right-wing activists from other countries. The first marches were authorized by the Bayreuth Court, but the recurring legal battle between the parish council, town hall and march organizers led to it being banned in 1991. In the following decade, rallies took place in other nearby cities, as well as the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark, leading to confrontations with antifascist activists.36 In 2001, the organizers of the “march in memory of Rudolf Hess” received authorization from the courts, owing to the role played by the lawyer Jürgen Riegel, the affluent vice-president of the ultra-right National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD). On 18 August 2001, some 900 Neo-Nazis paraded through Wunsiedel; one year later, there were 2,500 coming from throughout Germany and Eastern Europe. The confrontations with left-wing protesters led to several injuries and arrests. The legal modifications introduced regarding the right to assembly in 2005, which broadened the definition of incitement to hatred, enabled the courts to ban the march in following years. A later decision in 2009 by the German Constitutional Court ratified this. However, in 2011, the courts once again supported the NeoNazis’ claim to demonstrate.37 Meanwhile, many inhabitants of Wunsiedel, who were tired of the “state of emergency” that reigned over their town every August, took part from 2005 in demonstrations supporting democracy under the slogan of Wunsiedel ist bunt, nicht braun (Wunsiedel is multi-coloured, not grey-brown), which echoed in other

34

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cities in Bavaria.38 The Wunsiedel evangelical parish council took advantage at that point of the approaching expiry of the lease contract of the tomb in October 2011, entering into discreet negotiations with the descendants of the Nazi leader. Finally, in July 2011, Hess’ remains were exhumed by surprise in the early dawn and his ashes were scattered at sea by his grandchildren. In spite of later threats from Neo-Nazis, who even tried to organize a covert march to Wunsiedel in remembrance of Riegel (who suddenly died in 2009), the fact was that with the removal of his remains, the symbol disappeared. Therefore, the pilgrimages to the location also vanished, in the absence of a substitute tomb.39 The villa that belonged to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and his family, situated on Lake Bogensee (in the vicinity of Berlin), is another case of a potential Nazi pilgrimage centre. Local authorities are still searching for an ac­ curate management to avoid that possibility. The villa, built by Goebbels on ground gifted to him by the city of Berlin in 1936, served as a summer residence, love nest and backdrop of meetings between Goebbels and actresses, filmmakers and politicians. In 1945, it fell intact into the hands of the Red Army. One year later, the villa became a leadership training school for the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)’s recently founded youth branch (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ), undergoing several expansions. Since 1990, the building has been put to mis­ cellaneous uses, from headquarters of forestry services to training courses for different institutions. Although the Senate of Berlin has attempted to put the house on sale, the fear that it will fall into the hands of Neo-Nazi nostalgists has halted the project; some type of long-term lease for someone submitting a well-grounded plan for re-use and resignification is being considered.40 In all the cases analyzed so far, the German authorities have faced a recurring dilemma. What is the most appropriate solution for a politics of memory that intends to maintain a critical stance towards the dictatorial past? Museumizing the site of memory if applicable, and resignifying it at the same time, providing ac­ curate contextualization with reliable information? Or, on the other hand, leave it anonymous, condemning the site to a symbolic damnatio memoriae, and letting it be overrun by vegetation and rats? Is it more exemplary to demolish the remains of the past and designate the ground for new civil buildings, children’s parks or leisure areas? In essence, this is a similar debate to that concerning the annotated re-edition of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) by the Munich Institute for Contemporary History in 2016, with the official support of the Land of Bavaria. Whilst different groups expressed their fear at an extended distribution of a work inspired by hatred and racism, other voices argued the need for public opinion to have access to a his­ torically contextualized and critical edition of academic nature, with a limited (scholarly) diffusion. In short, to “resignify” the book rather than cast it into oblivion, the latter being an illusory alternative when several clandestine editions of Mein Kampf exist, circulating freely on the Internet in different languages. The book, which has enjoyed several reprints, continues to cause fierce debates in favour and against.41

The sites of the fascist dictators

35

The development of the treatment of the Hitler’s bunker area, the Obersalzberg premises or Munich’s Königsplatz perfectly displays these recurring doubts. However, in times when information freely floats through social net­ works, it became clear that it is nearly impossible to avoid these sites functioning as magnets attracting the simply curious and “dark tourists” fascinated by the history, aesthetics and morbidity of the Third Reich. In fact, in Berlin, Munich and other cities, non-authorized sightseeing tours are flourishing, some of them even acting as a vehicle for the nostalgists’ meetings in search of a site to venerate. Nevertheless, both German authorities and a large part of civil society have remained alert concerning any resurgence of a Neo-Nazi place of worship or pilgrimage. In this sense, educational policy and the constant investment in “cultural memory” by the FRG from the 1970s, as well as by reunified Germany from 1990, have borne remarkable results. There is a majority social consensus in impeding any resurgence in Nazi nostalgia, which even the radical parliamentary right-wing party, Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), supports, at least openly and with little enthusiasm.

2.2 Austria: The shadow of Hitler … and Dollfuss? Since the restoration of the country’s full sovereignty in 1955, the Austrian politics of memory has been characterized for almost three decades by a low and scarcely pro-active profile, at least in comparison with West Germany. Relying on the Moscow Declaration of 1943, through which the Allies recognized Austria as a victim of Nazism, the post-war Austrian Republic presented itself during the first decades of its existence as the first country invaded and occupied by the Third Reich, following its annexation or Anschluss in March 1938. The Austrian re­ sistance, a broad category that encompassed social democrats, communists, Catholic activists and priests and deserters from the Wehrmacht, was instead subject to an ongoing mythification. There was little space in that account for the different Austrian perpetrators who joined before or after 1938 in the NSDAP (more than 10 per cent of the population held a party membership card), the SS (according to some estimates, around a quarter of the Nazi concentration camp guards came from Austria, which represented barely nine percent of the population of the Third Reich) or the Gestapo; and much less for Adolf Hitler.42 Until the 1980s, the hegemonic narrative of the recent past in the Austrian public sphere rested on one foundation: the externalization of guilt. According to this tenet, National Socialism had been an exogenous product inoculated in Austria from the northern neighbour. Only in a stepwise manner, and from the mid-1980s under a social-democratic government, did the Austrian government accept the thesis of the country’s co-responsibility for Nazi crimes, therefore as­ suming its part of the guilt. This included proceeding to return properties to the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and to compensate the victims of the Third Reich in Austrian territory.43

36

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Prior to this development, however, the country’s institutions had already accepted a fact that was difficult to refute: Adolf Hitler had been born in Austrian territory, from where all his forebears and contemporary relatives came; the accent of his German was Austrian; his education and social background had been Austrian, as well as the roots of his anti-Semitism forged during his student and bohemian days in Linz and Vienna. Even the name of the Nazi Party from 1919, NSDAP, was an adaptation of the National Socialist Party founded in 1903 amongst German workers in Bohemia, which was transplanted afterwards to Germanophone areas of Austria-Hungary as Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (DNSAP).44 In Austria, during the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Hitler family lived in different locations from the birth of Adolf in 1889 until 1913, when he moved to Munich to try his luck as an artist. But Hitler, as well as a political leader guilty of genocide, would have been a traitor to his true homeland. The unanimous repudiation of his figure was opposed to the division caused by the memory of the authoritarian and social-catholic chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, killed by the National Socialists in July 1934. Hitler, the evil dictator rejected by all, found his symbolic opponent in Dollfuss, the martyred statesman, or at least regarded as such by part of the population.

2.2.1 Adolf was born here by accident 2.2.1.1 Braunau: The house of ghosts The birth house of Adolf Hitler is located at 15 Salzburger Vorstadt in Braunau am Inn, a small town on the banks of the River Inn, on the border with Bavaria. There was a popular restaurant and boarding house on the ground floor of the building at the end of the nineteenth century, which rented rooms out on its upper floors. Its tenants included the family of the customs official, Alois Hitler, who hardly remained in the house for two weeks following the birth of baby Adolf on a misty 20 April 1889. The Hitlers lived for three years in Braunau until Alois was promoted and posted to the other side of the border, to Passau, where the family lived for a while.45 After the Anschluss, the property at 15 Salzburger Vorstadt was expropriated by the NSDAP from its owner, the innkeeper Josef Pommer, who had in turn ac­ quired it in 1912. Having sympathized with the local Nazi group for some time was no longer of any use to Pommer. During the following years, the house’s ground floor was a library containing 3,000 volumes, and on its second floor, there was an attempt to recreate the atmosphere and original furnishings from 1889, for which the local NSDAP leaders had consulted an elderly woman who had worked for the Hitler family. They also sought to reflect the rise of the Führer with a permanent exhibition; in 1943, on the occasion of his 54th birthday, the doors of the property were opened for visits to its photographic exhibition. The ultimate objective was to turn the house into a symbol of the almost umbilical connection between Austria and Greater Germany. However, National Socialist propaganda

The sites of the fascist dictators

37

hardly showed any interest in Braunau, and did not wish to convert it into a founding myth.46 When he was a rising political leader, Hitler underlined in the first volume of his work Mein Kampf (1925) that destiny had caused him to be born in a border town between Germany and Austria, “on the border between the two German states, whose re-unification is the greatest aspiration of young people”, as a single blood belonged to a single Reich. In addition, it was a city branded by “German martyrdom”, a reference perhaps to the local rising against the Hapsburg dynasty in 1705 to demand the country’s inclusion within Bavaria. This would herald that it would be him, Adolf Hitler, who would complete the unification of the Germanic lands.47 What is true is that he had no emotional ties with Braunau, unlike Linz, a city for which he had grandiose ideas for urban replanning. When in March 1938, amidst the celebrations for the annexing of Austria to the Third Reich, he travelled by car through the town in a procession, returning to his birthplace as a triumphant Führer and going directly past the house where he was born without stopping. He never visited Braunau or displayed any interest in embellishing the city to highlight its symbolic status, as requested by the local authorities.48 However, Hitler’s birth house was also subject to some reforms under the supervision of the Nazi leading architect Roderich Fick, who was charged with the urban redesign of Linz, which was to become the Führer city. Although a squad sent by the district Nazi governor (Gauleiter) in the final days of the war attempted to dynamite the building and avoid it being profanated by the enemy, Hitler’s birth house fell intact into the Allies’ hands. In November 1945, the new municipal Social Democratic authorities, with the blessing of the North American occupiers, inaugurated on the first floor a modest exhibition about the

FIGURE 2.5

The house where Hitler was born, Braunau am Inn. ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

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The sites of the fascist dictators

crimes of the Third Reich and the horrors of totalitarianism. Two years later, the property’s ownership was awarded by the occupation forces to Branau town hall. Finally, in 1954, following the legal appeal by Josef Pommer’s widow, the house was returned to its former owners, in the person of the daughter of the couple who had been its owners. Since then, the building was given different functions. Until 1965, it housed a public library; in the following years it also performed other roles, from being the headquarters of a bank to a primary school. In 1972, for the purpose of avoiding the symbolic house falling into the hands of Nazi sympathizers, Braunau local council requested the intervention of the Austrian federal government, at that time presided by the Social Democrat and former Jewish exile, Bruno Kreisky. The home office minister proceeded to lease the property of 15 Salzburger Vorstadt to the Pommer family for an indefinite period. The lease contract explicitly prohibited any “use in the context of recent history”, a vague expression which sought to avoid Hitler and Nazism being as­ sociated with the house. The Home Office then sub-leased the property to Braunau am Inn city council, which put it to different uses, always with a pro­ visional bias. From 1974 to 2011, the ground floor housed a workshop for disabled people, which was run by a charity organization. It was an accurate reparation: the place where the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century was born now contributed to improve the living conditions of men and women who, during the Third Reich, would have been ruthlessly killed in the name of racial and social eugenics. In a complementary way, from September 1992, when a conference took place on the “unwanted legacy” of cities characterized by having been the headquarters of concentration camps, pogroms and dictators’ birthplaces, a series of annual conferences would be held on relevant issues of contemporary history, without focusing exclusively on nationalism and the Second World War.49 This became the Braunauer Zeitgeschichte-Tage, an initiative by the local historical and political scientist linked to the University of Innsbruck, Andreas Maislinger, as well as the journalist Erich Marschall, who persuaded several personalities from the region to participate in the project. The use to be conferred on Hitler’s birth home was debated during the first session. At that time, the Social Democrat town hall proposed acquiring the property and assigning it to be a delegation of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance in Vienna; others attending the sessions proposed the complete demolition of the house or its conversion into a peace site (Friedenstätte). Since 1993, a local contemporary history association (Verein für Zeitgeschichte Braunau) has ensured the continuity of these sessions, which were organized in recent years by the local historian Florian Kotanko. Braunau was the accidental birthplace of Hitler and, furthermore, its name evoked by sheer coincidence the brown (braun) colour of Nazi uniforms. However, it had never been a city where National Socialism enjoyed significant social support. During the post-war period, the SPÖ social democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs) were elected as the majority party of the town hall. In spite of this, they were unable to manage the “brown” reputation of the

The sites of the fascist dictators

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city very well, and even less what use to give to the “Hitler house”. The building evoked too many inconvenient ghosts from the past.50 For a majority of the in­ habitants of Braunau, moreover, the fact that their town might have been the birthplace of the culprit of genocide par excellence entailed a permanent cause for embarrassment every time they told a third party that they were a Braunauer, al­ though they tended to accept it with some self-irony.51 As the local novelist Wolfgang Glechner observed, there were many people from the city who dis­ guised their origins when they studied in Vienna or Salzburg. Hence the ironic title of his novelized childhood memoirs, with a cover featuring a baby depicted as Hitler: Nobody Is Born in Braunau (Niemand ist in Braunau geboren).52 However, the shadow of the former Führer perceptibly loomed over other aspects of everyday life. With some regularity, discreet groups of visitors “from the other side of the river” who were advanced in years (war veterans or former Nazis) appeared in the town, asking in a northern German or Bavarian dialect, and in a low voice, for the Hütte des Chefs, the “chief’s hut”; these were also joined, in later years, by new neo-fascist tourists and the simply curious. In a less visible manner than in other birthplaces of dictators, the city also had a modest “black market” in Nazi souvenirs, such as ashtrays or porcelain dishes bearing the inscription Hitlers Geburtsstadt Braunau (Braunau, Hitler’s birthplace), sold under the counter in some shops, since the exhibiting or sale of products alluding to the Nazi past is an offence in Austria, as well as in the FRG. There is no sign indicating to foreigners where Hitler’s birth house is located in Braunau am Inn. The town hall’s website made no mention of its specific location for years. There is no plaque either in front of the house or on its façade providing information for passers-by as to who the character was who was born in that building. As we have seen, the 1972 lease contract excluded its conversion into a site of remembrance for Nazism. However, from the start of the 1980s the course of the politics of memory began to change in Austria. This also influenced the course of local memory politics. The Social Democrat town hall tried then to take some steps to break public silence concerning the “House of Ghosts” (Geisterhaus). In 1983, Braunau council agreed to install on the property’s façade a discreet plaque in memory of the victims of Nazism. However, the owner, Gerlinda Pommer, objected to this out of fear of possible attacks by vandals. The matter did not end there. On the centenary of Hitler’s birth in 1989, the new mayor, Gerhard Skiba, took up the initiative once again. After a complex debate at the local level and in the face of opposition from right-wing parties (who preferred the Nazi past to remain in silence and oblivion), the local council agreed to erect a simple commemorative monument in front of the house, placing it on the pavement to avoid problems with the owner. It was a simple lump of stone brought from the quarry at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, located 70 kilometres away, with an austere inscription. Its text was almost identical to the one intended to be placed on the façade six years previously, which did not allude directly to the reason behind its presence:

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Für Frieden, Freiheit und Demokratie For peace, liberty and democracy Nie wieder Faschismus Fascism never again Millionen Toten mahnen Millions of dead remind us

Since then, at the beginning of each May, each year, and for the purposes of the anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, an official ceremony to remember concentration camp victims takes place. The homage is regularly attended by representatives of the Mauthausen Austrian committee, local politicians and some camp survivors. The placing of the commemorative stone had a catalyst effect on local politics of memory and all Austria. In the public arena, the role of Hitler in the country’s history was openly re-examined, and in particular an inconvenient question was posed once again in a new manner: who had collaborated with the German “occupiers” between 1938 and 1945, receiving them as liberators and fellow countrymen? Who had wished for union with Germany? At the dawn of the new millennium, Andreas Maislinger and other local activists promoted the Braunau setzt ein Zeichen (“Braunau makes a gesture”) campaign, whose purpose was to persuade local, regional and federal authorities to turn Hitler’s birth house into a museum that would act as a “site of reconciliation”. For that purpose, a petition campaign was launched, which was supported by representatives of both the Christian-Democratic Austrian People’s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ). However, the response from the Vienna government, presided over at the time by the Conservative politician Wolfgang Schüssel, was highly elusive. The debate would continue during the following years. The local tourist office publicly declared in 2011 that it would be convenient to create a museum or interpretative centre at Hitler’s house, where emphasis would be placed on the victims and crimes of the Nazis. However, they did not conceal their wish that the numerous tourists attracted by the project would also bring lucrative earnings to the town. The actual name proposed for the museum or interpretative centre by its campaigners, Haus der Verantwortung (House of Responsibility), was an idea by Andreas Maislinger and the source of a bitter public debate. The project sought to turn Hitler’s birth house into a meeting point for study seminars, public lectures and national and international debates on history and human rights. The ground floor would be dedicated to the interpretation of the past, the first to under­ standing the problems of the present and the second to projects for a better world and the future.53 However, the local authorities expressed their disagreement with the name, as it would suggest a city where Hitler was born by chance and lived his first three years of life should feel, in some way, equally responsible for his future crimes. On the other hand, the proponents of the project argued that turning it into a documentation and research centre would exorcize once and for all the ghosts of the past, and mark an international landmark in terms of how to manage

The sites of the fascist dictators

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a site of memory as unique as the birth house of a genocidal dictator. The transnational contextualization and, therefore, de-nationalization of the debate about the recent past would be an efficient antidote against the symbolic re­ miniscences that might be generated by the museumization of National Socialism.54 The discussion surfaced again a few years later, when the owner of Hitler’s birth house made the termination of her indefinite lease with the Austrian state public in 2014. Apparently, she had no intention of selling it immediately. But the an­ nouncement alarmed public opinion and the Vienna Government, concerned at the possibility of some eccentric millionaire or a nostalgist for the Nazi past ac­ quiring and transforming the property into a neo-fascist sanctuary. Some rumours even pointed towards a Russian magnate.55 To this was added the media com­ motion in May 2015 provoked by the news that an international neo-fascist network, Blood and Honour, would visit several sites linked to Hitler’s biography on a “brown route”, including various stops in Bavaria and Austria, amongst them Braunau am Inn. Although there was contact between the owner and the au­ thorities, an agreement could not be reached. Shortly afterwards, the Vienna Government decided to intervene. In July 2015, the Austrian Home Office created an interdisciplinary committee comprising historians, political scientists and law experts in order to address the expropriation of the house. Four months later, they issued a first report pointing out that Hitler’s birth house was unparalleled amongst memorial spaces in Austria related to the Third Reich: “The birth houses of dictators possess a high emotional significance, which is why they are socio-politically relevant”, this being linked in turn to an “irrational conception” typical of fascism, as was the cult of the leader. The report recommended that the State authorities act to prevent any form of veneration or Neo-Nazi activity related to the Braunau property, whether through expropria­ tion or its acquisition. In June 2016, the Home Office issued an expropriation order for Hitler’s birth house, which was based on the public interest to avoid any reproduction of the cult around the late Führer on the basis of the mythification of his birth house and its conversion into a centre of Neo-Nazi pilgrimage. Fighting the resurrection of Nazism was, furthermore, a tenet of the Austrian constitution and moral duty of the State since it was re-founded in 1955. The Austrian parliament approved the expropriation in December 2016 with the support of all parties, including the FPÖ. With different nuances, they were all in favour of a use that would wipe out the symbolic nature of the property for right-wing extremists and those nostalgic for Nazism.56 The State proceeded with the expropriation of the house in January 2017, with compensation equivalent to its market value, on the premise of the need for Austria to take historical re­ sponsibility and set an example of its commitment to democracy and human rights. The appeal lodged by the elderly owner was turned down by the country’s Constitutional Court in June 2018; it fared no better at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg.57

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Parallel to the debate in the courts, a new expert commission, comprising historians, documentalists, representatives of the Jewish community and different administrations concerned examined the options available for the “correct his­ torical use of Adolf Hitler’s birth house”. In October 2016, the commission considered five options: the transformation of the property into a museum, avoiding any exhibition of symbology or Nazi images to prevent erroneous in­ terpretations by visitors; its use for social and charity purposes; an educational use; its administrative usage by the authorities to involve it in the everyday lives of local citizens, whether as a tax office or police stations; or its demolition, which it advised against: it would be an indirect form of amnesia. If the last option were chosen, the experts recommended that some type of contextualized information be exhibited on the site where the house had stood. They prioritized the social, charitable or administrative utilization of the property, subjecting it to a complete restructuring that would remove any similarity with its past appearance, thus minimizing its symbolic power. On the other hand, it advised against its trans­ formation into a museum in order to avoid giving the house “a use that might favour any form of identification with the person of Hitler or National Socialism”.58 The minister for home affairs at the time, the Conservative Wolfgang Sobotka, then announced that the house would be demolished. Shortly afterwards, how­ ever, he rectified this position and supported the proposal for a civil use of the property. The debate would go on for three years in the public arena. Some emphasized the convenience of demolishing the Hitler’s house and putting an end to a debate which was tiresome for the residents of Braunau. Other opinions, as has been seen, were expressed in favour of the reformulation of the project to transform the property into a museum for educational purposes, as a House of Responsibility.59 Others, in short, advocated it being used indefinitely by nongovernmental or charitable organizations, as the best strategy for a symbolic reparation.60 The legal route having been identified following the sentence that confirmed the expropriation, the Austrian government decided to follow the re­ commendations of the experts’ commission, and disregarded opinions in favour of the museumization of the birth house of Hitler. In November 2019, the Home Office decided to hold an international public competition to remodel the property. Its purpose would be to house the district police station. The new minister for home affairs, Wolfgang Peschorn, stated that this would be a clear statement that the building would be “forever divested of any National Socialist memory”. To avoid gatherings of nostalgists and Neo-Nazis, the best option would be to lodge the police station at Hitler’s birth house, underlined Johannes Waidbacher, the city’s ÖVP mayor.61 The result of the tender, disclosed in June 2020, named the winning bidder as an Austrian architectural studio from the Vorarlberg region, which proposed the creation of a friendly environment, with annexes at the rear of the building, which would contribute to the forgetting of the property’s past. The Austrian

The sites of the fascist dictators

43

Government’s decision also intended to “neutralize” the historic dimension of the building, and this also implied the removal of the commemorative stone placed in front of it. This led to some protests from Braunau residents, who felt that such an important step was taken regardless of the views of local actors. However, this has raised a new, endless debate that still continues today: can the resignification of Adolf Hitler’s birth house simply avoid that undeniable fact?62 Currently, Braunau am Inn town hall visibly emphasizes on its home page that the city assumes its share of the responsibility for the fortuitous event of Adolf Hitler being born there. The municipality regards confronting the dictatorial past in a critical manner as a civic duty, and also in order “to refute the cliché that Braunau is a ‘brown city’”. With this purpose, the local authorities have lavished gestures of symbolic recognition towards the victims of National Socialism, and have underlined their welcoming approach to immigrants and other minorities, as well as their commitment to combat racial and gender discrimination. Similarly, from 2006, four memorial stumbling stones (Stolpersteine) have been placed on the city’s pavements in memory of the local victims of National Socialism, with special reference to the Jews and deportees to concentration camps. In August 2006, a local park received the name of a Catholic activist against the Anschluss, Franz Jägerstätter, who was executed in 1943 for refusing to join the Wehrmacht.63 In 2002, a camping site was installed for use by Gypsies (Sinti and Roma), in re­ membrance of their status as victims of the Holocaust. Nine years later, the local council decided to remove the title of honorary citizen of Braunau from Hitler, following long debates on the need for such a gesture, since it was assumed that such a condition had ended with the death of the distinguished party.64 However, all of this has not avoided there being cases of visitors making the Nazi salute at night in front of Hitler’s birth house in recent years. This included in 2017 a sort of doppelgänger of the dictator who would walk around the city, nostalgists who scratch off a fragment from the walls of the property to take away as a souvenir or who pose before the house after a Neo-Nazi rock concert.

2.2.1.2 A paternal grave and some childhood memories Although it is undoubtedly the most visible, Braunau am Inn is just one of several sites where the Hitler family resided during the childhood of Adolf. That is the case with Leonding, a small town of some 22,000 inhabitants where Adolf Hitler resided from the age of 9 to 15 (1898–1904). From his family home, he had to walk for two hours to attend the secondary school in the nearby city of Linz. The remains of Adolf Hitler’s forebears, Alois and Klara, rested in the local cemetery. They died, respectively, in 1903 and 1907, decades before their son would gain worldwide notoriety. The gaudy tomb, which was decorated according to local custom with medallions displaying portraits of the deceased, became from January 1933 the destination for frequent visits by groups of German Nazis who crossed the border, in the same way as it was vandalized by local anti-fascists. From March 1938, that tendency intensified, and Leonding became a

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FIGURE 2.6

Tomb of Alois and Klara Hitler, Leonding ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

site of pilgrimage for excursions by Hitler Youth groups, women’s groups and Nazi Party branches. The house neighbouring the Hitler family abode also had a visitors’ book for the “brown tourists”.65 Following the town’s surrender to the Allies in April, 1945, the profuse Nazi ornaments were swiftly removed from the tomb, which fell into discreet abandon. In the following decades, it was carefully looked after by the distant descendants of Alois’ first wife, who were not related to his son Adolf, and until the 1960s went almost unnoticed. However, from the end of that decade, and with greater in­ tensity in the 1970s and 1980s, the local authorities noted with concern the in­ creasing presence of foreign visitors to the cemetery on specific dates, particularly on 20 April, the date of Hitler’s birth. The local police prepared to control the entrances to the graveyard, and removed bouquets of flowers and offerings of a suspicious nature. Sympathizers of the booming Eastern European neo-fascist movements joined the traditional visits by nostalgists and the curious in the 1990s. On 20 April 2009, for example, several unknown parties placed at the grave a commemorative plaque referring to Hitler’s birthplace, and some German NeoNazis took symbolic guard duty shifts next to it. Two years later, the tomb was decorated with SS runes. In 2012, following several local controversies, Leonding town hall decided to remove the tomb and send the remains of Hitler’s forebears to the ossuary, taking advantage of the expiry of the burial lease in order to do so.66 The local institutions in Leonding also took some proactive steps in terms of politics of memory, although with some delay. In May 2007, near the parish church, an original monument located between the memorials to the fallen in the First and Second World Wars was inaugurated. This was the initiative of the local association Kult-Ex, with the support of the federal and local government. The

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Nachklang-Widerhall Denkmal (literally, the resonance and echo monument) is a column displaying the texts of 39 writers, which recall and evoke “persecution, deportation, extermination and resistance of Jews, gypsies and Yeniche, disabled, members of religious communities, deserters, homosexuals, conscientious objec­ tors, prisoners of war, political opponents, forced labourers and all other victims of National Socialism”. The ÖVP Conservatives and the far-right councillors of the FPÖ opposed the erecting of the monument, arguing that their town was not guilty of hosting the remains of Hitler’s parents. Although the future dictator spent his childhood there, Leonding had not played any relevant role in the Third Reich. Therefore, reminding its link to Hitler would cause the town to be seen as being under an undesired “brown” halo by public opinion. However, the local activists for memory and the SPÖ councillors succeeded in taking the project forward by arguing exactly the opposite: precisely by being associated with the history of the architect of the Holocaust, Leonding should assume its part of the responsibility and set an example by facing up to the past.67 The modest one-storey house where the family lived is located near the (old) tomb of Hitler’s forebears, and opposite the cemetery. In the post-war period, the local council acquired the property, which has been closed for a long time. Although no plaque provides information on the house’s past, tourists and in­ quisitive passers-by tend to stop and photograph it. Still, its use stirred up a fierce local debate between 2000 and 2002, when the then mayor, the Social Democrat Herbert Sperl, decided to restore it as a warehouse and workshop for the ceme­ tery’s gravediggers, a role that the house currently continues to play. Whilst some residents preferred to demolish the building and erase everything that recalled the youthful presence of Hitler in Leonding, others were in favour of turning it into a memorial expressing a critical vision of Nazism, which would allude to their crimes and darker aspects. The option ultimately chosen, however, was silence, camouflaged by the pragmatic use of the property by public services.68 This was also the practice followed with other houses or buildings where the Hitler family resided before 1907. The list ranges from the rural farm Raschergut in Hafeld, where Alois Hitler attempted with little success to raise bees, to the Leingartner hotel and the Schmiedsmühle in Lambach, where little Adolf attended the primary school and choir of the Benedictine monastery that dominated the city’s landscape. Only in the premises housing the primary school in Fischlham, attended by the future Führer with some success between 1895 and 1897, does an austere plaque recall that Adolf Hitler learnt to read and write there, but that years later, when an adult, he caused the deaths of millions of people. In addition, reference can be made to the various abodes, boarding houses and shelters for beggars and homeless people where Hitler lived during his time in Vienna and Linz. There are currently no signs or plaques identifying these places.69 However, they are visited with some regularity by nostalgists and tourists who take photos and, on occasions, make Nazi salutes. But the watchful attitude of the Austrian authorities has been compared in practice to that of their German neighbours.

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2.2.2 Dollfuss: Martyr or “killer of workers”? Adolf Hitler was not the only dictator in the inter-war period who had been born in Austria. Another case was the Christian Social chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, although he did not reach Hitler’s level of notoriety. He was a small but charis­ matic man, whose political career was linked to landowners’ associations. Appointed minister for agriculture in 1931, in May 1932 he became prime minister of the Austrian Government and also acted as foreign minister and minister for agriculture, with the support of different right-wing parties. In the following years, Chancellor Dollfuss suspended various constitutional rights, dissolved parliament under the legal premise of “self-dissolution”, and created a Social Catholic party, the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front, VF), which at some point in the future would be the embryo of a single party. He also instituted a model of an authoritarian, Catholic and corporate state (Ständestaat), which sought to be a “second German state” as an alternative model to that re­ presented by the Third Reich. It was at times termed “Austro-fascism”, and was supported equally by openly fascist groups, such as the Heimwehr. Dollfuss’ thinking was rather inspired by Mussolini’s Italy, and also by Catholic and rural traditionalism, replete with nostalgic references to the Austro-Hungarian empire and the legacy of war veterans of 1914–1918. It was also opposed to the irre­ dentism of Nazism and the pan-Germanic authoritarian nationalists, who never­ theless had a significant number of supporters in Austrian territory. The political career of Dollfuss at the height of his power was brief and tu­ multuous. The Austrian Nazis attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate him. A leftwing rebellion in February 1934 degenerated into a bloody repression, during which the Chancellor mobilized the army. An attempted coup d’état led by several Nazi groups in July 1934 led to the occupation of the chancellery and the kidnap of the government. Dollfuss was struck by two bullets and bled to death after his captors denied him medical treatment. The coup failed and its leaders were tried and executed, but it cost the life of the Chancellor.70 After his death, the corporate state, now led by Kurt Schuschnigg, launched an intense cult of personality around Dollfuss, with strong religious dimensions. Their objective was threefold: to create a distance between Dollfuss and Nazi Germany, encourage social consensus and legitimize the corporative state. The late Chancellor was depicted as a martyr for Austria’s freedom, a saintly patriot with a mystic aura. Distinguished civil servants even received as a prize for their work a small casket with earth from his tomb, certified by the VF. As well as naming streets and squares after him, the VF erected several monuments, and in some churches a figure representing Dollfuss was included in frescoes of a religious nature. In Vienna’s District 15, a church dedicated to Christ the King was erected (Christkönigkirche), known also as Seipel-Dollfuß Memorial Church, in whose crypt the sarcophagus of Dollfuss rested from September 1934 to January 1939. The remains of the Social-Christian chancellor Ignaz Seipel, who died two years previously, were also laid to rest there. They were the first to be placed in what

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would be the new national pantheon of Catholic and fascist Austria. Furthermore, in Hohe Wand Nature Park, near Vienna, and at the end of a road built under the mandate of the martyr statesman, the Vaterländische Front also promoted a popular subscription to build a votive church dedicated to Saint Engelbert. It was known as the Dollfuss church, opened in 1935, and was actually a shrine consecrated to his memory. After March 1938, the ruling Nazis put an end to the worship of the martyred chancellor. The new masters instead attempted to mythologize their comrades tried and found guilty of treason in 1933–1934. In January 1939, they transferred the remains of Dollfuss to Hietzing cemetery in Vienna. His successor, Schuschnigg, attempted in vain to negotiate with Hitler, but he could not avoid the Anschluss, which led to his subsequent slide into oblivion, in spite of suffering years of mistreatment, humiliation and Nazi concentration camps until 1945. Conversely, the myth of Dollfuss persisted in Austrian communicative memory. The persecution of his legacy and the foreign occupation legitimized the sub­ sequent and private veneration by many families of their lost chancellor: hanging his portrait in their homes represented a silent act of condemnation of the Nazi domination, or simply of nostalgia for better times. For their part, the exiled Christian-Social leaders venerated Dollfuss as the first victim of Nazism, whose sacrifice anticipated that of the entire nation.71 Post-war Austria did not settle scores with the inconvenient memory of the clerical-fascist regime. The new ÖVP saw itself as successor of the former Christian Social party, and many of its leaders unequivocally venerated the legacy of Dollfuss. The SPÖ social democrats, on the other hand, believed that if some (the Nazis) had not been patriots, others (the Christian para-fascists) had not been democrats, and that in February1934 a civil conflict and massacre of workers by order of the state had taken place. However, until the 1970s, the ÖVP and SPÖ cast the memory of Austrian Catholic fascism to oblivion. Except during elections, any dispute about the “civil peace” agreement between both parties was carefully avoided regarding the interpretation of the period 1933–1938. Instead, they honoured the memory of the victims of Nazism, as well as the resistance against the German occupation, matters which caused little division in public opinion. However, the myth of “self-dissolution” of the parliament by Dollfuss, which would lessen his authoritarian facet, persisted until the 1980s in different text­ books. That view was still maintained by some Christian democrat leaders at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Dollfuss’ vault in Vienna’s Hietzing cemetery was signposted as a “historical tomb” since 2012 although it did not receive any honorary markings (this was removed following protests by the local Green Party). It was never the venue for massive tributes, although it did receive floral offerings from ÖVP groups and student Catholic organizations during the 1950s and 1960s.72 At a local level, other initiatives reflected how the Christian democrats continued to venerate their martyred Chancellor. The Hohe Wand votive church, abandoned for almost two decades, was the backdrop in July 1954 of a gathering on the 20th anniversary of

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the death of Dollfuss. In the original crypt, an inscription was added on the back of the wall with a piety statue and a death mask of the Chancellor. The text, with few variations, was the legend that had appeared on the main altar before the Anschluss: Sein Leben war Arbeit Seine Sendung war Kampf Sein Wille war Frieden So starb er für Österreich

His life was one of work His destiny one of struggle His desire was for peace Thus he died for Austria

Later, the church was rebuilt at the initiative of various local and regional leaders of the ÖVP, especially its influential and ultra-conservative farmers’ branch (the Bauernbund). During the re-opening ceremony in 1979, various Christian democrat politicians were in attendance, including the former vice-chancellor Fritz Böck and Dollfuss’ daughter.73 Conversely, the Austrian Left maintained a distant stance towards the Chancellor’s memory, whom they regarded as an authoritarian and repressive leader. The inter-war corporative state was also seen as a precursor of what Nazism would become years later. It was only in 2006 that a Social Democrat chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer, undertook to remove the small devotional altar dedicated to Dollfuss in the Viennese headquarters of the chancellery, a memory of the failed attack in 1933. Similarly, it was not until 2010 that the Austrian government

St. Engelbert’s Church, Hohe Wand, with memorial space dedicated to Dollfuss. ©Wikimedia Commons

FIGURE 2.7

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stopped taking part in the yearly mass held on the anniversary of the death of Dollfuss, at a chapel in the centre of Vienna. In February 2010, led by the historians Oliver Rathkolb and Florian Wenninger, a manifesto signed by 97 political scientists, sociologists and historians requested that the Austrian parliament recognize the anti-democratic nature of the Ständestaat from 1933 to 1938, as well as the rehabilitation of all the victims of political persecution during that period and the erecting of a memorial dedicated to them. After intense negotiations, the Austrian federal parliament reached a consensus statement in 2012. However, two years later some authors close to the ÖVP still questioned the term “civil war” as applied to the events of February 1934, and described the suspension of parliament by Dollfuss as a constitutional act, motivated by the revolutionary pressure of the left and Nazi agitation. The portrait of Dollfuss presided until 2017 over the parliamentary headquarters of the ÖVP, before it was donated to a regional museum during works at the site, not without protests from some leaders, who still saw in the martyred Chancellor a crucial symbol of their political culture. They were not alone: in 2007, a survey showed that 25 per cent of Austrians felt that Dollfuss was a figure worthy of admiration.74 In this context, the birth house of Dollfuss in Texing (50 kilometres to the west of Vienna) has also been museumized. In 1998, on the initiative of the ÖVP regional government of Lower Austria, the Ministry of Education and the Bauernbund, a modest museum was set up in the house. The site, maintained by volunteers, is full of objects and photographs, and oscillates between ethnographic appearance (a typically rural house, in keeping with Dollfuss’ farming background) and an apologetic orientation. At the museum’s entrance, a plaque describes the “great Chancellor” as a “renovator” of Austria; inside, amongst other quasidevotional relics, there is even a box with earth from Dollfuss’ Viennese tomb, from a private donor.75 The museum runs on a scarce budget and has limited visiting times. It plays no significant role as a centre of massive attraction for nostalgists. However, its clearly apologetic approach has fuelled frequent debates at the regional level. In May 2017, coinciding with the proposal of the SPÖ to change the name of the Dollfuss Square (christened thus in 1965) in Mank, near Texing (a change to which two-thirds of residents were opposed), the acritical nature of the museum was discussed. Its di­ rector argued that the Chancellor belonged to history, with his virtues and defects.76 In March 2018, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Anschluss, the Christian Democrat mayor Gerard Kerner claimed that the museum presented a “sufficiently” critical vision of Dollfuss’ biography. One month later, a round-table debate took place in Texing with the participation of the historian and Social Democrat mayor of the neighbouring city of Sankt Pölten, Matthias Stadtler; the former Christian Democrat president of the regional parliament, Hans Penz; the mayor, Kerner; and the museum’s director. Whilst Penz recalled above all else the merits of the Chancellor as an expert in agriculture, which explained the ethno­ graphic bias of the museum and its being located in Texing, Stadtler listed the authoritarian and pro-fascist tendencies of Dollfuss.

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The lack of agreement in this and other debates revealed that the positions between right and left concerning the legacy of the “martyred Chancellor” continued to remain distant, and reflected the lack of social consensus regarding this matter. However, as time goes on, Dollfuss’ memory barely means anything for the younger Austrian generations.77

2.3 Italy: Post-fascist syncretism and anti-fascist pragmatism The post-war Italian Republic represents a singular case within the Axis powers defeated in 1945. Certainly, between 1946 and 1948 and the second decade of the twenty-first century, the anti-fascist myth acted as a powerful symbol for the le­ gitimization of the Italian Republic. Expressed in summary form, this paradigm postulated that after the removal of Mussolini by the Great Fascist Council and King Victor Emmanuel III on 25 July 1943, a sort of collective rising of the Italian people took place against the fascist regime and the subsequent German occupiers. The great majority of Italians would have therefore become active or passive antifascists, from armed partisans to sympathizers with the resistance. The course of the later Italian Social Republic (RSI) or Salò Republic, commanded by Mussolini himself, and the armed confrontations between his supporters (repubblichini) and anti-fascist partisans were implicitly subsumed in a struggle between patriots and German occupiers, supported only by a minority of Italian traitors.78 At first, only the explicit heirs of the fascist party (the former PNF, Partito Nazionale Fascista), grouped together after several attempts since December 1946 in the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI), remained outside that anti-fascist consensus. But they were just the tip of a very large iceberg, which was made up of former technical and professional cadres of the fascist regime and ex-combatants, who regarded indeed the misini as anachronistic buffoons, but who kept a positive remembrance of the two decades of Mussolini’s rule. Under the mantle of official anti-fascism, there was also a place for syncretism, ebb and flow and grey areas in the post-war Republic’s politics of memory, symbolized in an exemplary way by the many monuments remaining from the fascist era after 1945.79 These ambiguities were soon highlighted at the time by the Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, who as justice minister of the provisional government in June 1946 permitted a first and controversial amnesty for political offences, which would be extended in 1948. From the 1970s, they were also addressed by the biographer of Mussolini and pioneering historian of fascism, Renzo de Felice. However, they were only broached in a general way from the 1990s by profes­ sional historiography, and later by debates on public history. The historian Claudio Pavone would thus recall in 1991 that between 1943 and 1945, the north of Italy experienced a bloody civil war between Italians, civilians and soldiers, which ran parallel to the fighting between Germans and the Allies.80

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Monument to the fallen in the First World War and 1940–45, Carrara San Giorgio, Padua. ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

FIGURE 2.8

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2.3.1 Mussolini’s body and the anti-fascist paradigm An illustrative symbol of the myth of Italy’s self-liberation, which meant farce and scorn for some, and tragedy and insult for others, would be the execution of Benito Mussolini and his lover Clara Petacci at the end of April 1945. Lacking support for a final resistance in the Alps, and frustrated in his attempts to take refuge in Switzerland and surrender to the Allies, Mussolini was taken prisoner by a partisan unit in Dongo (Lake Como), when he was attempting to flee disguised as a German soldier in a Luftwaffe column which was retreating towards Austria. The Upper Italy National Liberation Committee, made up of representatives of all the anti-fascist parties, decided to execute the Duce before the Allies could detain and put him on trial. On 28 April, after being read the death sentence, Mussolini and his lover, without due trial, were struck, according to the version made public by the Communist Party, by a burst of fire from the Communist militant Walter Audisio (“Colonel Valerio”), accompanied by the political commissar, Aldo Lampredi (“Guido”). Today, in Giulino di Mezzegra, where the execution took place, there is a cross on the wall and photos of Mussolini and Clara Petacci on the exact spot (the entrance to Villa Belmonte, on Vía 24 Maggio). The ANPI (Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia) later added a plaque explaining that the dictator was sentenced to death there, and a panel of the End of the War Museum in Dongo contextualizes the entire space for visitors.81 The execution of the Duce was described as a symbolic act of popular justice. In his final moment, the former defender of a bella morte, a “beautiful death” as an epitome of a fascist life, would not have shown any integrity or greatness. His vulgar end would demystify his image and reveal him as a mediocrity. This nar­ rative also fed into the seventh art, as the film Mussolini, ultimo atto (1974, Carlo Lizzani) reflects. However, 60 years later, conspiracy theories still proliferated and even involved the British prime minister Winston Churchill, who, according to some, wished to destroy some compromising letters that the Duce carried upon himself. In 2006, Mussolini’s grandchildren maintained that the entire truth was still not known about the execution, as the version issued by Valerio contained some contradictions.82 Similarly, all trace of the treasure, in foreign exchange and jewellery being carried by the fascist leaders accompanying Mussolini (15 of whom were shot), was lost. The day following his death, the body of Benito Mussolini, together with that of his lover and the fascist leaders shot in Dongo, was moved to Loreto square in Milan by the partisans. Once there, the corpses were thrown onto the floor, exposed to the crowd and subjected to derision and humiliation. Finally, they were hung upside down from the roof of a petrol station under construction. In the context of the Italian Civil War, the public exhibition of Mussolini’s body, like a fairground dummy, was a symbolic act of destruction of his charisma: a Freudian killing of the father which also belied the alleged thaumaturgical powers he had when alive. It was also an act of symbolic reparation: on 10 August 1944, 15 partisans had been hung in the same square as a warning to the public.83

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The Italian Republic founded in April 1946 displayed double standards towards memory politics, evident above all during its first 15 years. The myth of the Resistance prevailed officially in the public sphere, but was just shared by a minority of the population. Most Italian citizens had (actively or passively) sym­ pathized with the Mussolini regime, but preferred to look towards the future and excuse the dictator and his minions as much as possible. On the one hand, all names, mottos and most significant references to Mussolini’s rule were erased from public buildings and the street directory, with few exceptions. On the other, the traces of the fascist period remained present on several buildings and architectural ensembles, such as the Foro Italico (previously labelled as the Foro Mussolini) or the EUR complex in Rome, built for the frustrated World’s Fair of 1942. The monuments and buildings were gradually renamed and resignified, although often in a superficial manner. Similarly, a certain number of bas-reliefs, frescoes and sculptures alluding to the fascist period, or clearly inspired in the aesthetic of Mussolini’s regime, can still be found in different ministries and universities, such as Padua or La Sapienza (Rome), and are occasionally the subject of bitter controversy.84 Furthermore, many ex-fascist castaways found shelter at different levels of the hegemonic Christian Democracy (DC) after 1946. They were also hosted by the Republican Party, and even admitted in the Communist Party (PCI). During the Cold War, the Catholic Church, a large part of the DC and moderate anti-fascists, as well as public opinion in central and southern Italy – areas which had hardly experienced the Civil War – advocated the convenience of a symbolic re­ conciliation between Italians and all the fallen, whether partisans, fascists or conscripted soldiers, from 1940 to 1945. Various leading magazines appealed to the “grey area”, those citizens who were anti-Communist whilst not being fascists, and who in 1943–1945 simply wanted the fighting to end.85 The fallen in the recent war of 1940–1945 could not rest in peace as they should, wrote the conservative journalist and former fascist Indro Montanelli. This would encompass Mussolini, whose posthumous degradation, many Christian Democrats believed, as well as non-communist anti-fascists like Leo Valiani or Ferruccio Parri, was a poor start to the Republic. The “Mexican carnage” (macelleria messicana) of Loreto, according to a phrase attributed to both, would not be a dignified foundational moment.86 The Italian post-war state declined to create a large memorial space or central museum focusing on the resistance and its fallen. Conversely, it opted for a de­ centralized and plural model, in which provincial and local institutions put into practice the most active initiatives of anti-fascist politics of memory. The country then filled with streets and squares dedicated to the victims of fascism and partisan fighters, and a dense network of regional and local networks for the historical study of the Resistance and its time cared for the maintenance and diffusion of the memory of anti-fascism.87 In other domains, however, an open syncretism de­ veloped. Thus, the fallen of the Second World War were included, irrespective of their side, in a common symbolic pantheon for those who died for the homeland.

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This equated them in practice with the dead of the Great War, whose com­ memorative monuments they often shared. This is also the case with the specific culft of the fallen in the campaign against the USSR in 1941–1943 (the campagna di Russia), or with the remembrance of those who died defending the colonial possession of Somalia against British troops.88 From the 1950s, Italian politics of memory placed greater focus on those spaces for remembrance that contributed to externalizing Italian guilt in 1940–1945, and remembered above all the victims of the German occupation. One example is the monumental complex near Rome remembering the 335 victims of the slaughter perpetrated by the SS in March 1944, the Fosse ardeatine. Another is the memorial dedicated to 167 civilians murdered in Fucecchio (Florence) that year. However, there was also a counter-memory narrative opposed to the anti-fascist one: that of the expatriated and refugees from the former Italian territories in the Adriatic, including the victims of Yugoslav partisans. This was the case of the massacres perpetrated by Tito’s followers in the karst sinkholes (foibe) of Istria in 1945. They killed hundreds of Italian civilians from Dalmatia and Istria, both fascist militants, autonomists from Fiume and anti-Communists. Another example was the local memory of the Yugoslav occupation of Trieste between 1945 and 1947. The foibe mass murders became the preferred subject of the memorialist discourse of the neo-fascists and, from the 1990s, the centre-right, which contrasted and equated this genocide with the crimes of fascist powers and the Holocaust itself.89 Finally, some memorials from the fascist period in honour of the martyrs of the Great War and which underlined in passing the Italianness of territories annexed in 1919, such as in Trent or Bolzano/Bozen, were also preserved and barely resignified until recently.90 How does Benito Mussolini fit into this panorama? A few days after its public exhibition in Piazza Loreto, and an autopsy, the body of the former Duce was buried together with his lover in an anonymous tomb in Milan’s Musocco cemetery. However, on a date as symbolic as Easter Sunday 1946, during the night of 23–24 April, three neo-fascist activists, militants of the tiny and clandestine Partito Fascista Democratico (Democratic Fascist Party), located his tomb and re­ moved his mortal remains. The moment was propitious: there were two months until the referendum on the form of government the country would take, which would lead to the birth of the First Republic and the exile of King Victor Emanuel III and his heir, Umberto.91 The bodysnatchers sought to highlight the existence of a wide sector of the population that was nostalgic for fascism. Following the arrest of the perpetrators, who were supported by some Catholic priests in Milan, the stolen remains of the Duce were recovered in Pavia some months later. The government decided then to hide them in a place unknown to everyone, even Mussolini’s family: a Cappucine convent in Cerro Maggiore, 20 kilometres to the north-west of Milan.92 The Mussolini family retained, however, a large part of the properties from before the war and the rise of the Duce to power. His widow, Rachele Guidi, was confined for 12 years to the island of Ischia (Gulf of Naples), where she led a

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discreet life. But she had a relevant public presence in the two following decades. Rachele granted interviews to the illustrated magazines and published an auto­ biography of her life with her husband in 1948, in which she presented Mussolini as a good father and spouse, and exonerated him from the defects that would have tarnished what was in the eyes of many his sordid ending: adultery, fraud and flight.93 Some of her children, such as the musician Romano and the aviator and film producer Vittorio, did not flee from the media spotlight either. The grand­ daughter of the Duce, Alessandra Mussolini, had somewhat of a political career from the 1980s.

