It was like that ?
I am sure that everybody agree that Franco, Sanjurjo and the other Generals behind the uprising of a part of the army havent even a hair of democratic, but sadly some of his counterparts fighting for the goverment of Frente popular were not much different in metods.
I’m no expert on the Spanish Civil War and it’s been a bit since I’ve read anything on the conflict. But I think it’s not so easily distilled down to a cut and dry ideological reckoning of “democracy vs. fascism.” I think it is better seen as a coalition of anti-fascists movements from Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, Socialists, left-of-center democrats, and various other idealists and ethnic minorities in Spain rallying against the Spanish Military coup led by Generalissimo Franco. One of the key reasons for the Republican cause’s weakness was it’s make up of all these factions that were often as prone to feuding with one another as they were with the fascists, making unity of command impossible and often poisoning any coordination…
But at heart of the Republican war effort was the fact that a democratic gov’t had been overthrown…
Incidentally, I voted twice for the first two, as Franco probably saw himself as saving Spain from radical elements. But of course, he actually destroyed whatever political order he was claiming to uphold and perpetuated a schism in Spanish society that lives on today…
I tend to agree with Nick here. There are many causes and reasons for Franco’s actions. Wanting to be a dictator is certainly one of them.
As Nick said the two sides werent strictly Black and White. Indeed Communists and Anarchists fought each other as well as the Fascists/Royalists.
As this is a photo site below are a lot of photos and clippings from the War. The site is an anarchist one I think:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/spancivwar/photobook/photohistorytable.html
And don’t forget the Soviet communists sometimes fought each other. I think George Orwell had to run for his life, after returning from the hospital, when he found the mostly Trotskyist-Russian unit he fought with had been “replaced” with the good men loyal to only Marshal Stalin…
Interesting gallery Firefly.
A victim of “democracy”:
José Calvo Sotelo (Tui, Pontevedra, May 6, 1893—Madrid, July 13, 1936) was a Spanish political figure prior to and during the Second Spanish Republic. His murder by a commando unit of the Assault Guards (and several socialist activists), a special police corps created to deal with urban violence, just the day after a harsh confrontation in Parliament, aroused suspicions of a government involvement in the crime and helped precipitate the Spanish Civil War.
An economist and jurist, he was secretary of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Ateneo Mercantil de Madrid and a university professor of the Universidad Central. He was affiliated with the Conservative Party of Antonio Maura Montaner. He first served as an administrative officer in the Ministry of Grace and Justice. In 1919 he was chosen as a deputy to the Cortes for the district of Carballino (Ourense), and in 1922 he was made civil governor of Valencia.When Miguel Primo de Rivera became dictator of Spain in 1924 he appointed Calvo Sotelo as finance minister in 1925.
Calvo Sotelo was forced into exile when the Republic was proclaimed (1931). Calvo Sotelo returned to Spain after he was amnestied in May 1934, becoming a deputy for Renovación Española. He soon became one of the most important right-wing political figures in the country. Calvo Sotelo unsuccessfully attempted to gain control of the Falange Española from José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1935. Calvo Sotelo was harshly critical of the Republican government after the electoral victory of the leftist Popular Front in February 1936.
Assassination:On the night of July 12, 1936, a lieutenant in the Republican Assault Guards and active member of the Socialist Party, José Castillo, was murdered in Madrid by gunmen of far right, carlist members of the Tercio de Requetés of Madrid, according to the historian Ian Gibson, or Falangist according to other authors like Paul Preston. In the first hours of the next day, July 13, members of the Assault Guards, Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas and the captain of Civil Guard Fernando Condés, went to Calvo Sotelo’s house, took him in front of his wife and children showing a fake arrest warrant, and later killed him in a police truck. His corpse was later left in the cemetery. According to all later investigations the perpetrator of the murder was a socialist gunman, Luis Cuenca, who was known as bodyguard of the Socialist Party leader Indalecio Prieto.In the days following, the Spanish Government, apparently unwilling of both to assert itself in front of its own police and to deny the general perception of that he was somehow involved in the shocking murder, only undertook a routine investigation that never reached any conclusion. This only accelerated the preparations for a military revolt that was being developed since the electoral triumph of the Popular Front in the month of February. Thus, on July 17, 1936 took place the uprising of the army of Africa in Melilla that, under the assumed command of Generals Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco and José Sanjurjo, resulting in the Spanish Civil War.
Edited by me to correct some paragraphs “sticked” due forum software bugs.
Had Franco not won, Spain would have become a Soviet dominated satellite state, given the way that the republican elements directly supported by the Soviets were doing away with all the non Soviet elements by the usual NKVD methods (i.e. arresting and shooting them).
Either way, Spain loses, but Franco was definitely the lesser of two evils – compere, for instance, Spain 1975 (popular holiday destination albeit run by a soft-Fascist dictator) and any of the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe in 1975 (totalitarian hell holes that people were fleeing from). Had the Republicans won we would have had Western Europe essentially bracketed by totalitarian Soviet satellite states, and the Cold War could have been rather different.
Perhaps, but Spain would have been in the unusual position of losing to the communists pre-war and, unlike post-war eastern Europe, being geographically isolated from the mother country in Russia, surrounded by the essentially pro-fascist Salazar in Portugal and other anti-communist / pro-fascist regimes.
