General Franco feared Hitler would kidnap him to force Spain into WW II, says daughter

London, November 28 (ANI): Spanish leader General Francisco Franco's daughter has revealed that her father feared that Adolf Hitler would kidnap him to force Spain into the Second World War.

Carmen Franco Polo, 82, said that her father had even nominated three substitutes to assume power at a conference in 1940, just in case he was actually abducted by the Nazi leader.

She has written about her life with El Caudillo in her book 'Franco, My Father', published in Spain on Friday.

The only daughter of General Franco, who ruled Spain for about four decades, also reveals that her father ordered troop reinforcements to the coast at the end of the Second World War because he believed that the Allies would invade his country.

According to her, her father thought that he had a good relationship with British leader Winston Churchill during the war, but did not get on with the then US President Franklin Roosevelt.

She even describes Roosevel's wife, Eleanor, in novel terms.

"The Americans liked my father but not Roosevelt, whose wife was very pro-Communist," Times Online quoted her as writing in the book.

Carmen said that the reason why her father liked the British was his belief that they were law-abiding.

"He admired England a lot, especially the people, because they did what they had to do and obeyed the law. This he found very admirable," she said.

She said that when Franco went to meet Hitler in 1940 in Hendaye, a French town on the Spanish border, he was afraid that Hitler could kidnap him just like Napoleon had kidnapped Spanish King Carlos IV in 1808 during peace talks.

It was due to that fear, she added, that her father had nominated a general and two others to assume control of the country should he be kidnapped.

She revealed that Franco angered Hitler by refusing to enter the Second World War, and found their meeting a bad-tempered affair.

"To my father it seemed very, very different. When they talked it didn't have the good atmosphere which happened with a later meeting with Mussolini," she wrote.

Carmen's book consists of a series of interviews with the Spanish historian Jesus Palacios and Stanley G. Payne, an American expert on Spain. She has also mixed her own memories about world events with reminiscences about day-to-day life. (ANI)