"When idealists go to battle: why the Spanish Civil War..." Topic

…still matters.

"The Spanish Civil War holds a perennial fascination for a non-Spanish audience. Even if we cannot quite claim to have "Spain in our hearts", histories of the conflict have kept alive the liberal conviction that the republican cause was just, while Franco's emerging dictatorship was not. At least one veteran interviewed by Adam Hochschild in his absorbing study of the Americans who went to fight in Spain reflects simply: "I wish we'd won." It is difficult after reading these three volumes not to echo that wistful response.

In recent years there has been some attempt to rescue historically the nationalist cause, with its conservative defence of nation, church and family, and at the same time to highlight the atrocities perpetrated by the republican side. Indeed, the Western powers used the reputation of the left in Spain to explain their unwillingness to help the legitimate government formed by an alliance of republicans. Even-handedness, however, has its limits. Spain's Second ­Republic represented the aspirations of millions of impoverished Spaniards to overturn long decades of extreme economic and social exploitation and to destroy the inherited power of the Catholic Church and the old landowners. The bitterness of the conflict came about not because the left was uniquely violent and unruly, but because the nationalists used terror and atrocity as their means to eradicate any vestige of the surviving democratic spirit in Spain. One American journalist, Hochschild writes, witnessed a nationalist officer pushing two young girls captured from the republican militia into a room of forty Moorish ­soldiers. When he protested, the officer merely shrugged and told him that the girls would be raped to death in a few hours. No amount of special pleading is ever going to turn Franco's campaign into a decent ­defence of conservative values.

For millions of Europeans and Americans this was evident from the start of the war in 1936. The young idealists who ventured out to Spain to volunteer on the side of the Republic, despite objections by their mealy-mouthed governments, went there as the vanguard of popular opposition to fascism and all it seemed to represent. Their ideals varied, and their motives, too, but they shared an embedded hostility to extreme nationalism, ruling-class power, capitalist self-interest and social intolerance…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

The only difference between the atrocities committed by one side or the other in the Spanish Civil War was who won. As the Republican side was losing and finally lost there were fewer atrocities committed by that side but if they had won the same numbers or more would have been eliminated.

As a side issue Spain having not taken part in WW1 was relatively well off in the 1920s and 30s. After the war started, the Republican side shipped all of the gold reserve to Russia to help pay for the military aid and shipped the Silver reserve to Mexico to keep it out of the hands of the nationalist. Stalin could now determine how much an I-15 or I-16 aircraft or T-26 tank would cost and the exiled Republican leaders did not suffer that much after the defeat.

"The only difference between the atrocities committed by one side or the other in the Spanish Civil War was who won."

No, it wasn't. The rebels started their rebellion by murdering opponents and potential opponents; it was their plan and their policy from the start to use terror and mass murder. Another difference was scale; the rebels murdered far far more than were killed on the Republican side. Finally, the murders on the rebel side were deliberate policy, planned from the start, whereas the murders on the Republican side were mostly in retaliation for the rebel murders. There are already several threads where this established fact has been shown.

"As the Republican side was losing and finally lost there were fewer atrocities committed by that side but if they had won the same numbers or more would have been eliminated."

Mere speculation, with no evidence.

nother difference was scale; the rebels murdered far far more than were killed on the Republican side.

Not surprising at all: while the Francoist were winning new territories and controlling more population -and therefore more potential victims- the opposite is true for their opponents, i.e. less territory and less population, then less potential victims.

In the period when both controlled the same ratio of square miles to population, both absolute and relative number of murders were very similar -marginally higher in the Francoist side-.

The only real difference between both models of repression is that in Francoist Spain it was centralized very soon, possibly as early as November 1936, while in Republican Spain it wasn't until March 1937 that repression was brought under a single organization, instead being left in the hands of the parties and their militias.

That is not speculation, just mathematics.

The murders began on the day that the rising started, and murder was rebel policy right from the start, shooting nearly 200 people on the very day that the rebellion began, despite there being virtually no armed opposition, which shows that murder was built in to the rebels' plan.

Not only that, the legitimate government did not carry out murder to any extent, indeed, it sought to control the left wing militias that did start to retaliate against supporters of the rebels.

Whatever, Chouan. I am not going to lose a single minute debating you. After all, you have all figured out, so it is pointless. That in Spain two totalitarian ideologies were fighting against each other is, for you, immaterial.