I’m not sure that Spain could ever have become anything like, say, Castro’s Cuba but in the 1930’s at the base of Europe if that had happened.
Much of the conflict in Spain was largely a symbolic collision between competing conceptions of various noble philosophies in what seemed to be a unique time.
Until Bush the Idiot unleased the modern version in other places.
Hmmmm, there was nothing noble in the anarchist and Stalinist fighters but a large wish to revenge against the one viewed as opresors of the people, that is the landowners and the spanish Church.
I must say though as for Spain ‘going communist,’ while this was a distinct possibility as the Soviets were on fact trying to consolidate their power over the resistance, many in the Republican side are historically somewhat bitter that it was the Soviets that offered the material aid closest to that of the German and Italian aid to the Nationalist side, while Britain and France largely stood by…
The Western powers were hesitant to get into a “proxy war” with Germany and also had significant social schisms in their countries regarding conflicts between the left and the right in light of the world wide depression, and were probably happy to see the most active of their leftists go to fight the fascists in Spain. While I believe France did offer some financial and material aid, for the most part, the early arms embargo put the Republicans at a severe disadvantage in the fighting…Which was something the Soviets were very happy to take advantage of.
I think the links with the Catholic Church, which go back a long way and link in with the dominant elements in Spain (as a bit of a reaction to the Moorish invasion and related conflcts) are also important in understanding Franco etc.
I agree here, I dont think Spain would have been a total Communist state, however, the Nazis may have invaded Spain if the left had won that war. I dont know how different the war may have been [if any] if Hitler had taken out the Spanish leftist state. But is sure is another ‘what if’.
If the left had won, Im sure that the Anarchists, communists and democrats would have had a barney at some stage after the event.
If the left won eventually the Stalinist would take the power, and with the Stalinist in power obviously no other way of commies would be allowed, so is very likely the the anarchist and socialist the didnt survive the"purges".
And talking about anarchist, here is one of the head of the CNT-FAi Buenaventura Durruti,
his most popular motto “La unica iglesia que ilumina es la que arde”, the only chuch that enlightened us is the one wich burns.
This was not an idle propaganda slogan, in 1934-35 before the military uprising dozens of churchs were burned and nearly 650 priest asassinated by the anarchist.
And some people is surprized by the support of the spanish church to Franco s movement ? well, I dont.
Remember though, the dirty war and assassinations went both ways - and Franco was one vindictive prick, keeping captured Republicans in slavery for years.
I think they discovered a mass grave not long ago that dug up some old wounds, no pun intended…
So what ?The anarchist terror is not a response to Francos s coup, those happen before the Military uprising.
There was terror in the country long before that, strikers and protesters on the left were often found dead or were killed by police during strikes. Terror happened before the Republicans took power as factions struggled for power. The priests are no different than anyone else…
And Franco’s coup had little to do with saving the priests of Spain; I think his forces killed a few of their own…And I think the numbers of Franco’s “White Terror” are far greater than any purges and executions by the Republicans…
The leftist actions were in part a response to rightist actions going back over a century, as typified by the Society of the Exterminating Angel run by a Catholic bishop about a century before the Spanish Civil War. The Society existed to exterminate liberals.
p.44 at http://books.google.com/books?id=p7vqPNB6locC&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq="society+of+the+exterminating+angel"&source=web&ots=xjsVi5_nkI&sig=-QdVOsaw34hIFLC88tzld7Qfj8Y#PPA44,M1
It’s a chicken and the egg situation. Neither side had clean hands.
The leftist actions were in part a response to rightist actions going back over a century, as typified by the Society of the Exterminating Angel run by a Catholic bishop about a century before the Spanish Civil War. The Society existed to exterminate liberals.
Perhaps but they made use of a weak spot in the fresh republican goverment wich was sadly that the police had orders to not intervene and the Guardia Civil didnt do anything to stop it the looting and burning.
Dear Nick, if you have some idea of how ultracatolic was ( and I have some because I have some relatives there) a large part of the Spanish population you might aprecciate the shock that those assasinations caused…not to mention the wish of revenge. Obviously at the end nobody had clean hands, but this only help to justify the Nationalist “no mercy” rule against prisoners of war, particulary anarchist.
And yes, the Nationalist forces killed some priest, all in Basque country, the alleged reason was “to morally support a godless movement”
By the way here is an interesting document wich deal with the prelude of the war:
http://stage6.divx.com/History---World-War-II/video/1720871/Prelude-to-Tragedy
I’m not defending the non-intervention by the Civil Guard into murders and rampages against the Catholic Church. However, could anyone find Franco’s wholesale genocide against anyone even slightly left-of-center, including liberal capitalists? Numbers as high as 200,000 of them? And don’t kid yourself, not all of those priests were “innocent men of God martyred” either…
He’s no “hero.” He could have returned the country to civil democratic rule, but instead ran it as a corrupt, fascist regime that continued extra-judicial killings and formed a a virtual slave class out of the defeated legions of the Republicans for years…
I’m not defending the non-intervention by the Civil Guard into murders and rampages against the Catholic Church
I never said you did.
He’s no “hero.” He could have returned the country to civil democratic rule, but instead ran it as a corrupt, fascist regime that continued extra-judicial killings and formed a a virtual slave class out of the defeated legions of the Republicans for years
Obviously not, a man who stay in power more than 30 tears hardly could be callled hero. the slave thing… well I need to search more info about.