2.3.2 Predappio, the “fascist Galilee” during dictatorship … and democracy The fascist leader came from Emilia-Romagna, in what is today the province of Forlì-Cesena. He was born in the village of Dovia (Predappio Vecchia) on 29 July 1883, on the first floor of a robust stone house, to a socialist blacksmith, Alessandro, and his wife, Rosa Maltoni, a Catholic schoolmistress. They baptized their son Benito Amilcare Andrea in tribute to the Mexican leader Benito Juárez and the Anarcho-socialist leaders Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. Mussolini entered politics in his home region but became a journalist and political leader in Switzerland, Milan and Rome. However, the Duce never did forget his roots, which he was able to capitalize upon for propaganda purposes. Shortly after coming to power at the end of 1922, he led the beginnings of the complete renovation of Predappio. There was also an increase in pilgrimages by different groups of fascist party members and sympathizers, who visited the birth house of the Duce and paid tribute to his mother’s tomb, as well as the school where she taught, on whose first floor the Mussolini family lived.94 Mussolini swiftly approved the urban and monumental restructuring of his home town, within a network of new cities and settlements (the so-called foundation towns, città di fondazione) which, numbering 147, would be emble­ matic of the 22 fascist period and its national regeneration projects.95 From April 1925, the foundations were laid for the new Predappio, an extension of the place that would eclipse the pre-existing town for it to become a shrine to the dictator, a myth for the origins of fascism, a scene both of mass gatherings for the pilgrimages of coming generations: “the Galilee for all of us”, as stated by Achille Starace, a prominent PNF leader. The monumental complex included several buildings, built over two decades with the participation of prestigious architects. Among them would be counted, in addition to a church dedicated to the memory of Rosa Maltoni, the Varano Palace, emerging from the renovation in 1926 of the school house and dwelling where the Mussolini family resided, which would go on to later be the town hall once it was transformed into a sumptuous building. There was also the Casa del Fascio e dell’Ospitalità (House of Fascism and Hospitality), opened on 1 May 1937, which took its inspiration from classical architecture and with a “virile and very modern” Littoria Tower. Other buildings were a market,

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postal and telegraph office and a hotel for pilgrims. The family crypt, inaugurated in 1932, would house the remains of Mussolini’s parents, within a town cemetery (San Cassiano) restored in order to act as an appropriate setting.96 Furthermore, the medieval castle which looked over the town, the Rocca delle Caminate, was donated to Mussolini following its restoration, which was financed by the state and a popular subscription in 1927. The castle was fitted with a large lantern that would project a beam of tricolour light at night, and was used as the summer residence of the Duce on some occasions. Some public acts and cau­ cuses were also held there, such as the first cabinet meeting of the Salò Republic. However, he sold it to his wife Rachele in 1932.97 With the end of fascism, the city lost its role as the theatrical location for gatherings and pilgrimages. The post-war Italian State attempted unsuccessfully to sell the House of Fascism and Hospitality and did not use it for any purpose. Later, the building housed some offices, a charity organization and a social club, and was used for other private activities. However, circumstances changed from 1957. The Mussolini family obtained permission to move the remains of their patriarch to his home town, following the direct handling of the matter by the Christian Democrat prime minister, Adone Zoli, who needed to boost the weak majority of the DC in the parliament. In spite of his unequivocal anti-fascist trajectory, Zoli authorized the transfer in exchange for the support of the 24 deputies of the neofascist MSI and a defector from it, Domenico Leccisi (leader of the group who had snatched Mussolini’s body), in the vote of confidence in his government which took place in the autumn. The operation attempted to consolidate the fragile Christian Democrat political hegemony and was imposed upon those within the party who preferred to forge alliances with the Socialist Party and other leftist groups. The strategy had already been applied by Zoli’s predecessor, Mario Scelba, a determined anti-communist, like his home secretary and short-lived prime minister in 1960, Fernando Tambroni.98 Family and local connections helped in the arrangements. Zoli came from the same region as Mussolini and was a cousin of the podestà (mayor) of Predappio during the fascist period, as well as a friend of Rachele Guidi. The outstanding socialist leader Pietro Nenni supported the transfer on humanitarian grounds. A former comrade of Mussolini, Nenni had shared a cell with him for several months in the Bologna prison in 1911, when they were locked up for opposing the war in Libya, and for a brief period he was one of the first fascists in Milan. Both he and Zoli, as well as the then Communist mayor of Predappio, Egidio Proli, under­ estimated the possibility that the town could turn into a site of neo-fascist worship. “If we weren’t afraid of him when he was alive, we won’t be now”, stated Proli. The Christian Democrat and Socialist press interpreted the reburial as a gesture of reconciliation towards those Italians who had died in both World Wars. Some proclaimed that it was in fact the infantry corporal Benito Mussolini who now received an honourable burial, recalling that he had volunteered for the Italian army and been wounded in the Great War.

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The transfer of Mussolini’s remains from Cerro Maggiore to Predappio took place between 30 and 31 August 1957. Although the operation was intended to be executed with discretion, what some baptized as the last journey of the Duce was covered by several news outlets. On reaching San Cassiano cemetery, several dozen neo-fascist acolytes bid farewell to their leader with a salute, writing their signature on the coffin that contained his body. Following the funeral ceremony, Mussolini was buried in the crypt, which would remain closed to the public for most of the year. Later, the mortal remains of his wife Rachele were interred there, as well as those of his children Bruno (fallen at the start of the Second World War), Annamaria, Vittorio and Romano. In practice, the site is a shrine dedicated to the memory of the Duce, whose sarcophagus occupies a pre-eminent position, as well as a bust and different fascist symbology, votive offerings and plaques of some combatants, sympathizers of fascism and those nostalgic for the regime. Already by the autumn of 1957, it was clear that Predappio had become a Mecca for pilgrimage for neo-fascist nostalgists, as well as for counterdemonstrations and rallies led by left-wing groups. Initially, and under the law, the authorities attempted to avoid disturbances and keep the display of fascist symbols under control, as well as the black shirts and Roman salute. However, the few thousand pilgrims and nostalgists who gathered in Predappio in the two following years were enough to stir up the anti-fascist groups. The various confrontations between left-wing sympathizers and the police that followed the announcement of the party conference of the MSI in Genoa in July 1960, authorized by the Tambroni cabinet, resulted in five dead demonstrators in the city of Reggio Emilia. Following this, and under the aegis of Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro, the DC moved towards the pact with parties to its left, such as the Socialists, the Republicans and the Radicals. For its part, the MSI, failing in its attempt to be­ come part of the government coalitions, embarked on a slow process of symbolic de-fascisization that peaked only in the 1990s. The 1960s and 1970s were characterized by an intense cultivation in the public sphere of the myth of the Resistance, which reduced the visibility of neo-fascism and the remembrance of the Duce.99 However, each year hundreds of pilgrims flocked to Predappio. Three anniversaries marked the flashpoints of the visits: the death of Mussolini (28 April), his birth (29 July) and the march on Rome of 1922 (28 October). In one week during 1971, disturbances and violent confrontations took place between neo-fascists and anti-fascists, as well as some bomb attacks. From 1983, when the centenary of Mussolini’s birth was commemorated, the neo-fascist pilgrimage took on greater dimensions: that year, some 5,000 neofascist sympathizers took to the town. Since then, around 100,000 tourists visit Predappio every year; around half of them sign the visitors’ book in San Cassiano crypt. Their messages since the beginning of the twenty-first century are in­ creasingly anachronistic, and reveal the growing ignorance of most young people as to what fascism was, as well as the banalization of the memory of the former Duce, who is almost equated to a rock star.100 For their part, residents have

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FIGURE 2.9 Neo-fascist admirer raises his hand to Mussolini, Predappio (April 2012). ©Foto Flavio Blaco

resigned themselves to the presence of neo-fascist demonstrators and tourists in their streets, as part of an omnipresent inheritance in their everyday life.101 Parallel to the intensification of neo-fascist visits and organized pilgrimages to Predappio, the ANPI branch of the Forlì-Cesena province continued to state that Mussolini’s tomb has to be strictly private and not a site for the apology of fascism. It has also underlined that publicly praising fascism is an offence according to the Scelba Law (n. 645, 20 June 1952).102 Despite this, the Italian police and the judiciary have a wide margin of discretion by which to decide what specific de­ monstrations publicly exalting fascism constitute a crime, and which would fall under the constitutional principle of freedom of expression. As the Constitutional Court established in 1956, only those cases which posed a specific danger to democratic order would be liable for prosecution. The so-called Mancino Law (1993) considered punishable any demonstration that incited ethnic, racial and religious hatred, or proclaimed racial superiority, and included the possibility of punishing any glorification of acts, principles and methods of fascism. However, the implementation of this regulation has tended to be lax and ambiguous. Some later legislative attempts to prohibit explicitly all exhibitions of images, content or symbols of fascism or national socialism, including the sale of souvenirs and the distribution of publications also remained in limbo. This was the case with the bill presented by the deputy of the post-communist Democratic Party (PD), Emanuele Fiano, in October 2015.103 From the mid-1980s, acts of tribute have been more discrete, and there are less and less public incidents. Even during the first years of the twenty-first century,

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nostalgists took part for some years in a sort of honour guard to watch over the burial area, with 10–12-hour shifts. The hundreds of participants were largely members of neo-fascist youth organizations.104 Year after year, the “pilgrims” ignored the law: they improvised street parades, dressed in black garments or Tshirts with fascist imagery, distributed propaganda, carried flags, chanted fascist songs and shouted slogans from the early days of the fascist movement, as well as held ceremonies in honour of the dead Duce. All this occurred under the de­ spondent gaze of the authorities, who generally did not interfere, in exchange for public order being respected. At the gathering on 27 October 2019, 3,000 neofascists descended on Predappio wearing black shirts. In the afternoon, a parallel gathering took place, organized by the ANPI to commemorate an alternative event, the liberation of the city by the Allies and the Resistance on 28 October 1944, as part of a symbolic agreement with the American units that occupied the town. Since the beginning of the 1990s, and after a decree of the prefecture that prohibited the sale of souvenirs related with fascism was abolished by the High Court in 1983, neo-fascist (and neo-Nazi) cult objects can be acquired in shops located in the main avenue in the city, which was named paradoxically after one of the most emblematic victims of fascism, the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who was killed in 1924. The attempts by the town council to close these premises on the grounds of their open apology of fascism did not prosper in the law courts. The goods range from bottles of wine and packets of pasta bearing the effigy of Mussolini to bibs and lighters, as well as busts, flags, calendars, T-shirts and sports clothes with fascist mottos.105 The Villa Carpena or Casa dei Ricordi (house of remembrances) is also an openly revisionist and apologetic place near the city of Forlì, a dozen kilometres to the north-west of Predappio. The villa, which was the residence of the Mussolini family for a period and was where Rachele Guidi died in 1979, was acquired in 1998 by a couple who turned it into a private museum of fascism. All kinds of objects, intimate utensils and publications belonging to and concerning Benito Mussolini are on display there, from his personal plane to uniforms or his marriage bed, with the purpose of showing an intimate dimension of the Duce and em­ phasizing Rachele’s heroic determination to preserve her husband’s legacy. The museographical narrative is imbued with a mixture of Catholicism and fascist personality cult. The third floor hosts a study centre funded by one of the Duce’s offspring, Romano Mussolini, with the purpose of awarding graduate theses on the fascist period.106

2.3.3 Musealizing Mussolini: An endless debate The initiatives to convert the birthplace of the Duce into a museum following the return of democracy began to take shape only during the 1990s, following the crisis and recomposition of the party system of the post-war Italian Republic,

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the renewal of debates on the 1943–1945 civil war and steady erosion of the foundational anti-fascist paradigm of 1946–1947. First it was the turn of the birth house or casone of Mussolini in the parish of Dovia, where in fact his family spent only a few years. It remained closed after 1944, when the allied occupants expropriated it from the family of the Duce. At the end of the 1990s, the property was acquired by the local council, and from 1999 on the initiative of the then mayor, Ivo Marcelli, it has been used for dif­ ferent public purposes, in particular as a space for temporary exhibitions. At first, a group of historians, amongst them Paolo Pombeni and Roberto Balzani, eagerly undertook the project to transform the house into a research centre on the crisis of democracy. However, finance was not secured. Subsequently, there were several temporary exhibitions on sport and art, aeronautics or the local dimension of fascism and everyday life, as well the cinematographic image of fascism.107 The most relevant exhibition was undoubtedly that dedicated to the youth of Mussolini (Il giovane Mussolini, 1883–1914), displaying his family and local origins, his first steps as a labour activist in Lausanne and then as a socialist leader. It was inaugurated in late September 2013 and endorsed by a prestigious international committee. As the PD mayor of the city, Giorgio Frassineti, underlined in his preface to the catalogue, his objective was to voice the desire for “a Predappio liberated finally from the guilt attributed to it over the years, above all else for being the birth place of Mussolini and therefore of fascism”. Against the negative image generated by “shopkeepers and nostalgists”, the future of Predappio would lie in contributing to the “historical insight and research”, as it would be one of the main points of connection that narrated twentieth-century European history. “Rethinking history” was required without “celebrations or negotiations”.108 In 2003, an architecture conference which took place in Predappio, with the support of the University of Florence, raised the possibility of integrating the buildings of the fascist period in a kind of urban museum that would display the rationalist utopia of the ensemble. Projects of this kind, however, were subject to bitter controversy from the start.109 From 2009, when he was invited to Braunau am Inn to take part in an in­ ternational colloquium on the “undesired memory” of the dictators’ birthplaces, Mayor Frassineti was in favour of using the historical resignification of sites of memory inherited from dictatorships as a strategy in fighting against neo-fascism. He also supported in 2011 the plan to create a European route of memorial spaces, which would include Predappio and other localities, in order to discuss the traumatic events and lessons of the twentieth century. This was the Atrium project, promoted by the Council of Europe in order to establish a European itinerary of totalitarian architecture.110 In addition to conditioning the House of Fascism and Hospitality, which would become the property of the town hall in 2016, the mayor’s office also proposed the restoration and promotion of other buildings from the fascist period, such as the tunnels containing the Caproni aeronautic workshops (the gallerie Caproni), today the headquarters of a technological laboratory for aerodynamic experiments. The

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remodelling of the Rocca delle Caminate was also addressed: the castle had fallen into a state of semi-abandonment after 1944, was sold by Rachele Guidi to the National Maternity and Childhood Board in 1962, and was acquired in turn by the province of Forlì in 1971. Restoration work on the castle was delayed, and in 2007 the plan to convert it into the headquarters of a Technopole and conference centre was launched by the local and provincial authorities, with financial support from the European Union. It was finally inaugurated in October 2016.111 Once the general lines of his project took shape between 2013 and 2014, the loquacious and at times controversial Frassineti (who boasted of using in his office Mussolini’s desk, brought from Rocca delle Caminate), announced the purpose of creating in Predappio a fascism visitor centre in the former Casa del Fascio e dell’Ospitalità. He was re-elected in the local polls of May 2014 on the basis of this project in his electoral programme. After gaining the support of Forlì-Cesena province and the Emilia-Romagna region, the Atrium project, the Alfredo Lewin Foundation (committed to the memory of anti-fascism and the Holocaust), the ANPI, as well as the then PD prime minister Matteo Renzi, an interdisciplinary committee, chaired by the University of Siena historian Marcello Flores, was tasked with drafting a report on the creation of a National Museum on Fascism in Predappio. Following several developments, the participation of the Parri Institute (the former Istituto Storico della Resistenza) from Bologna in 2016 and the broad­ ening of the original team, in which specialists such as Gustavo Corni and Matteo Pasetti as well as foreign historians participated, the museographical project was finally presented to the public in December 2017. Along the way, the ANPI and the Lewin Foundation, and the Bologna Parri Institute, withdrew their support. With differing perspectives, all stated that the final design had shown little concern for the local context, the permanent exhibition had been favoured over the visitor and research centre, and aspects such as the marketing of local products or a restaurant were included, which raised some questions of an ethical nature.112 The debate also had some repercussion in the political and parliamentary arena. Nine senators of the eco-socialist Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà coalition submitted parliamentary questions in the upper chamber in 2016, alerting to the possibility that a museum located at representative sites of the fascist period, and liable to become an emblem of historical revisionism or a space celebrating fascism, might be financed by the public treasury.113 The final project of Marcello Flores and his team insisted on the need to museumize and historicize the fascist period through a contextualized narrative, from a critical perspective. It would emphasize the European and transnational dimension of fascism, as well as its deep overlapping with the consequences of the Great War and the context of the inter-war period, its totalitarian nature (not dissociable from national socialism, thus refuting the myth of the benign character of the fascist dictatorship) and its repressive, imperialist and violent dynamics. The museum’s purpose would be to reinforce democratic values on the basis of a critical approach to fascism, based on historical knowledge and the con­ textualization of the Mussolini regime in its time. It would not be a museum in the

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classic sense of the term, but a cultural space with two large sections, a permanent exhibition and study and documentation centre. In February 2016, two days after the Renzi government approved funding for €2 million for the future museum, the Turin daily La Stampa published a manifesto signed by 55 historians from 28 universities and Italian and foreign research centres in support of the Flores mu­ seum project.114 For some, the design of the Predappio Museum, or “Mussolini Museum” lit the fuse for a fierce debate between Italian intellectuals and historians whose nuances are innumerable. However, the terms of the controversy are roughly similar to what took place in Austria.115 Should a former building related to fascism, located in the birthplace of its leader, be transformed into a re-signified museum about the regime he created, in spite of all the risks that this might pose? Or would it contribute, even if only indirectly, to humanizing the Duce, by presenting the regime within a family and local setting in which its greatest de­ miurge grew up near his birth house and tomb? Ultimately, the debate did not focus on the museographical project and its narrative, but on its geographical location.116 The museum project was opposed by some leading intellectuals with great impact on public opinion, such as Carlo Ginzburg, with recurring arguments: locating the museum in Predappio would associate it with the figure of Mussolini and would obscure many other dimensions of the regime.117 Some labelled it simply as “postmodern”. Following a heated internal debate, the network of historical Resistance institutes (today the Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri) declared its opposition to the Flores project in May 2016. However, it permitted each one of the regional and local institutes to take its own position on the matter. Some voices argued that a museum on fascism precisely in Predappio could not escape the risk of falling into the “humanization” of the figure of the former Duce, by placing him in his family context. Better locations for the visitor interpretative centre would be Rome, the capital of Mussolini’s power, or Milan, the birthplace of the fascist movement in 1919 and backdrop of its nemesis in 1945. The example of the NS-Documentation Centre in Munich could even be followed, and the interpretation centre be established in a neutral and abstract setting.118 In that way, an end could be put to the anomaly of Italy not having a leading museum to explain what fascism was to new generations. An additional argument was the fact that Predappio had difficult road access, which would cause complications for school groups: the scarce educational dimension of the museographical project, furthermore, would be one of its weak points. Other opinions flatly rejected the idea of a museum or visitor interpretative centre focusing on the regime and the dictator, since by turning the museum into the basis of the study and research centre, and not the opposite, and in allowing Mussolini to continue being the fulcrum of the project, a mixture of researchers, students and nostalgists could be attracted. This would create a hybrid atmosphere between “celebration and modification”, in the words of Luciano Canfora. With different nuances, some authors also argued that the historiographical reflection on

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fascism in Italy had not reached a level of sufficient maturity to develop a con­ sensual museographical narrative.119 Others proposed situating the museum on fascism in the significant site of memory of his crimes, such as the concentration and transit camp in Fossoli (Emilia-Romagna); to create a “diffuse museum”, filling all of Italy with monuments to the victims of fascism, including those of its colonial wars, on a route that could eventually include different examples of its fascist architecture; or to give priority to other themes of Italian and European history, such as a museum of anti-fascism, the Italian and European Resistance, the twentieth century, the crimes of fascism and the Holocaust. The historian of fascism from Padua Giulia Albanese, although very sceptical towards the museum project, insisted in placing within it a thematic network of sites of fascism memory in Emilia-Romagna and Italy as a whole. The historical experts’ opinions did not always come up with the preferences of political actors. According to Mayor Giorgio Frassineti, it was necessary to work on the basis of Predappio already being pilgrimage Mecca for those nostalgic for fascism, neo-fascists and dark tourists guided by countless websites and photos shared on social networks. Therefore, the most efficient option for a democratic politics of memory would be to accept that as a fait accompli, and redirect the significance granted to the site with the help of professional historians as part of a critical narrative on the recent past. It would not so much be a case of re-opening an academic debate as undertaking an exercise in public history. This would imply transmitting through an interpretation centre with a broad use of digital resources the advances and knowledge of professional historiography, without necessarily being limited to the physical space of a traditional museum setting.120 The time would come to create a large visitor interpretative centre on the fascist period, absent until now in Italy. The debate, which reached its decisive point between 2017 and 2018, remains open at the end of 2020. The museum project is currently at an impasse, caused in part by the changes that occurred in the Rome government following the elec­ tions of March 2018, which led to a coalition government between the right-wing Lega and the unclassifiable populist and anti-system movement, Cinque Stelle (Five Stars). Everything depended on the availability of public and private funds to undertake the definitive renovation of the House of Fascism building, for which Frassineti attempted to set up a Predappio Foundation as a private body with the purpose of attracting resources. By 2019, he had managed to raise €3.5 million, and some repairs to the property for the future museum began in spring 2019, under the supervision of the Parri Institute in Bologna.121 However, the election timetable once again intruded upon the process. In May 2019, in local polls in which, after two successive terms, Frassineti could not run as the head of PD, for the first time since 1946 a right-wing candidate, Roberto Canali, became mayor of Predappio on a ticket allied to the Lega (former Northern League). A few days after taking up his post, Canali expressed his desire to keep the Mussolini crypt open to the public all year in order to attract more tourists. He was also in favour of pushing forward the museum on the twentieth century,

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“narrating that historical period by overcoming pros, against and divisions, and calling for good sense in the visitors inspired by a nostalgia for fascism or its de­ fence in a presentist manner, with the aim of avoiding provocations, altercations or the exhibition of fascist symbols”.122 However, some months later, in January 2020, the Lega mayor blocked the design to create a museum and study centre, with the support of the Mussolini family. Rather than a formal excuse citing matters of intervention on assets declared historical heritage, Canali stated that it was reckless to stoke up a debate on fascism, “without exacerbating controversy, since there are fanatics on both sides”, shortly after expressing his preference for turning the planned study centre on fascism into a local history institute. At the end of summer 2020, the project seemed to be being redirected towards an in­ terpretative centre on early twentieth-century European history, whilst the Mussolini family wishes the town hall to meet the security costs for the crypt in order to keep it open all year.123

2.3.4 Fascist hierarchs: Memory and oblivion Mussolini was undoubtedly the main leader of Fascism, but not the only leader. In its early stages, the movement also saw outstanding and original figures like the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, and other local, highly prestigious and notably char­ ismatic leading figures, from Italo Balbo to Dino Grandi and Roberto Farinacci.124 During his 20-year rule, Mussolini’s authority and charisma shone brighter than all of them. The fascist hierarchs who survived the regime’s defeat mostly died amidst general indifference, and their anodyne tombs have not become relevant centres of pilgrimage or neo-fascist veneration. However, this was not always the case with the leaders who died before 1943; their tombs were the subject of some worship and monumentalization. After 1945, those memorial spaces have generally re­ mained intact. For their part, sites of memory linked to the origins of the fascist movement between 1919 and 1922 have hardly experienced any intervention of a memor­ ialistic nature. In general, the presence of those who have survived the war and time goes unnoticed by passers-by. Some websites address their history, although they are included in the more general range of spaces, buildings or monuments linked to the victims of fascism and German occupation of 1943–1945.125 This is the case, for example, with the Castani Palace in Milan’s San Sepolcro Square, where the founding assembly of the first Fascio di combattimento took place on 21 March 1919, and which was the headquarters of the PNF (and its successor, the Republican Fascist Party, PFR) between 1921 and 1945. Today it houses a police station. The opposite of Predappio is undoubtedly the memorial space of the Vittoriale degli Italiani, located in the village Gardone Riviera, on the shores of Lake Garda. The complex, which includes a mausoleum, squares, gardens, an open-air theatre and a house museum, was commissioned by the poet, soldier, fascist leader and advocate of Italian irredentism Gabriele D’Annunzio, between 1921 and his own

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Rally of neo-fascist nostalgists, cemetery of Predappio (April 2017). ©Foto Flavio Blaco

FIGURE 2.10

death in 1938. Managed by a private foundation, the entire ensemble focuses on the creative and literary facet of D’Annunzio, as well as his “deeds” in combat during the First World War as a military commander, aviator and seaman. However, in the Vittoriale, the narrative and exaltation of the occupation of the Dalmatian city of Fiume/Rijeka (September 1919–December 1920), led by D’Annunzio at the head of a volunteer corps and the inaugural act of mass rituals accompanying the emergence of the fascist movement, is particularly highlighted. In its upper section, the complex is crowned by the tombs of D’Annunzio himself and several of his followers or legionari who were under his command in Fiume. The numerous votive plaques and monuments donated by associations of irre­ dentist exiles from Dalmacia, Istria and other regions, remind the visitor that Vittoriale degli Italiani is a site of memory dedicated to D’Annunzio, but first and foremost to Fiume. It embodies the memory of the irredentist dream of Italian na­ tionalism. There are hardly any references in the museum’s narrative to the complex relationship between D’Annunzio and Mussolini, or the political career of the aviator and writer at the start of the fascist movement. However, outside the complex there are several neatly arranged stalls selling different neo-fascist souvenirs. They sell key rings, banners and T-shirts with fascist slogans and the image of the Duce. A particular case is that of the remains in the mausoleum of the Ciano family in Livorno, dedicated to Costanzo Ciano, a decorated and charismatic seaman, businessman and local fascist patriarch who died in 1939. He was the father of Galeazzo Ciano, who became Mussolini’s son-in-law and almighty minister of

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foreign affairs until his fall into disgrace and execution in 1944. The mausoleum, located on a nearby hill in Monteburrone, with spectacular views of the Mediterranean Sea, was financed by local contributions. It would have been crowned by a huge statue of Costanzo, amongst other features, and a 50-metre littorio lighthouse. Its construction began in 1940 but remained unfinished: in fact, the mausoleum never housed the remains of the fascist leader. Only the foun­ dation, lighthouse and some statues were built: German sappers blasted the tower, and only the basement and semi-destroyed remains of the sarcophagus in the mausoleum remained. Until the present, the fate of the funeral monument has been the cause of a fierce local and regional debate; while some suggest that the space should be used as a museum, others prefer its demolition.126 Another less notable example is the room used by Mussolini (number 220) in the mountain hotel Campo Imperatore (Gran Sasso massif) during the period when he was held at its facilities, from the end of August 1943 until his liberation by a German parachute unit some weeks later. The austere room was refurbished by the hotel management as a site of memory dedicated to the dictator and de­ corated with objects from the period and photos of his stay. Visitors and guests can reserve the room and stay the night there.127 Other funeral monuments dedicated to fascist leaders remain in place, and to date there has been no relevant debate as to their possible re-semanticization. They include the memorial dedicated to the prominent PNF leader who died in 1930, Michele Bianchi, who was national secretary in 1922 and one of the members of the governing quadrumvirato, as well as minister for public works for a short time. Built on a hill with spectacular views of the Thyrrenian Sea in his home town, Belmonte Calabro (Cosenza, Southern Italy), the monument was inaugurated in 1932. It is the work of the well-known fascist architect, Ercole Drei, and is in­ spired by Trajan’s column. It has four bas-reliefs conveying aspects of Bianchi’s biography, including the march on Rome with Mussolini in splendour, and a chapel where his sarcophagus rests. Although its demolition was proposed after 1945, the monument survived in a state of abandon. However, for some years, the site has been in a noticeable state of conservation, in spite of vandalism, and is used shamelessly by the local authorities as a tourist attraction. The explanatory plaque at the entrance of the site merely describes the monument, and explicitly em­ phasizes that it was visited by the Duce in 1939. Bianchi’s birth house in his home town is also a national monument. Moreover, several streets and squares in Cosenza province and other places continue to bear the name of Michele Bianchi.128 Of more modest dimensions is the memorial erected in an area of Monza cemetery in honour of the decorated First World War combatant, local squadrista leader and later head of the fascist militia, Aldo Tarabella, who died in a plane crash in 1930. The statue of Tarabella is the work by the sculptor Tino Bortolotti (1940), and it depicts him in a uniform and with a large fasces (fascio littorio) crushing a snake. Around it there are also several different tombs of fallen fascists from the pre-1922 period, as well as supporters of the Salò Republic from 1943 to

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1945. Although it was vandalized by partisans after the end of the war and abandoned for five decades, a neo-fascist association proceeded to recover the burial area and turned it into its own site of memory. From 2008, and in spite of protests from the Left, local and regional authorities close to the centre-right have left every 4 November (National Unity and Armed Forces Day, in com­ memoration of the 1918 armistice) a floral offering at the monument, with the participation of representatives from the parachute regiment. The latter do this on the premise that the heroes from both World Wars rest there, and therefore no distinction should be made between them. On the other hand, several neo-fascist groups go on pilgrimage to the memorial every 25 April, as a response to the ANPI commemorations, turning it into a “Fascist Pride Day”.129 The Vittoriale, the mausoleums of the Ciano family and Michele Bianchi, the Tarabella’s tomb and the Campo Imperatore Hotel are reminiscences of the past. However, a newly built monument was also dedicated to a self-confessed fascist even into the second half of the twenty-first century. The mausoleum was in­ augurated in August 2012 in Affile, 90 kilometres to the east of Rome. This was at the initiative of a local conservative mayor, Ettore Viri, who sought to honour Marshall Rodolfo Graziani. A fanatical fascist and later Army minister in the ca­ binet of the Salò Republic, Graziani had been accused of war crimes in Ethiopia by the League of Nations before the war, and later by the United Nations. He was finally tried and sentenced for collaborationism in Italy in 1950. However, Graziani only served several months in prison, after arguing due obedience to orders received by Mussolini. He spent his final years in retirement in Affile. Mayor Ettore Viri himself donated a bust of Graziani and different objects for the interior of the mausoleum, built largely with public money. The monument was inaugurated with the assistance of several hundred residents, as well as by nostalgists of fascism. However, it soon became the focus of bitter protests in Italy and abroad, and several marches were organized against it; some graffiti daubed on it recalling the marshal’s war crimes. A public petition through social networks collected thousands of signatures demanding that the Lazio regional council turn the mausoleum into a monument to the unknown soldier.130 Finally, the new centre-left regional governor of Lazio and a final ruling from the courts obliged Affile city council to undertake this re-signification. Although Viri was accused before the courts of being an apologist for fascism, the Graziani memorial still remains in place. These and other debates on the recent past on the “fascism of stone” (according to the now classic definition by historian Emilio Gentile) took place in Italy’s convulsive political context from the 1990s. During this period, some political and cultural post-war agreements, like the paradigm that regarded the Resistance as the ethical and political matrix of the Italian Republic, proved to be socially fragile. The attempts to re-define a politics of memory less focused on the heroic deeds of the armed partisans of 1943–1945, and more centred on the anonymous everyday resistance of thousands of Italians, was once again attacked in different quarters. The revisionism of the centre-right was determined to highlight the purportedly

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“benevolent” character of the Fascist regime, at least in relation to German Nazism. This also meant perpetuating the popular myth that portrayed the Duce as a clairvoyant statesman, who left a positive legacy in many spheres of Italian life.131 Revisionists also sought to establish a moral equalization between the antifascist partisans and the combatants of the RSI, or “Salò’s boys” (ragazzi di Salò). They also proposed to celebrate new commemorative dates of a patriotic nature, such as Memory Day (10 February) dedicated to the martyrs of the foibe, as well as Liberty Day (9 November, the day when the Berlin Wall fell) and even 18 April (in memory of the Christian Democrat election victory of 1948 against the communists). Their main goal was removing the symbolic Liberation Day (25 April) as a foundational date for the anti-fascist legitimation of the Republic. Some local undertakings also attempted to re-habilitate former fascist leaders through urban nomenclature, as occurred in Bari or Legano. In the city of Trieste, a controversial inauguration of a statue dedicated to the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio took place in September 2019, on the centenary of the Fiume occupation, amidst parallel neo-fascist and anti-fascist rallies in favour of and against the famous “poetsoldier”. That year, several towns also hosted exhibitions on D’Annunzio and Fiume, organized by the Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation.132 They were and are undoubtedly expressions of a deeper current of opinion. Almost 100 years after the advent of the Fascist regime, the wounds from two decades of Mussolini’s rule were not fully healed.133

Notes 1 Meinecke (1946). 2 The tomb of Paula Hitler (1896–1960) in Bergfriedhof cemetery (Berchtesgaden) bore her name until 2007; since then, it has shared a plot with another family. It never became a pilgrimage site, in part due to her being a discreet figure without any propagandistic prominence during the Third Reich. This was also the case with the cenotaphs dedicated to other assistants of Hitler in the old cemetery in the same location. 3 A complete compilation of places closely related with the life of Adolf Hitler, from his birth to death, can be found at https://www.hitlerpages.com/. 4 The space where the ruins of the Wolf’s Lair are located was abandoned by the German army in November 1944, and dynamited on Hitler’s orders in January next year. However, a large number of its eight buildings were not completely destroyed. The precinct was overgrown with vegetation for 15 years, until the Polish government opened it for visitors in 1959. In spite of its remote location, in a wooded area in the north-east, located several kilometres from the Russian border, from 1993 the Wolf’s Lair (Wilczy Szaniec) was developed as a tourist destination. Sightseeing tours were organized from Warsaw and other cities. Its management is shared by a private company (belonging to a Polish-Austrian entrepreneur) and the local authorities. The annual average of visitors has oscillated from the start of the 21st century between 200,000 and 300,000 (2018). Although there has been a permanent exhibition since 2015 at the site, in the public Polish sphere the debate arose four years later around the need to convert the complex into a site of memory equipped with a visitor inter­ pretative centre and a team of multilingual guides, which would convey a critical vision of the Wolf’s Lair’s past. The Polish authorities’ greatest fear lies in the space

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5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28

69

becoming a centre of attraction for Nazi nostalgists or neo-fascists throughout all Eastern Europe. At the same time, notable facts such as the assassination attempt against Hitler on 20 July 1944 by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (who planted a bomb to kill the dictator in the Wolf’s Lair) are hardly referred to in the complex’s narrative. See Kaule (2014: 42–44). Thamer (2011). Beevor (2002: 458–459). The Soviet reports are analyzed in detail in Eberle & Uhl (2005: 462–484). For the identification of the remains stored in Moscow, see Charlier (2018). See, amongst other authors, Frei (1996, 2005), Moeller (2001) and Reichel (2001). Regarding Hitler’s final days, in addition to the testimony of the Führer’s secretary, Traudl Junge, of the staff officer, Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, or of the bodyguard and telegraphist, Rochus Misch, see the detailed reconstruction by Joachim Fest (2003). See the detailed analysis in Kellerhof (2006: 96–125); further information can be found at https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/verein/forschungsthema-untergrund/bunker-undls-anlagen/fuehrerbunker.html. See Reichel (1999: 159–160), as well as Donath (2008). W. Bayer & S. Winter, “Unesco-Schutz für Hitlers-Bunker?”, Der Spiegel, 15 November 1999. Arnold & Arnold (2017: 143–145). Urban (2010). Reichel (1999: 49–52). https://www.ns-dokuzentrum-muenchen.de/home/. See Dietzfelbinger (2014); Reichel (1999: 39–42); https://museen.nuernberg.de/ dokuzentrum/themen/nationalsozialismus/das-reichsparteitagsgelaende/dasreichsparteitagsgelaende-nach-1945/. N. Frei, “Einstürzende NS-Bauten”, Die Zeit, 21 November 2017. See the different proposals at https://museen.nuernberg.de/dokuzentrum/themen/dasgelaende/kuenftiger-umgang-mit-dem-reichsparteitagsgelaende/diskussionspapierereichsparteitagsgelaende/. Exhaustively on this, see Copley (2020: 81–128). P. Strieder, “Weg mit diesen Skulpturen”, Die Zeit, 13 May 2020; H. Kollhof, “Lasst die Skulpturen stehen!”, Die Zeit, 20 May 2020; V. Marg, “Aufklärung statt Skulpturenstreit”, Die Zeit, 28 May 2020; A. Conrad, “Streit um das Nazi-Erbe des Olympia-Geländes”, Der Tagesspiegel, 28 May 2020; P. Valentino, “Un museo sul luogo dei Giochi di Hitler: il progetto che divide Berlino”, Corriere della Sera, 20 June 2020. Görtemaker (2019: 156–214). See Beierl (2015) and Frank (2004). See https://www.obersalzberg.de; the opening speech in Möller (2000). F. Leonhardt, “‘Hotel Hitler’: Millionenflop in Berchtesgarden”, Die Presse, 26 September 2010; “De vacaciones en la residencia de verano de Hitler y Eva Braun”, Cinco Días, 6 January 2005. “Hotel neben Hitlers ‘Berghof’ wird verkauft”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 2020. For further details, see the reconstruction in Hoser (2017). The American model and photographer Lee Miller, who was travelling with US troops, took a series of photos of US personnel in the apartment for Vogue, including one in which she posed in the bath tub, causing some commotion. See Miller (2013: 233–250). Some of the pictures, also including those that were discarded, can be seen online at https://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/0pJVgzbg3EVx5RO9OHpdug..a?ts= 1zr_GbdB3jiYhpBCrFJzQA..a. See Large (1998) and Weber (2018). Also, “At home with Hitler”, The Guardian, 1 September 2007.

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29 See the article “Villa in Bogenhausen: Einfamilienhaus entsteht. Kein Stein erinnert an Eva Braun”, Abendzeitung, 12 September 2017, as well as the account by Lee Miller (2013: 243–244), who visited the house in May 1945. 30 See Th. Loy, “Aufregung um Grabstein für Nazi-Führer. Ruhestätte bisher anonym auf Invalidenfriedhof”, Der Tagesspiegel, 1 September 2004; “Keine Ruhe um die letzte Ruhestätte von Fritz Todt”, Der Tagesspiegel, 12 September 2004. 31 “Unbekannte öffnen Nazi-Grab auf dem Invalidenfriedhof”, Berliner Zeitung, 15 December 2019; “Unbekannte öffnen Grab vom Nazi-Verbrecher”, Der Tagesspiegel, 14 December 2019. 32 See J. Casquete, “Kreuzberger Kirchhof unterm Hakenkreuz”, Der Tagesspiegel, 22 March 2019. Similarly, Casquete (2017: 196–213; 2020: 313–320). 33 See Siemens (2009: 255–276); C. Naujoks, “Horst Wessel: ‘Märtyrer der Bewegung’ kopflos im Grab?”, Die Zeit, 24 February 2009; Th. Schneider, “Ein NeonaziWallfahrtsort weniger? Horst Wessels Grabstein in Berlin entfernt”, Blick nach Rechts, 8 August 2013 (available at https://www.bnr.de/artikel/hintergrund/rechter-totenkult). 34 See S.F. Kellerhof, “Wer noch immer das Grab des Hitlers-Erfinders pflegt”, Welt.de, 8 November 2016 (available at https://www.welt.de/geschichte/article159331952/ Wer-noch-immer-das-Grab-des-Hitler-Erfinders-pflegt.html); K. Pfeiffer, “Grab von Hitlers Ideengeber Dietrich Eckart wird aufrechterhalten”, Berchtesgadener Anzeiger, 25 January 2018. 35 See “Neue Petition in der Causa Jodl”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19 December 2019; M. Köpf, “Beschluss gegen Jodl-Kreuz”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 February 2020; “SPDGesetzentwurf gegen Gedenksteine für Kriegsverbrecher”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 June 2020; “SPD will Jodlg-Grab mit Gesetzänderung beseitigen”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7 July 2020; H. Reister, “Jodl-Grab: Ist eine Steinplatte die Lösung?”, Abendzeitung, 31 July 2020. 36 See Dörfler & Klärner (2004), as well as information compiled by O’Hara & Schlüter (2002). 37 The different sentences of the German Constitutional Court from 2005 and 2009 against Neo-Nazi gatherings in Wunsiedel, as well as their legal and constitutional foundations, are exhaustively analyzed in Klaussmann (2019). 38 See “Kein Neonazi-Aufmarsch in Wunsiedel” and “Protest gegen rechtes ‘Heldengedenken’ ”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 May 2010. 39 See H. Holzhaider, “Grab von Rudolf Heß existiert nicht mehr”, and O. Przybilla, “Grabesruhe nach der Exhumierung Hitlers Stellvertreters”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21 July 2011; O. Przybilla, “Drohbriefe und Schmähungen”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30 July 2011. 40 See https://www.bim-berlin.de/immobilien/unsere-projekte/bogensee/, as well as Berkholz (2004) and K. Bischoff, “Berlin sucht Käufer für einstige FDJKaderschmiede: Bogensee wird jetzt weltweit angeboten”, Berliner Zeitung, 21 February 2008. 41 To follow the public discussion, see the updated press dossier provided by the Munich Institute for Contemporary History: https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/aktuelles/ themen/edition-mein-kampf/dokumentation-mein-kampf-in-der-oeffentlichendiskussion/. 42 See Judt (2006: 91–92). 43 See Uhl (2001, 2006) and Rathkolb (2015: 50–51, 389–430;2017). 44 See Zdral (2005) and Botz (2014: 126–127). 45 See Kershaw (2001: 29–42), Hamann (1998: 11–41) and Thamer (2018: 18–24). 46 Hafner (2018). 47 Hitler (1930: 1–2). 48 See Zöchling (2014), as well as Bevanda (2018: 47–48). 49 See the proceedings from the first conference, Unerwünschtes Erbe: 1. Braunauer

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50 51 52 53 54 55

56

57 58 59

60 61

62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

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Zeitgeschichtstage; 25.–27. September 1992, Dokumentation, Braunau am Inn: Verlag für Zeitgeschichte, 1992. Baumhackl (2015). See the unpublished work by Forster (2012). Glechner (2013: 125–126). For further information, see https://www.hrb.at/idee/. A. Förster, “Adolf Hitler. Haus der Geschichte”, Frankfurter Rundschau, 5 October 2011. A dystopian recreation of the argument and reductio ad absurdum can be read in Glechner (2012: 29–35). A Russian millionaire buys a house at 15 Salzburger Strasse (a different direction to Salzburger Vorstadt) in Braunau, a restaurant and various sou­ venir stalls nearby, attracting thousands of Asian tourists who do not understand that the plaque specified that “Here A. H. was not born”, due to their not knowing German. The Mayor’s Office, however, cannot fine him for pointing out on a poster that, indeed, Hitler had not been born there. Bill 211/ME XXV, Enteignung Liegenschaft Salzbuger Vorstadt, at https://www. parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXV/ME/ME_00211/fname_534788.pdf. A sum­ mary of the parliamentary debate at Parlamentskorrespondenz, 1416 (14 December 2016), at https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/PR/JAHR_2016/PK1416/. See Schöndörfer (2018) and Bevanda (2018: 79). Bundesministerium für Inneres, Abschlussbericht. Kommmission zum historisch korrekten Umgang mit dem Geburtshaus Adolf Hitlers, October 2016 (available at https://bmi.gv. at/bmi_documents/1908.pdf). See, for example, the local discussion unleashed by the statements made by the eco­ nomic historian, Kim-Christian Priemel, who supported the museumization of the property: R. Stammler, “Hitler-Museum in Braunau? Idee löst im Innviertel viel Kopfschütteln aus”, OÖNachrichten, 6 September 2017. The arguments of those who defended the House of Responsibility idea can be seen at https://www.hrb.at. Home secretary statement, “Hitlergeburtshaus: Innenminister Peschorn hat über die Umgestaltung und Nutzung entschieden”, available at https://bmi.gv.at/news.aspx? id=797861595967717930736F3D. See also P. Münch, “Polizei zieht in Hitlers Geburtshaus”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 November 2019. G. Matzig, “Bis zum Vergessen zeitlos”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 June 2020; Th.E. Schmidt, “Das Problemhaus”, Die Zeit, 27 August 2020. Notwendiger Verrat: der Fall Franz Jägerstätter; 4. Braunauer Zeitgeschichte-Tage; 22.–24 September 1995, Braunau am Inn: Verein für Zeitgeschichte, 1995. See https://www.braunau.at/Unsere_Stadt/Geschichte/Verantwortung_Geschichte. See Weissengruber (2008: 128–136) and Bevanda (2018: 103–104). A similar fate was suffered by the tomb of Geli Raubal, Hitler’s niece with whom the Nazi leader was in love and who died in September 1931. Currently located in Vienna’s central cemetery, and after several transfers, the tomb is not marked. The cemetery employees refuse to verify the exact location of the tomb in order to avoid it becoming a place of pilgrimage for nostalgists. See a complete description of the monument at http://www.nachklang-widerhall.at/. See Weissengruber (2008: 137). Hamann (1998: 42–64, 541–571). See Suppanz (2010) and Botz (2014). See the exhaustive analysis by Dreidemy (2014: 61–154, 207–216). Neuhäuser (2004). Dreidemy (2014: 248–256). Rathkolb (2017: 95–103). See https://www.texingtal.at/Dr_Engelbert_Dollfuss-Museum. For further details, see Dreidemy (2011; 2014: 291–312).

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76 M. Glück & J. Streimelweger, “Dollfuß bleibt weiterhin umstritten”, 3 May 2017, at https://www.noen.at/melk/bezirk-melk-dollfuss-bleibt-weiterhin-umstrittendollfuss-dollfuss-platz-museum-46893653. 77 See M. Glück, “Dollfuß-Museum: Zum 20. Jubiläum kritisch beleuchtet”, 3 March 2018 at https://www.noen.at/melk/texingtal-dollfuss-museum-zum-20-jubilaeumkritisch-beleuchtet-dollfuss-museum-gerhard-karner-79443785#; M. Glück & A. Faltner, “Dollfuß: Märtyrer oder Arbeitermörder?”, 29 June 2018, at https://www. noen.at/melk/texingtal-dollfuss-maertyrer-oder-arbeitermoerder-matthias-stadlerhans-penz-dollfuss-museum-fotos-100876043. 78 Fogu (2006). 79 R. Ben-Ghiat, “Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy”, The New Yorker, 5 October 2017, available at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/ culture-desk/why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-in-italy. 80 Pavone (1991). 81 For a synthetic reconstruction of Mussolini’s last days, see Milza (2010). In the town of Dongo today, there is a museum dedicated to the end of the war period, describing and explaining the final days of Mussolini. See http://www.museofineguerradongo.it/. 82 E. González, “Mussolini se agita en su tumba”, El País, 24 September 2006. 83 See Di Bella (2004), Musiedlak (2016), Luzzato (2020: 62–82) and Kümmel (2018: 70–77). 84 See Gentile (2008) and Baioni (2020). One example has been the controversial re­ storation of the frescoes of the Main Hall of La Sapienza university, in Rome, which revealed features (such as Mussolini on horseback) that had been “censured” and covered in 1950. See S. Merlo, “Si può cancellare la storia?”, Il Foglio, 20 October 2017. 85 See Baldassini (2006),Tranfaglia (1999),Cooke (2011: 9–66),Dematteis (2017) and Focardi (2005: 19–32). 86 Montanelli (1945). 87 In January 2020, the network comprised 63 local and regional historical institutes and 14 research centres and associated archives. See http://www.reteparri.it/wp-content/ uploads/recapiti/reteinsmli.pdf. 88 See the photographic collection of Balena (2004). 89 Focardi (2013; 2020: 185–186, 194–195, 210–211). 90 This is the case with the mausoleum devoted to the socialist deputy and irredentist leader Cesare Battisti, an Italian-speaking activist from the Trent region who enlisted in the Italian army in 1915. Captured by a South Tyrolean unit the following year, he was executed in 1916 in the centre of Trent, turning him into one of the myths of Italian irredentism. The shrine, inaugurated in 1935, stands on a hillock in the urban landscape of Trent. Another example is the monument to the victory in Bolzano/ Bozen, erected by the fascist regime in 1928 as a symbol not only of the victory over Austria in the Great War but also of the Italianization of a German language territory incorporated after 1919. However, in this latter case, and after several local debates, the monument was duly renamed and contextualized in 2014, like the former Casa del Fascio in Bolzano/Bozen. See Cole (2016). 91 Parlato (2013: 227–230). 92 For a detailed account, see Bonacina (2004). 93 Luzzato (2020: 112–129, 208–210). 94 See the description by Spada (2008). 95 Pennacchi (2010). 96 Flores & Giunchi (2019). 97 https://www.roccadellecaminate.com/storia/. 98 Luzzato (2020: 216–220). 99 See Cooke (2011: 67–112), and Focardi (2005: 41–55). 100 See Baioni (1996), Serenelli (2013a), Sedita (2014) and Luzzato (2020: 238–240).