Well said Antonio! (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

the sad but incredible thing is that, contrary to all propaganda clumsy attempts now totally countered by evidences, they still are quite a few that continue to call "rebels" those that, in practice, restaured the law, the civilisation and the Crhistian valours in Spain after the illegal reign of terror of the so called "Republica" which was, in practice, a puppet Gvt in the hands of Moscow and Front Populaire made out of naif at best or delinquent men belonging to Comintern..supported by equally dangerous Marxist puppets like Togliatti or Santiago Carillo…Evidences of massacre of civilians and liquidation of prisoners are far more documented for the red side..which is 'nt amazing at all as the very doctrine of Marxism and in general Left thinking is the phisical or morale elimination of every possible opponent…nothing different from SCW up to today's Maduro, Castro, Kim Jong-Un , the laughable Evo Morales or the former terrorist Pepe Mujica.

another thing that always puzzled me is that i never..but never read ..a genuine and neutral report about support of population to the red cause while for the Nationalist is exactly the opposite..they were always acclaimed as liberators in the cities in which they stamped out the red virus …..also the picts are equally interesting…the work of main and most famous photographer of the red side,Agustí Centelles , is a typical result of a carefully planned propaganda project in the best marxism tradition..his pictures are naivly posed or , sadly, an attempt to terrorize neutral population..(asaltos paramilitary death squads posing in every corner of barcelona including over dead horses and sporting their bombastic soviet style uniforms)..on the opposite Legion , Requete or Falangista volunteers are always represented, by other reporters, always smiling, covered with flowers and with acclaiming people on the sides of the road….there is still a lot to said about SCW …but if you want to continue to stick to the propaganda about romantic International Brigades, Hay Carmela and Dolores Ibarurri and No Pasaran..while in fact "Pasaron totalmente y muy bien" ….it's up to you to evolve toward the truth

Italwars:

That's incorrect. The Communists never had the strength to impose absolute control upon the Republic. Certainly, their influence was stronger than the size of their party should have granted, but that was an after-effect of the USSR being the only country willing to trade in weapons with the Government. That gave a lot of leverage to the PCE, but even in the latest part of the war Communists couldn't act without counting with Nationalists (in Cataluña) Anarchists (especially in Andalucía and Cataluña) and, of course, Socialists, particularly with the strong "Prietista" (after Indalecio Prieto) group inside the PSOE.

Loyalists were not more savage than the Rebels. Both engaged in a deliberate campaign of terror, with the goal of impossing comformity and get rid of potential dissenters. There was a big difference between both, though: in the Loyalist side the repression was a reflection of the interests and manias of the different political families that formed the uneasy alliance that was called the Republic. Thus, the Anarchists, being radicals in their loathing of religion, were the main perpetrators of murders of priests and nuns. Communists were more purposeful in their acts of repression, targeting both Rebel sympathizers, potential "burgeois" leadership that could have defied the triumph of a Communist Republic in the future, and Stalin's personal hate-pets: Trostkyists. Basque nationalists were especially interested in destroying their main rivals for the "Basque soul": Carlists; and while being a known Carlist or sympathizer could cost you your life, on the other hand, Basque nationalists were known for their clashes with local Anarchists for the willingness of the former to protect priests. Until well advanced the war, the Government wasn't able to impose a certain order in the chaos of conflicting interests. When Cataluña fell, during the retreat toward France, the hell broke loose again and uncontrolled violence by parties and militias started all over again.

Rebels were more focused almost from the begginning. After a few months of revenge murders, political assassinations and wanton violence by local Rightist militias and their death squads, Franco's government put an end to all that and instituted a centralized regime of repression and violence. Political murders lost their random character and became a tool in the hands of the Francoist state to impose a regime of comformity.

From the tranquility of our living rooms we can discuss that period and take party for one or the other side. Truth is that both sides thought democracy was dead and that only through violence could be created a "new Spain", at their image.

By the way, that difference between wanton repression and controlled repression is what explains why Francoists were well received and Loyalists were received with trepidation. You knew exactly who was going to be killed by the former, but never was too sure who was going to be "paseado" by the second.

Basilieu you certainly know your sources and know far more than i do…but the idea that Republican Gvt tried to control his militias or even that many of them were without control from the Gvt is difficult to accept…the fact is that they don't care a bit about murderd made by their men…for what i know the planned repression among their men was aimed at dangerous symbols after receiving orders from Moscow..at certainly not for the sake of human rights preservation…Buenaventura Durruti was eliminated because of his ideas, his followers and his freedom or at least indipendent thinking..certainly not for the murder of a Cardinal which took place many years before…or the nuns of Barbastro during the SCW…

Well Franco was a murdering revolutionary fanatic who overthrew democracy in a military coup. That alone makes decent people despise him. Many others have been conned by anti-communist propaganda from the cold war to excuse his abhorrent Fascist dictatorship.

