Heroes in Spain

Heroes in Spain (Helden in Spanien) is a feature-length documentary produced in 1938 by Hispano Film Produktion (Berlin) and Bavaria Filmkunst (Munich), with the collaboration of official Francoist party FET y de las JONS. Joaquín Reig Gozalbes, the Falange’s representative in Germany, directed the documentary together with Fritz C. Mauch and Paul Laven.

Hispano Film's commitment to Francoist propaganda resulted in five feature-length documentaries that faithfully followed the Falangist narrative. They were produced using materials from various sources (newsreels, reports, other documentaries, fiction films, photographs, and press clippings), and their content was updated as the conflict progressed. These documentaries were presented as an objective and comprehensive account of the war, explaining its causes, development, and historical significance. 

The most widely distributed was Heroic Spain (1938), which was narrated in Spanish and intended to become one of the Francoists’ propaganda jewels. The other four documentaries were narrated in German and targeted the territory of the Reich: Geissel der Welt (“The Scourge of the World,” 1937), Arise Spain! (1938), and the two versions of Heroes in Spain, one released in October 1938 and the other in June 1939. 

Heroes in Spain portrayed the uprising of 18 July 1936, as a response to the revolutionary escalation that, it asserted, had begun with the Popular Front's electoral victory in February. The film presents the main Francoist milestones of the war: the liberation of the Alcázar of Toledo, the Madrid front, the fall of Málaga, the Northern campaign, and the Aragon offensive leading to the arrival at the sea through Vinaroz that split the Republican zone in two. Images of the Catalonia offensive and the arrival of Francoist troops at the French border were added to the second version of the film.

The Hispano Film documentaries ended up having very limited distribution in Germany because they did not fully align with the country’s propaganda agenda. Despite their anti-Communist message and Falangist rhetoric, they had a strong and very Spanish national-Catholic and reactionary charge that did not sit easily within the Nazi government’s propaganda. In June 1939, UFA’s blockbuster Im Kampf gegen den Weltfeind (“In the Fight Against the Enemy of the World”) swept Heroes in Spain from the country’s movie screens. UFA’s documentary offered a detailed account of German military involvement in the war, while Heroes in Spain continued to conceal it.

MNM