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101 Serenelli (2013b). 102 La Stampa, 28 October 2019; Corriere di Bologna, 27 October 2019. 103 The text of the bill can be consulted at http://documenti.camera.it/_dati/leg17/ lavori/stampati/pdf/17PDL0034860.pdf. 104 M. Smargiasi, “Mille mantelli d’orbace per il nuovo culto del Duce”, La Repubblica, 28 October 2002. 105 The shop also has a website where all kinds of fascist and Nazi memorabilia can be purchased: https://www.mussolini.net. 106 See http://www.casadeiricordi.it/index.html. Similarly, Fuller (2018). 107 Giovanetti (2010). 108 See G. Frassineti & F. Billi, “Il perchè della mostra”, in M. Ridolfi & F. Moschi (eds.), Il giovane Mussolini, 1883–1914. La Romagna, la formazione, l’ascesa politica, Forlì: Neri Wolff, 2013, pp. 12–13. 109 See Ridolfi & Van Riel (2005), as well as Versari (2011). 110 See the project website, focusing above all on south-eastern Europe: http://www. atrium-see.eu/. 111 R. Kramer, “Faschismus. Bizarrer Mussolini-Kult in Predappio”, Berliner Zeitung, 24 July 2013. 112 This opinion was also shared by historians who had initially supported the project, such as Paolo Pezzino (2018). See also “Un museo del fascismo? La posizione della Fondazione Alfred Lewin”, Una Città, 229 (March 2016), at https://www.unacitta.it/ newsite/articolo.asp?id=1160. 113 Cf. transcription of documents from public session no. 579 of the Senate of the Republic, XVII Legislatura, 17 February 2016, pp. 165–166, at http://www.senato. it/service/PDF/PDFServer/BGT/964984.pdf. 114 See the museographical project, Ex-Casa del Fascio e dell’Ospitalità di Predappio. L’Italia totalitaria. Stato e società in época fascista. Un’esposizione permanente, undated. The ma­ terials can also be downloaded at http://e-review.it/sites/default/images/articles/ media/170/10_sintesi-progettoper cent20esposizione.pdf, and also at https:// progettopredappio.it/. 115 See the contributions in “Osservatorio Predappio. Per discutere del progetto di un museo sul fascismo” of the online journal of the Historical Resistance Institutes (today the Istituto Parri) in Emilia-Romagna at http://e-review.it/osservatorio-predappio. 116 For an exhaustive compilation of the debates, see Carrattieri (2018). 117 C. Ginzburg, “Il fascismo non è solo Mussolini”, Il Sole 24 Ore, 6 March 2016. 118 G. Turi, “Fare un museo del fascismo?”, unpublished paper, 2020. 119 This was the position, for example, expressed by historians of Fascism and post-war Italy such as Enzo Collotti and Filippo Focardi. See E. Collotti, “L’inglorioso museo di Predappio”, Il Manifesto, 5 April 2016, and A. FAbozzi, “Più nazisti che fascisti, ma attenti all’allarmismo strumentale». Intervista a Filippo Focardi”, Il Manifesto, 10 December 2017. 120 Noiret (2017). 121 An additional account of the debates for 2018 can be found in Plini (2018). 122 “Predappio, il neosindaco di destra: ‘Nostalgici senza polemiche’ ”, Il Resto del Carlino, 29 May 2019. 123 “Fascismo, il centro studi a Predappio non si farà. Progetto bloccato dal sindaco e dagli eredi di Mussolini”, Corriere dell’Umbria, 3 January 2020; F. Giubilei, “Predappio cancella il museo sul fascismo”, La Stampa, 16 January 2020; M. Di Vito, “Cripta Mussolini. Il sindaco di Predappio incontrerà gli eredi”, Il Manifesto, 8 August 2020. 124 A novelized but historically well-documented kaleidoscope on the foundational years of fascism can be found in Scurati (2018). See also the classic description by De Felice (1965). 125 One example is the website dedicated to sites of memory from the 1943–1945 period in Milan, sponsored amongst other institutions by ANPI: see http://mi4345.it/.

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126 “Cantieri edili all’ombra del mausoleo di Ciano”, La Nazione, 31 October 2009; Ippoliti, Carnevali & Lanfranchi (2017). 127 See https://www.histouring.com/en/historical-places/hotel-campo-imperatore/. 128 See http://www.comune.belmontecalabro.cs.it/index.php?action=index&p=344. For an account of fascist news reports on the transfer of Bianchi’s remains to the monument in 1932, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDIizYE0zWg. See also M. Scalise, “Michele Bianchi, il ‘super fascista’ della Calabria”, LameziaTerme.it, 14 January 2019 (available at https://www.lameziaterme.it/michele-bianchi-il-superfascista-di-calabria/). 129 See “La Giunta di Monza rende onore anche alle camicie nere”, 4 November 2007, available at http://www.brianzapopolare.it/sezioni/storia/20071104_monza_ omaggia_fascisti.htm; F. Isman & T. Marinoni, “Questo è il fiore del Partigiano”, 27 April 2017, at https://arengario.net/citt/citt519.html; F. Isman, “Aldo Tarabella, l’eroe ritrovato”, 24 March 2010, at https://arengario.net/libr/libr99.html. 130 G. Pianigiani, “Village’s Tribute Reignites a Debate about Italy’s Fascist Past”, The New York Times, 28 August 2012; Noiret (2013); Pearce (2014). 131 There is an ironic deconstruction of these revisionist myths in Filippi (2019). 132 The ceremony, which was attended by the president of the Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation, even prompted a diplomatic protest by the Croatian government. See “Inaugurata la statua di D’Annunzio a Trieste, Zagabria protesta”, La Repubblica, 12 September 2019; “Statua D’Annunzio a Trieste, protesta la Croazia. Dipiazza: ‘Polemiche incredibili’”, Il Messaggero, 12 September 2019. On the different exhibi­ tions, see also https://fiume.vittoriale.it/mostre/. 133 Baioni (2020: 192–193); Focardi (2013: 67–88; 2020: 285–304).

3 THE SITES OF THE AUTHORITARIAN AND COLLABORATIONIST DICTATORS

There were several European dictatorships from the inter-war period which emerged from civil and military coups, endorsed by monarchist, anti-communist, traditionalist or ultra-conservative sectors and with the support of minority fascist parties. In their first phases, these dictatorships were influenced to a varying degree by Mussolini’s Italy and, from 1933, Hitler’s Germany. They aligned their foreign policy with both Axis powers, collaborated with them in military matters and adapted to their circumstances models of political and economic organization that where characteristic of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. This included, amongst other aspects, the implementation of social and economic corporativism, as well as the mass mobilization and indoctrination of the youth, workers, peasants or women. Other regimes emerged directly under German domination, as puppet states overseen by the Third Reich (and Italy), and adopted political models based on their own traditions but aligned with the positions of Nazism. They range from Vichy France to Marshall Antonescu’s Romania, Admiral Horthy’s Hungary or the Croatian Independent State led by Ante Pavelić. The majority of these regimes disappeared between 1944 and 1945, following the military defeat of the Third Reich. There were two exceptions, characterized by extremely long dictatorships that adapted in chameleonic fashion to the Cold War world by remaining neutral in 1939–1945. Their political development went through a fascist or fascistized period and into a technocratic, corporate and Catholic phase in differing ways. The first was Spain, which will be examined in a specific chapter. The second was Portugal, whose military dictatorship that began in 1926 went on to become dominated from 1933 by the minister of economy and head of cabinet, Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar, who stayed in power until 1968; under his successor, Marcelo Caetano, the regime lasted through April 1974. Although Salazar expressed sympathies for the Axis until the early 1940s, he managed to keep Portugal’s neutrality and ensure the long-term survival of the Portuguese empire until 1974–1975.

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3.1 Portugal: Official anti-Salazarism, local opportunism In Portugal, unlike its Iberian neighbour, the long-lived dictatorship, established through a military coup in 1926 and dominated from 1933 to 1968 by the figure of António de Oliveira Salazar, underwent a sudden crisis before crumbling in a single day on 25 April 1974. The transition to democracy was relatively brief, albeit eventful and unstable. Following the “carnation revolution” of April 1974, led by the mid-ranking army officers (the “April captains”), there was a genuine revolutionary break with the dictatorial past. The politics of memory concerning the recent past of the young Portuguese democracy has been characterized in general by its radical and pro-active nature. Condemnation of Salazarism was accompanied by the parallel mythification of 25 April. An approach shared with greater or lesser enthusiasm even by the parties which in good measure included numerous mid-ranking politicians from the previous regime, as well as by the votes of many of the former sympathizers of Salazar, the liberal centre-right of the paradoxically named Social Democratic Party (PSD), and the conservative and Christian Democrat Social Democratic Centre Party (PP/CDS). The stigmatization of the recent dictatorial past was swift and radical, although it also left some matters in the shadows, such as those concerning the excesses committed during the colonial war of 1961–1974 in Guinea, Angola and Mozambique, which in part could have affected those who later rebelled against the dictatorship. There was a first wave of “savage” purges during the first and unstable post-revolutionary period, when hundreds of trials of members of Salazar’s political police (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, PIDE) took place, in a sudden exercise of transitional justice. However, these purges were later moderated by the government elected by the first free and constitutional elections of 25 April 1975, which gave a simple majority to the Socialist Party (PS) led by Mário Soares.1 Removing all references to the dictator Salazar from urban nomenclature and public places was not a highly complex process for the new authorities. The Portuguese dictatorship had never conferred great importance on the autocrat’s personality cult, whose charisma was based above all on his aura as an economist and efficient administrator, as well as on his being a clairvoyant statesman, and even a brilliant philosopher. Salazar himself abjured the public use of the term “Salazarism” and was allergic to mass rallies. All the avenues, squares and streets which bore the name of Salazar, his successor Marcelo Caetano or the final president of the Republic before 25 April 1974, Américo Tomás, were all rechristened within a few months. All these public spaces received names connected with the carnation revolution, figures from Portuguese history before Salazarism or people related to the democratic opposition. This also included the modern bridge over the River Tagus estuary in Lisbon, opened to traffic in 1966 and unofficially named Salazar bridge, which became 25th of April Bridge.2 Therefore, by 2017 only seven streets, located in rural and/or scarcely populated districts, still

The sites of the authoritarian 77

bore the name of Salazar. However, some neighbourhoods in medium-size towns such as Viseu, Leiria, Peniche and Coimbra still bear the name of Bairro fundaçâo Salazar (Salazar Foundation Neighbourhood). Moreover, various streets in con­ tinental and offshore Portugal recall ministers from his dictatorship, such as the Propaganda minister, António Ferro. Furthermore, the Salazar regime had not built many monumental sculptures: they were initially conceived more for the external representation of the dictatorship than for the interior cult of the dictator. In metropolitan Portugal, only two statues dedicated to the dictator existed, as well as a third erected in Mozambique. The first depicted Salazar in academic gown and was located in the interior courtyard of the Foz Palace (Lisbon) from 1959, the headquarters of the National Secretariat for Information, Culture and Tourism. It was removed from its pedestal one month after 25 April by a group of revolutionary artists, the Movimento Democrático de Artistas Plásticos (Democratic Movement of Visual Artists), under the slogan A arte fascista faz mal à vista (Fascist Art damages sight). The second, inaugurated in 1965, was built in his birthplace, the town of Santa Comba Dâo (Viseu district), located in the wineproducing area of the same name. After the carnation revolution, the statue was gradually damaged by acts of vandalism, being decapitated with the first incident and practically destroyed with the second in 1978. However, local residents attempted to restore the statue and return it to its pedestal, prompting the Lisbon government to remove its remains, some of which were kept by many locals as a sort of religious relic. On the site, opposite the headquarters of the local courthouse, a fountain was built, which did not stem the protests of nostalgists; in 2010, a monument dedicated to those from the district who had fallen during the colonial wars (officially named “overseas wars”) was built.3 Salazar had died at the end of July 1970, following a stroke two years before, which had rendered him incapable of continuing his duties. His successor and faithful follower of his legacy, Marcelo Caetano, was overthrown by the military in April 1974. He took refuge in Brazil, where he taught for some years as a university lecturer. He died there in October 1980. Caetano’s funeral took place in Rio de Janeiro’s Sâo Joâo Baptista cemetery and was attended by some 500 people, including five ex-ministers of the Salazar regime. Although the Portuguese president at the time, António Ramalho Eanes, offered to repatriate the body to the state, in the same way that he had allowed the return of former president Américo Tomás from exile two years before, Caetano had expressed his firm intention of being buried in Brazil.4 Owing to this, the new democratic state that had emerged from the carnation revolution avoided an additional symbolic dispute. During his life, Salazar had felt very connected to the place where he was born and had spent his childhood. He would frequently stay there during the summer and other periods, accompanied by his relatives and close collaborators. In Vimieiro, Salazar used to recreate the worship of the virtues of the simple, family rural life. He would make his own wine, which he would offer to visitors, and tend to his garden and estate. Not unsurprisingly, a significant number of the

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long-serving president’s trusted and closed political staff hailed from Santa Comba Dâo.5 Three days after his death on 27 July 1970, when Caetano was already in power, Salazar was buried in his home parish in a ceremony attended by around 400 people, following the State funeral held in the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon. The dictator’s casket travelled by train to Santa Comba Dâo, and thou­ sands of people crowded the railway stations along the route. In death, he was remembered in an official way as a “philosopher of social and political matters”, and it was this facet that would be the enduring impression of him.6 Salazar’s tomb was certainly characterized by a monastic austerity, in ac­ cordance with the principles he publicly espoused when alive. His anonymous grave is next to another seven of his family members, all unidentified. Only re­ cently has a plaque on a wall in the cemetery indicated indirectly where the dictator’s place of burial was located. That plaque included an epitaph in generic and moralist terms, which recalled Salazar’s austerity in life, as well as his purported integrity and discretion, attributes to which part of his charisma amongst the population was attributed. O homem mais poderoso de Portugal do século XX e modesto sem igual Nasceu humilde e humilde cresceu Viveu humilde e humilde morreu Mediocre é o povo que com ele nada aprendeu

The most powerful man in Portugal of the twentieth century and modest without peer He was born humble and humble he was reared He lived humbly and humbly he did die Mediocre are those who learnt nothing from his life

A similar legend is on the inscription of the plaque placed on his tomb in the twenty-first century: Aqui Jaz o homem A quem Portugal mais a dever ficou Ao Pais tudo de si deu Do Pais nada para si tirou

Here lies the man To whom Portugal owes the most To the country, he gave everything From the country, he took nothing

In Vimieiro there are also three houses which belonged to the dictator’s family. In the house where he was born, which has been shut for years and is located on Oliveira Salazar Avenue (one of the few streets with his name that still remain in Portuguese territory), there is an equally austere plaque. It was placed there at the start of the twenty-first century, when the house was restored: Aqui nasceu em 28-4-1889 Dr Oliveira Salazar Um Senhor que governou E nada roubou.

Here was born on 28-4-1889 Dr. Oliveira Salazar A gentleman who ruled And stole not a single thing.

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Moreover, in the village there is a school canteen, also closed, bearing the name of Salazar. Another house, where he once lived, is located beside it; it was in­ habited until a few years ago by his great nephew, Rui Salazar de Melo, a person who acquired a certain media presence from the 1990s. Another house is used as a wine cellar. Other than this, and a tile mosaic in the town centre, there is little in Santa Comba Dâo recalling the dictator. However, a local restaurant makes no secret of its (real or opportunist) nostalgia for the “old good days” by displaying in its dining room a bust, photos and sentences of the former autocrat, presented as the “best ruler” of the country in its 900 years of history.

3.1.1 Musealizing Salazar: A Portuguese Predappio? Unlike Predappio and Braunau am Inn, since 1975 the flow of visitors and nos­ talgists to Vimeiro, a place that is not easy to get to, has been quite modest, although not inexistent. Coinciding with the anniversaries of the birth and death of the dictator, each year there was a modest pilgrimage to pay tribute before his tomb and hear a mass in his memory in the parish. Only a few dozen and mostly elderly sympathizers attended.7 However, the use that could be given to the Salazar family house and its annexe buildings began to be the subject of some debate in the Portuguese public arena from 1997, when Rui Salazar launched one idea through the media, and even put up a poster on the birth house: Se Deus quiser será aquí o futuro museu do Dr. Oliveira Salazar (If God wishes, this will be the future Dr. Oliveira Salazar museum).8 The then Socialist mayor of Santa Comba Dâo, Orlando Mendes, took up the suggestion and proposed at the end of the decade the creation of a New State museum in the town. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century, the project was revived by the ministerial cabinet of the Socialist Party, but made no progress due to the various disagreements between the heirs (nephews and great nephews, as Salazar had no children). Some years later, the new Conservative mayor of Santa Comba Dâo, João Lourenço, supported by a local coalition of PSD and CDS-PP, resumed the project. He added a supposedly non-political argument in favour of it. Salazar would be regarded above all as an “illustrious son” of Santa Comba, and therefore worthy of being remembered as such, without this provoking excessive political “passions” among his sympathizers and detractors. The initiative was favoured by a fortuitous event. In 2007, after more than 30 years of oblivion, the figure of the former dictator returned to the centre of political debate in Portugal owing to a programme on the first channel of Portugal Television (RTP1). In Os Grandes Portugueses (Portugal’s Greatest), António de Oliveira Salazar was chosen by a large majority of viewers as the greatest Portuguese personality of the twentieth century.9 However, soon a group of former political prisoners, the União de Resistentes Anti-fascistas Portugueses (Portuguese Alliance of Anti-Fascist Resistance) linked to the Communist Party (PCP), together with an association of defenders of anti-fascist memory, Nâo apaguem a memória! (Do not switch off memory!), launched a cam­ paign to collect signatures to request parliament (the Assembly of the Republic) not

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FIGURE 3.1

Tomb of Salazar, Vimieiro (Santa Comba Dâo). ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

to allow the initiative to go forward. In the parliamentary debate that took place for this purpose in July 2008, the Right (PSD and CDS-PP) supported the creation of the museum, whilst the Socialist and Communist parliamentary groups and the EcoSocialist coalition Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda), in this case, through one of its de­ puties, the Lisbon historian of Salazarism Fernando Rosas, opposed the idea. The arguments of those facing the so-called Salazar Museum were, in principle, very similar to those cited in the cases of Predappio and Braunau. On the one hand, there was the fear of creating directly or indirectly a centre of attraction for nostalgists of Salazarism (“an obsolete sanctuary of pilgrimage of the extreme right”, according to Rosas), let alone at a geographical location with difficult access and little frequented by visitors and tourists. On the other hand, the idea was advanced that the narrative of a centre on Salazarism should address in a didactic fashion the most repressive and pro-fascist facets of the regime. In order to do that, an ambitious collection of documents would be necessary, and need to be placed somewhere that would allow the presence of a massive and ongoing number of visitors, including schools’ visits. Therefore, as alternative locations for the museum were suggested as nearby Coimbra, Lisbon or Porto.10 From that point, the issue of the “Salazar Museum” took on great public visibility. The gathering in Salazar’s birth place convened that same year, 2007, by a minority group of the (in itself weak) Portuguese extreme right-wing, was at­ tended by barely a few dozen demonstrators and met with the simultaneous mobilization of anti-fascist groups from the district. However, the local authorities insisted on using Salazar as a distinctive brand and tourist claim for the region. In 2012, the conservative town hall even attempted to register a “Salazar trademark” in order to market regional products, primarily the Memórias de Salazar (Salazar Memories) wine. The Portuguese board of the qualified denomination of quality

The sites of the authoritarian 81

wines then managed to find formal arguments through which to reject such an inconvenient and unusual request. The project to create a museum or visitor interpretative centre on the New State dictatorship based on Salazar’s birth house resurfaced from 2015, this time with the new town mayor of Santa Comba Dâo, the socialist Leonel Gouveia. In tandem with the initiatives of Frasinetti in Predappio, Gouveia insisted on several occasions that the contents should offer a modern and critical historio­ graphical vision of the figure of Salazar, his work and legacy, as well as highlight the most sinister and repressive aspects of his regime, both in continental Portugal and its colonies. The implicit argument, once again, was the need to attract tourism and resources to boost the economy of a depopulated, ageing and inactive district. The local authorities in Santa Comba Dâo acquired the three Salazar properties, of which one had already been donated by Rui Salazar. Initially, it was planned to open the Centro Interpretativo do Estado Novo (CIEN) at the end of 2019 on these premises. The Centre’s contents, according to Gouveia in July that year, were being prepared by a group of experts, in tandem with the “judicious and scien­ tific” collection of documentary material that would be a part of the new memorial space. The purpose of the mayor would be to create an interpretative centre with virtual contents, free of the dictator’s personal objects or items. The centre would be ideally visited by tourists and history students, and which could be part of a type of itinerary or route based on historical figures from the region (Central Portugal). It would not become a “sanctuary for nationalists”, but neither would it be intended to turn into a place to “demonize the great statesman from Santa Comba Dão”,11 a purportedly neutral denomination for Salazar now being used by the socialist Gouveia, too. Given that the political significance of the dictator would always be controversial, the mayor concluded, it would be relevant to locate the place where he was born on the global map of Salazar’s studies. However, Gouveia also expressed a somewhat ingenuous conception (similar to that voiced by Frassineti some years before) as to what historical accounts are: “History has to be told, it can’t be cut” (contada, nâo cortada), reducing it to a factual and purportedly aseptic narrative. Therefore, the interpretation centre would be best situated in an “engaging setting” based on the exhibition of information, and be “neither a shrine to nor crucifixion of ” Salazar. On the contrary, it would convey faithfully, without any “ideological connotation”, the real history of that period as experienced by ordinary Portuguese people.12 The scientific directors of the CIEN would be several historians connected with the Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies on the Twentieth Century from the nearby University of Coimbra, in particular the expert on the economic history of the Salazar regime and matters related to public history Joâo P. Avelâs Nunes. This author has reflected in several articles on the convenience of collaboration be­ tween historiography, museology and the concern for the preservation of cultural heritage, with the objective of attracting tourists with high expectations of a cultural nature.13

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FIGURE 3.2

Birthplace of Salazar, Vimieiro. ©Ramón Villares

The project was submitted to the president of the Portuguese Republic in midJuly 2019 by five town halls in Portugal’s central region (Santa Comba Dâo, Carregal do Sal, Penacova, Tondela and Seia). It promoted the idea of strength­ ening a route through various sites of memory connected to the twentieth century in Portugal, and a sort of “diffuse museum”. It postulated the creation of a Network of First Republic and New State History and Politics of memory Interpretation Centres, with a thematic itinerary based on both visitor centres dedicated to figures born in each one those locations. These were António de Oliveira Salazar (Santa Comba Dâo); the president of the First Portuguese Republic between 1919 and 1923, António José de Almeida (Penacova); the

The sites of the authoritarian 83

leader of the Republican Party, Afonso Costa, who was the first prime minister for several terms in the First Republic (Seia); the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux during the early 1940s who saved on his own initiative the lives of several hundreds of European Jews, Arístides de Sousa Mendes (Carregal do Sal); and the group of sanatoriums in O Caramulo (Tondela), built during the dicta­ torship. All of them would serve as spaces for musealization, debate and cultural promotion, and also perform further functions relating to heritage preservation and cultural tourism.14 The controversy inevitably raged once again. More than 200 former political prisoners of the Salazar regime, flanked by several intellectuals and opinion makers, signed a letter in which they expressed their rejection of the so-called Salazar Museum, echoing the same arguments from the past. As the former leader of the PCP, Santiago Abrantes, stated in August 2019, the content of the museum would seek to whitewash and humanize the dictator, instead of condemning his deeds: “It’s a museum to exalt the role of Salazar”, which would run the risk of becoming a centre of neo-fascist pilgrimage.15 A manifesto shared via the Internet (Museu de Salazar, Nâo!, No to Salazar Museum!) and expressed in similar terms succeeded in securing 18,000 signatures in support in just a few weeks, and was sent to the Socialist prime minister António Costa (PS) at the end of August. One of its signatories, the Coimbra historian specializing in the Portuguese colonial war Miguel Cardina believed that the problem was not so much the museum per se but the proposal to exploit the figure of Salazar for commercial gain. The location itself in his intimate environment entailed that every visitor would undergo a direct experience on the field concerning who Salazar was, aimed at exploiting “the emotional and subjective” aspects of his personality, which would implicitly result in a whitewashing of the memory of the dictator.16 Former deputies of the centre-liberal PSD also expressed their opposition to the project: the law expert Jorge Miranda, for example, stated that the planned museum would mean an offence to history and the values of the Portuguese democratic state, without further reflection.17 In this context, on 11 September 2019, the Portuguese parliament passed, with the support of votes from the left and the abstention of the centre-right of the PSD and the PP-CDS, a motion of the communist party condemning the initiative to create the interpretative centre on Salazar in Santa Comba Dâo. Once again, the argument stated that such an endeavour was liable to constitute an affront to democracy and democratic values, as well as an offence to the memory of victims of the dictatorship.18 However, the PS did not rule out afterwards that the project of a network of interpretative centres be resumed in the near future, as long as there were sufficient guarantees that its narrative would not run the risk of idealizing the figure of the dictator.19 At the end of 2020, the contents of this future interpretation centre are still as yet to be defined in detail. Only in March 2020 were some of the renovation works on the former Salazar school canteen in Vimieiro resumed. Several former opponents and political prisoners of the dictatorship have insisted that the “Salazar

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Museum” would be converted willingly or unwillingly into a centre of attraction for neo-fascists. Other voices, conversely, welcome the centre on the figure of the dictator and its contextualization; however, they do not believe that it is con­ venient for such a project to be located in Salazar’s home town, where the symbolic and emotional overload linked to him would prejudice the educational objectives of the museum. Some experts, such as the Coimbra modern historian Luis Reis Torgal, as well as the poet and former exile Manuel Alegre, or the socialist politician Joâo Soares, have underlined with coincident arguments that everything depends, to a large extent, on the narrative and contents conferred upon the planned interpretation centre by the authorities and, in particular, professional historians and museologists, without prejudging what their intentions are. For this reason, a thoughtful debate in the public sphere would be required, free as much as possible of partisan passions and simplifications. Furthermore, the museumization process should be supported by the highlighting and simultaneous experiences of resignification of the birthplaces of other great figures related to twentieth-century Portuguese history.20 As in Italy, therefore, the idea of a “Diffuse Museum” gained many respectable supporters, in this case the Portuguese twentieth century, and not a European narrative, being the principal context and basis. However, and also as in Italy, the debate focused more on the possible location of the museum than on the nature of its contents. The discussions continued through the summer of 2020. In June that year, the Committee on Culture of the Lisbon parliament admitted a plea by the Portuguese Alliance of Anti-Fascist Resistance, endorsed by 10,396 signatures. The petitioners demanded that plans to construct the visitor interpretative centre be stopped. Their arguments remained unchanged: for them, accepting the existence of a museum “or whatever they call them” in the school once attended by the dictator would mean allowing a site to exist where the supporters of the legacy of fascism could conspire, gather and mobilize against democracy. This would be even more dangerous when, for the first time since 1975, a new extreme right party, Chega (Enough!), has significant electoral prospects.21 The fate experienced by other emblematic memory sites of the Salazar dicta­ torship linked to its repressive nature, which focused on the remembrance of its victims, was far less controversial. For example, this was the case of the PIDE main barracks in Lisbon, which after several years of uncertainty was converted into luxury apartments in 2005 – it was never state property, and successive cabinets neglected to acquire the property or museumize the space. There is just a plaque on its façade remembering the civil victims of 25 April who died in front of the building, shot by PIDE agents. Conversely, in 2019 there were several voices, including some deputies and outstanding political leaders, intellectuals and former political prisoners, who supported the project to convert what had been the PIDE headquarters in Porto, and currently the headquarters of the local Military Museum, into a new Museum of Resistance and Liberty (Museu da Resistência e Liberdade).

The sites of the authoritarian 85

On the other hand, since the start of the twenty-first century, there has been a debate on the project to transform the castle-fortress of Peniche (120 kilometres north of Lisbon), which was used as a prison for political inmates, into a modest museum. The initial project made rapid progress with the collaboration of several historians. Finally, April 2019 saw the inauguration of a National Museum of Resistance and Liberty on the site of the former Peniche fortress.22 Other political prisons from the Salazar period, such as Caxias and especially Aljube, were thoroughly museumized. Indeed, the Aljube prison, located in a Lisbon neigh­ bourhood frequented by high numbers of tourists (Alfama), has become one of the main Portuguese memorialist centres on Salazarism.23

3.2 The authoritarian fathers of the homeland Beyond Portugal and Spain, the range of authoritarian and “fascistized” dictatorships in inter-war Europe is broad and variegated, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, in several of them, the figure of the regent, authoritarian president or dictator was confused in subsequent years with that of the father, de­ fender or restorer of the homeland, social order and national independence. This became particularly relevant wherever statehood was subjected to restrictions or eliminated during or after the Second World War. The memory of the autocrats tended to be adorned with paternalistic, traditional and even religious attributes in some cases. Therefore, both during their periods of government and for generations up to 1989–1990, the supreme rulers of these countries were not collectively re­ garded in a unanimous manner as dictators, but rather as authoritarian presidents, “regenerators” or reformers in times of crisis and instability. There are five cases that this study will address specifically: the Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia), Poland and, with its own particular characteristics, Greece. With these, an undoubtedly exceptional example in inter-war Europe Field Marshall Carl G.E. Mannherheim in Finland should be recalled in order to illustrate a perfect counterpoint: that of a counter-revolutionary, highly charis­ matic and prestigious army officer with a strongly conservative worldview, yet who eschewed dictatorial whims in spite of having the opportunity to indulge in them. This is why his veneration as “father of the homeland” reached, in the case of Finland, heights of almost insurmountable social unanimity.

3.2.1 From dictators to victims? Smetona, Päts and Ulmanis The presidents Antanas Smetona in Lithuania (1926–40), Konstantin Päts (1934–40) in Estonia and Kārlis Ulmanis (1936–40) in Latvia are three paradig­ matic examples. In all these cases, their mandates displayed clear corporative and authoritarian features. However, at the start they did not derogate the constitutions of their young states but limited themselves to suspending or restricting legal guarantees and declaring states of emergency. They did not give in to the pressures from minority fascist movements from their respective countries. Only Smetona

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collaborated in the first years of his rule with the ultranationalist and para-fascist party, Tautinninkai, led by Augustas Voldemaras. Similarly, in the three Baltic countries, what began as a provisional regime acquired steady traces of continuity through the promulgation of new constitutions, which in all cases considerably strengthened the power of the executive, modified electoral systems, created senates of presidential designation and introduced state corporate institutions. Ulmanis even adopted the pompous title of vadonis (equivalent to the Duce).24 Smetona, Päts and Ulmanis were toppled by the Soviet invasion in summer 1940. Smetona went into exile in the United States and died in an accident in Cleveland (Ohio) in 1944, where he lived amongst the Lithuanian immigrant community. Conversely, Päts and Ulmanis perished at the hands of the occupiers after they were deported and imprisoned. Konstantin Päts died in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 1956, after several years of being mistreated and internment in different prisons and asylums in the USSR. Ulmanis was imprisoned and de­ ported, and died of dysentery in September 1942 in the Turkmenbashi prison, in what is today Turkmenistan. The exact resting place of his remains is unknown. These tragic ends contributed to the rehabilitation of the three leaders in the public memory of the Baltic republics, once they regained sovereignty in 1991. However, there are striking differences between each of them. Whilst Ulmanis and Päts passed into posterity as martyr presidents, Smetona’s exile deprived him of that posthumous aura and even his purported cowardice was the cause of certain controversy amongst his compatriots. The remains of the Lithuanian president therefore rest in a niche located in a collective mausoleum in a North American cemetery, with hardly any visible sign distinguishing them from others, and re­ ceive few visits from Lithuanian and Lithuanian-American citizens. For its part, the body of the last Estonian president lay in a wooded area adjoining the psychiatric hospital where he died, in the Russian town of Burashevo (Tver, to the northwest of Moscow), without any grave to identify him. Sheltered from the trans­ parency policy promoted by the perestroika of Gorbachev from 1989 to 1990, two expeditions from the Estonian Society of Cultural Heritage succeeded in identifying the remains of Päts from amongst several dozen bodies that had been buried and scattered over a vast area. In October 1990, a solemn transfer ceremony took place to re-bury him in the so-called Wood Cemetery (Metsakalmistu) in Tallin. Following the country’s independence in 1991, the modest tomb of Konstantin Päts received regular tributes from the Estonian authorities on the anniversary of his death. Furthermore, in his former place of burial in Burashevo, a com­ memorative monument was built, whilst a permanent exhibition in the local museum pays tribute to him not only as a gesture of goodwill towards Estonia but also as a pragmatic strategy to attract Baltic visiters. The monolith erected in 1939 in honour of Päts on the site of his birth house, in the village of Tahkuranna, was destroyed in August the following year by the Soviet occupiers; it was rebuilt and re-positioned in June 1989. Just on one occasion, on 9 May 1991, the day of the Soviet victory commemorated by the large Russophone minority in the country, the monolith was vandalized.

The sites of the authoritarian 87

However, at the end of the last decade of the twentieth century, the figure of the martyr president was highly discredited. In 1999, some documents unearthed from the Russian archives by an Estonian historian seemed to prove that Päts had received Soviet bribes from the beginning of the 1920s. The heated debate in Estonian public opinion as to whether the former martyr was in reality a traitor continues today, and is the reason why many annual gatherings at this tomb are discreet affairs.25 Antanas Smetona’s mandate was characterized by his authoritarian presidentialism and an increasing cult of the leader based primarily on his government’s economic achievements, and later exaltation of him as a hero of Lithuanian independence in 1918–1919. However, his fleeing the country before the Soviets arrived and his autocratic tendencies rendered him a controversial figure in post-1991 Lithuania. Only in the second decade of the twenty-first century were some steps taken towards his rehabilitation in the public arena of the new Lithuania. In 2014, an exhibition in the former presidential palace of Kaunas was dedicated to Smetona’s exile; five years later, the Lithuanian parliament agreed to dedicate year 2019 to him, and the country’s president, Gitanas Nauseda, declared that Smetona’s memory had to be duly honoured and repaired as he deserved. In his native village, Užulėnis, there is a model of the former family farm on the site where his birth house was built.26 As has already been pointed out, the exact site of Kärlis Ulmanis’ tomb is not known. His remembrance has been the subject of a particularly intense cult in independent Latvia since 1991, and the nature of his authoritarian regime is fur­ thermore the focus for intense historiographical debate. From the 1990s, the country’s memory politics prefer to remember above all else the role of Ulmanis as the prime minister of the Republic of Latvia when independence was proclaimed in 1918. Conversely, his subsequent presidentialist and authoritarian period tends to be relegated to the background. However, the most elderly generations still associated in the 1990s the Ulmanis years as a golden age in the history of the country, characterized by economic well-being and stability. Latvian immigrants and exiles in Germany, North America and other countries had an idealized image of his rule. In 2003, owing to the donations from the Latvian diaspora, a statue of Ulmanis was erected in the centre of Riga; fresh flowers are always left at its base. A park in the city centre was also named after him, as well as one of the longest avenues in the city. The great nephew of the martyr president, Guntis Ulmanis, was elected as president of Latvia from 1993 to 1996, and benefited from his surname to boost his popularity and above all to underline the continuity of the new Latvian Republic with that of the first statehood in the inter-war period. However, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, only the far-right party National Alliance (Nâcionalâ Apvienîba), which has formed part of the county’s coalition governments since 2011, commemorates the anniversary of Ulmanis’ coup d’état every 15 May.27

3.2.2 Piłsudski, the (almost) undisputed hero An even more particular case was that of the memory of Marshall Józef Piłsudski in Poland. One of the main Polish leaders during the First World War, who founded

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the Polish Legion in August 1914, the military chief who rejected the attempted invasion by the Red Army in 1919–1921, and founding father of the restored Poland of the inter-war period, Piłsudski had also been an exponent of the leftwing dimension of the Polish national movement. However, in 1926 he led a preemptive coup d’état, partly in order to prevent the anti-Semitic right-wing of the national democrats from taking power. Piłsudski installed a regime characterized by limited pluralism, social paternalism and increasing authoritarianism, officially seeking the “moral cleansing” of the country. However, during his mandate there was no press censorship, and elections were held, though with a broad degree of manipulation to aid the coalition of parties that had supported him. Only from 1930, when the so-called colonels in his faction increased their power owing to the steady deterioration in Piłsudski’s health, did political repression increase, aimed above all at Ukrainian nationalists, fascist minority groups and anti-Semitic radical nationalists. In 1935, shortly before his death, a new constitution strengthened the powers of the executive to the detriment of the legislative.28 The main attributes of Piłsudski’s charisma were already developed and dis­ seminated during his mandate. He was publicly represented as the restorer and defender of national sovereignty against the Germans, Austrians and Russians/ Soviets, the architect of the army and Polish State and the great educator of the people. When he died in 1935, the sarcophagus with his remains was deposited in the Sigismund’s royal chapel of the Wawel cathedral in Krakow, next to several Polish kings and other historical figures. In keeping with his wishes, his heart was separated from his body and buried in Wilna/Vilnius, a city whose population at the time was mostly Polish and which belonged to Poland. Furthermore, Piłsudski’s birth house in Zulówo/Zulawas (today belonging to Lithuania), annexed by Poland after a brief conflict, had to be rebuilt by a war veterans’ association. It was in­ augurated as a memorial museum in 1937. Two years later, the same museum was destroyed by the Soviet occupiers. In its place today there is a simple monolith recalling Piłsudski, with omnipresent Polish flags and visited by some tourists. The Piłsudski cult disappeared from the public arena of socialist Poland between 1946 and 1980. The pro-Soviet regime attempted to portray him as a pseudo-fascist despot, the oppressor of national minorities (especially the Ukrainians) and mega­ lomaniac. However, both anti-communist exiles and Polish migrant communities in Western Europe and the Americas constantly venerated his memory, which was seen as a personification of the inter-war Polish Republic.29 In spite of the good and bad points of his regime, from the end of the 1980s, the admiration for Piłsudski has been shared, to differing degrees, by the left and right. He was not regarded as a dictator, but as a saviour of the homeland in difficult times. The clandestine trade union Solidarity (Solidarnósc) swiftly included him amongst their symbols, and its pressure forced the final Communist governments to dignify the Piłsudski’s memory. This recognition was already set in motion by General Wojciech Jaruzelski since 1980–1981, who presented his own pre-emptive coup d’état (in order to avoid a Soviet intervention in the country) as a replay of that performed by Piłsudski in 1926. Both the trade union leader Lech Wałęsa and the last president in exile

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Ryszard Kaczorowski, who symbolically handed power to Wałęsa as president-elect in December 1990, extolled the figure of Piłsudski as a benchmark of continuity between the Second Polish Republic of the inter-war period and the new Poland free of Soviet supervision. Both highlighted above all the crucial role of Piłsudski in August 1920 as a defender of the country against the Russian and Bolshevik threat, the so-called miracle on the Vistula.30 The Third Polish Republic, above all during the 1990s, named streets and squares after Piłsudski; many town halls built statues and monuments with his effigy, the first of which was Warsaw. These constructions often followed the designs and urban plans that dated from the 1930s. From the 1980s, the so-called Independence Mound or Piłsudski Mound was restored: an artificial knoll (a Slavic tradition honouring the fallen or major figures) located on a hill near Krakow, built with earth taken from the battlefields where Polish legionnaires fought during the First World War. It was a monument to those who had died for Poland, but shortly before its construction in 1934, the veterans’ associations of the Polish Legion had decided to dedicate the kopiec (mound) to their true leader, Piłsudski. The monu­ ment suffered serious damage during the Nazi and Soviet occupation,31 and was rebuilt in the 1980s. Since 1992, the Polish parliament assumed the patronage of the memorial mound, to which some symbolic features were added in order to also honour the Polish combatants fallen in 1939–1945. However, in practice the venue venerates and remembers above all else the figure of Piłsudski, and displays the continuity of several aspects of his charisma, forged during his mandate.32 Since 1990, the main parties and most relevant politicians in Poland have shown a reverential respect for the memory of Piłsudski. Conversely, his anti-democratic facets passed into oblivion. From 1987 until the beginning of the twenty-first century, Piłsudski was regarded by all opinion surveys as the most important Polish figure of the twentieth century. Only Pope John Paul II, and in part the trade union leader Lech Wałęsa, eclipsed his fame amongst the younger generations. The liberal president Bronislaw Komorowski stated in 2010 that whenever he was in Krakow he would meditate on Piłsudski’s sarcophagus in search of inspiration. Likewise, the ultra-Catholic and right-wing party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), founded in 2001, has defined itself as the continuation of Piłsudski’s political legacy, although its preferences have increasingly focused on the recovery of the figure who was his opponent when the Marshall was alive, the national democrat leader Roman Dmowski. However, the memory of Piłsudski was not entirely free of controversy. In 2006, for the 80th anniversary of his coup d’état in 1926, several associations and parties requested that the victims of the coup be remembered. They also claimed that the authoritarian aspects of Piłsudski’s rule be emphasized, in particular during his final years in power.33

3.2.3 Metaxas: The dictator who said “no” Other dictators escaped being called collaborators like those who co-operated with the invasion or were supported by the Axis powers. This is the case with the

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Greek general Ioannis Metaxas, an ultra-nationalist monarchist who, under the pretext of avoiding an impending Communist uprising, dissolved the Athens parliament in August 1936 with the support of King George II, and established an anti-communist, paternalistic and corporate dictatorship. Although in some aspects of his domestic policy Metaxas clearly imitated Nazi Germany, such as in the paramilitary training for the youth, his regime displayed greater affinities with Salazar’s Portugal or emerging Francoism. Metaxas declared neutrality on the outbreak of the Second World War, and remained resolute – he answered with a succinct Ochi (No) to the Italian am­ bassador – in the face of territorial claims by Mussolini, who sought to gain terrain in the Balkans from occupied Albania. The Greek dictator succeeded in repelling the Italian invasion of October 1940, but hardly had time to savour victory, dying suddenly at the end of January 1941. Eight weeks later, the country was occupied by German troops. However, Metaxas’ resistance against Italian aggression and his death shortly afterwards contributed to the posthumous exoneration of him in post-war Greek public opinion. His being a distant relative of a leader of Greek independence, Andreas Metaxas, also contributed to this. The dictator was not forced to choose the lesser evil, that is, between collaborating with the more powerful occupying force, Nazi Germany, and total submission. That way he did not go down in history as a traitor.34 In the period that followed the Greek civil war (1946–1949), a broad anticommunist coalition emerged. The one-sided portrayal of Metaxas as a great national leader effectively prevented any in-depth examination of his political deeds during the late 1930s, not only on the part of the right, but also by liberals and centrists. Only the left-wing press organs overtly labelled Metaxas as a fascist or para-fascist dictator. Some members of the Greek Military Junta that took power in April 1967 and established an authoritarian dictatorship until 1974, also known as the “regime of the colonels”, claimed to be the heirs to Metaxas’ legacy. An openly pro-fascist group, the 4th of August Party, campaigned for a large statue of Metaxas to be erected in Sintagma Square in the centre of Athens, which they suggested should also be called Metaxas Square. There were also plans to construct in Athens a huge memorial to the “No” of October 1940, which depicted Metaxas, King George II and Marshall Papagos – the commander-in-chief of the Greek army in 1940 – as exponents of the collective heroism of Greece against an invader. The monument, however, was inaugurated in the town of Kalpaki (northern Greece), in 1975. For his part, the main leader of the Junta, Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, preferred to see the regime of the colonels as a repetition of the military coup of 1909 which had led to the liberal and reformist government of Eleftherios Venizelos (1910–1915). Therefore, he opted for a strongly presidentialist political system, although devoid of fascist connotations. On the contrary, the supporters of the hardest wing of the military Junta kept on appropriating the figure of Metaxas; they erected some statues and named streets and squares after him in several cities in Northern Greece.35

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This association between the memory of Metaxas and the hardest wing of the “colonels” also contributed to the large majority of his statues being demolished in the transition period (Metapolitefsi) that followed the fall of the dictatorship be­ tween 1973 and 1974. Therefore, a cloak of oblivion fell over the dictator who said “no”. The figure of Metaxas had been left far behind, and his remembrance was subsumed by the heroic memory of national resistance against the Italian invasion. In fact, on some memorial sites dedicated to the Greeks fallen in those combats, the short sentence Óchi (no), is recorded in huge lettering, without further contextualization. Only on one memorial in Rupel, near the border with Bulgaria, is there still a bust of Metaxas with the inscription Ochi. The dictator’s negative response became, in practice, a collective no from the Greek nation as a whole, which is commemorated in Greece and Cyprus every 28 October as “No Day” (Epéteios tou Óchi), with military parades and student gatherings. It is also an occasion eagerly commemorated by Greek diaspora communities.36 Thus, Metaxas’ ochi has largely coexisted with overwhelming silence about his figure and the nature of his rule. In spite of this, the dictator’s tomb in the First Cemetery in Athens, an unpretentious family grave without great ornamentation, has suffered vandalism and graffiti by radical left-wing activists. Neither his birth house on the island of Ithaca nor the property where he lived in Athens are today a particular centre of veneration.

3.2.4 Mannerheim: The man who would not be dictator One example serving as a radical counterpoint to the cases hitherto examined, and those that will be discussed in the following, is that of Marshall Carl G.E. Mannerheim of Finland. From a noble Swedish-speaking family, Mannerheim enjoyed a successful military career in the Tsarist army, in whose ranks he fought in the Great War. After the Russian revolution, he left for his home country, where independence was declared in December 1917. Shortly afterwards, a brief but bloody war erupted between pro-communist reds and anti-communist whites (January–May 1918), in which Mannerheim commanded the White troops. Shortly afterwards, from December 1918 to July 1919, he also held the position of regent, until the new country’s first constitution was passed. Although he at­ tempted to be democratically elected as president in the first elections, he came second. He retired then to pursue private activities and travel through Asia. However, Mannerheim returned to hold the highest command of the Finnish army during the Winter War against the USSR (November 1939–March 1940), and the subsequent War of Continuation (June 1941–September 1944) in order to recover the territory lost to the Soviets. In this case Mannerheim agreed to be an ally of the Third Reich, although he always sought to keep his distance from Hitler. Finally, the now elderly Mannerheim was appointed president once again with exceptional powers, granted by the Helsinki government, from August 1944 to March 1946, for the purpose of negotiating an honourable peace with the Allies and preserving Finland’s sovereignty.

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Although he was a career soldier with well-known conservative and anticommunist sympathies, Mannerheim remained faithful at all times to the constitu­ tional order. In this way, he did not support his comrade, General Kurt Wallenius, in his attempted coup d’état led by the radical right party Lapua in 1932. When the Marshall commanded the Finnish army in exceptional circumstances, he avoided falling into authoritarian temptations. He was capable of remaining above internal political division and of advocating national reconciliation between former adversaries from the civil war, an ability recognized on his death in 1951 by social democrats and communists. The troops under his command in 1918 took massive reprisals against “red” prisoners, especially following the taking of the city of Tampere and in some concentration camps. However, the memory of Mannerheim has been exonerated from direct liability in these events, and is venerated by the large majority of post-war Finnish society, which unanimously sees in him a hero and saviour of the nation. In this sense, the icon of the Marshall of Finland, the statesman Mannerheim, took pre­ cedence over that of the counter-revolutionary butcher of the civil war.37 The prevailing public narrative on Mannerheim’s biography highlights above all his role as a supreme commander of the Finnish army against the Soviet at­ tempts to annexe the country: the memory of the Winter War acted as an en­ deavour that would reconcile the divided Finns in 1918. Furthermore, the fact that Mannerheim was a Swedish speaker from Southwest Finland strengthened the integration of that minority (around 10 per cent of the population at that time, and 5–6 per cent today) in the country. The busts and sculptures dedicated to him occupy central places in Finnish cities, and central avenues bear his name. Only in Tampere, where the local memory of the bloody reprisals taken against the “red” prisoners in 1918 was kept alive for a long time, was the statue of him on horseback moved in the 1950s to a peripheral and discreet site by a left-wing town hall.38 Similarly, the removal of the Mannerheim statue in the centre of Helsinki in order to build a museum of contemporary art in its place triggered in the 1990s an intense debate in national public opinion, which stirred the waters of the ap­ parent social consensus on the country’s recent memory. However, the icon of the “old marshall” (vanha marski) as a founding father of the nation continues to play a very prominent role in popular Finnish culture, under different forms which also include its banalization. It was no coincidence that he was named the most famous Finn in history in a 2004 television survey.39 Mannerheim’s elegant tomb in the Hietaniemi cemetery (Helsinki) is a frequent scene of visits and commemorations, as is his former headquarters in the city of Mikkeli, from where the Marshall led the two wars against the USSR.40 Likewise, the Mannerheim Memorial Museum, run by a private foundation and located in what was his private residence in the Kalvopulsto neighbourhood of Helsinki, welcomes tens of thousands of visitors each year, including many school groups.41 The family manor where Mannerheim was born, the Baroque castle of Villnäs/ Louhisaari, in the southwestern corner of the country, was acquired by popular subscription and donated to the Finnish state, which put it under heritage pro­ tection in 1967 for ethnographic and historic use.42

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3.3 Traitors or pragmatic patriots? In another group of authoritarian and para-fascist dictatorships from the inter-war period, the figure of the supreme leader was surrounded by a certain ambiguity from having ruled the country under a foreign occupation. In all cases, there was some type of military occupation by the Third Reich or Mussolini’s Italy, and the dictators that were tolerated in de facto puppet states played an ambiguous role. On the one hand, they collaborated with the invaders, which also included cooperating in the deportation of political opponents, Jews and Gypsies. On the other hand, they attempted to preserve, where possible, their independence of action, maintaining autonomous spheres of power, even without fully achieving this.43 Practically all the states invaded by the Nazis suffered after their liberation from a particular syndrome of oblivion. In all of them, there had been some degree of social collaboration with the German and Italian occupiers. However, not all collaborators were judged and removed in the post-war period. In general, and following an initial and savage purging undertaken by the Resistance, the dictators and high-ranking figures of the Fascists’ puppet regimes and satellite states often acted as a scapegoat or example to calm the guilty social conscience of a majority of citizens. In part, because there were too many active and passive collaborators throughout almost all the occupied territories. Many of them reintegrated themselves as civil servants, and even as political cadres, into the new democratic states that emerged from the post-war anti-fascist consensus.44 In some countries, such as Norway and the Low Countries, there was no re­ levant debate on the legitimacy of the courses of actions of the collaborating dictators or leaders; they were simply considered as wretched traitors. In addition, they were contrasted by the positive image of the monarchs of both countries, Queen Wilhelmina of the Low Countries and Haakon VII of Norway, who chose to go into exile and give their full support to the respective governments in exile. As shall be seen, in Czechoslovakia, as well as in Belgium and Yugoslavia, internal ethnonational cleavages generated differing memories concerning the period of occupation, which diverged from one ethnic group to another. This is the case with the Flemish nationalists in Belgium, who were mostly fascist or pro-fascist, as well as the Croatian radical nationalists or Ustaše, who were openly fascist and responsible for huge massacres. In other cases, such as those of France and Hungary, the dictators allied with the Third Reich or at least subject to its tutelage were also seen by the respective public memories of the recent past between 1945 and 1990 as traitors and ac­ complices of foreign fascist powers. However, a section of post-war public opi­ nion harboured changing and ambivalent positions towards them, and gave credence to the defensive argument of several of those collaborators when they were tried for treason, or when they wrote their autobiographies and testaments for posterity. According to their self-exculpatory versions, collaborationist leaders were but mere patriots who opted for the lesser evil as an alternative to the

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absorption or disappearance of their countries. At times called “patriotic traitors”, they chose therefore to protect their fellow citizens from the arbitrariness of the occupiers, and opted for sacrificing themselves for the homeland at the cost of their personal prestige. The use of concepts as versatile as loyalty, national identity and patriotism also facilitated the task of public rehabilitation of several of these collaborators, as was the case particularly in Eastern Europe after 1990.45

3.3.1 Mussert, De Clercq and Quisling: Traitors for almost everyone The main leader of the Dutch Nazi movement, Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB), Anton Mussert, played no major political role in relation to the Reich commissar in the country during the German occupation, the Austrian Nazi leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart. The occupiers put him at the head of the armed units of Dutch volunteers in the service of the Nazis, as well as the recruiting for com­ batants on the Eastern front. However, and in spite of his undisguised ambition, the Germans always refused to give Mussert, often treated openly as a puppet, a greater role or independence of action. After being arrested by the Dutch Resistance in May 1945, Anton Mussert was tried and condemned to death at the end of the year. The sentence was carried out in May 1946, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave in the General Cemetery of The Hague, where it rested for ten years without a single visit. However, the family found out where Mussert’s mortal remains were located. In June 1956, the police discovered that the body had disappeared from the tomb, which was interred without markings beneath a road in the cemetery. The government stuck from then onwards to the official explanation that the tomb robbers, perhaps former NSB members, had removed the wrong body, and that the remains of the Dutch collaborator had been cremated and placed in an ossuary in order to avoid new incidents. Other versions have alleged that the remains of Mussert were never found, and it is speculated that they were taken to the dis­ tinguished neighbourhood of Het Gooi, re-interred in a private garden and tended to by former fascists. It was even rumoured that in the 1970s the body was moved to Flanders by Dutch veterans of the Waffen SS and members of an extreme-right Flemish nationalist group, the Order of Flemish Militants (Vlaamse Militanten Orde, VMO).46 The aforementioned Flemish Order had some experience in necropolitics, as it had (proudly) undertaken in Flanders a similar operation with another notorious collaborator, similarly regarded as a father of the nation: the leader of the na­ tionalist, Catholic and para-fascist inter-war party, Flemish National Union (Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond, VNV), Staf De Clercq. He had died in October 1942, and was buried with full honours in Kester cemetery. After the liberation of Belgium by the Allies, his mausoleum was blown up in October 1944 by the Belgian Resistance. Some months later, in May 1945, the mortal remains of De Clercq were subjected to additional mutilation and public mockery. The body was

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then re-interred in an anonymous grave in Leerbeek cemetery following inter­ vention by De Clercq’s widow. In December 1978, the VMO located and unearthed the remains of De Clercq and then buried them in a simple tomb in Asse cemetery (to the northwest of Brussels), in an act of redress. Several representatives of the main Flemish na­ tionalist parties attended, including the liberal Volksunie, whose assessment of the collaborationist attitude of their cohorts during the Nazi occupation was (and still is today) very ambiguous. In August 2004, De Clercq was also the object of public tribute in one of the most important events in the Flemish national movement: the annual pilgrimage to commemorate the Flemish soldiers fallen in the First World War, the IJzerwake or march on the Yser tower. De Clercq’s original tomb was also restored.47 The story in Norway was quite different. The leader of the National Rally (Nasjonal samling) fascist movement, Vidkun Quisling, played an active and visible role as prime minister of the collaborating government, still under the control of the Reich commissar, following the occupation of the country by Nazi Germany in April 1940. Quisling and his colleagues co-operated in a pro-active manner with the occupiers, fought the Norwegian Resistance and recruited volunteers to fight on the Eastern front together with the German troops; his party received relevant social support. In fact, Norway was one of the occupied countries pre­ ferred by German soldiers, who appreciated the warm welcome from the local population – a product of this being high number of children born to occupiers and Norwegian women. On receiving the news of the Third Reich’s surrender, Quisling handed himself over to the Resistance. He was tried shortly afterwards and sentenced to death for treason, in a procedure in which the collaborationist leader stated in his allegations of innocence that he was the true “martyr of Norway”, who had sa­ crificed himself in order to guarantee the survival of the nation. Declared guilty, he was executed by a military firing squad in October 1945. His modest tomb in Gjerpent cemetery has never become a particular focus for attention for neofascists, and not even for curious and tourists. This is also the case for his birth house in the small village of Fryesdal. Purging of the collaborators was char­ acterized in the immediate post-war period by its ambiguous nature, and many of them were able to settle into Norwegian society in subsequent years.48 However, Quisling and his cohorts have been unanimously regarded in the country’s his­ torical culture and public memory as the leading villains of the twentieth century. This was made clear in the narratives of the historical museums and exhibitions devoted to the Second World War (such as the Resistance Museum), as well as in annual commemorations for the liberation of the country.49 In fact, not even far-right parties vindicate today the memory of Quisling. The main xenophobic and right-wing populist organization in Norway, the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet), has never referred to Quisling. The anti-European dis­ course of the party has even often compared the EU with the memory of the German occupation. When a fanatic ultra-right and former member of the

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Progress Party, Anders Breivik, committed a massacre of young social democrats in August 2011 after planting a bomb in Oslo, he declared upon being arrested that “today I am the greatest monster since Quisling”. Nor did he defend the traitor’s memory in his lengthy ideological manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, where all references to the former collaborator are negative. In fact, Breivik used the term Quisling as a synonym of traitor or European supporter of Muslims.50 It is therefore no surprise that the places connected with the collaborationist leader have hardly generated public debate. The official residence of Vidkun Quisling during his rule, the Gimie villa in the Bygdøy peninsula, near Oslo, has become since 2006 the headquarters of the Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Minority Studies, founded five years before with the generous support of the University of Oslo, the Norwegian government and the country’s Jewish community.51

3.3.2 Pétain and the Vichy syndrome The paradigmatic example of the “patriotic traitor” is undoubtedly the con­ troversial figure of the French field marshall Philippe Pétain, a military com­ mander in the First World War remembered for his leadership of French troops at the battle of Verdun (1916), and who enjoyed great renown and prestige amongst the population. When the German occupation of the country occurred in June 1940, Pétain accepted the position of Head of Government of the collaborationist Vichy regime, which controlled a large part of the central and southern territory of France, until August 1944. Therefore, Marshall Pétain implemented a corpor­ ativist and authoritarian state model, which embodied a good part of the antirepublican and traditionalist values of the French nationalist right from the late nineteenth century. A “national revolution” which was summarized in three mottoes: “work, family, fatherland”. After being captured in Germany, to where he had transferred his cabinet when France was liberated by the Allies, Pétain was tried and condemned to death in a procedure which attracted great attention from public opinion. Although he re­ fused to respond to the charges brought against him, he expressed his arguments in a statement read before the court. Pétain insisted that his actions had been dictated by sincere patriotism: if Charles De Gaulle, having taken refuge in London and the leader of the French Resistance and the “Free France”, had been a heroic “sword” against the Germans, he had had to undertake the ungrateful task of being the “shield” against the occupier.52 In consideration of his age, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Confined to a fort on the Atlantic island of Yeu, south of Nantes, Pétain died on 23 July 1951, at the age of 97, in the company of some of his loyal followers and his wife. Marshall Pétain was then seen, and would be regarded as such in subsequent decades, as the greatest symbol of the shameful regime which post-war France rushed to condemn to oblivion and shroud in silence. As in Italy, the post-war

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FIGURE 3.3

Tomb of Marshall Pétain. ©Wikimedia commons

overwhelming myth of the Resistance, which implicitly assumed that a unanimous popular uprising had taken place against the German occupier, provided new national legitimacy for the restored democratic state.53 However, since the early 1990s the taboos of the history of collaboration also began to be broken by a new critical historiography and revisionist attacks. The tomb of Marshall Pétain is an austere grave that is easy to locate in the town cemetery of Port-Joinville, the capital of Yeu Island. The number of visitors who come by each year, in a poorly communicated place, is low but not irrele­ vant. However, the late dictator maintained the posthumous rank of “Marshall of France”. A few weeks after Pétain’s death in November 1951, his cohorts, amongst them several army officers and former ministers of the Vichy govern­ ment, created an association to defend his posthumous rehabilitation, as well as the principles of the “national revolution” that had inspired his regime: this was the Association pour défendre la mémoire du maréchal Pétain (ADMP). The ADMP was based on the committee for the liberation of Pétain promoted three years before by his lawyer, the notorious far right-wing activist Jacques Isorni, also a prolific writer devoted to the posthumous vindication of the Marshall’s memory.54 The objective of the ADMP was to claim that Pétain was a good patriot who consistently protected the French from greater harm during the occupation. The association’s rallying cry was fulfilling the wishes of the deceased Marshall, who wanted to rest forever in the Douaumont war cemetery (near Verdun), beside the

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thousands of French soldiers fallen in the Great War. This would also be a symbol of the need for internal reconciliation, a “Franco-French peace” that would follow the previous conflict between compatriots, as stated that same year by Pétain’s great nephew and former head of cabinet, Louis-Dominique Girard.55 The re­ quest for transfer to Douaumont, which was supported in 1954 by more than 70,000 signatures, as well as by several war veterans’ associations, appealed to the objective of national reconcilement in the name of the shared memory that would still unite the French people beyond the unconfessed trauma of the Nazi occu­ pation: that of the common fighting and suffering at the trenches of the Great War.56 The ADMP comprised above all former Vichy regime ministers, former members of far-right collaborationist parties in 1940–1944, some elderly excombatants of the Great War and distinguished members of the military, as well as, over time, veterans of the Algerian war (1954–1962) discontent with the pur­ portedly defeatist policy of General De Gaulle concerning the North African colony. It consisted of a large body of officers, but lacking rank-and-file sup­ porters, with a surplus of leading figures. Although it published its own bulletin from the 1950s to the start of the 1960s, the association’s activities were low profile. As well as acquiring the hotel rooms in Vichy where Pétain’s government resided, the ADMP also purchased the property where Pétain was born in 1856, located in the village of Cauchy-à-la-Tour in northern France (Pas de Calais). In the simple house there is a private museum to honour the memory of Pétain, which can be visited only through invitation by the association, after the town mayor in 2009, Eugène Fontaine, refused to support a more ambitious project to create a Pétain museum. In his response, Fontaine called on the memory of the victims of the Vichy regime: “I do not forget the hero of 1914 nor the traitor of 1940”.57 On significant dates, such as the birth of Pétain (24 April), the association organizes an act of tribute in his birth house, consisting of a floral offering, a speech and mass. In 2016, around 50 nostalgic supporters attended the ceremony, whose president stated to the regional press that the ADMP still sought the transfer of Pétain’s tomb to Douaumont, and claimed that most French parties wanted “to erase the bad Pétain from history”.58 The association also stages an annual pil­ grimage to the tomb on Yeu Island on the anniversary of the death of Pétain (23 July); in the little hospital where he was interned, a commemorative plaque recalls the event. In the former hotel where his wife, Annie Pétain, la maréchale (the female Marshall), lived for six years, and where Pétain himself passed away, his room has been converted into a small museum dedicated in theory to the history of the island. In the Musée Historial de l’île d’Yeu, focusing in good part on the memory of Pétain, his deathbed, several personal items, flags, garments and handwritten letters are curated, and even a box of Spanish oranges that General Franco sent to his admired colleague.59 The increasingly elderly members of the ADMP, most of whom fought in the Algerian war, also including some far-right sympathizers, do not represent a great threat to public order. The inhabitants of

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the quiet Atlantic island stoically accept having to be the hosts of Pétain’s remains and their miscellaneous visitors, and some even do good business out of it.60 The successive post-war governments refused to grant Pétain his final wish and kept his vault in Yeu. However, his tomb was decorated with bouquets of flowers by direct order of different presidents of the French Republic on the occasion of various commemorations related to the Great War. Thus it was ordered in 1968 by general Charles de Gaulle, Pétain’s opponent from 1940 to 1944, equally an admirer of his past military feats and his former adjutant between 1925 and 1927.61 President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing did so again in 1978, and François Mitterrand repeated the gesture on several occasions in 1984, 1986 and from 1987 to 1992 every 11 November, the day of the armistice that put an end to the conflict. On that occasion, the tombs of another six French marshals of the Great War were also honoured. They were stealth symbolic recognitions that were intended to be isolated, in theory marking a distinction between the hero of Verdun and the villain of Vichy. However, it was enough to set off a bitter dispute in the French press, as they came to light in July 1992 on the 50th anniversary of the great deportation of Parisian Jews in 1942. Shortly before publicly defending his close friend and collaborator, René Bousquet, the former general secretary of the Vichy government, the consistently majestic and controversial president Mitterrand stated that his actions were only intended to honour one of the several victorious marshals of France during the Great War. Pétain, as the socialist president would repeat shortly afterwards in his memoirs, was just an example of the contradictions of history, but that could not cause the great hero of Verdun, whom the young Mitterrand had seen in 1940 as a protector of France owing to his aura and prestige, to be forgotten.62 However, the outraged protests of the French Jewish community, led by the then minister of industry and commerce, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who blamed Pétain for col­ lusion with the deportations of French Jews to German extermination camps on July 1942, put a definitive end to the discord. In 1993, Mitterrand established as compensation a National Day to commemorate the victims of racist and antiSemitic persecution every 16 July. His successor, the conservative Jacques Chirac, would dispel all previous ambiguities by publicly recognizing in July 1995 the responsibility of the French state, at that time the Vichy regime, for the de­ portations to extermination camps. As with Mussolini, the body of Pétain became the unexpected object of a stunning bodysnatch, which held the country in suspense for several days. On the night of 19 February 1973, in the middle of the legislative election campaign, his remains were exhumed clandestinely by a squad of five extreme-right activists. The action was led by Hubert Massol, himself an Algerian War veteran, far-right councillor and later president of the ADMP. He counted on the logistic support of a lawyer who had been a collaborationist and then leader of the post-war French far-right, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who in turn had strong connections with the paramilitary and anti-Gaullist organizations, Organisation armée secrète (OAS), which wanted Algeria to be returned to French sovereignty. Their objective was

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Cover of Paris Match (3.3.1973) on the robbery of Pétain’s coffin. ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

FIGURE 3.4

to fulfil the last wish of Pétain and transfer him to the ossuary in Douaumont. However, soon police surveillance forced them to hide Pétain’s coffin in a garage near Paris. Meanwhile, Tixier-Vignancour attempted in vain to convince pre­ sident Georges Pompidou to at least allow him to be reburied provisionally in the military pantheon of Hôtel des Invalides de Paris, in the hope that in the future his remains would be deposited in the Verdun ossuary. The squad members, who left a trail of clues, were soon apprehended by the police. Some days later, Massol disclosed the location of the casket. The Pompidou Government got rid of the body as soon as possible, and moved it by helicopter the

The sites of the authoritarian 101

following day to Yeu Island. There, Pétain was interred for the second time in an unusual ceremony followed by many onlookers, large media coverage, some elderly ex-combatants of the Great War and groups of those nostalgic for his regiment.63 Since then, the Marshall’s remains have received regular visits from tourists and some sympathizers, as well as the annual pilgrimage each 23 July organized by the ADMP, sometimes countered by marches by left-wing activists and Jewish groups. Although it was reinforced with cement to obstruct any desecration in the future, in both 2007 and 2017 the tomb was once again vandalized. In November 2018, a left-wing activist daubed graffiti on it, in protest at the gesture of the government of Emmanuel Macron in honouring Pétain’s tomb, as part of the official com­ memorations for the centenary of French victory in the First World War. Macron himself then stated that Pétain had been “a great soldier” in that conflict, which in turn led to further protests.64 Even 80 years after the Marshall’s treason and his transmutation from national hero to villain, the shadow of his regime can still be glimpsed in French politics today. However, the radical right represented by the National Front and its successor organizations, despite hosting small groups of Pétain supporters in its ranks, opted decisively for other routes, such as a xenophobic and antiimmigration discourse, and waived any express claim to the memory of Pétain. A collaborator with foreign occupants, whatever the nuances associated with the figure, is always an inconvenience for a nationalist party.

3.3.3 Tiso and Pavelić: Mysticism and nationalism A clearly opposite example to that of Marshall Pétain is Slovakia, where colla­ borationism is obscured by the nationalist mythification and victimization of the first forerunner of an independent Slovak state. The Catholic prelate Jozef Tiso was a prominent member of the nationalist, authoritarian and strongly religious Slovak People’s Party (Slovenská ľudová strana) during the inter-war period, whose main leader was Andrej Hlinka. The death of the charismatic founder in 1938 led to Tiso inheriting the post, and one year later, on 14 March 1939, he became the head of the puppet state of Slovakia, which was placed under the protection of the Third Reich. Although up to that point he had not demonstrated great leadership qualities, during his years in power the rather chubby and initially not very charismatic Jozef Tiso was the subject of an intense personality cult promoted by the Slovak State, which often adopted mystical tones. The dictator fled to Austria following the occupation of his country by the Red Army, later entering Bavaria, where he was protected by the Munich cardinal, Michael von Faulhaber, also a controversial figure during the Nazi period. The American occupiers detained him for several months before handing him over to the Czechoslovak authorities in October. His trial for treason began in December 1946, amidst fierce political disputes between Communists, Catholics and Democrats, as the Catholic bishops and many of their faithful were demanding the absolution of the prelate, as were the exiled Slovak nationalists. Public opinion was

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deeply divided on this matter. Finally, Tiso was condemned to death and hung in April 1947. Mystery surrounded from the offset the true location of the mortal remains of Jozef Tiso. According to the exile publications, the Prague government had or­ dered the body to be cremated and the ashes scattered. However, some of his loyal supporters immediately identified a tomb in Martin cemetery (Martinský cintorín) in Bratislava as his, and paid clandestine and discreet tribute there from 1947, wat­ ched by the police.65 Several decades later, his clandestine followers added a headstone with the name of Tiso. During the period of Communist rule in re-unified Czechoslovakia, the figure of Tiso the collaborationist was condemned to utter and official oblivion. In Slovakia, according to the new master narrative imposed from above, the true patriots had been the anti-fascist partisans, and their greatest feat the national uprising at the end of August 1944, which was commemorated by a great museum in the town of Banká Bystrica, as well as by dozens of monuments disseminated throughout the country. Only in Slovak nationalist and anti-communist circles in Western Europe and North America was the cult to the memory of Jozef Tiso kept alive. Conversely, its upholders minimized or ignored the prelate’s role in the deportation of 50,000 Jewish and Romani citizens to Nazi extermination camps, and highlighted the supposedly benign and modernizing nature of his regime. At the initiative of some exiled leaders, from 1979 to 1997, an annual pilgrimage took place to the Bavarian monastery of Altötting, where Tiso spent some months from the end of 1944 to April 1945, before being handed over to the Allies. His cell was turned into a small museum dedicated to his memory, which sought to recreate his misadventures during his expatriation and capture as a Via Crusis culminating in his dying for God and the homeland. The fall of the communist regime in Prague between November and December 1989 facilitated the return to Slovakia of some expatriate antiCommunist intellectuals. With them, and owing to the decisive support of the Catholic hierarchy and revitalization of nationalist and xenophobic groups like the new Slovak National Party (Slovenská národná strana, SNS) led by Jan Slóta and Stanislav Pánis, the cult of Tiso in the country was resurrected. The work of a group of historical propaganda writers who also returned from exile contributed notably to this rehabilitation, which was not shared by the majority of professional Slovak historians. The priest and dictator was now venerated as a martyr for the nation and a founding father of a sovereign Slovakia. At the end of 1991, several associations promoted the placing of a commemorative plaque at Tiso’s birth house, located in the northern village of Bytča, which caused great local con­ troversy at the time.66 Matters swiftly changed: following the independence of Slovakia in January 1993, the property became a small apologetic museum, where several of the prelate’s personal items were curated, such as photos, a bust and (over time) bodily relics. Tiso’s graveyard, now well signposted, was covered in fresh flowers, just like that of his fanatic prime minister, Vojtech Tuka, executed in 1946 and buried not far from him.

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The independent Republic of Slovakia from 1993, and in particular, the radical nationalists leaning towards far-right populism, who acquired relevant political influence and became members of several coalition governments, tended to idealize the inter-war state as a predecessor of the now recovered statehood. Although it eschewed excessively encomiastic tones, the politics of memory of the young state during the 1990s displayed great ambiguity when addressing the 1939–1944 period. The intensity of this revisionist discourse was lowered con­ sciously until 2004, with the purpose of not hampering the country’s entry into the European Union. The new leitmotif was now the return to “Europe”, to the West. However, from the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, public revisionism of Tiso acquired greater vigour. Both from the state and several sectors of civil society the regime of the para-fascist prelate was presented in a positive light. It was indeed an autocracy, but paternalistic and advanced in social matters, which would have saved the life of thousands of Jews from deportation and promoted the general well-being of the population. On significant dates, such as the anniversary of Tiso’s death (18 April) and the proclamation of the first Slovak “independence” on 14 March 1939, the tomb in Martin cemetery is visited by hundreds of neo-fascists, radical nationalists and different groups of nostalgists who maintain an almost mystical reverence for the creator of the first “Slovak Slovakia”. These include the Andrej Hlinka society,67 the owner of the tomb, as well as the traditional Matica Slovenská, which reprises the name of the pioneering nationalist association founded in 1863 and seeks to galvanize patriotic cults.68 However, Tiso’s consecrated body was the subject of some debate during the first decade of the twenty-first century, as several rumours surrounded the location of these mortal remains, and there was doubt as to whether the tomb did indeed contain them. In spring 2007, Stanislav Májek, president of the Andrej Hlinka society, ordered the exhumation in order to perform a DNA test in Vienna. The results confirmed that the remains were authentic. Subsequently, they were divided into three parts. One part was buried in the crypt in the Catholic Saint Emmeram’s cathedral, in Nitra, a city located in the centre of the country, where Tiso had served as a priest for a time. Another batch of bones was deposited, like the relics of a saint, in a reliquary located in his birth house in Bytča. According to some rumours, the final part is in the care of a Slovak migrant association in Canada. Few examples like that of Tiso demonstrate the importance of necropolicy and the religious legitimation of posthumous charisma. The cult of memory of the supposed father of Slovakian independence is swathed in strong religious over­ tones which veer towards mysticism. This can be seen in the annual procession that takes place in April each year, as a continuation of the past pilgrimages to Altötting. A nocturnal march over 25 kilometres, it is organized by several asso­ ciations and begins in Rajec, where Tiso’s collaborator and exiled nationalist leader Ferdinand Ďurčanský was born, and continues through the Sulov moun­ tains before coming to an end at the house museum in Bytča. The procession is attended by dozens of devotees of the figure and legacy of the dictator. It takes

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FIGURE 3.5

Birth house of Jozef Tiso, Bytča. ©Wikimedia commons

place in silence, amidst the prayers of the participants for Tiso’s soul and atone­ ment for that nation’s sins, for which they undergo fasting beforehand. The ritual includes a series of salutes and slogans that evoke fascism and which are dedicated to Christ the King. On reaching the Bytča house museum, a religious ceremony is held and several speeches delivered. The most pious receive permission to kiss the relics of their idol as a prize for their devotion. The Slovak authorities generally look the other way.69 The case of independent Croatia displays some parallels with that of Slovakia, as its first precedent of statehood also involved being a puppet state of Mussolini’s Italy and the Third Reich. The main leader (poglavnik) of the Ustaše fascist party, and then of the officially named Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH, 1941–1945), Ante Pavelić, orchestrated a brutal genocidal policy against the Serbian, Gypsy and Jewish minorities in his territory. Thousands of victims were executed in several concentration camps, like that of Jasenovac. After 1945, Pavelić fled to Italy, where he took refuge for three years in a convent, and then from there with his family to Argentina in 1948. After being attacked in Buenos Aires, he took refuge in Madrid, where he died in December 1959. The figure of the poglavnik was defended by radical Croatian nationalists from the beginning of the 1990s, and the memory of the crimes of the NDH is a controversial topic in the historical culture of independent Croatia. Revisionist

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authors compared the figures of deaths of several thousand Croatian and Bosnian (as well as Montenegrans, Slovenes and some Serbs) combatants, supporting the Axis and massacred by Yugoslav partisans in Bleiburg (Austria) between May and August 1945, with those of the Ustaše concentration camp in Jasenovac. In the symbolic confrontation between victims, the perpetrators were in the background. Moreover, in the Croatian history textbooks of the 1990s, the image of the NDH was rather positive, presenting it as the culmination of the desires for in­ dependence of the Croat people. This was also the case with the depiction of Pavelić, whose war crimes were omitted; only his surrendering of sovereignty to Italy and Germany, which were ultimately held responsible for the killings of Jews and Serbs, was lamented.70 In the Bleiburg commemorations, which were already underway in the 1960s, memorabilia with the Ustaše symbol and the effigy of Pavelić tend to be sold; in the early years, they also prayed for the soul of the late poglavnik.71 However, unlike Jozef Tiso, a necrophilic cult has not developed around him due to there being no dictator’s mausoleum in Croatia and his birth house being located in Bosnian territory. The tomb of the former poglavnik in Madrid’s San Isidro cemetery largely goes unnoticed. On occasions, it is visited by tourists and radical hooligans of Croatian football teams, as well as right-wing politicians. But it has not become a centre of pilgrimage for radical right-wing Balkan nationalists. The option of transferring the remains of Ante Pavelić and those of another Ustaše war criminal, who took refuge in Spain and was buried in Carcaixent in 1969, Vjekoslav Luburic, was occasionally suggested in the Croatian public sphere. However, both figures were born in territory lying in what is today Bosnia-Herzegovina, which enabled the Zagreb government to sidestep the question with the plea that such a decision would fall to another country. The transfer was also opposed by the elderly daughter of the poglavnik, Višnja Pavelić, who regarded the new Croatia as too liberal and for years kept a solitary vigil before the tomb to prevent it being desecrated by Serbian activists. Since her death in 2015, a committee of three members of the Croatian immigrant com­ munity has looked after the vault. Although the tomb was vandalized in March 2019, Pavelić’s victims seem to have forgotten about him. In present-day Croatia, the return of his remains would cause considerable political tension, a problem that the Zagreb authorities prefer to avoid, as has been shown by their fear that the Madrid government might order the disinterment of Pavelić and other dictators on Spanish soil and their repatriation to their home countries.72

3.3.4 The long shadow of the regent Horthy In neighbouring Hungary, the memory of the dictator also avails of some religious features interspersed with ultranationalism. The veteran admiral, Miklós Horthy, the commander of the imperial Austro-Hungarian fleet during the Great War, assumed the post of regent (Kormányzo) of Hungary between 1920 and October 1944, following the failure of the short-lived Communist Republic of Councils

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led by Béla Kun (March–August 1919).73 The conservative and anti-Semitic Horthy maintained a nominal respect for the parliamentary system for most of his mandate. He was acclaimed for having restored order and rebuilding the nation. Although he did not decisively support fascism as a state model for his own country, an option openly held by some of his prime ministers (such as Gyula Gömbös), Horthy aligned its foreign policy with the Axis powers, partly to guarantee the recovery of territories lost by Hungary to Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia by the Trianon Peace Treaty (1920). At the end of June 1941, Hungary declared war on the USSR and sent several divisions to the Eastern front. From 1942, the regent, who was tendencially Anglophile, displayed growing signs of distancing concerning Hitler’s guidelines, and unsuccessfully sought a separate dialogue with the Allies, which caused German distrust. After the Wehrmacht occupied Hungary in March 1944, seven months later, Horthy was deposed and kidnapped by his German allies, who imposed a puppet government of the local fascist party, the Hungarists or Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt), led by Ferenc Szálasi. Confined by Hitler in a Bavarian castle, the admiral was freed by the Allies who allowed him to go into exile, first in Switzerland and then in Estoril. Horthy wrote his memoirs, shared his woes and recollections with other exiles from East-Central Europe who had taken refuge in Portugal, and died in February 1957.74 In his own country, Admiral Horthy was condemned to a radical damnatio memoriae that would endure as long as the Communist regime. But his death in exile and Anglophilia, as well as his scarce sympathy for the Nazis, rendered him an atypical collaborationist if not a sincere patriot in the eyes of many Hungarians and exiles after the revolution of 1956. His aristocratic-like conservatism, at a remove from fascism, and his quest to find a separate peace with the Allies, were arguments expressed in his favour. However, Horthy’s detractors have pointed out the admiral was a confessed anti-Semite and a fanatical anti-Communist, who ruthlessly put down the remains of the Béla Kun revolutionary experiment of the Republic of Councils. The regent also imposed discriminatory laws against the Jewish minority from the 1920s, and authorized or at least tolerated the massive deportation of the Jewish population of Hungary to the extermination camps from March 1944. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989–1990, there were several attempts to re­ habilitate Horthy. Fulfilling the express wish in his will, according to which his body should only rest on native soil when the last Soviet soldier had left it, in September 1993 the mortal remains of Miklós Horthy, together with those of his wife and son Nicky were transferred from Portugal and re-interred in the family crypt of the cemetery in Kenderes, his birthplace (140 kilometres to the east of Budapest). The solemn ceremony was followed by thousands of people, as well as several members of the post-communist Government.75 The transfer led to a sort of general rediscovery of Horthy in Hungarian public opinion, as well as to several attempts at his rehabilitation by some historians and writers. This trend was also joined by the first head of the post-communist government (1990–1993), the Christian Democrat József Antall.76

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From an aristocratic line, the family castle of Horthy had been seriously da­ maged during the war by sackings by the German troops. During the communist period, the castle was collectivized, and no refurbishments or restorations were performed in it: the useful parts were put to different uses, such as a granary and school. From the mid-1990s, Horthy castle, only partially restored, has become one of the city’s unique tourist attractions, and since 2009 has been managed by a private foundation. Each year ceremonies are held in memory of the admiral and other members of his lineage in the rooms that have been renovated and re­ decorated, following the style from the beginning of the twentieth century, in­ cluding a “naval room”. The site is also used as an exhibition centre. In the complex as a whole, tribute is paid, explicitly, not so much to the “political leader” as the Hungarian “head of state”, as well as the “generous protector” of Kenderes and the history of his noble stock.77 In the different commemorations for both his birth (18 June) and his death (9 February), various radical right-wing groups have also taken part, above all since 2005.78 The Horthy memorial in his home town exudes an aristocratic and institutional nature. However, several of his followers and nostalgists, aligned with the antiSemitic far-right, were encouraged by the wide coverage given to their initiatives by the ultra-Conservative government of the Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) party, led by Viktor Orbán, above all in the second period of government from 2010, as well as by the new constitution of 2011. Although his figure did not receive official cult status in the strict sense, the admiral Horty was considered by Orbán as a direct precedent of his ideas, as the healer of the national trauma caused by the Treaty of Trianon and as the restorer of Hungarian sovereignty, both in having ended the Republic of Councils in 1920 and having resisted pressure from the Germans.79 Several town halls ruled by Fidesz mayors promoted the erection of statues of Horthy and Szálasi, and also baptized streets and squares with their names. On occasions, there was some public controversy. Thus, in May 2012, a bust of Horthy placed at the initiative of the mayor of Krekei was painted red by a citizen, and was subject to a legal case which was finally dismissed in the name of freedom of expression. In the town of Gyömrő (2011), the dispute on the change of name of Liberty Square for Horthy Square gave rise to a bitter debate between professional historians and publicists close to Orbán, who accused Hungarian historiography of not having been “de-Marxified” enough. It is the far-right party, Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), that has most campaigned for the recuperation of the cult to Horthy: from parliamentary speeches by its deputies to the promotion of images on the Internet. The party also commemorates several dates relating to Horthy’s life, such as his triumphal entry into Budapest on 16 November 1919. Counting on the support of the secretary of state for culture and president of the parliament, the controversial László Köver, Jobbik also attempted to repatriate the remains of the inter-war fascist writer József Nyírö to Transylvania from Spain, where he had died in 1953, and rehabilitate the no less anti-Semitic writer Albert Wass, another pro-fascist intellectual from the 1940s.80

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FIGURE 3.6

Bust of Admiral Horthy, Temple of Return, Budapest. ©Xosé M. Núñez

Seixas

At the start of November 2013 and coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the first Vienna Agreement, through which Hungary recovered part of the territory lost after the Trianon Peace Treaty, a bronze bust of Horthy, the work of the sculptor Bela Domokos, was placed in the atrium of the so-called Temple of Return (Hazatérés Temploma) of the Hungarian Reformed Church, located in Liberty Square (Szabadság Tér) in Budapest. The term return denotes the irredentist mould of the church, very much in line with the nostalgia for pre-Trianon Treaty Hungary espoused by current Magyar neo-nationalists.81 Busts of other politicians of that persuasion from the inter-war period were also placed in the atrium. In the opening speech, both the minister Lóránt Hegedüs Jr. and the deputy Márton Gyöngyösi, both furious anti-Semites and members of Jobbik, brutally insulted some counterdemonstrators who wore the yellow star in remembrance of deported Jews.82 Protected by a fence and a plastic bulkhead to prevent frequent vandalism, the statue of Horthy is located almost opposite the memorial inaugurated in July 2014, on the occasion of 70 years of the German occupation in 1944. It is a kitsch monument that seeks to reflect the role of Hungary (embodied in the archangel Gabriel) as a victim of German aggression, represented by an imperial eagle, which was responsible for the end of Hungarian sovereignty (only fully restored fol­ lowing the fall of Communism in May 1990, according to the Preamble of the Constitution 2011) and the deportation of Magyar Jews. But the more prolonged Soviet occupation would be even more disastrous, as the Veritas Institute, a statesponsored institution dedicated to historical revisionism since 2014, is at pains to demonstrate. This also expressed by a museum opened in 2002 in the headquarters of the Communist political police, demonstratively baptized as the House of

The sites of the authoritarian 109

Terror (Terror Háza). Its narrative focuses on the Nazi and Soviet occupations, but clearly places much greater focus on the latter, considered a longer and more repressive period for the country.83 The Orbán government similarly planned to erect a granite obelisk to sym­ bolize the suffering of the country under the Soviet yoke, as a tribute to political prisoners, prisoners of war and slave labourers who underwent deportation in the USSR during the communist years. The monument would run counter to that erected in 1946 in the same square to honour the Soviet “liberation”. Technical reasons led to its definitive placement in June 2018 in an outlying suburb of so­ cialist residential architecture, Óbuda.84 In October of the following year, Köver and Orbán also inaugurated another central memorial to the victims of the “red terror” of 1918–1919, which reproduced the design of a similar monument from the Horthy period.85 The Horthy bust, the 2014 monument and the Soviet obelisk, as well as a statue dedicated to the US president Ronald Reagan in 2011, comprise a complex and disputed memorial space in the most central and symbolic square of Budapest. The statue of the regent and the monument to German occupation bear witness to the frequent tributes paid by nostalgists to the admiral and ultra-right militants. Their detractors, who emphasize the deportations of the Magyar Jews in 1944, have built a sort of opposite site of memory in which photographs of the deported persons and the names of the abandoned Jewish cemeteries throughout Hungary are ex­ hibited, as well as a broken mirror that symbolized the deformed vision of the past held by the Orbán government. Furthermore, some groups of people sit out everyday in foldable chairs in front of the monument to discuss Hungarian history. The dispute on the dictatorial past therefore becomes a lived experience, where history and memory confront each other in the present. Meanwhile, tourists walk past and notice, without understanding very well the meaning of the spectacle they are witnessing in a symbolic landscape imbued with special meaning, comparable in that sense to that of Maidan Square in Kiev.86

Notes 1 See Costa Pinto (2008), Raimundo & Costa Pinto (2014) and Loff (2015). 2 See Gori (2017). 3 Pinheiro (2018). Also see the report on the statue and its replacements, “Inauguraçâo do monumento aos heróis do ultramar”, 12 May 2010, at https://arquivos.rtp.pt/ conteudos/inauguracao-do-monumento-aos-herois-do-ultramar/. 4 “Marcelo Caetano morreu há trinta anos no exílio”, Jornal de Notícias, 26 October 2010; N. Guardiola, “Marcelo Caetano fue enterrado ayer en Rio de Janeiro”, El País, 28 October 1980; https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/funeral-de-marcelo-caetano/. 5 See in general Ribeiro de Menezes (2009). 6 See the RTP report, “Cerimónias fúnebres de António de Oliveira Salazar”, 1 August 1970, at https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/cerimonias-funebres-de-antonio-de-oliveirasalazar/. 7 See, for example, the RTP report on the pilgrimage of 28 April 1996, at https:// arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/romagem-ao-tumulo-de-salazar/.

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8 See the interview with Rui Salazar de Melo and RTP report, “Projeto de casa-museu Salazar”, 27 July 1997, at https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/projeto-de-casa-museusalazar/. 9 See the analysis in Raimundo (2018: 9–15). For the context of parliamentary debates, see also Raimundo (2017). 10 S. Rodrigues, “Criaçâo Museu Salazar divide esquerda e direita parlamentares”, Público, 4 July 2008. 11 Público, 27 July 2019; “Salazar - a história de um museu que o Governo nâo comenta”, Público, 24 August 2019. 12 “Museu do Estado Novo nasce em 2019 em Santa Comba Dâo”, Diário de Notícias, 9 December 2018. 13 Avelâs Nunes (2017). See also his views on the “Salazar Museum” in C. Soldado, “Isto nâo é um museu Salazar, garantem responsáveis”, Público, 4 September 2019. 14 See the dossier by M. Carvalho, “Salazar, o passado nâo é aquí”, Visâo, 12 September 2019. 15 Sol, 18 August 2019. 16 “Petiçâo contra museu de Salazar foi encerrada. Promotores aguardam resposta de Costa”, Espresso, 28 August 2019; Público, 24 August 2019. 17 “Museu a Salazar é ofensa aos valores do Estado de direito democrático, diz Jorge Miranda”, Público, 26 August 2019. 18 Público, 11 September 2019; F. Raimundo, “Porque é que CDS e PSD se abstêm no caso ‘Museu Salazar’?”, Público, 16 September 2019. 19 L. Calvo, “Socialistas nâo fecham a porta a museu Salazar, mas exigem garantías”, Sol, 13 September 2019. 20 See L. Reis Torgal, “O ‘debate’ e … o Debate sobre o Centro de Interpretação do Estado Novo em Santa Comba Dão”, Público, 2 September 2019; “Alegre e Soares consideram indesejável apología do ditador”, Público, 24 August 2019. 21 “Commissâo de Cultura e Comunicaçâo da AR discutiu petiçâo sobre Museu Salazar”, 18 June 2020, available at https://www.urap.pt/index.php/especial-mainmenu-38/contra-omuseu-salazar-mainmenu-39/982-comissao-de-cultura-e-comunicacao-da-ar-discutiupeticao-sobre-museu-salazar. See also the minutes of the parliamentary hearing at https:// www.parlamento.pt/ActividadeParlamentar/Paginas/DetalheAudicao.aspx?BID=115048. 22 See Gori & Torreggiani (2018), and the website of the museum at 10.12977/ ereview266; http://www.museunacionalresistencialiberdade-peniche.gov.pt/. 23 See Pasetti (2017). 24 See Rothschild (1992: 372–381), Payne (1995: 401–402) and Besier (2006: 81–98). 25 See Pillak (2016) and Brüggemann (2006: 37–40). 26 See Richter (2002); The Baltic Times, 12 August 2019; Eidintas (2015). 27 Wezel (2016: 25–26). Other “ghost heroes” of inter-war Estonia were more popular, such as the aviator Herberts Cukurs, who in 1941 collaborated with the Nazis and was responsible for massacres of Jews (Eglitis 2002: 87–88). 28 See Payne (1995: 398–340) and Besier (2006: 142–159). 29 See Świda (2012). 30 The role of Piłsudski in the defence of Warsaw against Soviet troops was minimized in the 1920s and 1930s by his national democratic adversaries. The veterans’ associations of the Polish Legion of 1914–1917 highlighted above all this deed as crucial for the cult of “their” marshal; see Lehnstaedt (2019: 127–136). 31 Although Hitler admired and respected Piłsudski, the German occupation authorities proceeded to eliminate all public vestiges of cult based around him. However, the mound was not entirely destroyed (Szarota 2001). 32 Hein (2002: 270–296, 361–363). 33 Kusiak (2010). 34 See Petrakis (2005) and Basciani (2016: 457–468). 35 Kouki & Antoniou (2017).

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36 For example, the Greek-North American Oxi Day Foundation, which commemorates the date with a day dedicated to the heroism of those who fell against a stronger enemy. On its website, Metaxas is portrayed simply as the acting prime minister of Greece in 1940. Cf. https://oxidayfoundation.org. 37 Clements (2009) and Tepora (2021). 38 See Mrozewicz (2003). On the peculiar Finnish memory of the Second World War, see a synthetic view in Núñez Seixas (2018: 380–382). 39 Kyyrö (2017). 40 See the museum’s website at https://www.mikkeli.fi/sisalto/palvelut/kulttuuri-jakirjasto/mikkelin-kaupungin-museot/paamajamuseo. 41 See the house museum website at https://www.mannerheim-museo.fi/. 42 See https://www.kansallismuseo.fi/sv/louhisaari. 43 For a general and comparative overview, see Littlejohn (1972), Mazower (2008) and Kellmann (2019). 44 Judt (2006: 1143–1170). 45 See Grinchenko & Narvselius (2018). 46 See Meyers (1984: 294–297) and Kümmel (2018: 18–19). 47 See De Wever (1989: 218–219; 2003: 112–114) and Shelby (2014: 232–235). 48 Kellmann (2019: 237–240). 49 Maier (2007: 43–120). 50 See the text by A. Breivik, 2083: A European declaration of independence, at https://info. publicintelligence.net/AndersBehringBreivikManifesto.pdf. 51 See https://www.hlsenteret.no/. 52 Laughland (2008: 72–90). 53 Lagrou (1999). 54 Jacques Isorni penned dozens of books, some of them dedicated to defending the memory of Pétain: see, for example, Souffrance et mort du maréchal (Paris: Flammarion, 1951); Pétain a sauvé la France (París: Flammarion, 1964); Philippe Pétain (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1973, 2 vols.); and Nouvelle requête en révision pour Philippe Pétain (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). 55 Girard (1951). 56 See Rousso (2016: 61–62, 197–198), Conan & Rousso (1994), Shields (2007: 63–64), Le Naour (2009: 77–93) and Cotillon (2003: 221–235). 57 “Les maréchalistes au Musée”, L’Humanité, 25 November 2009. 58 Ch. Vincent, “Cauchy-à-la-Tour: ‘on veut rayer le mal Pétain de l’histoire’ ”, L’Avenir de l’Artois, 22 April 2016; “Drôle de pèlerins au village de Pétain”, Dailynord, 23 April 2010 (available at https://dailynord.fr/2010/04/petain-cauchy/). 59 See “Un musée Pétain à l’île d’Yeu. Le maréchal bien caché”, Le Monde, 10 November 1989; M. Bassets, “El destierro eterno del ‘generalísimo’ francés”, El País, 13 October 2019. 60 M. Kerjouan, “À l’île d’Yeu, la tombe de Pétain est un héritage encombrant”, L’Ouest de la France, 23 July 2019, available at https://www.ouest-france.fr/pays-de-la-loire/ lile-dyeu-85350/l-ile-d-yeu-la-tombe-de-petain-est-un-heritage-encombrant6455821. 61 Tournoux (1964). 62 See Mitterrand’s memoirs (Mitterrand 1996: 79, 127). 63 For a detailed reconstruction of the events, see F. Caviglioli, “Comment on vole un maréchal”, Paris Match, 1243, 3 March 1973, and also Le Naour (2009) and Kümmel (2018: 146–198). Similarly, see the complete documentary “Le maréchal Pétain, ce fantôme que la France enterra deux fois”, at https://dossiers.lalibre.be/marechalpetain/. Regarding Tixier-Vignancour, see Shields (2007: 127–139). TixierVignancour had even been a candidate for the presidential elections of 1965, his campaign chief being a young Jean-Marie Le Pen, later founder of the National Front. In 1972, he declined to run after the Gaullist Georges Pompidou assured him that in

112

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84

The sites of the authoritarian

return he would reconsider transferring Pétain’s remains to Douaumont. However, once elected, Pompidou swiftly forgot about his promise. L. Boichot, “Pétain, grand soldat: Macron rejoint De Gaulle, Mitterrand, Chirac et Sarkozy”, Le Figaro, 8 November 2018. Felak (2009: 86–124). H. Kamm, “War criminal gets Slovak memorial”, The New York Times, 3 December 1991. The embalmed body of Andrej Hlinka disappeared around 1967, and its sarcophagus, located in the crypt of St. Martin’s cathedral in Bratislava, has lain empty since then. See “Hlinka corpse riddle endures”, The Slovak Spectator, 5 March 2001. See, for example, “Tiso faithful flock to hero’s grave”, The Slovak Spectator, 19 March 2007. See Mace Ward (2013: 275–284) and Hruboň (2017); E. Gruberova, “Hitlers Hirte”, Die Zeit, 27 September 2007; some images of the marches from between 2014 and 2019 can be seen at http://www.jozeftiso.sk/memorial. See Koren (2010: 87–89) and Petrungaro (2006: 232–237). Abundant information from a critical perspective on these commemorations and their symbology can be consulted at https://www.no-ustasa.at/. See P. de Llano, “Višnja Pavelić: The daughter of a Croatian dictator who lived as a recluse in Madrid”, El País Semanal, 3 April 2020 (https://english.elpais.com/eps/202004-03/visnja-pavelic-the-daughter-of-a-croatian-dictator-who-spent-50-years-as-arecluse-in-madrid.html); I. Viana, “Pavelić: el carnicero fascista que horrorizó (incluso) a Franco y está enterrado en Madrid”, ABC, 17 January 2020; A. Vladisavljevic, “Croatian Fascist leader’s tomb vandalised in Spain”, BalkanInsight, 5 March 2019 (available at https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/05/croatian-fascist-leaders-tombvandalised-in-spain/); G. Knezevic, “Spain awakens Bosnian, Croatian ghosts of 1945”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 20 August 2018 (available at https://www.rferl. org/a/spain-awakens-bosnian-croatian-ghosts-of-1945/29444188.html). For the con­ text of policies and debates on memory from the NDH period in Croatia after 1991, see Radonic (2012) and Petrungaro (2006). Horel (2014). Horthy (1956). The solemn repatriation of the remains of the illustrious Hungarians fallen outside the country is a constant feature of Magyar memory policies since the end of the nineteenth century, when the remains of several leaders of the 1848 revolution who died in exile were transferred (Horel 2009). Romsics (2010: 109–113). See http://horthytura.hu. Turbucz (2014). See Horel (2017) and Toomey (2018). K. Verseck, “‘Creeping Cult:’ Hungary Rehabilitates Far-Right Figures”, Spiegel International, 6 June 2012; P. Jandl, “Hitlers ungarischer Partner wird rehabilitiert”, Die Welt, 5 June 2012. On the occasion of the centenary of the signature of the Trianon Treaty, in June 2020, a great commemorative monument to the territorial losses was unveiled before the parliament building in Budapest. Cf. P. Münch and T. Zick, “Ungarische Geschichtspolitik. ‘Auf ewig ungerecht’”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4 June 2020. “Bust of Admiral Miklos Horthy to be unveiled on Sunday”, The Budapest Beacon, 31 October 2013; A. Schiff, “Hungarians must face their Nazi past, not venerate it”, The Guardian, 11 December 2013. See also Feischmidt (2020). See https://www.terrorhaza.hu. R. Philpot, “Hungary has not yet shaken off its Nazi past: The continuing legacy of Miklós Horthy”, The Jewish Chronicle, 28 March 2017; T. Székely, “Memorial to the victims of communism to be erected near the Danube in Budapest”, 11 August 2017;

The sites of the authoritarian 113

“Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech at the inauguration of the monument to the victims of Soviet occupation”, available at https://www.kormany.hu/en/theprime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speechat-the-inauguration-of-the-monument-to-the-victims-of-soviet-occupation. 85 See https://index.hu/video/2019/10/31/kover_laszlo_orban_viktor_avatas_nemzeti_ vertanuk_emlekmuve/. 86 See Eröss (2016) and Rév (2018).

4 IS SPAIN DIFFERENT? THE MANY SITES OF THE CAUDILLO

As has been pointed out, in 2019 two events signalled the return to the forefront of the (dis)remembering of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, died on 20 November 1975. On the one hand, the claim filed by the Spanish Solicitor’s General Office against the descendants (his seven grandchildren) in order to place the Meirás manor in the public domain. On the other hand, the media-friendly transfer undertaken on 24 October 2019 of the dictator’s mortal remains from the Valley of the Fallen to the family pantheon (built in 1969) in Mingorrubio cemetery (El Pardo, to the north of Madrid), where the dictator now lies next to his wife. The controversies surrounding the transfer, which was supported only by the Left and sub-state nationalist parties, prove that the score-settling process with the recent past still depends on the political colours of who is in government. Evidence of this is the different nature of the politics of memory in each of the town halls and the country’s 17 autonomous communities. At the end of 2019, for example, the conservative-led Madrid City Council even removed some street names and plaques dedicated to the victims of Francoist re­ pression, on the argument that they had also been perpetrators before. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the relevant survival of sites of memory related to the Francoist dictatorship has often been attributed to the la­ cunae in the process of the Spanish transition to democracy since 1975, and the concessions of the democratic opposition to late Francoist elites, in addition to the absence of any form of transitional justice.1 This ranges from monuments dedi­ cated to the victors of the Civil War of 1936–1939 to street names, plaques and crosses of remembrance of the Francoist fallen soldiers and “martyrs” in churches, and a lengthy etcetera.2 However, the survival of these memorial spaces, references or symbols of the dictatorship is highly unequal throughout Spanish territory. Many of them were abandoned or had their Francoist symbols removed, and many more were dismantled. The so-called Historical Memory Law (Ley de la Memoria Histórica, LMH), enacted in December 2007 by the Socialist (PSOE) government

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of Rodríguez Zapatero, represented an important step forward. However, the law proved insufficient for some left-wing parties, as well as for the network of as­ sociations for the recovery of historical memory that blossomed in Spanish civil society since the late 1990s.3 How did the sites of dictator emerge, and how has Spanish democracy managed them since 1976–1977? There are two examples above all others. Firstly, a pharaonic complex whose significance is interwoven with that of several thousand more bodies, which turned it into a hybrid between war memorial, personal mausoleum and symbol of the regime’s values. Secondly, a stately, medieval-style Galician palace, which Franco ordered to be donated to him as a private property during the Civil War. In addition, there are some other places related to the dictator’s biography that could have potentially become sites of dictator, but never turned into symbolic centres for Franco’s supporters. Unlike cases in other countries, the dictator’s birthplace has so far barely ac­ quired public relevance. His birth house, a modest two-storey construction with a balcony located in María Street, Ferrol, remains in the possession of the Franco family. Before or after 1975, it never was a symbolic point of attraction for fol­ lowers and nostalgists of his regime. Since he left his Galician coastal home town Ferrol as a teenager to attend the Military Academy in Toledo, Franco never returned to live in the house, which has been closed for decades. In spite of this, the property was renovated and extended at the expense of Ferrol town hall in 1950, which also paid for its maintenance costs until September 1979, when the first democratic council withdrew this support. On its façade, a plaque from the end of the 1920s still recalls that, on an equal footing, the “valiant soldiers” Francisco (“hero” of the Foreign Legion) and Ramón Franco Bahamonde (the aviator who at the time was more famous than his brother due to having com­ manded the transatlantic flight of the Plus Ultra hydroplane in 1926) were born. Another later plaque, with the symbol of the 1939 victory, exclusively recalls Franco, the “caudillo of Spain and Supreme Commander of its Armies”. The Ferrol town hall similarly gifted the family of its “illustrious son” in 1967 with a vault in the noble area, reserved in theory for “Navy heroes”, of Catabois cemetery, which replaced the modest niche acquired by Francisco Franco and his brothers in another local graveyard years before. The remains of a younger sister of the dictator who died in 1904, as well as his paternal grandparents and a maternal aunt, also rest in the vault. In July 2018, at the request of the left-wing nationalist party Galician Nationalist Bloc (Bloque Nacionalista Galego, BNG), the municipal council, led by a left-wing majority, rejected the burial of Franco’s remains at Catabois, were such an option to ever be publicly proposed.4 However, and in contrast to the investment in sites of memory undertaken by the regime in the city which in 1938 was officially renamed Ferrol del Caudillo (caudillo’s Ferrol), Franco’s birth house did not attract particular attention from the authorities, which perhaps explains its scare subsequent visibility. Ferrol was never Predappio, and the dictator displayed his scarce interest in his birth house and home town, of whose working-class tradition since the late nineteenth

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century he was always suspicious. The property did not house any museum, and until the beginning of the twenty-first century visitors had to ask for the keys from a local trader.5 Conversely, the equestrian statue of Franco, located from 1967 in the town’s central square (Praza de España), was the focus since the end of the 1970s of fierce local debates and some vandalism, such as being painted pink by pro-Galician independence groups. Franco’s statue was removed from its pedestal on the night of 4 July 2002, an operation which took advantage of the remodelling works in the square, by a town hall run by a coalition of the BNG and the Socialist Party (PSOE). First placed in a military arsenal, in 2010 the sculpture was removed in compliance with the Law of Historical Memory (LHM) and placed in a storehouse.6 Located to the north of Madrid, El Pardo Palace was the official residence of Franco and his family during his rule, but never became a powerful centre of attraction for nostalgists. After the dictator’s death, the palace, which dates back to the fifteenth century and contains high-value tapestries and paintings, was put to other uses by the state agency of National Heritage (Patrimonio Nacional). Between August 1976 and 1980, it was opened to visitors with the purpose of displaying the caudillo’s everyday life, although there were hardly any of his private items left to include. Four years later, it was redesigned, and from November 1983 has been the official residence of visiting heads of state.7 The close connection with the daily sphere of the dictator in the popular imaginary weighed heavily on the final fate of other state possessions. This is demonstrated by the vicissitudes of the yacht Azor (goshawk), built for official and leisure use by the head of state in 1949, and hardly used by the Spanish Navy since the death of Franco. Its name attracted public attention, as demonstrated by the summer journey taken by the Socialist prime minister Felipe González on board the yacht in 1985, which made him the butt of many jokes and criticisms. The state then auctioned the Azor in 1992 for scrap. It was acquired by a businessman who attempted to reconvert it into a floating night club. After not being able to secure the necessary permits, it came up with an alternative fate for the vessel, beaching the yacht in the outskirts of the village of Cogollos, located in the inner Castilian province of Burgos, as part of a theme park project in which the boat would become a hotel. The business never took off, and not even the most fa­ natical Franco’s devotees went to Cogollos. The yacht Azor remained on a high point visible from the motorway until the performance artist Fernando SánchezCastillo acquired and transformed it at the end of 2011 into an abstract work in the shape of a prism with a jumble of pressed sheet metal and scrapped parts, entitled The Guernica Syndrome. Azor.8

4.1 One valley, one mausoleum, one Caudillo The non-sites of memory referred to can also be explained because they paled in comparison beside the evocative space par excellence of Francoism. Nothing in Europe or on any continent is comparable with the megalomaniac mausoleum of

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the Valley of the Fallen. Inaugurated on the First of April 1959, 20 years after the Francoist victory in the Civil War, the monumental complex comprises four spaces: a basilica carved from the rock, with an esplanade below; a gigantic cross; an abbey; and an avenue. There are also several additional buildings: a school with a schola cantorum, a library and study centre and guest quarters, designed in their day to house a monastery. A settlement was built two kilometres away for the civilian workers of the Valley. A total of 1,377 hectares and a perimeter of 6 kilometres. Although some aspects remain unknown, the history of the Valley of the Fallen has been systematically researched.9 As its first abbot, the strongly traditionalist priest Justo Pérez de Urbel recounted, Franco harboured the idea of constructing a great monument to his victory comparable to what the sixteenth-century mon­ astery of El Escorial had been for the Hapsburg dynasty. On an excursion in the Guadarrama mountains, accompanied by General José Moscardó, he discovered the Nava crag in the area of Cuelgamuros, 56 kilometres to the north of Madrid.10 This would be the site chosen for a great memorial to commemorate the victory of the insurgent side in 1939, which would glorify its values, expressed in the concept of crusade and the worldview of National Catholicism. Furthermore, it would honour the fallen for “God and the Homeland”, official label for the Francoist fallen. They were the pillars on which the legitimacy of the new regime was built: victory in the name of God and Spain, and the memory of those who fell for it, both in combat and at the hands of revolutionary violence in the Republican rearguard. This was stated in the Decree of April 1940, which expressed the purpose of building a basilica and monastery as a “place of repose and meditation”, but also to “perpetuate the memory of those who fell in our glorious Crusade”. The proximity (12 kilometres) to the monastery of El Escorial was perhaps an addi­ tional motive. The symbolic corpus of Francoism was self-referential: Franco did not seek to restore the monarchy overthrown in 1931, but to establish a new regime with its own legitimacy, which would directly link to the golden ages of the Spanish Empire. This was evident in the symbology of the “New State”, from the flag and anthem to the public holiday calendar and public ceremonies.11 The project was designed and led first by the architect Pedro Muguruza, who was strongly in favour of creating a new imperial style inspired by the legacy of sixteenth-century Spain. From 1950, the architect of the Generalísimo’s personal staff, Diego Méndez, took over the work; Franco himself imposed several of his own ideas at different stages. The final format displayed humongous dimensions: the cross would be 150 metres tall and its arms 23 metres wide, designed by Méndez, with allegorical and evangelical statues at its base; these were the work of the sculptor Juan de Ávalos, who also created the effigies inside the church. The esplanade measures 300 metres and the basilica is 262 metres long and 41 metres tall. The total cost of the works is not known exactly.12 In addition to civilian workers, between 1941 and 1950 a still undetermined number of prisoners of war, political inmates and criminal prisoners took part in the works; estimates range from 2,500 to perhaps 20,000. They were there in

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some cases to purge their Republican past or anti-Francoist commitment; in others, they could reduce their sentence by working on the project. They were assigned to the different building companies that were awarded profitable con­ tracts. After serving their terms, many released prisoners were taken on as workers with an indefinite contract. Working conditions were harsh, especially with ex­ cavation work, but inmates could move around with considerable freedom. After 17 years, works concluded at the end of 1958, although the site was inaugurated on the First of April of the following year, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of Franco’s victory. Henceforth, the whole site would be administered by the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Fallen Foundation, with a Board of Trustees under the presidency of the head of state. In turn, a number of tasks were de­ signated to the Benedictine Abbey that was part of the Valley, from praying for the “souls of those who died in the National Crusade” to serving as an instrument for “the knowledge and establishment of peace amongst men on the basis of Christian social justice”. From 1987, the tasks of the Board of Trustees and representation of the foundation came under National Heritage. However, the management and legal administration of the foundation have always been opaque, and avoided public scrutiny. Following the instructions given in 1958 by the home affairs minister, General Camilo Alonso Vega, the civil governors of each province relied on the colla­ boration of mayors and priests to collect the bodies of the fallen in the conflict, located in ditches and war cemeteries. Although it was supposed that they had all died for “God and for Spain”, no distinction would be made as to what side they had fought on, as long as they were “Spanish and Catholic”. It was an easy re­ quisite to fulfil: at that time practically all Spaniards, practising Catholics or not, had been baptized. This logomachy, which the apologists of Francoism translated as the magnanimity of the dictator (burying his own victims by invoking the principles of the victors in a space dominated by the narrative of the Crusade) concealed a necessity: the Valley had been conceived as a tomb of the “heroes and martyrs of the Crusade”, and it was hoped that many more remains could be transferred from war cemeteries. In 1946, the State Gazette still listed that the category of “heroes and martyrs” encompassed those fallen in combat “in the ranks of the National [i. e. insurgent] Army”, as well as victims of the “red terror” in the Republican rearguard, even if they had fallen after April 1939 because of “war injuries or suffering in prison”. However, delays in the works meant that 20 years later many families were now reticent to let the remains of their bereaved go. The Catalan Carlist veterans refused to transfer their own martyrs, venerated in a crypt-mausoleum close to the monastery of Montserrat. Another group of victims that it was supposed the Valley would feed off, the thousands killed in red Madrid, now rested in the “martyrs graveyards” located in the towns of Paracuellos del Jarama, Aravaca, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Torrejón de Ardoz and Vicálvaro, all of them placed in the outskirts of Madrid. The majority of their relatives were not inclined towards their remains being transferred.13

Is Spain different?

FIGURE 4.1

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Valley of the Fallen, Cuelgamuros (Madrid). ©Luis Velasco

The evidence that the number of fallen to be buried in the Valley might be much lower than that planned caused a change of mind. Corpses needed to be brought in from wherever possible. Franco himself admitted privately in 1957 that the soldiers of the Republic also fought “because they believed they were doing their duty for the Republic, and others because they were forcibly conscripted”. The Valley should not perpetuate division between the two sides, but remember “a victory against Communism, which was attempting to dominate Spain”:

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an external agent, whose victims would all be Catholics and Spaniards, which for him were synonymous.14 At the end of the 1950s, moreover, the regime now gave glimpses of a change in its legitimizing narrative which would focus on its modernizing efforts and management efficiency, as would be demonstrated in the later campaign of the 25 Years of Peace (1964). Between 1959 and 1983, the remains of at least 33,847 fallen combatants from the Civil War were transferred gradually to the Valley, according to the records of the abbey. They came from 46 of the 50 Spanish provinces. Most arrived between 1959 and 1969 (32,140 bodies): as late as 1981, 304 bodies were transferred. More than a third of the total number of remains (12,410) have not yet been identified. According to several indications, between the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, the arrival of mortal remains was greater than that registered, which would raise the total of corpses inhumated in the Valley to perhaps 50,000. In theory, relatives had to give their consent; if the identity of the bodies was un­ known, civil governors were authorized to transfer them to the Valley of the Fallen. An indeterminate number of Republican soldiers’ bodies, as with the executed taken from the mass graves of the insurgent rearguard, were transferred without the knowledge of their family. They were all interred in individual and collective columbariums, located in the eight cavities adjacent to the cross and the basilica chapel. On 30 March 1959, on the eve of the inauguration of the Valley, the remains of the founder of the Spanish Fascist party Falange in 1933, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, were transferred to the high altar of the basilica from the El Escorial monastery. After what had occurred 20 years before, when hundreds of Falangists transferred the mortal remains of José Antonio by foot from the Alicante prison (where he had been tried and executed by the Republicans in November 1936) to El Escorial, the regime did not want this second funeral cortege to be a mass rally. However, several hundred Falange party members improvised a procession to carry the casket to the basilica of Cuelgamuros. Moreover, the booing of Franco’s main political adviser, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, present at the ceremony, revealed the feelings of rank-and-file Falangists towards what they considered a symbolic dishonour towards their leader. In 1959, a radical Falangist group even planned to steal the remains of José Antonio to bury them in secret. In the com­ memorations of 20 November 1959 and 1960, anniversaries of José Antonio’s death, young party members gathered at the basilica to pay tribute at the tomb of their founder. On these occasions, some shouts against Franco were even heard. Between 1969 and 1973, the ceremonies held in the Valley by the Círculos José Antonio and other groups adhering to the purportedly revolutionary programme of the early Falange also caused small incidents, raising some concern in the regime’s ruling elite.15 Franco died on 20 November 1975, exactly 39 years after José Antonio. Following his state funeral, the remains of the dictator were buried in the basilica on 23 November 1975. Some 70,000 fervent supporters cheered the casket on the esplanade of the Valley of the Fallen. According to some versions, Franco himself

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had notified the architect of the exact site of his final resting place, between the high altar and the choir: “OK Méndez, and when the time comes, I’ll be here, right?”. Hence the reason why the latter had anticipated two graves. According to others, the family had decided nothing before his death, and it was Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro and King Juan Carlos I, Franco’s designated successor, who decided that the Caudillo should be interred in the Valley of the Fallen. After the funeral rites were over, the Valley of the Fallen fell discreetly into the background. The transition to democracy brought about a new parliamentary Monarchy, sanctioned by the approval by referendum of a new Constitution in December 1978. The symbols of the dictator and the winners of the Civil War remained in many streets, squares and churches. However, from May 1979, many town halls went on to be governed by the Left. Changes were introduced in urban nomenclature and the names of Franco, José Antonio, the coup generals of July 1936 and so many others were replaced in many cities. But the Valley of the Fallen remained at the margin of this process. From November 1976, when the first anniversary of the death of Franco was commemorated with the attendance of the kings of Spain, the Cuelgamuros basilica was not the location for any official celebration. The Benedictine monks of the Schola Cantorum went about their usual activities, and the Study Centre was closed in 1982. The gigantic mauso­ leum, which had already become a tourist attraction in the 1960s, attracted all kinds of visitors, between 400,000 and 600,000 per year. They could buy Francoist-related souvenirs and obtain a guide on the Valley written in uncritical tones. It is the third most visited monument belonging to the National Heritage in Spain, after the Madrid Royal Palace and the El Escorial Monastery. The Valley of the Fallen was certainly an impressive symbol. Not of re­ conciliation, but of sheer Francoism. The successive abbots and priors of the Valley congregation were always known for their ultramontane and pro-Francoist positions, and remained faithful to the founding principles of the place. Although it never became the nerve centre for mass rallies, the morning masses in the basilica rarely disguised their identification with national catholic values before dozens of fans of Franco’s memory. Between 1976 and 1981, on the significant dates of 18 July (anniversary of the military uprising of 1936) and 20 November, several thousand ultra-right wingers would attend the morning mass organized by the Francisco Franco Foundation, and would gather before the esplanade in front of the entrance steps. They would bear Francoist symbols, sing Falangist canticles and shout in favour of the army and a coup d’état. However, from 1982, the gatherings grew smaller in terms of attendance and visibility. The mass on 20 November 1988, the first following the death of Franco’s widow Carmen Polo, was attended by around 5,000 people. In 2003, the figure sunk to 250. The political speeches of ultra-right events were relegated from 1976 to another location, Plaza de Oriente, a square in the centre of Madrid. This was partly due to the prompt discrepancies between the different factions of the former single party of the Franco regime: the “authentic” Falangists always thought that the profile of their charismatic founder did not stand out enough in the dictator’s mausoleum. Between

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1977 and 1981, the ultra-right’s capacity for mass mobilization was noteworthy, especially the Fuerza Nueva (New Force) party, which claimed to preserve the national Catholic principles inspiring the regime. Following the failed coup d’état of February 1981, the PSOE’s overwhelming victory at the polls of October next year and the electoral crash of Francoist sympathizers, the number of those attending mass gatherings progressively decreased. Certainly, those who upheld Francoist values had not dis­ appeared, but they stayed at home and preferred now to vote for the democratic rightwing parties that, in theory, publicly detached themselves from the dictatorship. In 1982, the centrist-liberal government led by Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, the nephew of the leader of the monarchic right killed on the eve of the Civil War, regulated the working of the National Heritage, and expressed its willingness to clarify its authority over the Valley of the Fallen Foundation. The new legal regime of the site would be decided by a joint commission, resuscitated by the first socialist cabinet of Felipe González in 1984, but never completed this task. One year before, in July 1983, the Valley and its opaque economic man­ agement sparked some media attention. The socialist president of the Madrid region, Joaquín Leguina, stated at that time that the Valley of the Fallen could never be a symbol of reconciliation; however, he branded the exhuming of the remains of Franco and José Antonio as “absurd and arbitrary”, as “they are part of history, we should leave them in peace”. Therefore, he recommended that González’s government should display “no aggressive stance” on the issue. On his part, the prior of the abbey, Gregorio Díez, stated that he was in favour of the “depoliticization” of the Valley but did not disguise his admiration for the legacy of Franco. Other opinion makers believed that the time had not come to calmly debate the future of the Valley of the Fallen.16

4.2 A summer court: Meirás A parallel story was that of Meirás Manor (Sada, A Coruña), which became in practice the summer headquarters of the head of state. Until 1936, Meirás was a rural parish of just over 500 inhabitants, with many of its residents having emigrated to Latin America. The anarcho-syndicalist union CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) had put down roots in the area, and during the Second Republic a good part of the local population had been involved in a bitter conflict over land own­ ership. The repression by the insurgents in July–August 1936 was therefore harsh. Within the parish boundaries there was, moreover, a manor house dating back to medieval times, to which two towers had been added. It had been the residence during spring and summer months of the female writer Emilia Pardo Bazán. After her death in 1921, the house had remained closed for most of the year. In 1938, the owners were the daughter of Miss Emilia, Blanca Quiroga and her daughterin-law, Manuela Esteban-Collantes, both widows – Blanca was the widow of the monarchist General José Cavalcanti, who had actively conspired against the Republic in 1931, while Manuela was the widow of Miss Emilia’s son, Jaime, killed by the “Reds” in Madrid at the beginning of the war.17

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On March 1938, the press announced that the “Meirás Towers” had been donated by the “people of A Coruña” to the caudillo. The initiative had been taken months before by several members of the social and political elite of the nearby city of A Coruña, some of whom were old acquaintances of Franco, such as the banker Pedro Barrié de la Maza, the painter and town councillor Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor and the Francoist civil governor Julio Muñoz de Aguilar. They sought to make A Coruña a sort of summer capital of the new state, to compete with San Sebastián and its Ayete palace, which used to be the summer residence of the kings of Spain. At the end of March, the purchase of the manor was formalized. Franco accepted the donation, of course. Once the property and its estate had been acquired, it had to be refurbished, the purchase formalized and the operation financed. For that purpose, a Provincial Pro Caudillo Manor Board was created and presided over by Muñoz de Aguilar. Its members were drawn from the Provincial Council (Diputación) and several town halls, as well as local banking, the Chamber of Commerce and the Urban Property Chamber. In August, the deed was ratified before a notary and the Board acquired the manor, which was then donated to the caudillo. The refurbishment works, supervised by Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo, involved significant additional costs. Both the manor and its large estate underwent considerable remodelling and expansion, including the expropriation of adjoining properties in subsequent years.

FIGURE 4.2

Meirás Manor, Sada (A Coruña), July 2019. ©Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

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In December 1938, Franco decamped to Galicia. Perhaps with the intention of concealing his true purpose, he succeeded in persuading the Pope to decree a repeat of the Holy Year of Saint James of 1937 in order to ensure the jubilee in Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. He then took possession of his gift. On 5 December, the Pro Manor Board and A Coruña authorities presented the caudillo with the keys and a scroll which detailed the donation to the head of state. In reality, it concealed a gift to Franco as private owner, but it entailed its use as an official summer residence managed by public administration. In March 1940, the new National Heritage creation act required in theory the manor to be assigned to state ownership. To solve the question, Franco signed a new deed of sale that replaced the previous one, using a frontman for this, the banker Barrié de la Maza, who in May 1941 executed the contract of sale for the Meirás Manor before a Madrid notary. Meanwhile, the Pro Manor Board had ended in ruin. The collection method started in March 1938, a popular subscription calling on the citizens of A Coruña and Galicians to “demonstrate to the entire world the links uniting them in ad­ miration and gratitude towards the saviour of Spain”, had not provided the results hoped for. It was one of the various semi-voluntary charity collections typically undertaken by those who had overthrown democracy, which included several methods of coercion, such as the publication of list of “bad patriots” who had not made a small donation. However, even that did not ensure the collection of the amount required. The Board then fell back on a “proportional distribution” throughout all the municipalities of the A Coruña province, where each town council had to contribute the designated amount. Finally, a donation amount for the subscription (in some cases for a month, in others for a period of three or six months) was retained from the salaries of public employees as well as some private companies in the province of A Coruña. Someone, probably the banker Barrié de la Maza himself, added the rest. Between 1945 and 1975, the Meirás Manor served as the summer residence of the head of state. In the words of the British ambassador Samuel Hoare, it be­ came the “Berchtesgaden of the Spanish dictator”, a misty and peaceful place where Franco could engage with his interlocutors in a relaxed atmosphere.18 A number of 29 cabinet meetings, 30 official audiences and ambassadors’ receptions were held there. The regular stays of the caudillo and his family in the summer residence oscillated between three and four weeks per year.19 The costs for surveillance, maintenance and miscellaneous works on the site, as well as some extensions, were borne by the military and civil wings of the head of state headquarters, the Ministry of the Army, A Coruña Provincial Council and A Coruña town hall. The interior of the Manor was decorated with several artworks, as well as a stone calvary (cruceiro) which was donated by the city council of Pontevedra, and two statues originally taken from the Romanesque Portico of Glory in Santiago de Compostela cathedral, acquired by that city’s town hall and requisitioned improperly by Franco in 1954.20 Furthermore, Carmen Polo also obtained from Franco’s close friend Barrié de la Maza and the

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town hall of A Coruña the property of an eighteenth-century mansion, Cornide House, in order to have proper accommodation in the urban centre during her brief visits to the city. An auction was simulated for this purpose in order to disguise what it really was: “a direct allocation of assets that went from state property to the Caudillo”, as the logistics officer of Franco’s staff wrote. The maintenance of the mansion, used for receptions and events during Carmen Polo’s stays in the city, were paid out of the public coffers.21 Following the dictator’s death, the Meirás manor closed its doors during the summer. It would receive occasional visits by his widow, who was awarded the noble title of “Lady of Meirás” for life, alongside her daughter and grand­ children. Carmen Polo was still officially received in 1976 by the authorities, and the Spanish Exchequer paid for some of the Manor’s management expenses until 1980. Meirás was also the occasional venue for the weddings of Franco’s grandchildren, as reported in the tabloid magazines. It was never a site of worship or concentrations by the ultra-right, but for two decades, at the end of August every year, a local priest would say a mass in remembrance of Franco, attended by several dozen nostalgists. They included the conservative mayor of Sada from 1979 to 2007, Ramón Rodríguez-Ares, an admirer of the caudillo since when, as a young assistant in a pharmacy, he would take medicines to the Manor. In February 1978, a fire destroyed part of the building. According to the public version, a short circuit caused furniture and walls as well as some artworks to catch fire. Other theories suggest that it was a stratagem to sell these items abroad, which would compensate the Franco family for the property’s increasing maintenance costs. Then the former summer residence was shrouded once again in silence. Between 1977 and 1978, some cultural and left-wing nationalist entities proposed its expropriation and even that it become the headquarters of the future Galician Regional Government. The idea was reprised in 1981–1982 by A Coruña’s centre-liberal mayor, Joaquín López, who sought to strengthen the city’s potential to become the capital of the emerging Galician autonomous community by converting Meirás into the residence of the regional presidency. However, the proposal faced the opposition of several residents’ associations in the A Coruña area, and did not finally succeed.22

4.3 Dealing with Franco’s memory sites in the twenty-first century The period of Socialist government of prime minister José-Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, especially its first legislature (2004–2008), brought with it a renewed emphasis on the score-settling policies regarding the dictatorial past. The Socialist Party had included reparations for victims of the Civil War and Francoism in its electoral programme, as part of a larger project aimed at extending and enhancing citizens’ rights and democratic regeneration. The lack of an absolute majority in the Spanish parliament forced the PSOE to enter into a dialogue regarding these

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measures with left-wing parties, such as the United Left (Izquierda Unida, IU), the Catalan Eco-socialists of Iniciativa per Catalunya-Verds (ICV), the Catalan Proindependence Party (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC) and the Galician BNG. All these organizations conveyed to some extent the claims of memory grassroots activists, such as the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, ARMH). This movement had been active for five years, and initiated and promoted the exhumation of mass graves of victims of Francoist repression.23 The fate of the Valley of the Fallen was one of the points discussed by various draft laws presented by ICV and ERC in the parliament. In July 2006, the con­ clusions of the Interministerial Committee to study the situation of the Civil War and Francoism victims pointed out that the Cuelgamuros site, “the most important symbol of the Civil War and the dictatorship”, should undergo a threefold in­ tervention. The site should be managed by “the standards applied to other sites of worship and public cemeteries”; “acts of a political nature or exulting the Civil War” would be prohibited from taking place there, and its managing foundation should “enhance our knowledge of the Civil War and the post-war historical period”. It also recommended that the Valley should act as a site “to honour everyone who suffered from the tragic consequences of the war and dictatorship”. Furthermore, the Valley foundation should modify its by-laws to honour “the memory of all victims”, and promote “a culture of peace”.24 The recommendations of the commission were only in part applied by the Historical Memory Law passed the following year. In its article 16, the legal text stipulates that the Valley of the Fallen “shall be governed by the rules applicable to religious places and sites of worship”, and shall undertake “its depoliticization”, as well as prohibit “acts of a political nature” that exalt Francoism. The Valley’s managing foundation would have to include amongst its objectives “honouring and rehabilitating the memory of all those who perished as a result of the Civil War of 1936–1939 and the subsequent political repression”. Such an ambiguous wording, which did not include all the wishes of the memorialist movement, left aside some key issues. They included the transfer of the remains of José Antonio and Franco, as well as of the remains of the people buried in the Valley to those family members who requested this. Moreover, the deconsecration of the entire space (something that the Government and moderate Catalanists did not request, in order to avoid confrontation with the Catholic Church), and its full resignification in democratic terms, were postponed.25 As has been pointed out, the LMH was adequately applied in several areas. Almost all public effigies of the dictator were removed, especially the visible equestrian statues that had been inaugurated in several cities during the 1960s, as a tribute to the caudillo who had not only “pacified”, but also “modernized” Spain. Relevant town halls such as that of Valencia (1983) and Ferrol (2002) had agreed beforehand to remove the equestrian statues of the dictator from public spaces. Now the law also forced army barracks to do the same. Madrid (2005) and Zaragoza (2007) were followed by Santander (2008) and the North-African town

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Melilla (2010), as well as Barcelona, where the sculpture had been in place since 1963 in the courtyard of Montjuic castle. The majority of the statues ended up in warehouses or private spaces.26 There was one exception: the effigy in the port of Melilla erected in the democratic period, in 1978. The sculpture depicted Francisco Franco as an officer of the Spanish Foreign Legion and “saviour” of the city from the Moroccan rebels in 1921. This was the conservative local govern­ ment’s argument for not removing it until late February 2021.27 On the instructions of the Ministry of the Presidency, in May 2011 an experts’ commission was established and included historians, jurists and philosophers. Six months later, towards the end of Zapatero’s second presidency, the committee submitted a detailed report on the possible uses to which the Valley might be put. In spite of assessing the high costs of restoration and maintenance that would be required, they opted to “preserve and explain”, thus converting the Valley of the Fallen into a memorial site that would explain its history, symbols and original purpose from a critical perspective, covering the period of the Civil War and Francoism, focusing its narrative on the victims on both sides. The human remains should be identified where possible, thus re-asserting the public cemetery’s par­ ticular role as an ossuary. The body of José Antonio could remain, but without occupying a pre-eminent position. That of Franco, the only one who had not died during the conflict, would be removed. The legal regime of the Valley’s man­ agement should be changed through a specific law, and the agreement with the Catholic Church revised in order to regulate the role of the Benedictine com­ munity. Finally, the experts proposed architectural changes to the front esplanade to include a visitor interpretative centre, and for the names of all those buried there to be identified, as well as the forced labourers who built the Valley. In addition, a “meditation area of a civic character” should be included. One particular vote of three experts, amongst them the conservative law expert and former PP leader Miguel Herrero-Rodríguez de Miñón, expressed reservations about the transfer of Franco’s body, given that he was a head of state whose dignity had not been removed by law. This endeavour would also cause division amongst public opi­ nion: “a not irrelevant number of Spaniards would believe that the exhumation entails a discrediting of a long period of Spanish history”, while another part would disapprove of his remains being transferred “with the dignity befitting a Head of State”.28 The six-and-a-half years of conservative government of PP prime minister Mariano Rajoy (2011–2018) brought about an impasse in the implementation of the LMH. Without being repealed, most of its tenets were not put into practice due to a lack of budgetary allocation. However, several town halls and regional governments adhered to it through their own activities, or passed their own memory laws. The PP fell back on its traditional argument: oblivion and re­ conciliation. It was not the time to bring the past back to life, but to look towards the future and overcome the serious economic crisis. However, the return of the Left to power in June 2018 marked a new impulse for proactive policies of de­ mocratic memory. The definitive score settling with the dictatorial past was now

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led by the new Cabinet presided by the socialist Pedro Sánchez. This was part of a gesture politics to please his allies on the Left, but it also reflected the concerns of a new generation of PSOE leaders and members, who were much more committed with the necessity to definitively coming to terms with Francoism. On the one hand, the remains of Francisco Franco were exhumed from the Valley of the Fallen, following the decision taken by the Sánchez cabinet months before. It was an assertion of what had been unsuccessfully proposed in the par­ liament by the Left in 2013, and once again by the PSOE in February 2017, which proposed the resignification of the Valley by means of a memorial. Now the government resolved to put into practice one of the points of the LMH, for which it introduced an additional section in its article 16, which stipulated that “only the mortal remains of people who perished as a result of the Spanish Civil War may rest in the Valley of the Fallen, as a place of commemoration, remembrance and tribute to the victims of the war”. An additional provision detailed the procedure to be followed.29 Furthermore, it ordered the Holy Cross Foundation of the Valley of the Fallen to disclose its accounts. In the vote held in the parliament in September 2018, where there was yet to be any political representation by farright deputies, no vote was cast against initiative (except two conservative de­ puties, who claimed it was a mistake), with the abstention of both the PP and the young centre-liberal party Ciudadanos (Citizens, Cs). The Franco family lawyers opposed the transfer of the dictator’s remains, and filed several appeals that got as far as the High Court. If it were to go ahead, they would demand head of state honours and the re-inhumation of Franco beside his daughter, Carmen (who passed away in late 2017), in her husband’s family chapel in Almudena Cathedral, in the very centre of Madrid. This would have enabled its transformation into a centre of attraction for nostalgists. The executive managed to prevent this on the basis of public safety concerns. Given the refusal of his des­ cendants to propose an alternative place of burial, the Government decided to bury Franco in the family vault where his wife rested, in Mingorrubio. The culmination was the bizarre response from the prior of the Valley’s congregation, Santiago Cantera, an outspoken far-right winger who threatened to disrupt the exhumation by any means, even if rebuked by ecclesiastical authorities. The PP, Cs and the new far-right party Vox accused Sánchez of agitating Franco’s ghost as a political tactic before the November legislative elections, of digging up the hatreds of the Civil War and taking refuge in the past to conceal the country’s true economic problems.30 Following the final ruling by the High Court on 30 September, against the Franco family, the transfer took place on 24 October 2019. It was an act without head of state honours, although it was broadcast by several TV channels. The remains of the caudillo were removed and carried out of the basilica on the shoulders of his descendants and without any government representation, except the justice minister as chief notary of the state and two senior officials. Following the transfer to Mingorrubio by helicopter, barely a few dozen nostalgists, ac­ companied by the elderly colonel Antonio Tejero (one of the ringleaders of the

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failed military coup of February 1981), awaited the casket. However, no parlia­ mentary extreme-right leader was to be seen. In the family vault, the coffin was covered with the Francoist flag and a private funeral ceremony held. The Caudillo would not rest alone: several of his former ministers lie in the same cemetery, such as his right-hand between 1941 and 1973, Luis Carrero Blanco, and the president of the government from 1974 to 1976, Arias Navarro, as well as another dictator the Dominican Rafael-Leónidas Trujillo. That same day, prime minister Pedro Sánchez stated publicly that the Valley of the Fallen would symbolize something quite different in the future. There, now only “victims lie”, and his cabinet would do whatever necessary to end the “in­ famy” of the thousands of disappeared in mass graves, as well as the “moral affront” entailed by the “glorification of a dictator in a public space”. Franco’s exhumation would mean a final tribute to national reconciliation, both for the generation of those who fought each other in 1936 and those who in 1975–1978 decided to forget “as an act of concord”. The media coverage of the transfer attracted con­ siderable criticism, which described it as pure electioneering or a sort of implicit tribute to the former Generalísimo. However, although several conservative pub­ licists expressed their rejection of the transfer, right wingers in parliament preferred to swiftly forget about Franco and turn the page. On 20 November 2019, around a hundred members of the far-right and Franco Foundation gathered in the Valley of the Fallen to commemorate the death of the dictator with a mass. His corpse was no longer there but his ghost remained. In the evening, dozens of people laid wreaths in Mingorrubio cemetery. The family paid for a mass at a nearby church, which was replicated by another 24 churches all over Spain. However, not even the officiating parish priest made explicit reference to Franco in his homily, to the disgust of the diehards.31 Today, the future of the Valley of the Fallen is uncertain. The resignification of the site undoubtedly poses great inconveniences due to the overwhelming weight of the symbology evoking the victorious side in 1936–1939. Preserving it would require an important public investment due to damp and deterioration. The opinions of experts from different groups differ as much or even more than their counterparts in Portugal, Austria or Italy. The art historian Javier Arnaldo argued that the Valley should be resignified through an artistic intervention.32 The an­ thropologist Francisco Ferrándiz preferred the creation of a memorial and the dignifying of the victims, removing internal hierarchies amongst them and iden­ tifying those where still possible. The well-known historical memory activist and founder of the ARMH, Emilio Silva, proposed that the interpretative centre should be moved inside the basilica, which should be de-consecrated. Other historians of Francoism defended the resignification; the archaeologist Alfredo González Ruibal argued for a decisive architectural intervention that would alter key features of the site’s narrative, such as the cross and basilica.33 Unswerving in their attitude, the miscellaneous apostles of the far-right and Franco Foundation maintained that things should be left as they were.

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Few were in favour of abandoning the Valley of the Fallen and letting it crumble away and become a ruin. One of these was the prominent historian of Francoism and influential opinion maker Santos Juliá, who wrote in 2018 that “for the Valley of the Fallen, no resignification is possible other than that of a place in moral and material ruins”, as its megalomania could only embody “the same idea which it served as a symbol, that of the Catholic Nation of Spain in its triumph over the ‘vanquished and defeated anti-Spain’”.34 Letting it fall to pieces and a radical damnatio memoriae would be the best solution to a site whose ori­ ginal message was difficult to modify in any sense. The representatives of the association of family members of the Republicans buried at the Valley of the Fallen also came out against the resignification of the site, whilst it was “presided over by a great cross and with the Benedictine abbey”, which would mean nothing would change.35 Even if a comprehensive resignification were to take place in the mausoleum, an architectural intervention modifying its outdoor narrative and a comprehensive de-consecration of the site, the risk that the new Valley of the Fallen would continue to attract far-right supporters would not go away. The mausoleum no longer hosts the dictator. Still, it continues to be an atypical and gigantic necropolis. A gloomy rather than pharaonic monument: a “cathedral of death”.36 What should be done with the bodies? The poor state of the crypt’s conservation, due to leaks and overcrowding, has caused the coffins of the original columbaria to rot. The majority of the bodily remains have become mixed to­ gether. The Pro-Exhumation Family Members Group has proposed from 2011 a number of specific claims, all referring to the bodies of the Republican combatants transferred to the Valley without the consent of their families. The technical difficulties entailed by the individualization and identification of the remains, as forensic experts have pointed out, pose a problem for that right. Any long-term solution for the Valley should include the creation of a laboratory for identifying the bodies which could help families locate their relatives. The number of visits remained at a high level although less than previous decades. In 2017, a total of 283,227 people visited the Valley of the Fallen. The state secretary for democratic memory, a post held since 2020 by the modern historian Fernando Martínez, will decide on the matter. The most plausible scenario involves an international tender of ideas for the resignification of the Valley site, the agreement with the Catholic Church being revised and the legal status of the Foundation being modified. Following this, a public debate would undoubtedly begin that would be intense or at least similar to what has taken place in Italy or Austria. However, the discussion will not only focus on the dictator but will also be forced to address the divided memory of the Civil War. Meirás, for its part, returned to the news at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In 2007, the BNG gained control of Sada’s mayor’s office, with the support of other left-wing groups. The new mayor, Abel López Soto, proposed to discuss the return of the manor house to the public domain. A first step was to

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promote the declaration of Meirás Manor as a Cultural Heritage Site (Ben de Interese Cultural, BIC), under the protection of regional legislation. This would enable it to be opened for visits two days each month, force the Franco family to maintain it in a good state and guarantee the right of first refusal to the regional government, the Xunta of Galicia, in the event of the property being put on sale. At the end of December 2008, the Galician government, now ruled by a coalition of PSOE and BNG, agreed to declare the Meirás manor a BIC, a measure opposed at the time by the regional PP. In March 2011, Meirás Manor opened its doors for the first time to the public. However, no mechanism for the Spanish state to expropriate the manor was included in the LMH. From mid-2017, moreover, the Francisco Franco Foundation assumed the management of Meirás and expressed its intention to use it to highlight the “greatness” of the “most important Spaniard at a worldwide level since Philip II”.37 In parallel, some sectors of Galician civil society mobilized to secure the “re­ turn” of the Meirás manor to private property. In November 2004, the A Coruña Commission for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Comisión para a Recuperación da Memoria Histórica da Coruña, CRMHC) was set up. Its purpose was to claim the removal of Francoist symbology remaining in the city and its environs; the fol­ lowing year it organized a demonstration in front of Meirás Manor. Various events followed this to involve local and autonomous authorities, as well as research on the history of the expropriation of surrounding plots of land.38 At the beginning, the mobilizations encountered some resistance amongst the locals. Over time, social attitudes changed. In August 2008, the CRMHC organized a mock wed­ ding outside the Manor, whilst inside the marriage ceremony of a greatgranddaughter of the dictator took place.39 These actions were accompanied by annual marches on Meirás. On the fifth of these marches, held in November 2018, 29 organizations took part, from political parties and trade unions to residents’ associations and cultural groupings, as well as a well-known Deportivo da Coruña football club supporters’ association.40 The news that the Franco Foundation would assume management of Meirás was the cause of some social outrage. Even the strongly regionalist Galician PP, which had held the Xunta since 2009, was now in favour of taking action on the matter. The CRMHC intensified its activities, and both the current mayor of Sada, Benito Portela (who was close to the Galician left-wing and nationalist En Marea coalition) and A Coruña Provincial Council (governed by the PSOE and BNG) took the initiative. In August, the Provincial Council, in cooperation with the memorialist movement, created a working group of experts alongside in­ stitutional representatives from A Coruña University and several experts: the Board for the Return of the Manor. The historical and legal report that was submitted at the end of February 2018 highlighted the fake purchase from 1941, proposed its annulment and that the Manor be managed by National Heritage. However, the State Solicitor General’s Office gave a negative answer to the petition.

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Meanwhile, in September 2017 a unanimous decision by the Galician Parliament urged the regional government to create an experts’ committee to study the legal channels through which to return the Manor to the public domain at no cost. The committee included law experts from all three Galician uni­ versities, institutional representatives, from notary associations and property re­ gistrars, as well as some historians. After several meetings, the committee published its own historical and legal report at the end of June 2018. The approach proposed was based on the concept of usucaption or acquisitive prescription: the fact that the Manor had exercised public functions as the summer headquarters of the head of state, and that its maintenance came under the public treasury for 37 years, provided grounds for the state to reclaim its ownership as public heritage.41 At the beginning of July 2018, the Galician parliament unanimously decided to support the decision to urge the Spanish government to initiate action for recovery for the property of the “Meirás towers”, adopting the conclusions of the experts’ report. The return of the PSOE to government in Madrid from June strengthened the expectation that the action would be successful. In July 2019, the State Solicitor’s General Office submitted a claim in a Coruña court against the Franco family, whose arguments were based mostly on the conclusions of the experts’ report.42 The trial hearing took place in July 2020 and a final verdict reached in early September that year,which ordered Franco’s descendants to return Meirás to the Spanish State.43 A final decision by the Supreme Court is still pending. Meanwhile, the owners of the Manor have filed lawsuits against local activists and historians for libel, and also against 19 members of the BNG, who unfurled a

FIGURE 4.3

Demonstration at Meirás Manor, 19 November 2005. ©La Voz de Galicia

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banner at the Manor in July 2017 demanding it be returned to public heritage. An interdisciplinary experts' committee was set up in January 2021, in order to decide over the re-semanticization of the Meirás site in the near future. However, in Galician society today there is a high level of consensus regarding the social le­ gitimacy of the recovery of Meirás Manor for the public domain. The public use of the Manor will only be discussed once this has been achieved. In this case, there is a comparative advantage: its walls not only host the ghost of Franco but also possess a prior history as a site of cultural memory associated with the writer Pardo Bazán, part of whose library is still located in one of the towers. Still, there are proposals to transform the Manor into a literary site of memory, obscuring the Franco years as a form of oblivion.44

4.4 The little Caudillos: Falangist leaders and Franco generals Only José Antonio Primo de Rivera and spaces linked to his short life (1903–1936) could rival the posthumous memory of Franco. However, the cult of the absent, following his re-inhumation in the Valley, tended to decline during the transition to democracy and the subsequent years. The fact that the anniversary of his death coincided with that of the Caudillo caused his cult to be eclipsed even further. In addition to separate masses for the soul of the Falangist leader every 20 November at the Valley of the Fallen, there is a plaque on the birth house of José Antonio, located at Génova Street in Madrid. It includes the relief of an angel with a helmet, coat of arms and shining star recalling the event. On the day of the centenary of his birth (24 April 3003), a group of neo-Falangists gathered before the property. Since then, small rallies have taken place on significant dates in front of the house, as well as at the place where José Antonio’s law firm was located.45 Some other early fascist leaders, all of whom died in the first weeks or months of the Civil War, are a similar case. Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, founder of the Councils of the National-Syndicalist Offensive (Juntas de Ofensiva NacionalSindicalista, JONS), a group that heralded in 1931 the development of Spanish Fascism, was assassinated at the end of October 1936 in Madrid. His remains rested next to those of other victims of revolutionary violence in the Martyrs of Aravaca graveyard (outskirts of Madrid). Each year, his tomb receives regular tributes from neo-Falangist minority groups, who see in Ledesma an exponent of true Spanish fascism, whose revolutionary roots were not uncontaminated by Francoism. Another example is that of Onésimo Redondo, a JONS leader and later on of the Falange, whose popularity in Valladolid and other Castilian provinces rivalled that of Primo de Rivera. He was killed in a shoot-out with anarchist militia in Labajos (Segovia) at the end of July 1936. In commemoration of the 25th anni­ versary of his death, in July 1961, a commemorative monument was inaugurated at a hill looking over the city of Valladolid. Since the 1980s, the site was in a state of abandon, and several residents’ associations in a neighbouring area demanded its demolition. However, it was not removed until January 2016, when it was

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transferred to the Historical Memory Document Centre in the city of Salamanca.46 The mortal remains of Redondo were inhumed in June 1941 in a granite mausoleum presiding over the “noble area” of El Carmen cemetery, where the remains of several celebrities from Valladolid rest, and 50 metres from the mass graves containing the bodies of dozens of local citizens executed by the military insurgents in 1936. As with the memorial erected in Labajos, the pantheon is the usual scene of modest far-right gatherings on 24 July each year, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of Redondo. The participants follow a route from the mausoleum to the hill and place of death. In the birth house of the so-called Castile’s caudillo, located in the village of Quintanilla de Onésimo (a name still in use), there is a commemorative plaque; the main square also bears the name of Redondo and is the scene of occasional Falange gatherings.47 Franco was named Generalísimo by his peers (there is no rank of marshal in the Spanish army) on 1 October 1936. Although he was not the only or most no­ torious military leader of the July uprising, the cult to his leadership during the dictatorship completely eclipsed the memory of the other coup generals; none of them would overshadow him in death either. In spite of this, the reopening of the public debate on the transfer of Franco’s remains contributed to highlighting that in democratic Spain some coup generals’ tombs remained in pre-eminent places. Specifically, two memorial spaces located at religious sites with restricted access, although at times within publicly owned buildings. They did not receive massive tributes, and neither became relevant for nostalgists. However, they were the subject of regular masses and events of a commemorative nature by family members and acolytes, grouped for their most part in religious brotherhoods and fraternities. The mobilization of some historical memory associations spurred on some left-wing media and town halls.48 This was the case with the generals José Sanjurjo (died in a plane crash in July 1936) and Emilio Mola (also died in a plane crash in June 1937). Their remains were placed in 1961 in the crypt of the Monument to the Fallen in Pamplona, a sturdy mausoleum inaugurated in 1942 to remember the 4,500 Navarrese soldiers, almost all of them Carlist volunteers, who died on the Francoist side during the conflict. The local political hegemony of the strongly conservative regional party UPN (Navarrese People’s Union, close to PP) ensured silence regarding the monument. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the building became an exhibition centre, and some Francoist symbols were removed from its façade. In 2016, Pamplona town hall, now with a Basque left-wing nationalist mayor and supported by a majority of councillors (17 out of 27, with UPN as opposi­ tion), decided to close the crypt, as part of a wider project to resignify the building, which also included an urban redevelopment of its surroundings. Between October and November 2016, the remains of Mola and Sanjurjo were handed over to their families, as was the case with the other five sets of remains in the crypt, which represented each of the Navarre districts. The judicial appeal filed by

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a daughter of Sanjurjo was dismissed by the Navarrese High Court two years later. However, the Brotherhood of Volunteer Knights of the Cross (Hermandad de Caballeros Voluntarios de la Cruz), founded after 1939 by Carlist war veterans, held regular masses in the crypt on the 19th of each month in tribute to their fallen and the coup generals.49 Subsequently, the mayor’s office called on a competition for the re-semanticization of the Monument to the Fallen. Overall 48 proposals were received, of which 7 were selected by an international jury and subjected to public scrutiny between February and March 2019. A project proposed the demolition of the site, leaving only a “poetic space of commemoration”. The other six suggested the resignification of the area, reconditioning its urban surroundings. One of them proposed creating in Pamplona a network of urban sites of memory; another two opted for a museum or a visitor interpretative centre; another proposed a utilitarian use by municipal services; the fifth recommended that the building could house a library and a “conflict mediation centre”. The final proposal suggested turning the monument into a cultural centre for concerts and exhibitions. However, some local historians stated that any resemanticization was impossible, as the management of the monument by the Brotherhood of Knights had been an affront to the victims of Francoist repression, and many of those to whom tribute was paid had been the perpetrators.50 In May 2019, the victory of the centre-right (a coalition between UPN, PP and Cs Navarra suma, Navarre adds up) in the local elections contributed to cooling the debate on the monument. Furthermore, the Navarrese Administrative Court admitted the appeal filed by two authors of rejected proposals in the final phase of the ideas competition, due to procedural errors in the jury’s decision.51 Both the current mayor, who belongs to UPN, and his council group are in favour of an urban redevelopment of the site, as well as the resignification of the monument, which would continue to be an exhibition hall, depending on the cost.52 The Navarrese debate, today at a standstill, represents a prelude to what will be the debate on the future of the Valley of the Fallen and, perhaps, of the Meirás Manor. The tomb of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, the charismatic and ruthless leader of the military uprising of July 1936 in the city of Seville, has been located, since his death (1951), in a chapel of the Virgin of Macarena Basilica in Seville, a temple inaugurated in 1949 through public subscription backed by Queipo himself and presided over by the Macarena Brotherhood (Hermandad de la Macarena). His removal was requested from the end of the twentieth century by several memory groups, and the Brotherhood took some steps: the original en­ graving that referred to the date of the uprising (18 July 1936) disappeared from the tomb. Two years later, the image of the Virgin of Macarena ceased to bear the sash of honour, donated by Queipo, on the processions. The exhumation, se­ conded by several civic memory associations, was finally ordered in July 2016 by a plenary session of Seville town hall after being proposed by IU, with the ab­ stention of Cs and the opposition of the PP. As well as referring to Canon Law (in theory, only bishops, cardinals or pontiffs may be buried in sacred places), Queipo’s role in the brutal repression of July–August 1936 was also cited. The

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local right-wing parties and the general’s family opposed the measure, arguing that the tomb is located in a temple. The members of the Brotherhood were divided in that respect. Furthermore, several “anti-fascist watches” took place before the basilica, organized by memory activists. The lack of regulatory development of the Andalusia’s Historical Memory Law, passed by the regional assembly in 2017, was a further stumbling block. The final consensus solution between the descendants of Queipo de Llano, the Brotherhood’s leadership, the regional institutions and the Spanish Ministry of Justice consisted in transferring the remains of the general to the columbarium for members of the Brotherhood, which is being built inside the sacristy and whose completion is expected in April 2020. The tomb that is the cause of so much disagreement would not be on public display and would therefore cease to cause controversy.53 Another case where the cult of the memory of a Francoist general was closely linked to religious fraternities is that of General José-Enrique Varela. A major figure of the military uprising of 1936, he was buried, upon his death in 1951, in the family mausoleum located at the local cemetery of San Fernando (Cádiz). Every Good Friday, the descendants of the general placed the two Saint Ferdinand medals awarded to Varela (the highest military decorations in the Spanish army) upon the breast of the image of Our Lady of Solitude. As members of the religious fraternity devoted to that virgin, they also enjoyed the privilege of joining the party at the head of the processions. The imposing equestrian statue of General Varela, inaugurated in 1946, still resides in the San Fernando Square in the city centre. The remains of other well-known generals of Franco, such as Andrés Saliquet, Alfredo Kindelán and Agustín Muñoz-Grandes (the first commander-in-chief of the Spanish Volunteers “Blue” Division on the Eastern front in 1941–1942) rest in individual tombs in local cemeteries and go unnoticed. The most notorious figure is undoubtedly Muñoz Grandes, who was also army minister (1951–1970) and vice-president of the government (1962–1967). His funeral in Madrid was at­ tended by some thousands of people, most of them veterans of the Russian front. His modest sepulchre in Carabanchel cemetery, located in a popular neighbour­ hood of Madrid, receives occasional tributes from the Blue Division Veterans Brotherhoods, and has also been vandalized on several occasions by left-wing activists.54 One exception is the tomb of General José Moscardó, the so-called hero of the siege of the Alcázar of Toledo (July–September 1936), who was inhumed since 1956 in the crypt of the historical site of the Alcázar (fortress) of Toledo, the Army Museum headquarters since 2009. The remains of General Jaime Milans del Bosch, one of the leaders of the coup d’état of 23 February 1981 also rest there, amongst others. He had also been a defender of the Alcázar in the summer of 1936, when he was a young cadet. Both are members of the Brotherhood of the Alcázar, a religious fraternity comprising survivors and descendants of those who resisted the siege of 1936. The Brotherhood regularly holds masses in

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remembrance of the “fallen heroes” of the Alcázar, as well as one in remembrance of Moscardó every September.55 Several local memory activists have criticized the periodical ceremonies exalting the Franco regime that take place in the masses in the crypt, as well as the fact that several features of the permanent exhibition on the siege of the Alcázar have hardly changed since 1975, presenting a one-sided view of the events. Furthermore, the name of Juan A. Vallejo-Nágera, a psy­ chiatrist who upheld a Spanish version of Nazi biological racism, still appears in the gallery of illustrious military scientists of the Spanish army. Although the Alcázar of Toledo is state property, until now the Spanish Ministry of Defence has ignored the matter.

