3 images of the Panzer IV in El goloso museum not far away from Madrid.
Thank you, again, honorable gentlemen, for your more than elucidable submissions! Due to your devoted effort and comprehensive persistence I was able to acquire the most informative insight into truly intriguing and for me completely unknown aspects of armored vehicles production in Spain. Once again, thank you for those posts and the very insightful information presented in the subsequent comments.
And now something completely different. Occasional findings of the commensurately unknown historiographic resources, sufficiently capable to fulfill the growing requirements of the web-community toward previously unexploited graphic materials, are representing a constant challenge for an amateur historian, but in the very same time a pretty hazardous effort, mainly due to the lack of sufficiently corroborated evaluation of those findings. Therefore in this specific issue I will ask you, honorable ladies and gentlemen, for your munificent help, because certain historiographic aspects connected with these materials are still ambiguous for me.
All presented materials have been publicly obtainable some sixty years ago, more precisely these snapshots were printed in a Hungarian edition of the notorious German illustrated magazine “Signal”, back there in 1944. Due to a pretty bleary description that escorted these snapshots I am begging you for the further explanation of those actions as well as for the identification of those personalities that are presented on these photographs.
Parade in Madrid – El Caudillo is passing-on personally his good wishes to the decorated officers (“Signal”, U/Nr. 13 – 1944)
Do you have any information about those officers? Who are they?
Parade in Madrid – Defile of the Excombatientes ("Signal’, U/Nr. 13 – 1944)
I am especially interested for the clarification of the following problem: are these marching ex-combatants actually volunteers of the famous “Blue Division”, or just ordinary members of the Falange?
Parade in Madrid – Parade-March of the Infantry (“Signal”, U/Nr. 13 – 1944)
Parade in Madrid – Glance Above the Melée (“Signal”, U/Nr. 13 – 1944)
The only positive fact connected with this snapshot that I know is that Franco’s wife, Donna María del Carmen Polo y Martínez Valdés is the second from the right. Her daughter, María del Carmen is sitting on her right side, and the wife of the Spanish Minister of War, Lady Asunsio is on her left. But who are those other VIP personalities?
If you know the answers, please don’t hesitate. Thank you in advance!
In the meantime, as always – all the best!
Excellent photo shots as usual Lib. I going to post the pic in a spanish to see if some guy can tell us more names.
Well, I don´t know who are the other personalities. I can tell you that the excombatants are members of the spanish “Falange”, falanx, wich was the party militia.
“Blue division” members wore the same clothes because most of them were members of that organization, and they were so clothed when they traveled from Spain to Germany, but later they used only german uniforms.
“Of course there are some people for whom anybody who fought for the Spanish Republic is a criminal. I suspect that the current government of Poland would have, at least secretly praised Franco and his junta as savious of the Catholic faith.”
Ironically when the Germans occupied France they found many of the former Republican soldiers & other already imprisioned in France. Republican refugees fleeing across the border in 1939 were corraled in refugee camps by the French government, which feared disorder. Those deemed politically undesireable or as possible criminals were kept in confinement camps. The Gestapo found them convientlly confined when it begainits activitys in Occupied France in July 1940.