Well, as normal as a fascist dictator can get, anyway. The Generalissimo went about rebuilding his country, one step at a time, while also taking steps to 'normalize' things. As a result, his was the only fascist government to survive WWII. Franco and his fascists were brutal, but not stupid. He managed to keep Spain 'neutral' during WWII, which was a smart move because there was no way Spain could have held off either the Axis or the Allies when Franco took power.

Spain had emerged from a bloody civil war in 1939, with a new fascist government under Generalissimo Francisco Franco. During the war, all the major powers had fielded semi-automatic rifles with varying degrees of success, and after the war bolt-action rifles were old news. As I mentioned in my blog about the M48, after WWII there were literally thousands and thousands of Mauser and Mauser-type rifles scattered about Europe. Secondly, the M48 wasn't the last Mauser-type rifle fielded to military and police forces. Yes, it was the last newly manufactured military Mauser-type rifle, but if you want to get technical (and I do), there was at least one other Mauser design that was fielded after the M48: the Spanish FR-8. First, the last 'true' Mauser made was the German K98k, made in Germany, by Germans.

When I wrote that article, I was a bit torn about the title, for a couple of reasons. Recently, I blogged about the last production Mauser rifle made, the Yugoslavian M48.

Spanish fr7 mauser rifle parts