Notes 1 For an introduction, see Aguilar Fernández (2009) and Encarnación (2014, 2020), as well as Juliá (2006). See also Rodrigo (2013), and Bernecker & Brinkmann (2009). 2 See Duch (2014) and Ranzato (2007). 3 The term “Historical Memory Law” actually refers to the “Law 52/2007 that re­ cognises and broadens the rights and establishes measures in favour of those who suf­ fered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship”; see Ley 52/ 2007, de 26 de diciembre, por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura, in Boletín Oficial del Estado, 27 December 2007, available at https://www.boe.es/eli/es/l/2007/ 12/26/52/con. On the political debates surrounding its drafting and parliamentary discussion, see Juliá (2017: 574–586). 4 “Ferrol: víctima de un expolio que llega aún a nuestros días”, El Correo Gallego, 23 September 2019. 5 It also seems to be invisible for local historians. See, for example, Cardesín (2007). 6 R. Pita Parada, “El destierro de Franco cumple 15 años”, La Voz de Galicia, 4 July 2017; Cardesín (2003). 7 See K. Marín, “Ayer se abrió el Museo del Pardo”, El País, 4 August 1976; López Marsá (2010). 8 O.L. Belategui, “El naufragio del Azor”, Hoy, 9 August 2009; “Fernando Sánchez Castillo convierte el Azor en una obra de arte”, El Periódico, 23 January 2012. See also the description of his work by Sánchez Castillo himself, at https://vimeo.com/ 128305399. 9 See for more information Sueiro (1976), Olmeda (2009), Calleja (2009), Ferrándiz (2011), Stockey (2013), Rodrigo (2019) and Marimon & Solé (2019). 10 Sueiro (1976: 17–18). 11 See Moreno Luzón & Núñez Seixas (2017: 238–292), as well as Box (2010). 12 The so-called national subscription, a tax imposed on the earnings of all workers in the insurgent zone throughout the civil war, would be its initial source of finance. Subsequently, from 1952 the profits from a draw in the National Lottery which was held each 5 May were added to this. 13 See Olmeda (2009: 170–207) and Marimon & Solé (2019: 66–76). The family members of those executed in Lleida province by the Republicans, who rested in a mausoleum in the local cemetery, were also opposed to the transfer, with the support of local leaders of the single-party regime. 14 Quoted by Franco Salgado-Araújo (1976: 239). 15 See Sueiro (1976: 265–267), Olmeda (2009: 229–235, 252–263, 322–325) and Thomàs (2017: 415–417).

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16 See F. Mercado, “El Valle de los Caídos, un complejo de difícil despolitización y costoso mantenimiento” and id., “El prior de la abadía aboga por la ‘neutralidad’ del Valle”, El País, 26 July 1983; D. Sueiro, “Cuelgamuros, un desafío imposible”, El País, 26 July 1983. 17 See Babío Urkidi & Pérez Lorenzo (2017; 2019). 18 Hoare (1946: 220–221). 19 Grandío Seoane (2019). 20 See more information in F. Prado-Vilar, “Os profetas do Pórtico e a cultura galega: unha viaxe que non cesa”, April 2020, available at http://consellodacultura.gal/ especiais/mestre-mateo/. 21 See A. Narváez, “La histórica Casa Cornide de A Coruña, ¿cómo acabó siendo de los Franco?”, El Español, 8 September 2019; Babío Urkidi and Pérez Lorenzo (2017: 271–275). 22 Babío Urkidi & Pérez Lorenzo (2017: 323–346). 23 See Ferrándiz (2014), Encarnación (2014: 158–186) and Hristova (2016). 24 See Olmeda (2009: 396–414, 423–427); Informe general de la Comisión Interministerial para el estudio de la situación de las víctimas de la guerra civil y del franquismo, 28 July 2016, available at http://www.todoslosnombres.org/sites/default/files/documento7_0.pdf. 25 See the manifesto Trece puntos mínimos para el debate de la Ley de Memoria, at http://www. multiforo.eu/Archivos_Historia/13Puntos.htm. 26 See De Andrés (2005), as well as J. González Úbeda, “¿Dónde están las estatuas que honraban a Franco?”, Público, 17 December 2017. 27 “La última estatua de Franco se resiste a morir”, La Información, 4 August 2010. The president of the autonomous city of Melilla, Juan J. Imbroda (PP), reiterated in 2010 that the statue paid tribute to the Foreign Legion, whose deployment “more than eighty years ago” under Franco’s command had enabled Melilla “to remain forever Spanish”. 28 Informe de la Comisión de Expertos sobre el Futuro del Valle de los Caídos, Ministry of Presidency, Madrid 2011 (available at https://www.elindependiente.com/wp-content/ uploads/2018/03/informe_expertos_valle_caidos.pdf). 29 See https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2018–11836#au. 30 Concerning the different stages of this process, see G. Gómez Bravo, “Franco y el Tribunal Supremo: ¿error o revisionismo deliberado?”, El Confidencial, 7 June 2019, and also the dossier “La tumba del dictador”, 24 September 2019, available at https:// conversacionsobrehistoria.info/2019/09/24/la-tumba-del-dictador/. 31 See “20-N, la soledad de Franco en su nueva sepultura y misa con polémica”, El Mundo, 21 November 2019; “Vivas a Franco en el primer 20-N sin su mausoleo”, El País, 21 November 2019. 32 J. Arnaldo, “¿Qué hacer con el Valle de los Caídos?”, El País, 20 July 2018. 33 “¿qué hacemos con el Valle de los Caídos?”, El Español, 18 June 2018. 34 S. Juliá, “Valle de los Caídos”, El País, 4 November 2018. 35 P. Martínez Varela, “No hay resignificación posible en el Valle”, El País, 31 August 2018. 36 T. Montero, “Una catedral de la muerte”, Deia, 13 May 2019. 37 Babío Urkidi & Pérez Lorenzo (2017: 346–350); S.R. Pontevedra, “La Fundación Franco mostrará la ‘grandeza’ del dictador en Meirás”, El País, 2 August 2017. 38 See Monge (2010). 39 See the video of this event at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-_eTehKQ4. 40 See Souto (2019) and Treglown (2014: 87–93). 41 Informe da Comisión de Expertos nomeada pola Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria da Xunta de Galicia, en cumprimento da resolución do Parlamento de Galicia, sobre as posibilidades de incorporar ao patrimonio público a propiedade das “Torres de Meirás”, Santiago de Compostela, June 2018 (author’s archive). 42 Busto Lago (2019).

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43 See S. Pontevedra, “Spanish Judge Tells Franco’s Heirs to Return Summer Residence”, El País, 2 September 2020, available at https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/202009-02/spanish-judge-tells-francos-heirs-to-return-summer-residence.html?rel=listapoyo. 44 As pointed out by the historian Ramón Villares, “Pazo de Meirás. Un truncado lugar de memoria”, Los Domigos de la Voz, 12 December 2001. See also id., “Cara outro Meirás”, La Voz de Galicia, 4 September 2020. The debate is alive at the beginning of 2021. See Babío & Pérez Lorenzo (2020), as well as X. M. Núñez Seixas, 'Lugares de memoria, lugares de los dictadores', El País, 27 January 2021. 45 R. Escudero, “Génova, 24–26: la manzana de la infamia”, 17 April 2019; https://www. lamarea.com/2019/04/17/genova-24–26-la-manzana-de-la-infamia/. On 24 November 2019, the Falange and its sympathizers marched from the birth house of José Antonio to his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen; see https://www.elmundofinanciero.com/noticia/ 84811/sociedad/la-falange-convoca-una-manifestacion-por-la-unidad-nacional.html. 46 “Onésimo Redondo se despide de Valladolid”, El Norte de Castilla, 1 February 2016; http://mceaje.blogspot.com/2018/07/homenaje-onesimo-redondo-de-la-juventud.html. 47 “Fosas comunes a la sombra de mausoleos falangistas”, El Norte de Castilla, 21 July 2016. 48 A. Torrús, “¿Dónde están los restos mortales de los principales golpistas de 1936?”, Público, 15 November 2016; P. Viñas, “Las otras tumbas incómodas de la dictadura”, El Correo, 13 October 2019. 49 “Pamplona deja de honrar a los golpistas del 18 de julio”, Público, 16 November 2016; “La Justicia avala las exhumaciones de los generales golpistas Mola y Sanjurjo del Monumento a los Caídos de Pamplona”, Público, 15 January 2019. See also Caspistegui (2020: 288-290). 50 “Derribar los Caídos o mantenerlo”, Pamplona Actual, 9 February 2019; J.M. Alonso, “Los Caídos de Pamplona: ¿derribado? ¿un museo de San Fermín? ¿Lugar de con­ ciertos?”, El Confidencial, 8 February 2019; Ateneo Basilio Lacort, “La ‘resignificación’ imposible e improbable”, nuevatribuna.es, 9 April 2019. 51 “Adiós a las propuestas para transformar los Caídos: anulan el acuerdo del jurado del concurso de ideas”, Navarra.com, 11 December 2019. 52 “Navarra Suma plantea mantener el edificio de los Caídos y reurbanizar la zona”, Diario de Navarra, 29 January 2020. 53 See “La basílica de la Macarena acepta retirar los restos de Queipo de Llano”, El País, 18 July 2018; “Comunicado oficial de la Hermandad de la Macarena”, 17 July 2018, at https:// www.hermandaddelamacarena.es/2018/07/comunicado-oficial-de-la-hermandad/; “Los re­ stos de Queipo de Llano serán trasladados tras Semana Santa”, El Correo, 22 February 2020. 54 For example, in February 2015: “Así ha quedado la tumba del capitán general, jefe de la División Azul y ministro de Franco tras el ataque antifascista”, El Confidencial Digital, 19 February 2015. 55 See F. Bravo, “Si Franco sale del Valle de los Caídos, ¿pueden salir Moscardó y Milans del Bosch del Alcázar de Toledo?”, El Diario.es, 23 August 2018; L. Rodríguez, “¿Qué pasará con el Valle de los Caídos del Alcázar toledano?”, El Plural.com, 7 August 2018.

5 THE SITES OF THE COMMUNIST DICTATORS

The panorama of twentieth century communist dictatorships in which the cult of the dictator’s personality placed a crucial role is equally diverse. Outside Europe, there are still highly interesting cases for analysts: North Korea or, with differing nuances, the Cuba of Fidel (and Raúl) Castro. There are still Communist or postCommunist regimes that, like Vietnam and China, have grown into softer and modernizing authoritarian systems, without undergoing a genuine change of political regime. In Europe, on the other hand, that evolution was very different. Between 1988–1989 and 1991, all the communist regimes disappeared, some though a process of peaceful transition, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland or Hungary, and others through violent transitions and even civil wars and ethnic cleansing, such as Yugoslavia or in the Caucasus. In the large majority of popular republics created in central-eastern Europe after the Second World War, leaders with a charisma mostly constructed on the basis of power emerged along the lines of the Soviet model, and were also exalted as restorers of national sovereignty against Nazism and Fascism, and as constructors of socialism. Some of them, like Walther Ulbricht in the German Democratic Republic (1949–1971), or Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania (1946–1965), remained in power for a long time, whether as general secretaries of communist (or unified so­ cialist) parties, or as prime ministers and presidents, and survived the de-Stalinization of the 1950s. Others, such as Mátyás Rákosi in Hungary (1947–1956), were removed from power amidst the political tensions that followed the death of Stalin. The de facto dictator of Poland between 1946 and 1956, Bolesław Bierut, passed away before losing power, as did Georgi Dimitrov, the strong man of Bulgaria between 1946 who died unexpectedly in 1949. It was also the case with the Czech Communist leader Klement Gottwald, president of Czhecoslovakia between 1948 and 1953. Often caricatured as “little Stalins”, all these leaders imitated to greater or lesser degrees the model of leader cult they saw in Stalinism, even appearing in the

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shadow of the Soviet dictator. When they died, stadiums, avenues and even cities were baptized in their names, both in their own countries and in other socialist states in Europe, America and Asia. There are Dimitrov neighbourhoods in distant places such as Maputo (Mozambique) and Managua (Nicaragua). The tombs of the majority of the aforementioned Communist dictators, however, did not become centres of pilgrimage. The regimes founded by them continued their existence with new leaders and new styles of leadership, which in some cases, such as that of Nicolae Ceauşescu, merely exacerbated the inherited personality cult.1 Only in three cases was there a funeral cult similar to that of Stalin and Lenin, whose embalming and conservation technique in sealed mausoleums was exported by the USSR to other Communist countries: an authentic socialist knowledge transfer.2 Georgi Dimitrov, whose long career as an exile in the 1930s and as a leader of the Communist International had earned him some international re­ nown, died in Moscow in 1949, which led many to speculate as to whether he had been eliminated by Stalin, who was jealous of his Bulgarian comrade’s popularity. His body was immediately embalmed by the specialists who had attended to Lenin’s tomb and repatriated to Sofia, where a temple with Doric columns was hurriedly erected in a central square in order to house the mausoleum, inaugurated in December of that year. The memorial temple was therefore turned into a nerve centre for the massive events and commemorative ceremonies of the Bulgarian state, as well as a place of pilgrimage for visitors, many of them summer holi­ daymakers, from the Soviet block and other communist countries. With the fall of the Communist regime, the Dimitrov mausoleum began to be vandalized, leading to its closure in 1990; Dimitrov’s remains were incinerated and re-inhumed in the city’s central cemetery, whilst the square, beside the National Museum, was named after the first prince of an independent Bulgaria in 1878. After almost ten years of abandonment, the memorial was blown up in August 1999 and its remains completely removed. The site today is unrecognisable and serves as a garden and location for public celebrations; however, the “presence of the absence” remained present in the memory of inhabitants of Sofia, who for decades continued to meet “opposite the mausoleum”, even though it no longer existed.3 The remains of Klement Gottwald were also embalmed and placed in a mausoleum situated next to an emblematic monument, dedicated to the Czech medieval hero, Jan Žizka, commander of the Hussite army in 1420, on Vítkov hill, located in a suburb of Prague. It was mostly built during the inter-war period as a sort of national Czech pantheon. Now, the nationalist character of the socialist regime, as a restorer of the Czechoslovak independence lost in 1938, was strongly highlighted. The new mausoleum also stood on the site dedicated up to then to the founding father of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Tomáš Masaryk (who died in 1937), and also contained several leading figures of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ). However, in 1962, the party officially decreed the end of the per­ sonality cult. The remains of Gottwald and those of his comrades were incinerated and re-inhumed in a mass grave of Prague’s Olsany cemetery. His tomb is tended to today by the minority Community Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which

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organizes periodical rallies and modest tributes. For its part, in 2012, the gov­ ernment of the post-communist Czech Republic inaugurated in the former mausoleum of the communist leaders in Vítkov a permanent exhibition offering a critical vision of the personality cult in the country’s recent past.4 In Romania, the deceased dictator Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was given a similar treatment: his inhumation in a mass pantheon which in turn had a prior patriotic significance. The mortal remains of Gheorghiu-Dej were therefore placed following his death in 1965 in the mausoleum or pantheon of patriotic heroes, located in Liberty Square (today Carol I Square) in Bucharest’s centre, inaugurated fourteen months beforehand. The remains of other communist leaders would also be laid to rest there. In 1991, the Romanian government removed the symbology alluding to the Communist period, as well as the bodies of all those buried beneath the former regime, including Gheorghiu-Dej, who was re-inhumed in the nearby cemetery at Bellu. Other bodies, however, remained at the site until the beginning of the twenty-first century, since they were not claimed by any family member. Meanwhile, in 2004 the Orthodox Church launched a campaign to demolish the memorial and build a cathedral over its remains. However, public opinion was against the project and expressed a preference for resignifying the monument. The consensus solution imposed was to turn the area into a patriotic site of memory dedicated to all Romanian soldiers killed in both World Wars. From 1991, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier was transferred to the park and placed opposite the mausoleum, which strengthened its resignification as a site of national reconciliation. In spite of this, budget shortfalls have prevented until now the complete alteration of the space, where the shadow of the past remains present. As in Sofía, for some Bucharest residents it continues to be the “Communist mausoleum”.5 The intention of this study is not to analyze the full cast of “little Stalins” but to focus specifically on four cases, those where the national version of so-called real socialism took on very specific characteristics, amongst them a strong dose of nationalism and the personality cult of the dictator, whose charisma was con­ structed from a position of power. This is the Soviet Union during the long period of Joseph Stalin’s rule (1924–1953), and its subsequent management by postSoviet Russia, and similarly his native Georgia; the Albania of the long-lived Stalinist satrap Enver Hoxha (1944–1985); the Romania of Nicolae Ceauşescu (1967–1989), which from the 1970s was characterized by a peculiar combination of heterodoxy in foreign policy, and of an iron grip and ultra-conservatism in its domestic policy; and, finally, the socialist Yugoslavia of Marshall Josip Broz Tito (1945–1980), whose regime of non-dogmatic workers’ management and in­ dependent foreign policy of non-alignment was combined with an intense per­ sonality cult of the partisan leader. Tito was seen as an eternal father of the country and the guarantor of unity between the southern Slavs. In all these cases, to greater or lesser extents, the initial repudiation of the figure of the dictator during the first period of the transition to democracy and the market economy gave way, towards the end of the 1990s, to a certain nostalgia for the certainties and communitarian values prevalent during the period of real socialism.

The sites of the Communist dictators

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Many citizens, unable to adapt to the socio-political and cultural changes of the change of regime, now saw better times and reference models in Communist re­ gimes. Above all in Russia, but also in other countries, which went on to harbour a more benign image of the autocrats of the past.6

5.1 Stalin: Between nostalgia and tourism 5.1.1 Russia: From tyrant to great military leader Joseph Stalin died suddenly from a stroke at his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow in March 1953. The circumstances of his decease were somewhat bizarre and the result of the overwhelming climate of terror created around him. Stalin lay un­ conscious for hours without been attended to, as his guards did not dare enter his rooms during what they imagined was a prolonged sleep by the dictator. Once discovered, the medical attention he received was poor, in part due to the con­ sequences of the great purge that took place months before amongst the corps of medical practitioners, accused of conspiracy in the service of world Jewry. The Soviet state underwent a great demonstration of grief, observed by millions of citizens throughout the territory of the USSR. The body of the dictator was embalmed, put on public display for three days in the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions, near Red Square (where Lenin’s body had also been dis­ played in 1924), and transferred to a massive funeral cortege through the streets of Moscow, during which an avalanche caused an undisclosed number of deaths. Finally, Stalin’s corpse was placed next to that of Lenin in the Red Square mausoleum which had been inaugurated in 1929. Throughout Soviet territory, public mourning ceremonies multiplied and were attended by thousands of people; many of them, including many a victim, wept inconsolably.7 The day following the dictator’s death, the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) agreed to build in the near future a pantheon to honour eternally the great figures of USSR history. For such a purpose, several renowned Soviet architects conceived of different projects, in­ spired by classical Greece, imperial Rome and even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. However, in the subsequent months, the remembrance of Stalin was managed in the Soviet public sphere with growing discretion. During the deStalinization process undertaken by Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, and on the basis of his consolidation in power, the plan to build the pantheon was avoided. Instead, great public works and social housing building projects were given absolute priority. Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin’s “personality cult” as one of his greatest mistakes, in addition to his crimes, made public in the 20th CPSU Congress held in February 1956, did not sit easily with the posthumous veneration of the dictator. The dilemma was obvious: what should be done with Stalin’s corpse, located beside the embalmed body of Lenin, the founder and unquestionable icon of the USSR?

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The final decision would be delayed for several years. It was an expression of Khrushchev’s fears of setting too swift a pace for the thaw or de-Stalinization, as the responses from the rank and file of the CPSU and other Eastern-European Communist parties, as well as a good part of the population, to the condemna­ tion of the personality cult, were exceedingly contradictory. The slogan was maintained at all times that it was the party and not its leaders and members who wrote its history and mapped out its course. Ultimately, following the decision taken by the 22nd CPSU Congress in October 1961, and in order to put an end to the “dissatisfaction” and even dishonour that Lenin’s mummy would endure in having to share its space with a tyrant and criminal, the Kremlin signalled the start of the second wave of de-Stalinization through the so-called operation mausoleum: the transfer of Stalin’s remains. His embalmed body was retired discreetly from the Red Square mausoleum on the night of 31 October 1961, and was inhumed a few dozen metres away in the necropolis located in the nearby Kremlin wall. The new burial place was located in a memorial space that harked back to the days after the October 1917 revolution, when the remains of 240 pro-Bolshevik victims were laid to rest there. Over the following decades, the bodies of dozens of political leaders, Heads of State and senior USSR military officials, as well as dis­ tinguished cosmonauts, writers and scientists would be added to these: a sort of provisional national vault.8 Although some intellectuals and leaders then proposed to

FIGURE 5.1

Stalin’s admirers, 21 December 2015, Moscow. @Sergei Ilnitsky

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distinguish and symbolically highlight the grave of the victor in the “Great Patriotic War” of 1941–1945, marking it out from the rest of those buried there installing before it a permanent guard of honour, the initiative did not prosper. The Georgian dictator became just one more of several Soviet ex-leaders and outstanding figures, and was condemned to almost anonymity disguised as level­ ling by the rank and file, to be just one more amongst several of Lenin’s successors and the heroes of 1917. In fact, Stalin’s tomb was located amongst the two Soviet leaders who were almost unknown to the great public, Mikhail A. Suslov and Mikhail Kalinin, and soon fell into discreet oblivion. Only a minority of the thousands of daily visitors who went to pay tribute to Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet State, would walk a few dozen metres further to do the same with his successor. It would not be until the twentieth anniversary of the victory of the Second World War, in 1965, that an austere bust was added to Stalin’s tomb.9 The discourse of Soviet public memory during the Khrushchev era (1953–1964) avoided treating Stalin, who was portrayed as a ruthless autocrat, in a way similar to that of the founding father par excellence of the USSR, Lenin. Conversely, the contrast between the latter, a revolutionary and visionary, and Stalin, a tyrannical and bloody conspirator, was repeatedly highlighted. This is a difference that otherwise recent historiography on the Soviet revolution has re­ lativized considerably. However, although public memory of the Georgian dic­ tator was immersed in a dense silence, this was not the reason why he fell into utter oblivion. This was reflected in the conspicuous cultivation of what was officially referred to as Great Patriotic War, which repeated the wartime slogans, and which now sought to relegate as much as possible the cult of Stalin as an architect of victory in favour of the Soviet people as a collective. There was strong continuity to this discursive pattern. The narrative of the Great Patriotic War reached its apogee during the period of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), who also put an end to several of Khrushchev’s liberalizing measures and promoted a discrete rehabilitation of Stalin. That nar­ rative pervaded the educational system, cinema and popular culture, as well as hundreds of monuments and Victory Day commemorations (9 May), instituted as an official holiday in 1965. Its main point was that the greatest protagonist of the liberation of the Soviet homeland, who would also have sacrificed itself for the liberty of the peoples of Europe, would now be the people of the USSR in its entirety. This included Red Army combatants, partisans and the civil population that had endured the rigours of the occupation, or the hard work in factories and the countryside of the rear-guard to sustain the Soviet war effort. Civilians and soldiers would have fought above all for the rodina or local and family motherland, the epitome of the great Soviet homeland, and not for Stalin. The dictator’s role had now become tarnished but had not disappeared. For many, and Soviet propaganda itself, Stalin was still the great military leader who, with an iron hand and discretion, even in spite of many mistakes, had led the Soviet people to victory. But he was no longer the omniscient father of the motherland as depicted in war propaganda in the 1940s, but a more reflective Stalin, who heeded

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his generals and acted with them, from Zhukov to Konev. A metaphor of a heroic but disciplined and well-led people, where Stalin was still necessary as a counterweight to the possible liberalizing tendencies that would end up making Soviet citizens too independently minded: something that the Brezhnev-era rulers greatly feared. This narrative lasted until the first phase of the Gorbachev govern­ ment, whose policy of informative transparency (glasnost) once again enabled debate in the public sphere on the crimes of Stalinism. However, the interpretation of the Great Patriotic War continued into the 1990s amidst the Boris Yeltsin government, in the Russian Federation which emerged from the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991.10 The continuity of the regime and its repressive inertia following the death of Stalin undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the procrastination and contra­ dictions of his successors in the managing of his inconvenient memory. It was surprising, however, that the figure of Joseph Stalin would flourish once again after the end of the USSR and the Soviet system, which seemed to confirm the motto of his own propaganda, according to which Stalin would live forever.11 From the mid-1990s, his mortal remains received regular tributes every 21 December, the official date of his birth as established by the autocrat himself (who had actually been born three days before), from the delegations of the now minority Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the successor of the former CPSU. The commemorative acts follow a predetermined ritual and had clear religious connotations: before placing red carnations on his tomb, those in at­ tendance kiss an image representing the dictator. Similar ceremonies, amidst some sporadic protests by memorialist associations, are also held on each anniversary of the death of Stalin. Although on some occasions, as in 2009, the Moscow town hall gave official support to the ceremony, generally no representative of the Russian State attends the events.12 Even more paradoxical is that since the mid-1990s, the Russian right-wing ul­ tranationalists have breathed new life into the figure of the Georgian dictator and have added him to their own pantheon of national heroes. For them, Stalin is but the heir and follower of the imperial Russian tradition going back to the almost mythical Rus of Kiev in the ninth century. On the marches held every 4 November by the ultranationalists, at least since 2013 some portraits of Stalin can be found, jointly exhibited with the flag of the Tsars. In this communion of opposing factions, developments that are only different in appearance are condensed, since Russian nationalism, even with ethnic adornments, did not cease to be present within Soviet communism from the Second World War. From the 1920s, some white émigrés regarded the Bolsheviks as a guarantee of the unity of the lands of the former Tsarist empire. From 1999 to 2000, with the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, a former member of the secret police known for his authoritarian drive and preference for a limited or illiberal democracy with a strong executive power, restrictions on civil rights and freedoms and questionable independence of the judiciary, the vision of the figure of Stalin underwent a notable turnaround. Putin promoted a revision of History in a

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clearly pro-Soviet sense, as well as the control by the Russian State of the prevailing narrative regarding the recent past, also through the enactment of memory laws.13 The official account of the Great Patriotic War, the partisan resistance and the fight against Germany and “fascism” in general during the Putin era now emphasized the defence of the Soviet homeland against the invader. This also included an implicit nostalgia of the old good times when different nationalities and ethnic groups coexisted in harmony within the USSR, fought elbow to elbow against the common enemy and held shared ideals. Against the divisive memory of the 1917 October revolution, whose centenary in 2017 was almost ignored by the Russian state’s politics of commemoration, the victory of May 1945 over fascism would be the great collective heroic deed of the Soviet people, the chrysalis that contributed to its definitive crystallization as a community, and the conversion of the USSR into a hegemonic industrial and military power for more than 40 years. The gigantic achievement would have to justify all the mistakes and excesses of Stalinism, as well as the massacres, purges, famines, unprecedented expansion of the Gulag camp system and massive deportations of the 1920s and 1930s.14 Within this framework, the historical significance of Joseph Stalin was also reassessed, especially his facet as a military leader and creator of the USSR as a great world power, thereby preserving its internal unity. Conversely, the most brutal and repressive aspects of his dictatorship were ignored or overlooked. However, the official statements both of Vladimir Putin and his successor in the presidency, Dmitry Medvedev, remained constantly at a calculated equidistance and ambiguity concerning Stalin’s memory. Medvedev recalled that in 2010, on the 65th anni­ versary of the victory over Nazism, military successes did not mean Stalin’s crimes should be forgotten. The war had not been won by the dictator and his generals but by the Soviet people in its entirety. His position was not shared by everyone, not even within Putin’s United Russia party. The then mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, had supported the idea of celebrating that year’s Victory Day with posters of Stalin, which triggered some public debate.15 In June 2017, Vladimir Putin stated that the “excessive demonization” of Stalin “is one means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia” by external enemies, without elaborating on what he considered to be “excessive” criticism of the Soviet dictator.16 These gestures from above enjoyed, furthermore, some support from public opinion. Between 2003 and 2005, several surveys showed that more than half the population held a positive memory of Stalin, who had raised the USSR to the level of a world power. That did not only include former bureaucrats and CPSU members but also the children and grandchildren of victims of the purges and the Gulag. More than half of under-30s stated that they would even consider voting for someone like Stalin if he or she stood for the country’s presidency. In 2005, 42 per cent of Russians favoured the return of a “leader like Stalin”, a percentage that rose to 60 per cent amongst the over-60s. Three years later, a television survey on what had been the most relevant figure in Russian history chose Tsar Nicholas II as the winner, closely followed by Stalin, who in turn clearly outstripped the third figure chosen, Lenin.17

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In the following years, the Georgian dictator’s popularity in Putin’s Russia only increased. In 2012, a survey placed Stalin in first place (37 per cent) amongst the most illustrious Russians in history, above Lenin and the tsar, Peter the Great. Between 2007 and 2019, the percentage of Russian citizens who expressed a positive or highly positive opinion of Stalin rose from 28 to 70 per cent. In the latter year (2019), 41 per cent of those surveyed stated that they respected the figure of the dictator. This percentage increased in older generations and amongst the inhabitants of rural areas, which tend to identify Stalin (whose times they can barely remember) with the somewhat prosperous times of Brezhnev, as well as amongst those surveyed with a lower level of education. It was true that almost half of the youngest surveyed ignored almost everything regarding the political purges, deportations and labour camps of the 1930s and 1940s. Also, many of those who thought that Stalin had been a “powerful” person did not elaborate much on this statement. Nevertheless, in 2012, almost two thirds of those surveyed believed that they could forgive the excesses of the Georgian autocrat could be forgiven due to his huge achievements during the world conflict, a percentage which in 2019 reached 40 per cent. For most, Stalin was a tyrant and a repressor, but also a powerful statesman. If the dilemma was between freedom and power, Stalin embodied the patriotic nostalgia of many Russian citizens in the twenty-first century for a mighty country respected throughout the world, as it once had been. But a majority of Russians did not wish to return to a dictatorial regime like that of Stalin.18 An expression of this master narrative from the start of the twenty-first century was the updating of the epic account regarding the Great Patriotic War in popular Russian culture, from cinema to video games, as well as the promotion of an identical narrative in the most widespread school textbooks in the Russian Federation. Russia is, moreover, the country with war memorials and monuments par excellence. Since 1945 to the present, more than 70,000 sites of memory dedicated to the German-Soviet conflict were inaugurated, always from the viewpoint of the exaltation of the Soviet motherland’s efforts, in the former territory of the USSR. Many of these spaces, above all those built during the Brezhnev era, are pharaonic in size, from the monumental statue of the Motherland in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) to the memorial complex on Poklonnaya Hill, near Moscow. In addition, an astonishing quantity and variety of plaques, monoliths and obelisks, as well as bunkers, tanks and artillery pieces lo­ cated on pedestals can be added to this. They commemorate singular battles, specific events and figures in the Great Patriotic War. Conversely, only 1,140 monuments and plaques, located above all in the ex-Soviet republics, honour the victims of the political repression of Stalin and the Communist period in general.19 Since the second decade of the twenty-first century, dozens of local initiatives (not all of them successful) have emerged to build monuments in Stalin’s memory, from the northern Caucasus to Karelia. In July 2015, a small museum dedicated to Stalin was opened in Khoroshego, a small town near Rzhev (to the northwest of Moscow), known for the harsh fighting that took place there between January

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1942 and March 1943. This was an initiative by the Russian Military History Society, whose president was the then minister of culture, who a year later also campaigned for returning a bust of the dictator to the Military History Museum in the city of Pskov, to the south-east of Saint Petersburg. Khoroshego Museum, located in a simple peasant house where Stalin once stayed from 4 to 5 August 1943, on what was his only visit to an area near the front, commemorates this stay and displays several photos of the dictator, as well as several objects reflecting his daily life. The undisguised objective is to present a close and accommodating image of comrade Stalin, portrayed always as a great and virtuous military leader, and as the modernizer par excellence of Russia. In turn, the locating of this museum on the site of the only visit by the dictator to the front is an attempt to counter one of the arguments challenging Stalin’s supposed military genius in the 1990s: that of being a distant and cowardly tyrant in having always remained far away from his soldiers.20 Moreover, in May 2019 a bust of the dictator was erected in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. It was paid for by public subscription on the initiative of a local leader of a radical communist group, amidst a strong debate promoted by the mayor’s office, which from 2014 was being run by the Russian Communist Party, between supporters and opponents of the statue.21 An example of the renewed cult of the figure of Stalin, amongst nostalgia and patriotic pride, but also the pragmatic exploitation of his memory for touristic objectives, is that of the many summer leisure residences or dachas that the dictator used when alive. Two of them, which were amongst his favourites, may be

FIGURE 5.2

Homage to Stalin’s Tomb, Moscow, 21 December 2016. ©Maxim Shipencov

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highlighted particularly in this regard. On the one hand, the one located in the Russian town of Sochi, on the banks of the Black Sea, portrayed through a museographical narrative with a clearly nostalgic, acritical and dramatic bias. This depiction is favoured by the numerous personal objects of its former and illustrious inhabitant, from chess boards to billiard tables, family photos and a gramophone, and is strengthened with the kitsch exhibition of a wax figure of Stalin sat at his desk. As of the present, the dacha has not been turned into a museum in spite of there being several projects intending to do so.22 On the other hand, there is the Kuntsevo dacha, located to the west of Moscow, on the banks of the Moscow River and built by Stalin’s head architect in 1934. The dictator spent a great deal of his time there from the early 1940s, holding meetings and receiving foreign guests, from Churchill to Mao Zedong. However, it is best known as being the place where the dictator passed away in one of its rooms.23 The property and its estate belong to the Russian State, which refuses to operate it on any tourist basis. The dacha remains closed to the public, in spite of it containing the vast majority of Stalin’s personal belongings at the time of his death.24 It has been re-opened for institutional use only on very few occasions, in particular for Vladimir Putin. Shortly after being elected in 2000, the Russian president held a meeting in Kuntsevo of several oligarchs where he showed off his power. Stalin’s ghost helped him to affirm his authority and create an intimidatory atmosphere. Other summer villas of Stalin were rarely visited by the dictator due to his obsession with security. Many of them passed into private hands or served other public uses. This is the case, for example, of dacha number five, located near Nalchik, in the south of Russia, which was later converted into the headquarters of the Department of Biology of the Kabardino-Balkaria State University.

5.1.2 A distinguished son of Georgia? As has been seen, the nostalgia for the USSR finds in the remembrance of the Great Patriotic War an ideal breeding ground: the epic fight of different Soviet nationalities against a foreign invader would cement common unity. The successor states of the USSR, from Belarus to Armenia, share a cult of the memory of the conflict as a collective deed, although the emphasis on the common struggle gives way, in this case, to the greater focus on nationalization where possible of the conflict’s narrative. Therefore, their national narratives aim at underlining the particular contribution of each Soviet territory to the victory against fascism, it being presented in this way as a positive gesture for a good cause, for the sake of humanity. However, in the Baltic area, Ukraine or the Caucasus, the young national states emerged out of the disintegration of the Soviet Union promoted in their memory policies a clear break with the Soviet era, portraying themselves as collective victims of a foreign occupation during the World War II, whether originating in Moscow or Berlin. As a result, they all brought to light the suffering of their population under Stalinism. Conversely, the Great Patriotic War and

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Victory (9 May) memorials cult became mostly for Russian and Russian-speaking minorities a symbol of their collective identity and national pride. In the re-nationalized master narratives of the Great Patriotic War that had been implemented in Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asia and the Caucasus republics, the figure of Stalin is simply ignored, or regarded as responsible for overshadowing the Ukrainian, Kazak or Byelorussian prominent role in the final victory over fascism. Furthermore, the memory of Stalin in the vast majority of post-Soviet republics is predominantly negative, ranging from ruthless dictator to fanatic genocide. For the Baltic and Ukrainian nationalists, Stalin was undoubtedly the great villain of their twentieth-century history. In countries such as Armenia, his statues were swiftly removed and replaced, like all other Soviet monuments. But that did not erase all the recent past. In both Azerbaijan and Armenia, a survey in 2012 revealed that the approval percentages of Stalin remained surprisingly high (21 and 25 per cent, respectively). Moreover, the responses to the question of whether a new leader as wise as Stalin was needed rose to 18 per cent in Azerbaijan, and 38 per cent in Armenia.25 However, the public and private memory of Joseph Stalin in his home country, Georgia, possessed very distinctive characteristics since his death. In the same way that Austria could not deny being the birthplace of Hitler, it was impossible to deny that Stalin was Georgian, or that his social habits, formative political ex­ periences, culinary tastes and, in short, his strong accent when speaking Russian, were undoubtedly Caucasian.26 From the mid-1950s and beginning of the twenty-first century, the cult of Stalin has survived in an exceptionally intense way in one place: his home town, Gori, located to the north-west of the country’s capital, Tbilisi. Already by 1937, when hardly 13 years had gone by since its countryman had become leader of the USSR, an extensive museum dedicated to the glorification of the socialist system was established in Gori. It was remodelled and expanded between 1953 and 1957, the year in which it was re-opened as a museum dedicated specifically to Stalin. It was a paradox in appearance, but could also be explained by the cautious pace taken by Khrushchev’s first de-Stalinizing measures. On the death of the dictator, there were massive displays of mourning in Tbilisi and other Georgian cities; in March 1956, a few weeks after the 20th CPSU Conference, there were also several riots and street protests to demand that the legacy of the “illustrious compatriot” Stalin, now insulted from the Kremlin, be retained. The Stalin museum is conceived as a majestic memorial space, Neo-classical in design and inspired by the Venetian gothic style. In front of it, in the city centre, and in its interior, there are huge statues of the dictator. The eight rooms of the museum follow a chronological order based on the life of Stalin and are replete with documents and personal items belonging to him when he was alive: gifts received from other Heads of State and Soviet citizens, photographs and footage, his first work desk, paintings depicting the period and some of his death masks. Towards the mid-1980s, some references to Lenin’s doubts concerning his suc­ cessor’s suitability were added to the exhibition, and the figure of Leon Trotsky

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was subtly re-introduced. A room dedicated to the repression and massacres committed during the Stalinist period was only annexed to the permanent exhibition in 2010. Still, these additions have been overshadowed by the overall museographical account; apologetic in tone, it has hardly been modified since the mid-1970s. In an interior courtyard of the museum, framed by Greco-Roman columns, Stalin’s birth house has been partly reconstructed after being dismantled and transferred. However, some versions deny that it was the Jugashvili family home, where the future dictator was actually born on 6 December 1878, and which housed on its left-hand side the home and workshop of his father (a shoemaker by profession), claiming instead that it was a nearby house or later and dignified reinvention. In another courtyard, the private railway carriage in which Stalin travelled from 1941, which was recovered in Rostov (where it was still in operation) and restored in 1985, can be visited. In spite of its mostly anodyne existence in a faraway provincial city in the Caucasus, the museum did remain open throughout the Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras, and even survived the end of the Soviet Union and the traumatic independence process in Georgia. Certainly, Gori never became a site of memory or massive cult of Stalinism, nor did it attract huge numbers of pilgrims or nostalgists during the Soviet era. Perhaps because of this, none of the Georgian dictator’s successors dared to close or resignify it in a radical manner. The city remained, simply, very distant from almost everything, and it was not easily accessible from most of the (former) USSR. The independent Republic of Georgia disowned the role of its Soviet past and, at least in theory, the memory of its illustrious compatriots, Iosif V. Jugashvili (later nicknamed as Stalin) and Lavrentiy Beria, the cruel leader of the political police NKVD. The new Georgian State did not really undertake a critical review of the recent past during the 1990s. This lack of reflection was related in part to the peculiarities of the turbulent transition to independence. Following the con­ vulsive period of the presidency of the former dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia, characterized by internal violence, ethnic conflicts with its neighbours and political instability, in January 1992, Eduard Shevardnadze, who had been Soviet foreign minister under Gorbachev, came into power with Russian support. A good part of the old leading elite of Georgia during the final decade of the USSR entered the Tbilisi government with him. Therein also lie some of the difficulties of Georgian historiography, and of the State’s politics of memory, in addressing the issue of the purges and the Stalinist repression in their own country. The greatest culprits, Stalin and Beria, were Georgian by birth. Therefore, it was not so straightforward to externalize the blame and personify it in an external agent, as would occur with the memory of the Soviet occupation of 1921, which put an end to the independence of the Republic of Georgia (in fact, a kind of German protectorate), proclaimed by the local Mensheviks three years previously.27 On 9 May 1995, on the com­ memoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War,

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president Shevardnadze visited the Stalin Museum in Gori and expressed his desire that it should become in the future a centre for studying the Stalin “phenom­ enon”. But that project never came to fruition.28 The official politics of memory only changed in the first decade of the twentyfirst century, at least for a while. Shortly after the short armed conflict with Russia in August 2008, the South Ossetia war, the Georgian government, then held by the controversial pro-Western and populist leader, Mikheil Saakashvili (president of the country from 2004 to 2013, following the so-called rose revolution of November 2003), expressed the intention to convert the site into a museum dedicated to commemorating the historical continuum of “Russian aggressions” against Georgian identity. This would complement the role of the museum concerning the Soviet occupation inaugurated years before in Tbilisi. The nar­ rative of the visitor’s centre would now focus on illustrating the criminal nature of the Stalin regime. Similarly, Saakashvili proceeded to remove a large number of the Soviet monuments and sites of memory that still remained in Georgian territory, as well as to re-nationalize the country and erode any trace of its recent past connected to the Russian Empire and the USSR.29 They included the great statue of Stalin erected in 1952 in the centre of Gori on Stalin Avenue, opposite the museum. The monument disappeared in 2010 following a swift nocturnal removal. On the façade of the Stalin Museum, the Tbilisi government also installed a large banner, on which it explained to visitors that in that place Soviet propaganda was displayed, whose objective was simply to falsify the reality of a dictatorial and

Stalin’s admirers in front of the Stalin Museum, Gori (2011). @Zurab Kurtsikidze

FIGURE 5.3

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bloody regime. As has been seen, a room was added to the premises where the results of the purges and deportations ordered by the Stalinist dictatorship were exposed. However, the rest of the permanent exhibition hardly underwent any modifications.30 The de-Stalinization of local memory, moreover, was not shared by all. The brief Russian occupation of Gori during the five-day war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 did not have any enduring effects on the opinions of its inhabitants, either. In December 2012, shortly after the electoral defeat of Saakashvili, Gori’s city council approved a decision in favour of returning the statue of Stalin to its pedestal, which to date has not taken place. Moreover, the local authorities expressed their preference for keeping the museum open, as well as not altering the main narrative of the permanent exhibition.31 This implied consciously preserving its apologetic content As a result, at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, no resignifying of the museum, nor even its possible conversion into a critical ex­ hibition on Stalinism as a historical period, its crimes and victims, has been pro­ posed: not even a definitive nationalization in exclusively Georgian terms of its contents, or a focus on Stalin’s formative years in his native country. Mzia Georgievna, a leading member of the museum’s staff, explained in December 2019 that in its rooms, the positive and negative facets of Stalin where displayed on an equal footing. However, some of the dictator’s achievements could not be denied, such as his position as unquestionable victor in the Second World War. Although during the forced collectivization of agriculture during the 1930s grave mistakes had been made, ultimately a positive fact should be highlighted: “Russia, where people used to go about in clogs, underwent great industrial progress”, from which Georgia had also benefited. She therefore reproduced a typical and clichéd post-Soviet master narrative. It is not surprising that some non-governmental organizations dedicated to the independent analysis of Georgia’s Soviet past, like SovLab (Soviet Past Research Laboratory, founded in 2010) have proposed somewhat sarcastically the creation of a museum about the Stalin Museum in Gori.32 The nostalgists of the Soviet era are not a majority in twenty-first-century Georgia, where since 1991 the Communist Party has been almost irrelevant in electoral terms. Yet Stalin is still regarded as a national hero: a symbol of Georgia’s national pride, devoid of immediate political content. In 2012, 45 per cent of citizens still maintained a positive opinion concerning Stalin, and up to 68 per cent saw him as a “wise” leader. Stalin’s approval percentage still rose to 40 per cent six years later, according to other surveys in 2018–2019. It was above all over-60s who revered his memory, associating it with the victory over Hitler. However, the youngest members of Georgian society were unaware of almost everything related to the dictator. For the generations of Georgians who still lived in the USSR, Stalin is not a symbol of the supposed “good old days”, but above all “one of us” who took power in the USSR and gained international respect: in fact, the almost religious veneration that many locals feel for Stalin is not linked, as in Russia, to a desire for authority and order. The percentage is higher in the city of

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Gori, a good part of whose inhabitants are proud that their town was the birth­ place of one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century, simply converted into a “great statesman” of an international dimension. However, their opinions about their fellow countryman were highly varied: some even believed that Stalin had restored the power of the Orthodox churches.33 For their part, the country’s governments after 2013, dominated by the centreliberal coalition of Georgian Dream, which supported a more normalized re­ lationship with the powerful neighbour to the north, also concluded that the museum, as a site of memory, was almost harmless in political terms, and it was not worth creating grounds for grievance with the proud Russian government led by Vladimir Putin. Ultimately, the costs of image would be compensated by the economic benefits also generated by the museum. From the strictly commercial point of view, the profits of the Stalin Museum are rather scant in comparative terms, but not insignificant for a city like Gori. Between 2018 and 2019, the museum attracted on average of more than 150,000 annual visitors, mostly Russian and Chinese tourists, the reason why some high-ranking Georgian civil servant proposed aiming the museum and nostalgia for Stalin towards the Asian market. He was immediately dismissed.34

5.2 Albania: The pyramid of the red pharaoh The long-lived dictator Enver Hoxha remained in power for over four decades, following the expulsion without external help of the Italian and German invaders of Albania in 1944. He imposed a Stalinist and despotic regime, with hardly any phases of relative liberalization. The management of his memory after he passed away was ostensibly very simple. Following his death in April 1985, in a lavish ceremony orchestrated by his appointed successor, Ramiz Alia, Hoxha’s remains were inhumed in the National Martyrs Cemetery, inaugurated in 1971 in a hill overlooking Tirana, where the remains of around 400 Second World War par­ tisans rest. Alia proclaimed in his funeral eulogy that Albania would be “forever red”.35 Up to 34 collective farms, as well as the University of Tirana, were named after Hoxha. The three large statues of the late dictator were erected in his birthplace, as well as in Korça, the city where he went to secondary school, and in the capital Tirana, in the same square that was the location of the equestrian statue of the late medieval nobleman and military commander who had fought against the Ottomans, Skanderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti): the Albanian national hero par excellence. A grandiose and original mausoleum-museum in the form of a pyramid was added shortly afterwards to these monuments, and inaugurated in October 1988 in the centre of Tirana. At that time, it was one of the most modern buildings in the city and all Albania. The pyramid, covered with marble plaques and crowned with a red star, was designed to be cutting edge in design by several architects, one of whom was a daughter of the autocrat, Pranvera Hoxha, and his son-in-law, Klement Kolaneci. The body of the dictator was not placed inside, apparently

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because it had not been embalmed. Instead, it contained a wide range of objects he possessed when alive, such as his glasses, his first bicycle, or the desk at which he had sat at primary school, conserved as if a religious relic. For opponents of the regime and inhabitants of Tirana, the monument was known as the “Pyramid of the Pharaoh”. The peculiar Communist regime of Hoxha’s Albania, isolated from the Warsaw Pact and, over time, also from the People’s Republic of China, held out for a year following the fall of the Iron Curtain. The late-Communist elites, led by Ramiz Alia, shrewdly interpreted the geopolitical situation in a pragmatic way, and were able to avoid in time a popular insurrection against the regime. The revolt of the University of Tirana students in December 1990 was exploited by Alia in order to purge the most entrenched and Stalinist faction of the Party of Labour, the single party of the dictatorship, which was led by Hoxha’s widow. Nexhmije. Subsequently, Alia legalized political parties, called elections and supported several of the demands of the student rebellion. One of them, which enabled the reformist sectors or the regime to carry out an overhaul, comprised of making the name of Enver Hoxha disappear from the public arena.36 As with other cities in East-Central Europe, the removal of the communist dictator’s statue, as well as those of Lenin, Marx or Engels, became mass rallies whose content was highly symbolic. On 14 February 1991, around one hundred thousand inhabitants of Tirana gathered in Skanderbeg Square to watch the de­ molition of the grandiose monument to Enver Hoxha. Students also demanded that the autocrat’s name disappear from the official nomenclature of the University

FIGURE 5.4

Pyramid of Tirana. ©Wikimedia commons

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of Tirana: that same night, the busts and statues of Hoxha were removed discreetly from all public places. Finally, in May 1992, the new Democratic Party govern­ ment, led by Sari Berisha, ordered the exhumation of Hoxha’s remains, alongside the bodies of twelve other senior Communist officials, and his re-burial in the municipal cemetery in Tirana.37 This was carried out in secrecy in the early morning, and the red marble slab imported from Italy that covered his tomb was recycled as part of a new monument to the fallen British soldiers in Albania during the Second World War. Since then, Hoxha’s austere tomb has been no more conspicuous than those around it. Although it has suffered from some vandalism, the dictator’s tomb has largely gone unnoticed in the country’s public sphere. It receives some modest tributes from nostalgists on the anniversary of his death, as well as from groups of tourists, many of them Chinese.38 During the period of instability of the early 1990s, and particular following the first post-Communist cabinet led by Berisha in 1992, successive Albanian gov­ ernments decreed several additional measures to bury once and for all the cult of the dictator. However, the political heirs of Hoxha (initially, the Albanian Socialist Party, the successor of the former Party of Labour) still displayed a certain respect for some aspects of his legacy, such as his mythicized role as partisan leader and liberator of the country between 1941 and 1944. Yet the new rulers continued to ignore a dilemma: what should be done with the visible pyramid, located in the heart of the capital? In spite of there being many nearby examples, such as Bulgaria, where the mausoleum dedicated to Dimitrov was demolished, the sur­ vival of the Hoxha pyramid still constitutes today a particular case in the context of post-Communist Eastern Europe.39 Initially, the museum inside the pyramid was dismantled, all Hoxha’s personal items removed, and the premises closed to the public. Shortly afterwards, the monument received the official and more neutral name of the Tirana Pyramid. The difficult circumstances of the Albanian transition to the market economy, which following a period of chaotic neo-liberalism and crime, led to a massive financial collapse, and the popular uprising of 1997 which cost two thousand lives, contributed to the postponement of any decision on the fate of the memorial. Only at the beginning of the twenty-first century did different proposals for resignifying or re-using the building begin to be debated. These included trans­ forming it into a cultural centre, the site of a new national library or a space defending democracy. It was also declared a national monument, although this category, according to Albanian legislation, is not sufficient to ensure that the complex is protected from eventual demolition. The second government of the conservative Berisha (2005–2013) issued a call for tender to demolish the pyramid and erect on the site the new Albanian parliament, which was regarded as highly convenient given its central location.40 However, both the Albanian architects’ association and many politicians and intellectuals promoted a petition to demand the preservation of the pyramid and its surroundings, which would be turned into a site of memory, a museum or visitor interpretative centre. When the Socialist

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Party returned to power in 2013, the Edi Rama government postponed once again the decision on the strange inheritance from the dictator. Meanwhile, the pyramid was dying a slow death and undergoing a process of serious deterioration, through vandalism, graffiti, the theft of its materials and other damage. Amongst its sporadic uses, the building acted as a youth activity centre, television studio and a venue for temporary exhibitions and meetings. It was also a temporary base for NATO command operations during the Kosovo War (1999) and as a disco popular amongst Tirana teenagers. Ironically named The Mummy, during the 1990s it was one of the few modern leisure areas in a poor city characterized by Socialist urban planning. In fact, the pyramid has maintained until the present its reputation as an informal meeting centre for young people and teenagers. One of the arguments put forward by those who supported keeping the monument in its original location is its scarce cognitive association with the dictatorial past for a good part of the population. Amongst the youngest Albanians, born at the end of the dictatorship or after its collapse, the Tirana Pyramid is not regarded as a symbol of Hoxha’s dictatorship, which is an increasingly distant point of reference for them. But that opinion is not even widespread amongst those over 61, who might still have a clear image of the regime. The short time that has passed since the inauguration of the pyramid and the fall of Communism con­ tributed to the association between the site and its original purpose is socially very tenuous. Conversely, for many young Albanians, the pyramid was the place where their parents met, and even where they were conceived. The preferences of those surveyed seem to gravitate towards reforming the space and its transformation into a tourist attraction, with suitable contextualization. Finally, at the beginning of 2020, a decision was reached to resignify the site. Tirana town hall, the Albanian government and a private American-Albanian Foundation will finance the reconversion of the pyramid into a pioneering edu­ cational and cultural centre, open to young people and tourists. A Rotterdam architecture studio prepared a re-design, altering exteriors and interiors, which will house exhibition rooms, common areas and a Tumo Network Centre. This is part of a programme based in Armenia, whose branches in different countries offer technology and design courses and workshops for young people.41 A similar dilemma is posed by what was the private residence of Hoxha and his family: a luxurious mansion (for the Albanian standards of the time), located in the Blloku district in the city centre. It was an area which in its day was prohibited to visitors and which was known by local residents as the “Kremlin without walls”. Today, it is a popular neighbourhood for nightlife in Tirana.42 The residence has several soundproof rooms, is replete with paintings in the socialist realism style, and also has a private swimming pool and tunnel connected to a bunker. In spite of its visibility, Hoxha’s “Kremlin” remains currently closed, and awaits the Albanian government’s decision on its future. Opinions, as in the case of the pyramid, range from those who prefer it to be demolished and forgotten, to those who prefer to convert the residence into an interpretation centre for tourists and school parties,

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with a historical, critical and educational role. Many people also point out that in current Albania there is no memorial dedicated to the more than 5,500 opponents executed by the dictator’s secret police, more than 24,000 people who were imprisoned on political grounds, and 70,000 inmates in jail for a variety of reasons. The same applies to the remains of the former concentration and work camps where thousands of Albanians were confined during the dictatorship. The house that was the birthplace and family home of Enver Hoxha is located in the town of Gjirokastër, in the south of the country, from where the famous writer Ismail Kadare also hails. A modest construction, it was demolished at the beginning of the 1960s. In its place, the dictator ordered the building of a new mansion in 1966, designed by his sister. It housed an apologetic museum on the life of Hoxha and his family, focusing especially on his period as an anti-fascist resistance leader in the Second World War. In Korça, the house where Hoxha lived from 1937 to 1939 and worked as high-school teacher was transformed into a museum during the dictatorship; it was mostly visited by school parties. The mountain village of Galigat, where Hoxha was in hiding when he was a partisan leader in early 1944, has similarly become a pilgrimage centre for party members, students and pioneers: the Galigat hut. The memorial, however, was destroyed after 1991 by the town’s inhabitants.43 Following the fall of the Communist regime in August 1991, the seated statue of Hoxha in Gjirokastër, erected on a promontory in town, was demolished mostly on the insistence of the Greek minority activists; the house museum was converted officially into the city’s Ethnographical Museum. It therefore housed the collections of the former local museum, whereas all references to and personal belongings of the former dictator were stored away in cupboards out of sight. More than one visitor dared to open them to exhume objects related to the il­ lustrious former resident. However, the museum is also known by the population as simply the Enver Hoxha house.44 The permanent exhibition recreates the everyday life of a Muslim merchant family in the Gjirokastër region, which is related to the well-off although unpatrician background of the autocrat. Enver Hoxha was the son of a trader regarded as an outsider in the city, as Kadare stated in his memories; but he was also the nephew of a prominent local nationalist leader, Hysen Hoxha or Baba Çeni, who as well as being the mayor was one of those in attendance at the country's declaration of independence in Vlora, in November 1912.45 The strong association of the dictator with his family lineage suggests that Albanian nationalism, very present in the peculiar version of Marxism-Leninism developed by Enver Hoxha, and a key factor in his personality cult,46 has become one of the most crucial ingredients of Hoxha’s remembrance in the twenty-first century. This explains the persistence of a certain tolerance towards some aspects of his life and legacy. Like Stalin, although with less intensity, Hoxha is still presented in the public sphere as a preserver of the country’s sovereignty, owing to his leadership of the partisan movement, and equally as a later bulwark against the annexationist intentions of Tito’s Yugoslavia, the expansionist objectives of the

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USSR and the West, to ultimately gravitate towards Maoist China and, since 1978, “walk along an unknown path”, in his own words. This can be appreciated in the National History Museum in Tirana, that also enabled a discreet re-siting of Hoxha within the pantheon of figures venerated in the policies of Albanian memory, although he did not attain the level of reverence afforded to the medieval leader Skanderbeg and the world famous Catholic nun, the ethnic Albanian Mother Teresa, born as Anjezë G. Bojaxhiu in Kosovo.47 In December 2016, a survey by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) revealed that 42 per cent of Albanian citizens be­ lieved that Hoxha had played a positive role in the history of the country, whereas 45 per cent saw him as an assassin and a tyrant. For over half those surveyed, Communism was a good idea but one which had been poorly applied in Albania, largely the fault of the dictator’s bureaucracy and subordinates.48 Hoxha’s shadow still hangs over the short historical memory of the young country, in spite of governmental efforts to highlight the pre-Communist past of the country and its tradition prior to 1939. With this objective, in November 2012, Berisha’s conservative executive orchestrated the return to the country of the mortal remains of King Zog I. This was the name adopted by president Ahmet M. Zogolli in 1928, after enacting a constitution and declaring a parliamentary monarchy, although his government had clearly authoritarian tones. Zog I left Albania with the Italian invasion of 1939 and died in exile in Paris in 1961. The re-inhumation was part of the pomp for the centenary of Albania’s independence in November 2012. King Zog I and several members of his family were inhumed in a solemn ceremony, attended by hundreds of people, in the rebuilt Royal Mausoleum, which dated back to 1935. However, the figure of the king provoked a political divide: the socialists accused Zog of being a coward and haven stolen the Albanian treasury for a comfortable life in exile.49 Following the inhumation ceremony, the figure of Zog I fell into oblivion. The short-lived monarchic period in inter-war Albania left few positive traces in popular memory.

5.3 Romania: The Dracula syndrome The post-Communist country that has most succumbed to the dictates of mass tourism when musealizing the recent past has probably been twenty-first-century Romania. On 21 December 1989, four days after a wide and popular revolution would begin against his regime, the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day in a police barracks in Targoviste, to the south of Bucharest. The execution took place immediately after they were condemned to death by a popular court in a pantomime trial, recorded on video by those who had rebelled against the dictatorship, amongst them many of Ceauşescu former supporters. The revolt would go on for several more days, leaving a total of 1,104 dead and more than three thousand wounded. The mortal remains of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu rest today in a discrete grave in Ghencea civil cemetery, to the west of Bucharest. Barely 30 or so elderly

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Communist nostalgists gather every 26 January, on Nicolae’s birthday, around his grave.50 The memory of the dictator and his kind of dictator consort was erased swiftly from the Romanian public sphere during the 1990s. This damnatio memoriae was in keeping furthermore with the advances of state-oriented politics of memory, and a transitional justice which lasted until the mid-1990s, although with ups and downs. It erased the traces of the dictatorship and restored dignity to its victims, as well as extolling the leading figures and those killed during the re­ volution of December 1989. Thus, between 1990 and 1991, the names of hun­ dreds of public buildings, streets and squares were changed, even if progress in score settling was not always accompanied by a thoughtful and deep reflection on the recent past. It was also a reaction to the oppressive presence during two decades of a regime that paid megalomaniacal tribute to the figure of the dictator and his wife. This personality cult made images and aphorisms associating the Ceauşescus with the Communist party and the entire nation ubiquitous, from their placement in football stadiums to university classrooms and archaeological museums.51 The veil of silence over the Ceauşescus in post-Communist Romania endured for at least 15 years. This was also due to a good part of the new governing elites of 1990s Romania, represented initially by the National Salvation Front (Frontul Salvării Naţionale, FSN), having made their careers in the bosom of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and wishing to free themselves from the shadow of the deposed satrap as quickly as possible. The new leaders not only swiftly eliminated Ceauşescu from the political scene but also made them almost exclusively re­ sponsible for the hardships of the Romanian people, by highlighting the scanda­ lous greed of the ruling couple.52 Indeed, the huge fortune accumulated by the Ceauşescus and managed in part by their family clan (in particular, Nicolae’s brother Marin and one of their sons, the bon vivant Nicu) was largely returned to the State. The rest, deposited in foreign bank accounts, was never recovered. The situation only changed in the second decade of the twenty-first century. There was somewhat of a return of the nostalgia for the supposed good times before 1990, and therefore the paternal figure of Ceauşescu, amongst the losers from the Romanian transition to capitalism. This included thousands of un­ employed and former civil servants, but also young people born after the end of the Communist regime. That tendency, shared with other countries of Eastern Europe, was accompanied furthermore by a kind of kitsch nostalgia that led to an artistic re-interpretation.53 In the public return of the memory of the figures of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu, economic incentives also had a decisive impact in Romania, and one above all others: tourism. The opportunity to attract foreign visitors awoke the greed of some of Ceauşescu’s relatives who still maintained family properties in their home town. This was the case of the birthplace of the dictator in Scornicesti (near Craiova, in the southeast of Romania), which had belonged to his forebears, the small landowners, Andruţă and Alexandrina Ceauşescu. This was the place where Nicolae, born in 1918, lived until he was eleven when he moved to

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FIGURE 5.5

Nostalgists in front of Ceauseuscu’s birthplace, 2018. ©Wikimedia commons

Bucharest to work as an apprentice cobbler. The modest rural one-storey dwelling remained closed for several decades until the autocrat’s parents passed away. However, in 2007 the house was reconditioned, transformed into a modest museum and opened to tourist visits by the nephew of Nicolae Ceauşescu, the retired militia officer Emil Bârbulescu, who had held some high-ranking posts in the regional section of the Home Office and until then had kept a limited public profile. After remaining silent for two decades, Emil became an outspoken de­ fender of his uncle’s public legacy, as well as a relentless debunker of the hypocrisy of the Romanian political elites after 1989.54 At first, the Romanian Culture Ministry did not grant the proper authorization for a monument to be built in memory of the autocrat in the main square in Scornicesti. However, Bârbulescu ordered the construction of the planned statue three years later, a few metres away from the Ceauşescu family home. This was under the provision that the garden was a private property, and that the sculpture could not be regarded as a public monument. A work by the sculptor Petre Georgescu Dedy, the statute is a granite bust that is austere in tone although respectable in size, representing without great artistic refinements a mature Ceauşescu, whose expression is calm and smiling. There is a brief inscription on its pedestal simply stating that he was president of Romania. The site has been visited since then by thousands of tourists and also by some nostalgists. With the death of Bârbulescu in April 2016, several local politicians expressed before the cameras a wish for the house museum dedicated to Ceauşescu to remain open, as a centre focussing on the historical period it represented.55

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In January 2018, on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the autocrat, several dozen people were mobilized by the Communitarian Party of Romania (one which regarded itself as a successor to the former PCR) to gather before his house museum to defend the “canonization” of Ceauşescu as a national hero and martyr of socialism. This was done in the name of a national committee to honour his memory, presided by an eccentric retired teacher and inveterate nostalgist of the communist era, Gheorghe Ungureanu.56 Its social echo, however, has been limited up to the present. Several of the palaces that were inhabited by the dictator and his family ex­ perienced a different fate. This is the case with the Spring Palace (Palatul Primaverii), the Ceauşescus’ luxurious official residence located in an exclusive neighbourhood of Bucharest, reserved for the regime’s civil servants. The man­ sion, with its 30 rooms decorated in the Rococo and Baroque style, replete with opulent carpets, tapestries and marble, was carefully preserved in its original state and opened to the public from March 2016. The opening was partly due to boost tourism but also intended to fulfil a sobering purpose: to show citizens the lavish pomp with which the country’s top leaders surrounded themselves, with luxury unimaginable for those living in the Romania of the 1970s and 1980s with its shortages of basic goods. However, the narrative of the permanent exhibition in the Spring Palace barely offers the visitor adequate information on the political context, and seems to focus solely on personal and private aspects of the life of the Ceauşescus. Although several historians have called for the opening of the Communism Museum in this space, or rather in the colossal People’s Palace built on the dictator's orders in the centre of Bucharest (and today the headquarters of the Romanian parliament), the politics of memory in democratic Romanian are not always guided by that critical course.57 If the tomb of the dictator and his wife does not represent a massive attraction for tourists or nostalgists, the opposite is the case of the site where they were detained, tried and executed: the Targoviste military barracks, whose memorial is a stark example of commercial opportunism. After being in use for more than two decades, the facilities were transformed into a thematic museum at the end of 2013, with the purpose of recreating in a sensationalist way the final days of Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, and the end of communist Romania. The in­ terior of the site was renovated, refurbished and redecorated according to the austere Socialist style of the end of the 1980s. The main and morbid attraction is the inner courtyard wall against which the Ceauşescus were shot, with holes caused by the impact of the firing squad’s shots visible, and the silhouettes of the bodies on the ground. The narrative of the Targoviste barracks seeks to be neutral and aseptic, without any trace of critical content regarding the dictatorial past; it does not encourage normative values, either. It recounts, as if it were a docu­ drama, the final days of the dictator and his wife as if following a plot full of violence and mystery. It is a sort of disneylandization of the memory and legacy of the Communist period, which to some extent serves as an outlet to avoid uncomfortable debates

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on the recent dictatorial past. However, the nostalgic return to an idealized Communist past, as a reaction to the uncertainties of the present, also finds ex­ pression in the museum dedicated to the history of the socialist period in Podari, in the south-east of the country. Other examples would be the different museums focussing on consumer goods and everyday life during the socialist period, which were inaugurated at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century in Timişoara and Bucharest. All of these are private endeavours seeking to attract tourists, nostalgists and those interested in bygone eras. At the same time, with acritical syncretism, they implicitly present Nicolae Ceauşescu as a sort of red twentieth-century Dracula. The Ceauşescus went on to be seen as the pair of villains par excellence of twentieth-century Romanian history, or at least the second half, causing Gheorghiu-Dej to be forgotten. Nevertheless, there was also another controversial dictatorial figure from the country’s recent past. This was Marshall Ion Antonescu, who ruled the country with dictatorial powers between 1940 and 1944. After being detained with the arrival of Soviet troops, he was tried and executed in 1946, and his ashes scattered near Jilava prison, where he had been incarcerated. In post-war communist Romania, the figure of Antonescu was seen as a traitor to his country and a fascist subject to the dictates of Hitler and the Axis. However, since the 1970s, the increasingly nationalist course of Romanian historiography, following the lines marked out by Ceauşescu, tended to minimize the Antonescu’s anti-Semitism and

Museum Targoviste, execution site of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu (2019). ©Luiza Iordache

FIGURE 5.6

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even present him as a protector of Romanian Jews, in clear opposition to the neighbouring Horthy’s Hungary. Fascism, from that perspective, would not be a genuine Romanian product but a foreign inoculation completely alien to the national character. That trend continued until the fall of the Communist regime during the 1990s. An open revisionism if not utter denial was now added to previous arguments regarding the slaughter of the Jewish population by Romanian troops in Ukraine from 1941. For their part, ultra-nationalist groups, in particular the Greater Romania Party (România Mare), presented Antonescu as a defender of the homeland against Bolsheviks and Hungarians and emphasized that this regime would have saved the lives of thousands of Jews. In some places, streets and squares were baptized with Tito’s name, as well as other Romanian fascist politicians from the time, and at least seven statues with his effigy were erected. By 1990, two politicians linked to România Mare founded the Marshall Antonescu League to advocate the public revision of his legacy. Before the beginning of the twenty-first century, several proposals were made in parliament and Romanian High Court to rehabilitate the memory of Antonescu. Nonetheless, and largely in order to allay the European Union’s fears, in 2004, the Romanian parliament approved a law prohibiting public denial of the Holocaust, which also included the glorification of Tito’s image. This did not impede his popularity from remaining surprisingly high in Romanian society: in 2006, the viewers of a series on illustrious Romanians included Antonescu amongst the most important figures in the country’s history.58 However, the debate on the past has not translated into a memorial cult to Antonescu, partly through the lack of a tomb, although the remains of his widow and children rest in a Bucharest cemetery. Nor is there a birth house of private museum dedicated to the Marshall, unlike the case with Nicolae Ceauşescu.

5.4 Yugoslavia: Tito, the nostalgia for unity Marshall Josip Broz Tito dominated the political life of post-war Yugoslavia from 1945, when his partisans liberated the country from the German and Italian presence before the Soviet troops arrived, until his death in May 1980. During his long mandate of 35 years, Tito exploited with supreme skill his undoubtable charisma, both within Yugoslavia and outside, combining it with a ductile political pragmatism. Although undoubtedly Communist, as was Tito himself, his regime detached itself from the Soviet Union since 1948, as he refused to submit to Stalin’s will to make Yugoslavia a Soviet satellite state. Some years later, Yugoslavia promoted the world bloc of non-aligned countries with or against any major power bloc. Furthermore, Tito’s regime also enjoyed a very good re­ lationship with Western Europe, which supported Yugoslav non-alignment policy with generous credits. Tito’s regime was, all things considered, a relatively “soft” dictatorship, al­ though it went through different phases. Between 1945 and 1947, his troops

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committed murders, carried out expeditious expropriations of small landowners and businessmen, and perpetrated several massacres against political opponents, beginning with Croatian and Serbian fascists, monarchists and collaborationists with the former occupiers. To this was later added the persecution unleashed against thousands of citizens accused of conspiring in favour of Stalin and the USSR. They were interned in prisons, as well as in the labour camp on Goli island, which was only closed definitively in 1988. Tito also forced thousands of members of the Magyar, German and Italian minorities to leave the country en masse. Once this brutal purge was over, in the following decades Tito’s regime was not characterized by massive slaughter, systematic repression or deportations to labour camps. Tito’s Yugoslavia did not maintain throughout its whole existence a dense network of concentration camps, nor did it grant all-encompassing influence to the secret police. Moreover, the dictator did not enjoy absolute power, since the pe­ culiar federal system of Yugoslavia, especially following the enactment of the 1974 Constitution, imposed some limitations on his capacity to act. On the contrary, Tito was forced to make concessions almost continuously, and to act as a referee among different institutions and groups. However, a crucial element of the Yugoslav communist regime was the intense personality cult of its leader. The myth of Tito was constructed consciously from 1942 to 1943, and was consistently given wide social propagation through schools, workplaces and media throughout the entire country over 35 years.59 At the beginning of his mandate Tito was openly inspired by the example of Stalin. Nonetheless, he tended to increasingly govern as a type of revived en­ lightened despot. Tito even imitated some gestures and traditions inherited from the Serbian monarchy to cement his legitimacy. That is why he was dubbed at times the last Hapsburg emperor, as well as because of his increasing tendency towards ostentation. Outwardly, the figure of Tito was crowned with a halo of anti-fascist combatant, an “eternal partisan”, champion of world peace and apostle of the co-existence between blocs in the Cold War. The image he projected inwards was that of the great leader who guaranteed internal peace and stability of a Yugoslavia in “unity and brotherhood”, sealed by the shared cause of the partisan war against the fascist invader. Josip Broz Tito would embody this unity in his own biography, as the son of a Croatian father and Slovenian mother, born on the border between Croatia and Slovenia; he later married a younger Serbian wife. The most widespread sculptoric representations of Tito portrayed him as a partisan commander, looking re­ sponsible and thoughtful; his image possessed greater symbolic strength than the Yugoslav flag. The anthem dedicated to Tito was more popular than the national anthem. His birthday, declared the Day of Youth (Dan mladosti) from 1957, was an occasion celebrated more than the anniversary of the birth of Yugoslavia. Every 25th of May, a date declared as the autocrat’s official birthday (but which in fact commemorated his victory over the Germans at the battle of Drvar, in 1944), thousands of people applauded Tito in the Partizán football stadium in Belgrade.

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This was a well-rehearsed ceremony including large-scale choreography to the sound of gaudy anthems (Tito, Tito, Tito is our sun/Tito, Tito, tito is our heart/ […] The People, the Party, the Youth, the Army!). Its culmination was presenting Tito with the final passing of a baton or sceptre carried by young athletes, who had covered the entire country, starting in Tito’s home village and passing through the major cities: a ritual which began in 1945.60 The baton-passing ceremony con­ tinued after Tito’s heath with the sceptre being passed to the president of Yugoslavia Socialist Youth until 1988. Tito’s charisma was also reflected in his death. Throughout Yugoslavia there were houndreds of ceremonies of collective mourning, and Tito's mortuary chapel

FIGURE 5.7

Statue of Tito, House of Flowers, Belgrade. ©J. M. Faraldo

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at the Parliament was visited by thousands of citizens. The massive state funeral of the Yugoslav leader, held on 8 May 1980, was attended by delegations and re­ presentatives from 128 foreign countries, a number rarely seen in the official obsequies of a head of state during the twentieth century. The intricate ritual attempted to transfer the almost sanctity with which the figure of Tito was imbued to the Yugoslav flag in order to guarantee the country’s survival.61 This found a reflection in the mausoleum where he was inhumed, in Dedinje, near Belgrade. This is the House of Flowers, located on the ground floor of the complex which contains Yugoslavia History Museum and the 25th of May Museum, an event designated as Youth Day since 1967 in the former Yugoslavia. The mausoleum includes the tomb of Tito and his last wife Jovanka (who died in 2013), as well as a museum containing some personal items, gifts from other Heads of State, a collection of traditional costumes from the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia, gifts sent to Tito by ordinary citizens and a weapons arsenal. The exhibition uses the building adjoining the official residence of the Yugoslav leader, which was designed in 1975 as a winter garden and terrace, as well as a relaxation area for the dictator and his family. During the turbulent period following the disintegration of the Yugoslav state, the mausoleum was closed to the public for ten years. Today it is part of the Tito Memorial Centre, together with two personal villas of the dictator in Belgrade and other buildings, which is part in turn of the Museum of Yugoslavia. According to the information provided by its webpage, the site receives around twelve thousand visitors each year, a figure which includes numerous inhabitants from the neighbouring ex-Yugloslav republics, and also increasingly Chinese and other Asian tourists.62 In the early 1990s, Tito’s body symbolized for a while the aspiration to keep Yugoslavia united. There was some debate about the political convenience of moving his mortal remains from Belgrade to another site, whether his home town (to prevent symbolically the secession of Croatia, an idea considered since the beginning of 1991) or to Bosnia. Indeed, some proposals suggested that his body be quartered and divided into several parts, which would be distributed to and placed in mausoleums located throughout different territories in Yugoslavia, whose union only he would be able to maintain, alive or dead. Even after death, Tito was still a myth that almost everyone wanted to exploit. Both the nationalist leader and post-Communist Serb, Slobodan Milošević, and the former partisan and later Croatian nationalist, Franjo Tuđman, a revisionist pseudohistorian of Ustaše fascism and the Holocaust, engaged in this. Both rulers, who embodied the insurmountable divorce between Serbs and Croats after 1989, clearly declared their admiration for the deceased Tito and claimed to be his heirs, although in very different ways. Milošević, president of what remained of Yugoslavia, saw in Tito’s legacy an obvious reference for unity.63 Conversely, Tuđman claimed that the puppet state of 1941–1945, the NDH, was a predecessor of the new Croatian Republic founded in June 1991. Although he did not deny the Ustaše crimes, he relativized them, and interpreted that the

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NDH had been an expression of the Croatian nation’s age-old desire for in­ dependence. At the same time, in some public statements Tuđman also attempted to “re-nationalize” the role of Tito in Croatian history, as he would have had the merit of including his country on the side of the victors and achieving for Croatia a generous status within the post-war Yugoslav federation. Similarly, he highlighted the strongly Croatian ethnic identity of many Tito’s partisans, who would also have defended the country from Stalin’s designs. All of this formed part of the national “reconciliation” between Croats advocated by Tuđman during his decade as president (1990–99). In practice, however, the Republic of Croatia devoted greater efforts to removing statues and names from streets connected with the partisan myth, which was seen as one of the main symbolic foundations of the post-war idea of Yugoslavia. Instead, the “nationalization” of Tito’s memory has played a secondary role in the Croatian politics of memory.64 In the view of many ex-Yugoslav citizens, the mistakes of the former ruler in the final years of his life were the reason for social discontent in the 1980s and early 1990s.65 Serbian right-wing nationalists abjured the memory of Tito. For their part, the Slovene nationalists, once the country’s independence was proclaimed in June 1991, also ignored the memory of the dictator, in spite of his maternal link to the country. This was also the case with many Croatian nationalists, who unlike Tuđman regarded the dead Marshall as a traitor to his authentic country of birth. They therefore removed the statues of Tito from their pedestals, and erased his name from the streets. All reference to Tito was erased from the public sphere. Nonetheless, the name “Tito” was still present in the street directory of several Croatian cities over two decades later. Only in September 2017 did the town hall in Zagreb resolve by a narrow majority to rebaptize a historical square in the city centre (Trg. Marsala Tita) named after him as “Liberty Square”. In the bitter debate that took place amongst the councillors, two arguments came up once again. Everyone recognized the role of Tito as a partisan and anti-fascist leader who put Croatia on the winning side in the Second World War. However, the defenders of the motion believed that Tito had then implanted a dictatorial regime that would cost the lives of half a million people. Similar debates on the replacement of statues of the Marshall took place in other cities, such as Podgorica (Montenegro) and Užice (Serbia). Furthermore, his name was still present in 2017 in 276 streets and squares in Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia.66 Conversely, even in those years, Tito’s popularity and respect for his memory continued to be noticeable amongst a large part of the inhabitants of the Republic of Macedonia, both Slavs and ethnic Albanians, as well as between Albanians from the Serb province of Kosovo and the Bosnian Muslims. This was partly because unlike inter-war Yugoslavia, which attempted to define itself as a single nation, Tito’s regime had supported the institutional recognition of their respective na­ tional identities, starting with their language and culture.67 The Yugoslav pre­ sident, Milošević, finally announced in 1996 that Tito’s body would remain buried in the House of Flowers. Since then, the mausoleum has not been the focus of significant controversy in the remaining Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2008, which

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included Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo; nor is it in Serbia today. Once a year, on the anniversary of Tito’s death, hundreds or people, summoned by the ve­ terans’ associations of the “War of Popular Liberation”, the official name of the Second World War in Tito’s Yugoslavia, gather at the House of Flowers to pay tribute to their leader as a victorious partisan commander. From the second half of the 1990s, a wave of nostalgia for the old days under Tito’s aegis, seen as a period of work, peace and well-being, spread through a large part of the former Yugoslav territories. This was greatly shaped by the subsequent traumatic experience of the wars of secession between 1991 and 1999. To the general yearning being experienced throughout a large part of Eastern Europe for

FIGURE 5.8

Tito’s Tomb, House of Flowers, Belgrade. ©J. M. Faraldo

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the social and economic certainties of the communist system, Yugonostalgia added one of the facets of the past cult to the figure of Tito: that of guaranteeing internal peace, tolerance and the unity of the southern Slavs on the basis of diversity.68 Although the main aspects of the Tito myth had disappeared from public life in the new republics, from the end of the 1990s, these displays of a developing ve­ neration of him by civil society spread through several post-Yugoslav republics, and were even reflected somewhat in text books for primary school. The political repression enforced at the beginning of his mandate or his luxurious lifestyle, which were not the source of criticism during his rule, were now highlighted. However, Tito was still presented as a statesman of international renown, who defended the sovereignty of the Slavs against Stalin. A true patriot, in spite of everything else.69 In Croatia, it was now remembered that the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 recognized in theory the country’s right to self-determination. In 1996, an asso­ ciation dedicated to promoting the memory of Tito was established. Two years later, a survey carried out amongst the spectators of a successful Croat TV pro­ gramme came up with an unexpected result: almost 75 per cent viewed the late dictator positively. In 1999, the film Maršal (Marshall, Vinko Brešan), a comedy that showed a carefree and friendly image of Tito as a resuscitated ghost, enjoyed great success at the box office and encouraged younger people to take an interest in the former ruler.70 Tito the bon vivant bequeathed to the Yugoslav state and subsequent republics a certain number of villas in which he spent a large part of his time engaged in recreational activities, as well as two large yachts and other properties, and even a natural park on Brjuni island, where he received various figures of world renown, from Che Guevara to Sofia Loren. Many of these sites and assets were sold by post-Yugoslav states; others belonged to different administrations. Few of the buildings became memorial spaces.71 A good example of this was the luxurious summer palace ordered to be built by Tito on the banks of heavenly Lake Bled, in northern Slovenia, which became a kind of summer headquarters for his gov­ ernment. It was converted into an elegant hotel, which retains the furnishings of the socialist era in various spaces, and a large mural narrating the history of the “War of Popular Liberation”. In this case, the Slovenian state preferred to privatize and forget, rather than resignify. On the contrary, since the end of the 1990s some local museums feeding off Yugonostalgia sold busts and T-shirts with photos of the dictator, exploiting in particular his period as a partisan commander during the early 1940s. There are at least three Tito caves open to the public. One is in the mountainous interior of the Adriatic island of Vis, where according to some accounts he spent long periods in hiding, and held meetings with his commanders. Another is near Pale, in territory now belonging to the Srpska Republic of Bosnia, and another is nearer the city of Drvar (southwestern Bosnia), with a cabin from where Tito led important military operations. This was an authentic centre of pilgrimage until 1989, which was re-opened to the public and restored in 2006.72 The private celebrations of the

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so-called Youth Days were also still held by some groups of civil society and minority parties, such as the Titist Left, every 25 May, in poorly attended cere­ monies where at times a double dressed as the much-missed Tito would appear. This was a way of remembering a united Yugoslavia, once again, through the figure of Tito, although often the flags flown at these celebrations are from dif­ ferent Balkan republics. A good example is the well-cared for memorial site dedicated to Josip Broz in his home town of Kumrovec, situated to the north-west of Zagreb and near the Slovenian border. This is a continuation of the former ethnographic museum (Muzej Staro Selo or old village), designed in 1947 as a place to protect the house where Josip Broz was born. A year later, a statue of the leader was erected in front of the statue. The work of the sculptor Antun Augustinci, like several other sculptures located throughout the country (and that at the House of Flowers), depicts him once again as a partisan commander in reflective pose. In 1953, a museum (Muzej Marsala Tita) was inaugurated within the memorial landscape, and forty houses in the village were restored. After 20 years, the Kumrovec site was declared a “memorial park” under patrimonial protection, to whose design eth­ nographists, historians and architects contributed. Tito’s birth house, a robust stone building, contains an ethnographic exhibition that recreates the rural re­ gional furnishing from the end of the nineteenth century, as well as a collection of photos of the Marshall’s visits to Kumrovec (although he always spent the night at a villa designed exclusively for him, today a property of the state) and his heavilyattended state funeral. Currently, the Kumrovec site’s web page makes only a secondary reference to the birth house of Tito, and prefers to present the ethnographic site as a recreation of an idealized rural past. However, most of those who visit the place do not so out of interest in the rural world, but because of Tito. Although his statue was van­ dalized in 2004, it was restored and returned to its pedestal shortly afterwards, and has not been the target of further attacks. The local primary school is still named after Marshall Tito. His name is used to market the museum, devoid of references to the deceased Yugoslavia. Josip Broz is in Kumrovec, above all else, a dis­ tinguished son of the town, whose memory is profitable when attracting tourists and hundreds of Yugonostalgists. However, his image is continuously exploited by an independent Croatia: in 2000, 60 per cent of people surveyed stated that they supported the remains of Tito being re-inhumed within Croatian territory. Four years later, a winegrower in Kumrovec labelled some of his bottles with the name of the former dictator.73 As in life, the icon of Tito, and in this case the retroactive cult to his figure, is stronger than the flag or Yugoslav anthem. On 25 May every year, coinciding with the prior official anniversary of his birth, several hundred people gather at Tito’s birth house. In 2012, around twelve thousand people from Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Hercegovina gathered in Kumrovec, were received by the mayor and took part in a demonstration in favour of the former Yugoslavia.74 It is not, however, a site of cult or mass pilgrimage, partly due to its being little known

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outside the country. In 2018, the number of assistants registered at barely a few thousand per year.75 Yugonostalgia is increasingly tenuous in the Balkans, but the memory of Tito is not so much associated with the postulates of a regime as with the times of economic stability and peace, when the Yugoslav passport enabled its holder to cross borders throughout all Europe and most of the world. Thus, Yugonostalgia is expressed both by a youth subculture and online forums, through which an imaginary Yugoslavia never experienced by young and not so young people can be recreated. Some of them are also true admirers of his distinctive biography as a partisan and statesman. In 2016, according to a survey, 81 per cent of Serbs, 77 per cent of Bosnians, 65 per cent of Montenegrins and 45 per cent of Slovenes believed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had brought more dis­ advantages than advantages. Even a quarter of Slovenes thought that Tito was a great statesman.76

Notes 1 See Apor, Behrends, Jones & Rees (2004), for a full panorama. Similarly, see Morgan (2017). 2 See the biography of the Lenin Mausoleum’s medical team leader, Ilya Zbarsky, in Zbarsky & Hutchinson (1998). 3 See Wien (2004), Todorova (2006) and Grigorov (2007). 4 Leick (2013: 96–97); Kolár (2016: 94–96); Futerová (2019: 87–97). 5 See Light & Young (2015:46–48, 52–53). 6 See Todorova & Gille (2010), as well as Todorova (2018: 641–661). 7 See the documentary film State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa, 2019). For a reconstruction of the contradictory popular reactions to Stalin’s death and funeral, see Altrichter (2018: 300–327), Merridale (2002: 258–261) and Figes (2007: 522–534). The latter author depicts the paradoxical shock suffered by many deportees and victims of Stalin’s purges, who mourned the dictator and feared that a new period of political uncertainty started. 8 See Schlögel (2017: 825–832). 9 See Jones (2006; 2013: 1–3) and Figes (2007: 605). On the vicissitudes of the process and criticism of the personality cult, see also Kolár (2016: 91–142). 10 See Tumarkin (1994), Edele (2019), Figes (2007: 616–629) and Jones (2013: 173–211). 11 Plamper (2012: 221–222). 12 See Lutz-Auras (2013: 291–292); A. Ferrero, “El Stalin que sobrevive en Rusia”, Público, 4 March 2016; “‘Homage to evil’: Russian activists detained over Stalin pro­ test”, The Guardian, 8 March 2019. 13 See Koposov (2013; 2017: 207–237), as well as Becker (2016: 73–86, 102–111). 14 Edele (2017); Malinova (2017). 15 See Lutz-Auras (2013: 298–301); F. Nienhuysen, “Russland: Streit um Stalin. Krieg der Plakate”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 March 2010. 16 “Putin Accuses Russia’s Foes of ‘Excessive Demonization’ of Stalin”, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, 16 June 2017, available at https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-putin-decriesexcessive-demonization-stalin/28559464.html. See also “Путин рассказал о своем отношении к Сталину”, Ria-Novosti, 16 June 2017, available at https://ria.ru/ 20170616/1496623625.html. 17 See Sherlock (2007: 151–152), Figes (2007: 641–642) and Veiga (2009: 357). 18 See Lipman (2013); data from the 2012 survey in Gudkov (2012). Levada Centre data for 2019, at https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/04/19/dynamic-of-stalin-s-perception/.

174

19 20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42

The sites of the Communist dictators

See also for a general overview, Faraldo (2020: 101–107), as well as Lutz-Auras (2013: 301–303). See Nelson (2019: 78–79). See Khapaeva (2016); C.J. Williams, “Putin, Once Critical of Stalin, Now embraces Soviet Dictator’s Tactics”, Los Angeles Times, 11 June 2015, as well as L. Palveleva, “Russian Museum Celebrating Stalin Slated to Open for Victory”, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, 18 March 2015, available at https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-stalinmuseum/26907807.html, and P. Ruttland & N. Shimmield, “Putin’s Dangerous Campaign to Rehabilitate Stalin”, The Washington Post, 13 June 2019. See “Russia’s Third-Largest City to Pay Tribute to Stalin with New Statue”, The Moscow Times, 19 November 2018; and “Siberian Communists Unveil Stalin Monument amid Controversy”, The Moscow Times, 10 May 2019; E. Hartog, “Is Stalin Making a Comeback in Russia”, The Atlantic, 28 May 2019; available at https://www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/05/russia-stalin-statue/590140/. See http://dachastalina.ru. For a description of Stalin’s life at the dacha, and the circumstances of his death, see Rubinstein (2016: 7–11). https://www.kuncevo-online.ru/kinozal_kino_dacha_stalina.php. Abrahamian (2006: 282–283, 312–313) and De Waal (2013: 55–63). See Sebag Montefiore (2007), Baberowski (2004: 204–208) and Altrichter (2018: 17–69). See Junge & Bonwetsch (2015: 13–15). Bakradze (2013: 50–51). De Leonardis (2016). S. Walker, “Hero and Horror: Stalin Rebranded”, Independent, 6 June 2012. O. Vartanyan, “Georgia: A Stalinist Restoration”, New York Times, 21 December 2012. Quoted by B. Sawicki, “Personenkult im Stalin-Museum”, 18 December 2019, at https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/georgien-personenkult-im-stalin-museum.1773.de. html?dram:article_id=466098. See Bakradze (2013) and De Lenoardis (2017: 256–258), as well as S. Asatiani, “The Great Terror: In Stalin’s Birthplace, Forgiving and Forgetting”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 14 August 2007, available at https://www.rferl.org/a/1078153.html. See Read (2016). J. Fernández Elorriaga, “Albania será siempre roja, afirma Ramiz Alia al enterrar a Enver Hoxha”, El País, 16 April 1985. Hoxha’s state funeral can be watched at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=cX-nwfaEWVA. See Rama (2020). Years later, the dictator’s former resting place has been occupied with the remains of Azem Hajdari, one of the main leaders of student demonstrations that brought the collapse of the communist regime in December 1990, and first leader for a brief period of the Democratic Party of Albania. Hajdari, who was one of the party’s MPs, was killed in 1998. See Fevziu (2019: 255–258), as well as Vickers & Pettifer (2009: 83). See Nientied & Janku (2015). See, for example, Berisha’s statement on 11 February 2010, available at http://arkiva. km.gov.al/?fq=brenda&m=news&lid=13912&gj=gj2. See C. Patricolo, “Transforming Tirana’s Iconic Pyramid”, 20 July 2019 (https://emergingeurope.com/after-hours/42100/); R. Vines & Ch. Miller, “Bizarre Communist Folly to Be Reborn as Albanian Education Center”, 17 January 2020 (https://www.bloomberg. com/news/articles/2020-01-17/bizarre-communist-pyramid-reborn-as-albanian-educationcenter). Some further details of the project may be consulted at https://www.mvrdv.nl/ projects/312/the-pyramid-of-tirana. See S. Walker, “The House that Hoxha Built: Dictator’s Villa to Become Public Space”, The Guardian, 28 June 2019.

The sites of the Communist dictators

43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

175

Giakoumis (2016). Yamey (2016: 130). Fevziu (2019: 10–11). Sretenovic & Puto (2004: 219–222). See Giakoumis (2019). See Rejmer (2020: 17); “Former Dictator Still Seen in Positive Light by Many Albanians, Poll Shows”, Tirana Times, 9 December 2016 (https://www.tiranatimes. com/?p=130276); and F. Mejdini, “Albania Survey Shocks Victims of Communist Regime”, 12 December 2016 (https://balkaninsight.com/2016/12/12/albaniastruggles-to-fight-the-root-of-communism-nostalgia-12-09-2016/). M. Dima, “El entierro en Albania de su único rey, Zog I, divide al país sobre su legado”, el Diario.es, 17 November 2012. M. Chiriac, “Nostalgic Romanians Honour Dictator’s Memory”, Balkan Insight, 27 January 2016. See Stan (2013), Stan & Tismâneanu (2015) and Rusu (2017). See Petrescu & Petrescu (2010). Asavei (2017). See the vindicatory book penned by Bârbulescu (2011), whose title was a declaration of intent: We, the Traitors: Nicolae Ceauşescu Was My Uncle. See the Romanian television news on the occasion of Bârbulescu’s death: “A murit Emil Bârbulescu” (4 April 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPPIBLEGTgI); and “Emil Bârbulescu, condus pe ultimul drum” (5 April 2016, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V_AN2r1jb4g). See I. Jifcu, “Nostalgici comunismului şi-ar dori canonizarea lui Ceauşescu, la 100 de ani de la naşterea sa”, 26 January 2018, at https://www.mediafax.ro/social/nostalgiciicomunismului-si-ar-dori-canonizarea-lui-ceausescu-la-100-de-ani-de-la-nasterea-sa16960819/gallery-16960832/1. P. Karasz, “At Ceausescu’s Villa, Focus Is on Décor, Not Dictatorship”, New York Times, 6 June 2016. See Chioveanu (2003), Shafir (2004) and Bucur (2010). Flere & Klansjek (2014), Sretenovic & Puto (2004: 209–216), Halder (2013: 137–176) and Calic (2020: 179–247, 382–383). See Zivojinovic (2010), Veiga (2004: 45–46) and Halder (2013: 193–213). See Videkanic (2010), Brklljacic (2001),Pirjevec (2016: 557–575) and Halder (2013: 227–234). See https://www.muzej-jugoslavije.org. On Milošević and his possibly being inspired by Tito, see Veiga (2004: 98–100). On the appeal of Tito to Tuđman, see Czerwiński (2016) and Petrungaro (2006: 275–278). See also Halder (2013: 276–289). Calic (2020: 380–381). See V. Pavlic, “Zagreb City Assembly Renames Marshal Tito Square”, 1 September 2017, available at https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/21662-zagreb-cityassembly-renames-marshal-tito-square; Calic (2020: 381–382). See Bringa (2004), Kameda (2010) and Reinkowski (2011). Calic (2018: 330–331). Pavasović-Trošt (2014). See Nemet (2010: 74–75), Koren (2010: 88–89) and Petrungaro (2006). See a full description in M. Stojanovic et al., “Tito’s Legacy: Surveying the Yugoslav Leader’s Real Estate”, Balkan Insight, 28 June 2019 (available at https://balkaninsight. com/2019/06/28/titos-legacy-surveying-the-yugoslav-leaders-real-estate/). In April 2019, the cave and cabin at Drvar had to be closed due to lack of funding for its restoration following a rockfall. See “Tito’s Cave, a Symbol of Yugoslav Resistance, Closed due to Lack of Funds”, The Srpska Times, 4 April 2019. See Nemet (2010: 77).