We should be beyond that now and shun revisionists trying to do the same whitewash job as Irving failed with on the Nazis.

They were all murdering scum and the pity is the Allies didn't go and finish Franco off after they'd got rid of Adolf and Benito. A shameful failure on the part of western democracies.

The only difference…by one side or the other in the Spanish Civil War was who won.

Not at all. One side was the democratically elected government (plus direct-democracy anarchists who took no part in the election but later supported the government) and the other side were TRAITORS who wanted to create an unelected dictatorship with the support of the corrupt Spanish catholic church and landowners (plus Hitler and Mussolini whilst the idiot governments of Britain, France, USA etc remained silent – corporations like Ford and Texaco were even allowed to aid the dictators). They started with the mass murder in Badajoz. link

In time of war even the most democratic country has laws for the trial and execution of spies, traitors and terrorists like Franco's bunch.

Drops the mic

We should be beyond that now and shun revisionists trying to do the same whitewash job as Irving failed with on the Nazis.

Oh! Now is called revisionism to simply recognize that brutality was practiced with enthusiasm by the totalitarian ideologies that fought the SCW!

No, mate. It is not, because nobody -well, nobody that has read anything about the SCW, I mean- would deny that Franco' Spain was controlled by a violent and murderous dictatorship that tried to impose an authoritarian, if not totalitarian, political regime through the use of violence and the repression of political adversaries. I don't give a if they killed 100,000 or 150,000 people. The difference is of quantity, not of quality. They would be equally repugnant either way.

What is "revisionism" a la Irving, though, is trying to paint the Loyalists as an alliance of bleeding heart democrats that fought for freedom and liberty. They were not. They were as brutal, as cruel and as barbaric totalitarians as their opponents. They were equally anti-democratic. To deny those facts is as repugnant as those that deny the brutality of Stalinism, or Nazi revisionists indeed.

And not, there is no moral equivalence. Or there is, if you want. Unfortunately, in my country Democracy was murdered in July 18th 1936, if not earlier. The only real alternatives were between an Ultra-Catholic totalitarian regime and a Ultra-leftist totalitarian regime. What do you prefer: to die from lung cancer? Or pancreatic cancer? Because THAT were the choices the Spaniards had.

We should be beyond that now and shun revisionists trying to do the same whitewash job as Irving failed with on the Nazis."
i agree with you…for that reason and because the fact, of which you're perfectly aware, that comunist doctrine like the one sported by soviet sponsored foes of Franco during the SCW, is the same thing of Nazism..in practice another side of the same coin..to support and have simpathies for Republic is eactly this kind of dangerous revisionism

In time of war even the most democratic country has laws for the trial and execution of spies, traitors and terrorists like Franco's bunch.

Fair enough… then why most of the killings weren't even dignified with a mock trial? Because you can't execute civilians whose only guilt was attending mass, being a priest or just an affiliate to a Conservative party as spies, traitors or terrorists and pretend that was justice.

Moderate, there's no point arguing with fascists, fascist apologists, or fascist sympathisers, or those who seem to prefer an murderous military authoritarian regime to a democratically elected government that is, even if only marginally, of the Left. They will use any kind of dis and mis information to "prove" that the retaliatory murders by the far left justified the pre-planned murders officially orchestrated by the rebels as part of their conspiracy. Defending Franco by using the "they did it too" argument is, by any standard, justifying and supporting his murderous policy.
As you so rightly point out, a legitimate democratically elected government was overthrown by a murderous rebellion, who used terror, rape and murder as instruments of policy right from the start. Anybody who argues otherwise, against the facts, is, clearly, seeking to justify and legitimise Franco and the other murderers.

+1 Chouan. A violent murdering coup against a democratically elected government, and connived at by the 'Western Democracies'.

+1 Chouan.

I'm fairly sure they don't erect statues to Franco anymore. Unlamented, unloved & unspeakable….except by the extremist few.
He's undoubtedly sharing a very hot place with his mates, Musso & Hitler.

Who is defending Franco? Where do you find in the following statement a defence of Franco?

It is not, because nobody -well, nobody that has read anything about the SCW, I mean- would deny that Franco' Spain was controlled by a violent and murderous dictatorship that tried to impose an authoritarian, if not totalitarian, political regime through the use of violence and the repression of political adversaries. I don't give a Bleeped text if they killed 100,000 or 150,000 people. The difference is of quantity, not of quality. They would be equally repugnant either way.