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74 M. Mandic, “Poruke iz Kumrovca: Dok je Tito bio živ, svima nam je bilo bolje2, 26 May 2012, at https://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/poruke-iz-kumrovca-dok-je-tito-bioziv-svima-nam-je-bilo-bolje-414160. 75 See the Museum’s website at http://www.mss.mhz.hr. 76 E. Keating & Z. Ritter, “Many in Balkans Still See More Harm from Yugoslavia Breakup”, 18 May 2017, avialable at https://news.gallup.com/poll/210866/balkansharm-yugoslavia-breakup.aspx; Calic (2020: 385).

6 EPILOGUE: WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE SITES OF DICTATORS?

This study has sought to examine through comparison a chapter of post-war European history: the memory policies concerning the recent past of sites of dictators. The spaces discussed are not always large urban complexes in a mag­ nificent shape, imperial capitals, grandiose memorials or imposing statues. On the contrary, their principal settings are often intimate memorial spaces, some of which are in appearance even insignificant. Sites located in small cities, towns and villages, from the Slovak Bytča to the Georgian Gori, the Galician Meirás to the Croat Kumrevec; buildings and houses that are not always dazzling, or con­ spicuous tombs in cemeteries where thousands of the dead rest. The most frequent actors of this story are not great statesmen or intellectuals, either, but local memory activists, mayors and regional governors, as well as authorities subordinate to the main centres of decision-making. However, in this history of parallel and at times interconnected lives and stories from below, from Sada to Yeu island, from Predappio to Braunau am Inn, or from Vimieiro to Scornicesti, there is an important and often concealed part of the remembrance of dictators. The experience of all these apparently hardly significant places in the great account of European history, shows us one of the virtualities of global history: displaying the complexity of the world through small parallel stories, which in turn are directly or indirectly interrelated. At the same time, casting a panoramic and comparative gaze over them, and also focusing on their specificities through a microhistorical prism, unusual parallels, common patterns and differences may be revealed between European history and the memory of twentieth-century dictatorships. This study has addressed a European chapter of a global history. A history that possesses its own dynamics and specificities on other continents. There have been many modern dictators of one kind or another in Africa, Asia and the Americas, whose mortal remains rest in monumental tombs that have become centres of cult

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Epilogue

and pilgrimage, or whose birthplaces have turned into specific spaces of remem­ brance. The first precedent was undoubtedly the immense mausoleum in the shape of a bell built on the side of a mountain near Nanjing to house the body of Doctor Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese Republic in 1912, who died 13 years later. The tumulus was inaugurated in 1929, and on the Asian continent it was a landmark similar to that of Lenin in the Soviet Union. It meant that the leader of a republic, like the heir of an empire, also received a burial in a tomb invested with (secularized) sacredness. Because of this, it would be imitated by authoritarian presidents, as well as by several dictators. The cast could begin with the monumental site inaugurated in 1953 that houses the remains of the first president of the Turkish republic, the reformist and authoritarian Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1923–1938), in Anitkabir, near Ankara. More recent is the mausoleum of the father of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong, in Peking’s Tiananmen Square, where since May 1977 his em­ balmed body has been curated. Other examples would be that of the founder of the dictatorial dynasty of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, whose embalmed body following his death in 1994 lies in the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, accompanied since 2011 by that of his successor, Kim Jong-il. Furthermore, the mausoleum where the equally embalmed body of the Vietnamese national hero Hồ Chi Minh rests was inaugurated seven years after his death and is located in Bah Dinh Square, near Hanoi, where he proclaimed Vietnam’s independence in 1945. However, all of them are venerated in the twenty-first century as founders of their regimes and restorers of national independence. The narrative of their sites of memory is acritical and apologetic, a mixture of national assertiveness and ideo­ logical loyalty, and their mausoleums receive hundreds of thousands of visitors every year who are mostly citizens from their own countries. The continuity of their essential features of the political regimes that they founded makes them scarcely comparable with the European examples addressed in the preceding chapters, with the exception of the memory to Stalin in the USSR and Russia, whose meanders and capacity for survival were also related, as we have seen, with the fact that the Soviet regime survived his death by almost 40 years. One of the few Asian communist dictators who were toppled (by a foreign invasion) was Pol Pot, supreme leader of the genocidal regime of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (1976–1979); he died whilst under house arrest in 1998. Following cremation, his remains have today become the focus of a limited cult. Pol Pot’s ashes rest in a simple cenotaph erected on the site of his cremation in the border town of Choam, which is visited by tourists, the curious and even some loyalists (if some of the guards are paid); many then go on to a nearby casino. In Mongolia, the grandiose mausoleum of Sükhbaatar, erected in the centre of Ulan Bator in honour of the communist leaders Damdin Sükhbaatar, head of the Mongolian revolution of 1921, and the country’s president Khorloogiin Choibalsan, deceased in 1952, was demolished in 2005. On its site, a room dedicated to the country’s

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FIGURE 6.1

179

Hồ Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi. ©Ramón López-Facal

national hero par excellence, the medieval Mongol emperor, Genghis Khan, was built.1 Similarly, the posthumous cult to the extravagant post-Soviet dictators who took power in Central Asia from 1991 has been little disputed. These were the cases of Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan (1990–2006) and Islam A. Karimov in Uzbekistan (1989–2016). In both countries, successor presidents have respected the autocrats’ mausoleums and memorials, partly out of considering them founding fathers of their independent republics, who exercized their leadership in the final years of the USSR as local leaders of the CPSU. However, the memory of authoritarian, anti-Communist dictators and presidents, like general Park Chung-hee in South Korea (1963–1979), Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan (1950–1975), Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines (1950–1975) and Suharto in Indonesia (1967–1998), some of whom were overthrown by military coups d’état and popular uprisings, has been the subject of fierce disputes in the public sphere of the pseudo-democratic or democratic regimes that followed them. There were also several African dictators in the second half of the twentieth century who went from being heroes of independence to satraps: reformistoriented and paternalist in some cases, violent and greedy in others. The list includes Jean-Bédel Bokassa, self-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic (1966–1976); Idi Amin in Uganda (1971–1979); the long-lived Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Zaire (1965–1997); Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo (1967–2005); El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba in

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Gabon (1967–2009); and Hastings Kamuzu Wanda in Malawi (1966–1994). In some of these cases, the overthrow and death of the autocrats was followed by a posthumous rehabilitation and veneration, as they were often seen as heroes, restorers or founders of their young national states. The successor governments eschewed therefore any resignification of mausoleums, residences or birthplaces, and even promoted some of them as tourist destinations.2 In South America, conversely, the democracies that followed the bloody dic­ tatorships of the 1970s and 1980s have expeditiously prevented centres of cult emerging around the tombs of autocrats. In general, dictators have been denied since the 1990s the status of (ex-)heads of state, lowering them to the condition of coup participants and/or persons guilty of genocide. This was the case in countries where there was a comprehensive process of score settling with the recent past. This followed an initial moment when, shortly after the return to democracy from the mid-1980s, many perpetrators were exempted from responsibilities owing to the pressure of the military establishment. The cases of Chile and Argentina can illustrate two different models of managing the memory of dictators. In Chile, the transition from dictatorship to democracy from 1990 was gradual and overseen by the same armed forces that had executed the coup d’état 17 years before. General Augusto Pinochet, supreme leader and then de facto president of Chile under his dictatorial regime, still retained the post of supreme commander of the army after the end of the dictatorship. Between 1998 and 2002 he also had the rank of lifetime senator. He dreamt of a mausoleum similar to the Parisian crypt of Napoleon or the Valley of the Fallen. Following the extradition request filed by Judge Baltasar Garzón in 1998, Pinochet underwent in subsequent years several legal proceedings in his country, which subdued somewhat the enthusiasm of his followers. In his final years, he wished to be buried in the family pantheon located in the General Cemetery in Santiago de Chile. However, both this option and that of the mausoleum of the Military School were discarded out of fear of demonstrations by memorialist associations and left-wing groups. When the ex-dictator died in a military hospital in December 2006, he was buried amidst institutional detachment. Although Pinochet was denied a state funeral, he was honoured as an ex-commander-in-chief of the army, and the Military School housed his mortuary chapel. His remains were then deposited in the chapel of a family estate, Los Boldos, 150 kilometres to the south-west of the capital, in a ceremony attended by family members, friends and high military ranks. Each year, on the anniversary of the death of Pinochet, two masses are held in his honour in that chapel: one is private, the other is open to the public. They are regularly attended by members of the army and elderly nostalgists, as well as con­ troversial politicians, such as the right-wing senator Iván Moreira.3 The activity of the Pinochet Foundation, founded in 1995 to “promote the work and legacy of the government of President Pinochet amongst younger generations” and to award grants to exceptional students,4 does not appear to salvage the memory of the dictatorship from indifference either. Only a small square in the town of Linares, located in a rural and conservative area of southern-central Chile, was named after

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Pinochet, as well as a monolith that recalled the “martyrs” of the so-called military civic uprising in 1973. In November 2019, coinciding with the wave of social revolts taking place throughout the country, the monument was the object of a much-discussed act of vandalism. In October 2020, a new attack was perpetrated against the monument, as the plaque of the monolith was “erased” with a pen.5 A different case was that of the members of the Argentine Military Junta which in March 1976 installed a bloody dictatorial regime, the euphemistically named National Reorganization Process, responsible for 30,000 victims who were mostly disappeared without trace. Those responsible for the repression were initially absolved by the controversial Full Stop Law of December 1986, complemented by the Law of Due Obedience in June the following year, decreed by the Radical Party government of Raúl Alfonsín. To these were added several pardons granted by the government of his successor, the Peronist president, Carlos S. Menem. After 15 years, however, the Argentine Congress and the Supreme Court annulled those laws. Those responsible had to stand trial again and were convicted for crimes against humanity, serving prison sentences or house arrest (in cases of advanced age). Following their death, their memory was associated with gen­ eralized social repudiation. Unlike Pinochet, they could not even count on the support of the armed forces, who were deeply discredited following their defeat in the Falklands War of Spring 1982. This was the case of general Augusto Videla, who died in prison in May 2013. Although his relatives wanted to bury him in the family vault in Mercedes cemetery, 100 kilometres to the west of Buenos Aires, the protests of the memorialist associations forced his relatives to find another location for his remains. The military vault in the well-known cemetery of Chacarita, located in the centre of Buenos Aires, was also rejected as a site for the remains of Videla due to the fear of demonstrations being held there. Memory activists sustained that perpetrators of genocide like him, or admiral Emilio Massera, had no right to a tomb through which they could be remembered, as this was something that the military had denied thousands of victims who were thrown into the sea. In 2015, however, it was disclosed that the ex-dictator Videla was buried in a grave under a false name, located on a plot which was the property of a retired military officer in the Pilar Memorial Cemetery (on the outskirts of Buenos Aires), a site where Massera and a civilian minister of the dictatorship, José A. Martínez de la Hoz, also lay. Since then, memorialist associations have held a march to the cemetery gates to condemn the 1976 coup d’état every 24 March. Other leading members of the Military Junta, such as the generals Roberto Viola (died in 2010) and Leopoldo F. Galtieri (died in 2003) were buried in the military vault in Chacarita cemetery, close to the centre of Buenos Aires. Galtieri even received military honours, which were prohibited by law from 2009 for the funerals of those condemned for violating human rights. In order to avoid acts of repudiation, focused demonstrations or graffiti on their tombs, family members secretly removed his remains years ago.6 As has been stated, the fate and management of sites of dictators represent a complex chapter within the diversity of post-dictatorial memory policies. As many solutions have been applied in practice as there are different cases. Grey areas, wide

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margins of extra-official tolerance and differences of interpretation between state, regional and local authorities are abundant. This explains why in several countries damnatio memoriae is alternated with museumization, spaces converted into an at­ traction for those nostalgic for the dictatorship with the touristification and even open marketing, if not overt disneylandification of sites of dictators. Local authorities in general lean towards pragmatism, often in the name of a naively “neutral” or merely factual discourse of history, devoid of any conflictive interpretation. They also attempt to channel situations that already exist through an intervention of public history. State agencies, alongside history experts, museologists and engaged intellectuals tend to cling strongly to normative principles of a general nature. Hence also the decisive role that, as has been indicated, is assumed by local actors and activists in this European history, making it a good example of glocal history. On the one hand, mayors and local politicians, from Gerhard Skiba and Johannes Waidbacher in Braunau am Inn, to Abel López Soto in Sada, Giorgio Frasinetti in Predappio and Leonel Gouveia in Santa Comba Dâo. On the other hand, local historians and activists, from Andreas Meislinger in Braunau to the groups in Sada that mobilized to recover “historical memory”. Finally, en­ trepreneurs and local managers, supporters of venerating and exploiting the sites of dictators through pragmatic criteria, such as Emil Bârbulescu in Scornicesti or the entrepreneurial hotel managers in Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg, They are all actors operating on a local and regional level, but do not necessarily do so in the localist sense, nor do they always act in an isolated manner. They can be con­ sidered glocal actors, who act locally, but think more or less globally. Thus, amongst the activists in favour of the critical preservation of historical memory in Braunau and those in Predappio there were frequent contact at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when learning mutual lessons. The same can be stated of the Portuguese and Italian experts, as the former saw clear similarities between Santa Comba Dâo and Predappio. As a general rule, in most of Western Europe (above all Germany, Austria and Italy), the solutions proposed have focused on a Europeanization of the remembrance of dictators, as a common “negative memory” of a troubled past, which acts as a permanent admonition for the present and future.7 This nar­ rative emphasizes its transnational dimension, aiming at the creation of itin­ eraries and virtual museums illustrating the importance of some specific locations as the birthplaces of dictators, in the context of the twentieth-century Europe. In other countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Georgia, Russia or Albania, debates tend to focus on the local, regional and state/national dimension, and have sought to resignify these memorial spaces within their own national history. This also reflects a further dichotomy: that existing between those societies (and states) that have assumed their condition of having been the cradle of doctrines and dictatorships with a transnational and mur­ derous projection, and therefore with an awareness of a historical responsibility that has repercussions beyond their borders; and those that remain caught within the elucidation of their own debates and family demons. In this sense,

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the Europeanization of the sites of dictators, preached by various forums and on some occasions by projects such as Atrium, continues to be today an unresolved matter. Consistent with the general lines of the politics of memory of the recent past in each post-dictatorial state and of its institutions, sites of dictators attract specific attention. The dilemmas oscillate between the moral imperative of critical memory, the desire to place a specific location on the global map of tourist destinations and the fear that places will explicitly or implicitly turn into sanctuaries for nostalgists of the dictatorship and enemies of democracy by associating sites connected with the private and personal life of the dictators with their museumization. This can con­ tribute to humanizing them and perpetuate their charisma in an indirect manner, perhaps morphing into morbid fascination for “dark tourism”. There are many cases where sites of dictators have become places of cult for nostalgists. The birthplace of Jozef Tiso in Bytča is a good and almost consecrated example of this. Others include Horthy Castle in Kenderes and the birthplace of Stalin attached to the Museum devoted to him in Gori. The Valley of the Fallen, in spite of the proposals for its resignification since 2011, is another exponent of the transformation, albeit less direct, of the autocrat’s tomb into a pilgrimage centre. However, in times of mass tourism and straightforward and massive accessibility to information through social networks, the values and meanings ascribed to places linked to the dictators of the twentieth century are subject to great volatility. Neofascists, neo-Stalinists and dark tourists who adore the morbid interest of great tyrants, the irresistible fascination always exuded by the “bad guys” in the film, can always choose between a huge panoply of spaces to commemorate or satisfy their curiosity regarding the memory of a dictator, thus converting them into new memorial spaces. The range of putative or substitutive sites of dictator would span from the duly identified grave of a dictator’s partner or bigwig of the regime, such as Rudolf Hess, or a relative of the autocrat, to the room or house where the dictator happened to stay once or several times, such as Campo Imperatore or Khoroshego. In most cases, once it is decided to put an end to the damnatio memoriae – oblivion being the best form of revenge, to quote Jorge-Luis Borges – whose greatest risk consisted in leaving abandoned spaces to turn into a Mecca for pilgrimages for nostalgists and novice supporters of what dictatorships represented, the proposals and debates concerning the use of sites of dictators by democracies have pivoted on three central questions. The first and often most prevalent has been the where: the convenience of museumizing and resignifying spaces saturated with symbolic content, where the ghost of the dictator still prevails in some manner and his charisma turns into morbidity or fascination. The alternative is guaranteeing the objectives of these museums or interpretation centres in locations enabling easy and massive access, devoid of shadows of the past. The second is the what: what should be told in the museum or interpretation centre? The contextualized biography of the dictator in a general sense? His

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specific connection to the site in question, whether this be his mausoleum or birth house or home town? Or the dictator’s character, crimes and victims, from a critical perspective, which reminds the visitor what the autocrat did when alive or when he became an adult? The third great question lies in the how to resignify. Should the choice be a traditional physical museum, equipped with documentation and research sections, a visitor interpretative centre with an explicitly didactic approach? Is a model of delocalized museum that would avoid focusing on objects and photos, to rather prioritize virtual and interactive content? Or instead, a “diffuse museum”, inserted in a network of regional, national or European spaces that would enable this site of dictator to be contextualized adequately within a broader panorama, thus dwindling its uniqueness? Within this last mode, how many buildings and what environment should be created? Should it adopt a specifically national or a transnational narrative? That is where the role of the community of professional Historians with a capital “H” and interdisciplinary vocation should undoubtedly be raised, but not as a section of humanist disciplines that resemble a post-modern mishmash. A knowledge of the past based on contrasting theoretical frameworks and metho­ dological accuracy and which is available to society in general. This is doubly urgent in times when the past is becoming an object of vulgarization and shared on social networks in a simplified manner. The complexity of the past, and even more so of the pasts that do not pass owing to their symbolic and normative burden, cannot fit into a twitter or Instagram message.

Notes 1 Leick (2013: 91–93). 2 In this sense, the case of the despotic emperor Bokassa is paradigmatic. He was con­ demned in the Central African Republic, later given amnesty and finally rehabilitated 14 years after his death. The nostalgia for his figure is connected with the years of chaos and violence following his deposal, supported by France, in 1976. The remains of Idi Amin, buried in Saudi Arabia, are not a source of controversy in his home country. Some of his official residences are promoted by the Ugandan government as a tourist attraction. See Schlichte (2011), Ramondy (2016) and Leick (2013: 240–281). 3 See Olmeda (2009: 349–351); Alija Fernández (2016); D. Escobedo, “A diez años de su muerte: viaje al feudo de Pinochet”, 15 December 2016, at https://www.theclinic.cl/2016/ 12/15/a-diez-anos-de-su-muerte-viaje-al-feudo-de-pinochet/; S. Vedoya, “Conmemoran muerte de Pinochet en reservada misa en Los Boldos”, 10 December 2017, available at https:// www.latercera.com/noticia/conmemoran-muerte-pinochet-reservada-misa-los-boldos/. 4 See https://www.fundacionpresidentepinochet.cl/. 5 “‘Borrada’ con lápiz BIC: así apareció la polémica plazoleta que homenajea a Pinochet en Linares”, biobiochile.cl, 30 October 2020; available at https://www.biobiochile.cl/ noticias/nacional/region-del-maule/2020/10/30/borrada-con-lapiz-bic-asi-aparecio-lapolemica-plazoleta-que-homenajea-a-pinochet-en-linares.shtml. 6 A. Rebossio, “El falso nombre de la tumba de Videla”, El País, 28 May 2015; F. Rivas Molina, “Tumbas sin nombre para los dictadores argentinos”, El País, 19 July 2018. 7 As defended by some authors for the memory of fascism and the Second World War. See Bauerkämper (2012: 392–404).

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INDEX

A Coruña ix, 1, 122, 123, 124, 125, 131, 132 A Coruña Commission for the Recovery of Historical Memory (CRHMC) 131 Abrantes, Santiago 83 Adenauer, Konrad 19 Affile 67 Albanese, Giulia Padua 63 Albania i, 11, 90, 142, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 169, 182 Alegre, Manuel 84 Alia, Ramiz 155, 156 Aljube 85 Alonso Vega, Camilo 118 Altötting, monastery of 102, 103 Anitkabir 178 Anschluss 35, 36, 43, 47, 48, 49 Antall, József 106 Antonescu, Ion 164, 165 Arias Navarro, Carlos 121, 129 Armenia 150, 151, 158 Arrow Cross Party 106 Assmann, Aleida 6 Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) 126 Association pour défendre la mémoire du maréchal Pétain (ADMP) 97 Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (ANPI) 52 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal 178 Athens 90, 91 Audisio, Walter 52 Austria 10, 11, 14, 17, 26, 35–42, 46–9, 52, 62, 68, 72, 101, 105, 129–30, 151, 182 Authoritarianism 88 Ávalos, Juan 117 Azor, yacht 116 Baltic States 85, 86, 150–51 Bârbulescu, Emil 162, 182

Barcelona 127 Barrié de la Maza, Pedro 123–4 Battisti, Cesare 72 Bavaria 17, 22, 26–7, 29, 101; Bavarian Landtag 27, 32 Béla Kun 106 Belgium 93, 94 Belmonte Calabro 66 Belgrade 166–8, 170 Berisha, Sari 157 Berlin 18–9, 20–1, 23, 25–6, 30, 33–5, 68 Berchtesgaden 17, 26, 31, 68, 124, 182 Bianchi, Michele 66–7 Bierut, Bolesław 140 Bleiburg 105 Blloku (Tirana) 158 Bogensee 34 Bokassa, Jean-Bédel 179 Bologna 56, 61, 63 Bormann, Martin 26 Bosnia-Herzegovina 105 Brandt, Willy 19 Bratislava 102 Braun, Eva 18, 28–9; house in Munich 29–30 Braunau am Inn 17, 36–9, 41, 43, 60, 79, 177, 182 Breivik, Anders 96 Brezhnev, Leonid 145–6, 148, 152 Bucharest 142, 160, 162–5 Budapest 10, 81, 106–9 Bulgaria 91, 140–2, 157 Burashevo 86 Bytča 102–4, 177, 183 Caetano, Marcelo 75–8 Calvo Sotelo, Leopoldo 122 Cambodia 178 Campo Imperatore 66–7, 183 Canali, Roberto 63–4

200

Index

Canfora, Luciano 62 Caproni, galleries 60 Cardina, Miguel 83 Carinhall Manor 29 Carrero Blanco, Luis 120, 129 Castani Palace 64 Catabois cemetery (Ferrol) 115 Catholicism 59 Caucasus 141, 148, 150–2 Caxias 85 Ceaușescu, Elena 14–5, 160–1, 164 Ceaușescu, Nicolae 10, 11, 14–5, 141–2, 160–5; birth house of 161–3 Central African Republic 179, 184 Centro Interpretativo do Estado Novo 81 Cerro Maggiore, monastery 54, 57 Central Asia 151, 179 Charisma 2–5, 8–9, 12, 15, 46, 52, 64–5, 76, 78, 85, 88–9, 101, 103, 121, 135, 140, 142, 165, 167, 183; Charismatic leadership 64 Chiang Kai-shek 179 Chile 180 China 15, 156, 160 Chirac, Jacques 99 Choibalsan, Khorloogiin 178 Christian Democracy 53; of Germany 19; of Italy 53, 55–6 Christian Social Union (CSU) 22 Church 10, 44, 46–8, 55, 117, 129; Catholic Church 53, 126, 127, 130; Orthodox Church 142, 155; Reformed Church 108 Churchill, Winston 52, 150 Ciano, Costanzo 65, 67 Cinque Stelle 63 Ciudadanos (Cs) 128 Cleveland 86 Cogollos 116 Coimbra 77, 80–4 Collaborationism 67, 101 Communism 108, 119, 146, 158, 160, 163; Communist regime 102, 106, 140, 141, 143, 156, 159, 161, 165–6, 174 Communist Party 52–3, 79, 83, 141, 143, 146, 149, 154, 161; Czechoslovakia 141; Italy 53; Portugal 79, 83; Romania 161; Soviet Union 143, 144, 146–7, 149, 151, 179 Communitarian Party of Romania 163 Congo 179 Cornide house (A Coruña) 125 Costa, António ix, 83

Councils of the National-Syndicalist Offensive (JONS) 133 Croatia 104–5, 166, 168–9, 171–2; Independent State of Croatia (NDH) 104–5, 168 Cuba 15, 140 Cuelgamuros 117, 119–21, 126 Cult of personality 1, 46 Czech Republic 142 Czechoslovakia 29, 93, 102, 106, 140–1 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 64–5, 74; statue of (Trieste) 68; Vittoriale degli Italiani 64–5, 68, 74 Dalmatia 54 Damnatio memoriae 28, 30, 34, 106, 130, 161, 182–3 Day of Youth (Yugoslavia) 166–7 De Clercq, Staf 94–5 De Felice, Renzo 50 De Gaulle, Charles 96, 98–9 Democratic Party 22, 33, 58, 76, 157, 174; of Albania 157, 174; of Italy 58, 60–1, 63 Dictatorship; definition 2, 3, 5; types of 2, 3, 5 Dimitrov, Giorgi 140–1; mausoleum 141, 157 Documentation Centre; of Austrian Resistance 38; Munich 22–3, 27, 62; Nuremberg 24–5; Obersalzberg 31 Dollfuss, Engelbert 36, 46–50; birth house 49; myth of 47; tomb of 47, 48 Dongo 52, 72; Museum of 52, 72 Douaumont cemetery 97, 98, 100, 112 Drvar 166, 171, 175 Ďurčanský, Ferdinand 103 Eanes, António Ramalho 77 Eckart, Dietrich 26, 31 El Pardo Palace 1, 114, 116 El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba 179 Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) 126 Estonia 85–7, 110 EUR, Rome 53 Falange Española (FE-JONS) 120, 133–4 Fascism 40–1, 46–7, 50, 53–6, 59–64, 67, 84, 104, 106, 133, 140, 147, 150–1, 165, 168, 184; Fascist movement 59, 62, 64–5, 95; Fascist National Party (PNF) 50, 55, 64, 66; Fascist regime 1, 47, 50, 68, 72; Republican Fascist Party (PFR) 64

Index

Ferrándiz, Francisco 129 Ferrol 115, 126 Fest, Joachim 20 Fidesz 107 Finland 85, 91–2 Fiume 54, 65, 68 Flanders 94 Flemish National Union (VNV) 94 Flores, Marcello 61–2 Foibe, massacre of 54, 68 Forced labor 45, 127 Forlì 59, 61; Forlì-Cesena, province 55, 58, 61 Foro Italico 53 Fosse ardeatine 54 Foz palace 77 France 6, 76, 93, 96–9, 184 Franco, Francisco 1, 10, 14, 72, 98, 114–7, 119–29, 132–4, 136–7; birth house 115; body of 1, 120, 122, 126–8, 134; family 123, 128, 131, 132; state funeral 120; sculptures 116, 127 Franco, Ramón 115 Franco foundation 121, 129 Francoist regime 2, 114–5, 121, 137 Frassineti, Giulio 60–1, 63, 81 Fraueninsel (Bavaria) 31–2 Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) 40–1, 45 Frei, Norbert 25 Funeral 3, 57, 66, 120–1, 129, 136, 141, 143, 155; King’s funeral 3; State funeral 4–5, 78, 120, 168, 172, 180 Gabon 180 Galicia 1, 10, 124; Regional parliament of 10, 132; Xunta of 125, 131 Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) 115–6, 126, 130–2 Galigat hut 159 Galtieri, Leopoldo 181 Gamsakhurdia, Zviad 152 Gardone Riviera 64 Gentile, Emilio 67 Georgia 10, 142, 150–2, 154–5, 182 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe 141–2, 164 Georgian Dream coalition 155 Germany 11, 13, 18–20, 21, 33–7, 40, 46, 76, 87, 90, 95–6, 105, 147, 182; Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) 11, 13, 17, 22, 27, 35, 39; German Democratic Republic (GDR) 17, 19, 22, 31, 140 Gimie villa 96 Ginzburg, Carlo 62 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 99

201

Giulino di Mezzegra 52 Glechner, Wolfgang 39 Gnassingbé Eyadéma 179 Goebbels, Joseph 18, 34; Goebbels Villa 34 González, Felipe 116, 122 Gorbachev, Mikhail 86, 146, 152 Gori 151–5, 177, 183 Göring, Hermann 26, 29 Gottwald, Klement 140–1 Gouveia, Leonel 81, 182 Graziani, Rodolfo 67 Greater Romania Party 165 Greece 85, 90–1, 143 Guidi, Rachele 15, 54, 56, 59, 61 Gulag 147 Gyömrő 107 Hafeld 45 Hastings Kamuzu Wanda 180 Hegedüs Jr., Lóránt 108 Heroism 5, 90, 111 Hess, Rudolph 11, 30, 33–4, 183; myth 33–4; tomb of 11, 33–4 Historical Memory Law (LMH) 114, 126–8, 131, 136–7 Hitler, Adolf 9, 17–21, 25–9, 31–2, 35–47, 68–9, 75, 91, 106, 110, 151, 154, 164; addresses in Munich 10, 21, 28, 29–30; birth house of 9, 36–8, 39–44, 151; bunker 18–21, 35; childhood’s house of 11, 36–7, 43, 45; rests of 18 Hitler family 36, 43–5, 68; tomb of Hitler’s parents 43–5 Heydrich, Reinhard 30 Helsinki 91, 92 Hlinka, Andrej 101, 112; Andrej Hlinka Society 103 Hồ Chi Minh 178, 179 Holocaust 7, 35, 43, 45, 54, 61, 63, 96, 165, 168 Horthy, Miklós 10, 75, 105–9, 165, 183; birth place 107, 183; myth of 106–9 House of Flowers (Belgrade) 167–70, 172 House of Terror (Terror Háza) 108–9 Hoxha, Enver 10–1, 13–5, 142–3, 155–60; birth house 9, 158–9; tomb 155, 157; personality cult 159 Hoxha, Nexhmije 15, 156 Hungary 36, 76, 93, 105–8, 110, 140, 165 Idi Amin 179, 184 Institute for Contemporary History (Munich) 34 Invalidenfriedhof 30

202

Index

Iron curtain 106, 156 Isorni, Jacques 97 Istria 54, 66 Italy 11, 46, 50, 52–3, 62–3, 67–8, 76, 84, 93, 96, 104–5, 129–30, 157, 182; Italian Social Republic (RSI) 50, 68; Italian Republic 50, 53, 59, 67 Jaruzelski, Wojciech 88 Jasenovac 104–5 Jews 20, 30, 33, 43, 45, 83, 93, 99, 103, 105, 108–9, 165; deportations of 45, 93, 99, 102–3, 106, 108 Jobbik 107, 108 Jodl, Alfred 31–2 Juan Carlos I, King 121 Juliá, Santos 130 Kaczorowski, Ryszard 89 Kadare, Ismail 159 Karimov, Islam A. 179 Kaunas 87 Kenderes 106–7, 183 Khoroshego 148–9, 183 Khrushchev, Nikita 143–5, 151–2 Kim Il-sung 178 Kim Jong-il 178 Königsplatz 22, 35 Korça 155, 159 Korea 13, 140, 178–9; North Korea 13, 140, 178; South Korea 179 Kotanko, Florian 38 Köver, László 107, 109 Krakow 88–9 Kreisky, Bruno 38 Kremlin 18, 144, 151, 158 Kumrovec museum 172 Kuntsevo 150 Labajos 133, 134 Lake Bled 171 Lake Garda 64 Lambach 45 Latvia 85, 87 Law and Justice (PiS) 89 Leccisi, Domenico 56 Ledesma, Ramiro 133 Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda) 80 Lenin, Vladimir Ilich 2–5, 15, 141, 143–5, 147–8, 151, 156, 178; cult of 4,5; tomb of 3–4 Leonding 11, 43–5 Liberation Day (25 April) 68

Liberty Square (Szabadság Tér) 10, 107, 142, 169 Linz 36, 37, 43, 45 Linz, Juan J. 2 Lisbon 76–8, 80, 84–5 Lithuania 85, 86–8 Livorno 65 López Soto, Abel 130, 182 Loreto square, Milan 52, 54 Lourenço, Jôao 79 Luburic, Vjekoslav 105 Luzhkov, Yury 147 Macarena, Our Lady of 135 Madrid 1, 104–5, 114, 116–9, 121–2, 124, 126, 128, 132–3, 136 Magdeburg 18 Maislinger, Andreas 38, 40 Malawi 180 Maltoni, Rosa 55 Mank 49 Mannerheim, Carl G. E. 91, 92; Mannerheim Museum (Kalvopulsto) 92; myth of 92; tomb 92 Marcos, Ferdinand E. 179 March, Werner 25 Marg, Volkwin 26 Martyrdom 5, 37 Massera, Emilio 181 Mao Zedong 150, 160, 178 Massacres 7, 12, 47, 54, 93, 96, 110, 147, 152, 166 Massol, Hubert 99, 100 Mausolus, King 5 Medvedev, Dmitry 147 Mein Kampf 17, 34, 37 Meirás manor 1, 114, 122–5, 130–3, 135, 177; Meirás trial 132; mobilization for the recovery of 114, 125, 130–3 Melilla 127, 138 Memory 1, 4–15, 17–20, 22, 25, 27–31, 33–6, 39–45, 47–8, 50, 53–7, 60–1, 63–8, 76, 79, 82–9, 91–2, 95–8, 101–7, 109, 114–7, 121, 125–7, 129–31, 133–7, 141–2, 145–55, 157, 160–3, 165, 169, 171–3, 177–83; politics of 8, 12, 17, 19, 22, 34–5, 39, 40, 44, 50, 53–4, 63, 67, 76, 82, 103, 114, 152–3, 161, 163, 169, 183; sites of 5–9, 11–2, 14, 18, 27, 29, 60, 64, 82, 115–6, 135, 148, 153, 178; spaces of 6–7 Mendes, Orlando 79 Méndez, Diego 117, 121

Index

Metaxas, Ioannis 89–90; myth 90, 91; tomb of 91 Milan 52, 54–6, 62, 64, 73 Milošević, Slobodan 168–9 Mingorrubio cemetery 1, 114, 128–9 Mitterrand, François 99 Mobutu Sese Seko 179 Mola, Emilio 134 Monarchy 3, 117, 121, 160, 166 Mongolia 178 Montanelli, Indro 53 Monument to the Fallen (Pamplona) 134–5 Monuments to the Fallen 7–8; in Italy 51; in Russia 148 Monza 66 Moscardó, José 117, 136, 137 Moscow 4, 35, 86, 141, 143–4, 146–50 Mother Teresa 160 Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) 50, 56–7 Munich 10, 17, 21–3, 27–30, 34–6, 62, 101 Muñoz Grandes, Agustín 136 Museum 4, 11, 15, 22–3, 26, 30, 40, 42, 49, 52–3, 59, 60–4, 66, 79–86, 88, 92, 95, 98, 102–4, 108, 116, 135, 136, 141, 148–55, 157, 159–65, 168, 172, 183–4; Museumization 41–2, 71, 84, 182–3 Mussert, Anton 94 Mussolini, Benito 3, 9–10, 14–5, 29, 46, 50, 52–68, 77, 90, 93, 99, 104; birth house 60–2; crypt of (San Cassiano cemetery) 56, 58, 63; death 52, 54, 57; family 52, 54–6, 59, 64 Nachklang-Widerhall Denkmal 45 Nalchik 150 National Alliance (Latvia) 150 National Catholicism 117 National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) 33 National Martyrs Cemetery of Albania 155 National Salvation Front (FSN) 161 National Socialism 19, 22–3, 27, 28, 31, 35, 38, 41–3, 45, 58, 61 Nationalism i, 5, 38, 65, 101, 105, 142, 146, 159 Nauseda, Gitanas 87 Navarrese People’s Union (UPN) 134–5 Nazi Party (NSDAP) 10, 21–3, 26, 28–32, 35–6, 44 Nenni, Pietro 56 Neo-Fascism 11, 57, 60 Netherlands 33 New Reich Chancellery 19 Nitra 103

203

Niyazov, Saparmurat 179 No Day (Epéteios tou Óchi) 91 Nora, Pierre 5–6 Norway 93, 95 Nostalgia 35, 47, 64, 79, 108, 142–3, 147–50, 155, 161, 165, 170–1, 173; of Fascism 35, 47, 64, 79; of Communism 142–3, 147–50, 155, 161; Yugonostalgia 165, 170–1, 173 Novosibirsk 149 Nunes, J. Avelâs 81 Nuremberg 10, 21–5, 30–1; Nuremberg Trial 18, 32 Obersalzberg 10, 26–7, 31, 35, 182; Berghof 17, 26–8; Eagle’s Nest 10, 26; Wachenfeld house 26 Oblivion i, 6–7, 21, 25, 27, 34, 39, 47, 64, 79, 89, 91, 93, 96, 102, 127, 133, 145, 160, 183 Occupation 38, 46–7, 54, 64–5, 68, 89, 93–8, 101, 108–10, 145, 150, 153–4; German occupation 47, 54, 64, 93, 94, 95–6, 108–10; Italian occupation 93; Soviet occupation 89, 108, 152–3 Olympiapark (Berlin) 25 Orbán, Viktor 107, 109 Order of Flemish Militants (VMO) 94–5 Pale 171 Pamplona 134–5, 139 Papadopoulos, Georgios 90 Pardo Bazán, Emilia 122–33 Paris 100, 160 Park Chung-hee 179 Parri, Ferruccio 53, 62 Parri Institute 61, 63, 73 Partisans 50, 52–4, 67–8, 102, 105, 145, 155, 165, 169; Albania 155, 169; Italy 50, 52–4, 68; myth of 52, 53, 57, 97; Soviet Union 145; Yugoslavia 54, 105, 165 Patrimonio Nacional 116 Päts, Konstantin 85–7 Pavelić, Ante 75, 101, 104, 105; tomb of 105 Pavone, Claudio 50 Peking 178 Peniche 77, 85 Perpetrators 11, 12, 20, 27, 30, 35, 54, 105, 114, 135, 180–1 Peschorn, Wolfgang 42 Pétain, Philippe 96–101; tomb 97–8, 100–1; birth house 98

204

Index

PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado) 76, 84 Pilgrimage 4, 13–4, 21, 27, 30–1, 33–5, 41, 44, 55, 56–8, 63–4, 67–8, 79–80, 83, 95, 98, 101–2, 105, 141, 159, 171–2, 178, 183 Piłsudski, Józef 87–9, 99, 110; birth place 88; Piłsudski mound 89; Tomb of 89 Pinochet, Augusto 180–1, 184 Pol Pot 178 Poland 85, 87–9, 140 Polo, Carmen 121, 123–5, 128, 134 Pommer, Josef 36, 38–9 Pommer, Gerlinde 39 Pompidou, Georges 100, 111–2 Popular Party; of Austria (ÖVP) 40, 42, 45, 47–9; of Portugal (PP-CDS) 83; of Spain (PP) 127–8, 131 Portela, Benito 131 Porto 80, 84 Portugal i, 13, 15, 75–9, 81–2, 85, 90, 106, 129, 182 Portuguese Alliance of Anti-Fascist Resistents 79, 84 Predappio 55–65, 79–81, 115, 177, 182; Casa del Fascio e l’Ospitalità 55, 61, 72; Varano Palace 55; Museum’s Project 60–2 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 120, 133 Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) 95–6 Putin, Vladimir 146–8, 150, 155 Pyongyang 178 Queipo de Llano, Gonzalo 135–6 Quisling, Vidkun 94–6 Rajoy, Mariano 127 Rákosi, Mátyás 140 Rama, Edi 158 Rathkolb, Oliver 49 Raubal, Geli 28, 71 Red Army 18, 34, 88, 101, 145 Redondo, Onésimo 133–4 Referendum 54, 121 Reggio Emilia 57 Reichsparteitagsgelände 10, 23, 25 Renzi, Matteo 61–2 Repression 7, 46, 88, 114, 122, 126, 135, 148, 152, 166, 171, 181 Resignification 7, 9, 12–3, 18, 34, 43, 60, 84, 126, 128–30, 135, 142, 180, 183 Resistance 2, 30, 35, 38, 45, 47, 50, 52–3, 57, 79, 84–5, 90–1, 93–7, 131, 147, 159; Belgian Resistance 94; Italian Resistance

52, 53, 57, 59, 62–3, 67; Myth of 97; Norwegian Resistance 95 Revisionism; Neo-Fascist revisionism 61, 67; Post-Communist revisionism 103, 108, 165 Revolution 3–4, 13, 76, 77, 91, 96–7, 106, 144–5, 147, 153, 160–1, 178; Portuguese revolution 76–7; Romanian revolution 160–1; Rose revolution (Georgia) 153; Russian revolution 3–4, 144–5, 147 Riegel, Jürgen 33–4 Riga 87 Rocca delle Caminate Castle 10, 56, 61 Romania 11, 75, 106, 140, 142, 160–5 Rome 2, 53–5, 57, 62–3, 66, 67, 143 Rosas, Fernando 80 Russia (including Russian Federation) 10–1, 18, 54, 87, 142–3, 146–50, 153–4, 178, 182 Saakashvili, Mikheil 153–4 Sada 1, 122–3, 125, 131, 177, 182 Saint Engelbert Church 10, 47 Saint Petersburg 149 Salazar, António de Oliveira 3, 9–10, 14, 75–8, 80, 82–5, 90 Salazar, Rui 79, 81 Schüssel, Wolfgang 40 Scornicesti 161, 162, 177, 182 Suharto 179 San Fernando 136 San Sepolcro Square, Milan 64 Sánchez, Pedro 128–9 Sánchez-Castillo, Fernando 116 Sanjurjo, José 134–5 Santa Comba Dâo 77–83, 110, 182; Vimieiro (parish of) 77–8, 80, 82–3, 177 Santander 126 Santiago de Chile 180 Scelba, Mario 56, 58 Schuschnigg, Kurt 46–7 Seipel-Dollfuß Memorial Church 46 Serbia 169, 170 Seville 135 Shchusev, Aleksey V. 4 Shevardnadze, Eduard 153 Shushenskoye 4, 15 Silva, Emilio 129 Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà 61 Sites of dictator 1, 9–14, 26, 115, 117, 177, 183, 181–3 Skanderbeg 155, 156, 160 Slovak National Party 102 Slovak People’s Party 101

Index

Slovakia 101–4 Slovenia 166, 171–2 Smetona, Antanas 85–6 Soares, Joâo 84 Soares, Mário 76 Sobotka, Wolfgang 42 Sochi 150 Social-Democratic Party 22, 32; of Austria 35, 37; of Germany 19, 22, 32 Socialist Party 56, 76, 79, 116, 125, 157; of Albania 157; of Spain 114, 116, 125, 128, 131–2; of Portugal 76, 79, 83 Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) 34 Sofia 141, 142, 171 Solitude, Our Lady of 136 Soviet Union (USSR) 11, 142–3, 146–7, 150, 152, 165, 178 Spain 1, 11, 14–5, 28, 75, 85, 105, 107, 112, 117, 118–9, 121, 123–4, 126, 129–30, 134, 182 Speer, Albert 19, 23, 26, 33 Sperl, Herbert 45 Spring Palace, Bucharest 163 Stalin, Joseph 4, 9–10, 13–4, 18, 140, 143, 145–54, 159, 166, 171, 178; birthplace of 9, 183; cult of 145–9, 151; memory of 143, 145–9, 151–5, 178; museum 148–55; tomb of 141, 145–6, 149 Stalinism 140, 146–7, 150, 152, 154; DeStalinization 140, 143–4, 154 Sükhbaatar, Damdin 178 Sun Yat-sen 3, 178; mausoleum of 178 Szálasi, Ferenc 106–7 Tahkuranna 86 Tallin 86 Tambroni, Fernando 56–7 Tarabella, Aldo 66–7 Targoviste 160, 163–4 Tbilisi 151–3 Temple of Return 108 Texing 49 Textbooks 47, 105, 148 The Hague 94 Timișoara 164 Tirana 155–8, 160; Pyramid of Tirana 10, 156–8 Tiso, Jozef 9–10, 14, 101–5, 183; tomb of 102–5; birth house of 102–4, 177, 183 Tito (Josip Broz) 9, 10–1, 14, 54, 142, 159, 165, 166–73; Birth place 166–7, 172; Cult of 142, 165–73; Tomb; see House of Flowers Tixier-Vignancour, Jean-Louis 99–100

205

Todt, Fritz 30 Togliatti, Palmiro 50 Togo 179 Tomás, Américo 76–7 Torgal, Luis Reis 84 Tourism 11, 13, 25, 27, 77, 81, 83, 143, 160–1, 163, 183; Dark tourism 183 Transition 1, 8, 13, 76, 91, 114, 121, 133, 140, 142, 152, 157, 160–1; to democracy 1, 8, 13, 180; Greek transition 91; Portuguese transition 76; Postcommunist transition 140, 142, 152, 157, 161; Spanish transition¡ 1, 114, 121, 133 Trent 54, 72–3 Trianon, Treaty of 106–8, 112 Trieste 54, 68 Trotsky, Leon 151 Trujillo, Rafael L. 129 Tuđman, Franjo 168–9 Turkmenbashi 86 Turkmenistan 86, 179 Uganda 179 Ukraine 150–1, 165 Ulan Bator 178 Ulbricht, Walter 140 Ulianovsk 4 Ulmanis, Kārlis 85–7 Ungureanu, Gheorghe 163 United Left (IU) 126, 135 United Russia 147 Uprising 90, 97, 102, 121, 134–6, 157, 181 Ustaše 93, 104–5, 168 Uzbekistan 179 Užulėnis 87 Valencia 126 Valiani, Leo 53 Valladolid 133–4 Vallejo-Nágera, Juan A. 137 Valley of the Fallen 1, 114, 117–22, 126–30, 133, 135, 180, 183 Varela, José E. 136 Verdun 96, 97, 99–100 Verein für Zeitgeschichte Braunau 38 Veritas Institute 108 Victims 7, 12, 14, 20, 22–3, 35, 39, 40, 43, 45, 47, 49, 53–4, 59, 63–4, 83–5, 89, 98, 100, 104, 105, 109, 114, 118, 120, 125–9, 133, 135, 144, 147–8, 150, 154, 161, 173, 181, 184 Victor Emmanuel III 50 Victory Day 145, 147 Videla, Augusto 181

206

Index

Vienna 3, 17, 36, 38–41, 45–7, 49, 71, 103, 108 Vietnam 15, 140, 178 Villa Carpena 59 Villnäs Museum 92 Viri, Ettore 67 Vítkov hill 141–2 Voldemaras, Augustas 86 Volgograd 149 Waidbacher, Johannes 42, 182 Waffen SS 21, 28, 94 Wałęsa, Lech 88–9 War 4, 6–7, 10, 18, 21, 23, 27–8, 30–3, 37–9, 44–6, 49–54, 56–7, 60–1, 63–6, 76–7, 83, 85, 87–92, 95–9, 101, 106, 109, 114–5, 117–8, 120, 122, 125–8, 130, 133, 135, 137, 140, 142, 145–8, 150–5, 157–60, 166, 169–71, 181; Algerian War 98–9; Falklands War 181; Finnish Civil War 91–2; First World War 7, 28, 51, 54, 56, 61, 65–7, 87, 89, 95–6, 98–9, 101, 105, 142; Great Patriotic War 145–8, 150–1; Greek Civil War 90; Italian Civil War 52, 60; Kosovo War 158; Polish-Soviet War 87–8; Second

World War 10, 23, 38, 44, 53, 56–7, 67, 85, 90, 95, 106, 140, 142, 145–6, 152, 154–5, 157, 159, 169, 170; South Ossetia War 153; Spanish Civil War 114–5, 117, 120–2, 125–8, 130, 133, 137; War of Popular Liberation 170–1; Winter War 91, 92; Yugoslav secession wars 170 War memorials 115, 148 Warsaw 68, 89, 110, 156 Wenninger, Florian 49 Wessel, Horst 31; Tomb of 31 Wolf’s Lair 18, 68–9 Wunsiedel 33–4, 70 Yeltsin, Boris 146 Yeu, Island of 96–100, 177 Yugoslavia 11, 93, 106, 140, 142, 159, 165–70, 172, 173 Zagreb 105, 169, 172 Zaragoza 126 Zeppelin field 23, 25 Zog I, king 60 Zoli, Adone 56 Zulówo/Zulawas 88