Where, pray tell me, do you find any condoning or justification of Franco's regime? There are none.

It is the same argument used by those who refused to recognize the brutality of Stalin's regime: if you attack the USSR, you are defending Hitler. Yeah… I have heard that argument used against Timothy Snyder, for comparing Nazi and Soviet murders in what he calls the Bloodlands.

False dicotomy and strawman arguments in one paragraph. Well done, Chouan. Not surprising that your buddies give you a +1. You deserve it.

Either you are pro-Republican or you are a Fascist. you, mates. I am not either. My ing family suffered at the hands of both. So, off. I have grown with tales of how one side or the other killed, maimed and raped. How they teared appart families and murdered innocents. Those things are not for me just data in a page: those are the stories from my own family; a family that had victims in both sides of the political divide.

This again? Tango stop instigating hatred and fights. Whether voluntary or involuntary. Seriously man. If you do not stop this I will stifle you.

You are well aware that none of us (ME INCLUDED) are able to discuss this topic in any rational way. Time and time again any topic of the spanish civil war that is not limited to strictly war-gaming has deteriorated to this sad state of affairs.

Thus I beseech you, stop fanning the flames. Avoid these postings. You do have the right to post as you see fit. I am not contesting that. But you can choose not to do so. Please choose so. If you do not, than in my minds you revel in this fighting. Your right. And my right to stifle you.

I am sorry for it coming to this.
With Respect
Konstantinos

Konstantinos

Truth be told, it is not Raul who is guilty. It is us, those who choose to answer, who are really guilty of being unable of debating with any measure of rationality. I try, God knows I try, but sometimes, when because of trying it is insinuated that I have any simpathy whatsoever for a dictatorship like that of Franco, I lose it.

But you are right, and I am making a solemn promise that from now on I will keep clear from these threads.

Ktravlos..if you write "with respects"..you probably have to pay respect..which is not often the case…who are you to try to forbid somebody to post something strongly related to the forum..and, among other things, to accuse him to fanning flames..if, also when somebody wrote about the innocent (and boring) figure of Garibaldi you transform everything in politics..daring also to try to teach us lessons ??!!!..and i'm not talking about the insults that i receive
Tango is perfectly allowed to post everything while respecting the forum rules…and also if there is sort of animated discussion i find interesting to read different opinions..like for example Chouan, extremely radical..but expressed in an honest and idealistic way..
so keep calm , stop teaching unecessary lessons and if you really cannot resist to stiffle..stiffle your ego

TMPCW?

Italwars said

that comunist doctrine like the one sported by soviet sponsored foes of Franco during the SCW, is the same thing of Nazism.

Franco didn't turn traitor to fight the Communists. He rebelled against the democratically elected government which was undermining the status quo and the financial power base of entrenched monarchical, church and aristocratic interests.

The Communists joined in for their own ends and eventually helped undermine the efforts of the Republican cause. I have no truck with them.

However you are wrong. The Communists were not the same as Nazis. Communism was a collective ideology for the betterment of all and the joint ownership of everything that was perverted by the usual charismatic psychopaths who infect all organisations.

Nazism was a creed of deliberate destruction of 'inferior people' whether Jews, Slavs, Roma, Africans, Homosexuals and the physically and mentally ill. The way they carried their programme out was evil, but the driving ideology, the ultimate aim, was itself evil.

Very different things.

The point is, that if a person seeks to justify the murders of the military rebels, in any way, they are supporting them. Rather than seek to explain or excuse their murders, they should simply be condemned. The "they did it too" response, pointing at the murders by the left is itself an excusing of the murders by Franco's people by suggesting an equivalence. The murders carried out by the Right were a deliberate part of their policy of terror. That out of control far left militias murdered political opponents in retaliation in no way at all justifies the murders by Franco. By repeatedly mentioning them one is giving credence to the view that both sides were as bad as each other when they clearly weren't.

My best friends grandpa fought for the Republic and got to enjoy the "hospitality" of a forced labour camp for several years after the war.

It's history…and we must be mature and intelligent enough to be able to argue about it … the vast majority of the fellow members are…. as was demonstrated in many historical / controversial threads … there is always the risk that one or two will pass the frontier … but that's what happens in a Forum … and besides … nobody is forced to read or participate in the thread …

Stop de snipping… it never end well as you can see…

Amicalement
Armand

I thought the piece you linked to and posted was a very reasonable commentary and you did a good job posting it Armand.

Many thanks.

have it your way Armand.

Thanks my friends for your support… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand