Pío Moa is insanely biased in favor of Francisco Franco. But mainstream narratives are even more insanely biased against. One would think that half a century after Franco’s death we could all calm down and discuss him without foaming at the mouth. But that’s not happening, and one has to scratch one’s way to some semblance of knowledge about the actual facts by reading different accounts and finding the middle ground between the extremes.
The glaringly obvious thing that nobody in Spain is ready to discuss is why the country was stuck between Franco and Stalinism and had to make that choice in a civil war. Why did things get so extreme? Why is the reaction to these events so overinflated almost a hundred years later?
Extreme forms of attachment to the past are an avoidance mechanism aimed at hiding from the present. This is true for societies as well as individuals. In Spain it’s not possible to discuss the civil war and the dictatorship in a dispassionate manner. People freak out and start spluttering. Pío Moa might be wrong on a bunch of things but at least he’s trying to have a normal conversation.
Clarissa's Blog 
OT: A Cinderella story (if Cinderella had big boobs and danced up a storm)
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I have friends on the generalized American Left who still maintain a romanticisation of the International Brigades, and try to play & sing the “Songs of the Spanish Civil War” album. And will argue their side against more moderate/realist observers who point out it was not actually a noble cause.
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“Why did things get so extreme? Why is the reaction to these events so overinflated almost a hundred years later?”
Most of the world were suffering from the Depression, many believed that capitalism itself had failed. The democracies had few answers and less funding to spare, at the time, communism and fascism appeared to offer both.
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Everything you need to know about the Spanish civil war you can learn by Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, though most of it is a statement against interest. He was a member of the Lenin Division of the POUM, so an unapologetic communist. I remember he wanted to make it very clear that this was a war against Christianity among other things, specifically Catholicism, as the British press was intentionally downplaying this truth. He bragged that he had not crossed a single Catholic church that had not been destroyed, burnt down or converted into a latrine by the communist.
I’ll be interested in your take on Franco, in many ways a great man, but I have always found his disloyalty/ingratitude toward Hitler dishonorable and troubling
Walnut.
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Hmmm, I rather doubt that one gets characters like Boxer and Benjamin from an author that is simply“an unapologetic communist” ;-D
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Animal Farm was 10 years later, and as some might point out many, found it to be more anti Stalinist than anti communist, but that’s a debate for another time.
Walnut
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Later, Orwell wrote that he went to Spain as a journalist with an idea of fighting if he figured it was worthwhile. At the time, he was concerned about his general health and lack of knowledge of both local politics and military matters. Afterward, believing that he should have enlisted with the CNT-FAI militias — actually understanding that his military knowledge was greater than average.
Maybe also because of their fighting abilities despite their anarchist attitudes with electing leaders, plus discussing and agreeing with plans. Doesn’t really sound much like communist totalitarian types ;-D
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To be fair and this is coming from me. Hitler wasn’t in Spain for the Spanish, or even really to stop the communists. He was there for three reasons. To bleed the Italians, to keep the communists occupied, and to train and test his new air force.
The Italians and the Germans despite how the media made them look were not friends. The Italian government wanted Austria and came very close to taking it before Hitler managed to bring it to his side. There were a lot of other incidences as well though that was the biggest one.
The thing was the Italians under Mussolini were providing the majority of the fascist support. Hitler arranged for the communists to occasionally receive old outdated small arms. Not a lot, certainly not enough to win. But enough to keep the war ongoing, draining the military strength of the Italians.
Ironically it did in fact work. The Italians sunk a lot of their military supplies (weapons and ammo) into Spain. Supplies and weapons they desperately needed in the following years considering that Mussolini kept opening new fronts draining their already low supply. (France, Greece, and a few others.)
The communists were being supported from everywhere. Including America. For Europe, it drained a lot of their collective resources by rerouting manpower, weapons, and supplies into a quagmire. What Hitler did was make sure they always had just enough weapons to keep fighting, but not enough to win. At the same time the weapons sent were the worst possible, thus increasing the number of communists killed.
The idea was that if the communists are stuck supporting this war, then it limits their ability to expand in the rest of Europe. Keep in mind, Germany came extremely close to falling to the Red Threat. France and Britain also came very close to falling. Italy did not mainly because Mussolini’s forces hunted them down, burned them out and then killed them wherever they could be found.
As for the support to the Fascist cause. Again most of the material support came via the Italians. The guns, ammo, volunteers, etc. Hitler did support and supply them with weapons and volunteers, but most of the German support was via use of transport planes. To get Franco’s army from Morocco to Spain proper, and other aircraft. Which was more for blooding his own air force rather than to win the war.
So its not really that surprising that Franco didn’t have much gratitude for Hitler. In reality Mussolini was actually helping him. While Hitler was using Spain to bleed his enemies and train his own troops.
Realistically for Germany, Hitlers choices were actually quite clever. Their enemies died or were stalled, while the German forces got valuable combat training.
For Spain Hitler’s choices were the worst of both worlds. Not enough to end the war firmly. And providing just enough support to all sides that the war lasted much longer than it would have, killing a lot more Spanish than a regular civil war would have.
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Oh, I forgot to put at the top. My comment was a response to Walnut’s question/statement.
“I’ll be interested in your take on Franco, in many ways a great man, but I have always found his disloyalty/ingratitude toward Hitler dishonorable and troubling”
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Yeah, it’s always been a cop out how nationalists refuse to acknowledge Hitler in the way that communists acknowledge Stalin.
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I’m a nationalist and I have acknowledged about 3 million times that yes, at its worst extreme nationalism absolutely leads to Hitler. I could even provide links to where I said that, including very recently.
The question I keep asking is this: are we ready to ditch the large middle class, the welfare state in its widest definition, and state-guaranteed rights to avoid the potentiality of Hitler?
My answer is no. I’ll take the risk.
Nationalists have given their answer. It’s everybody else that’s dithering.
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I guess the problem is people are more likely to associate the welfare state with Stalin.
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The welfare state without rights is the definition of a jail. These two things only work together.
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The apartheid state was basically a welfare state without rights. That’s why Mandela acknowledged even Afrikaners were prisoners of the system.
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“Why is the reaction to these events so overinflated almost a hundred years later?”
My guess is oppositional identity formation. Spanish people latch onto the Civil War to proclaim what they’re not.
There’s something similar in Poland (not nearly as extreme) about the communist period (and immediate aftermath) with people creating identities around opposition (or apologetics) for what happened.
That’s also why slavery is still a hot button issue in the US. Both Blacks and Whites _need_ slavery in the past to help form a coherent identity in the present.
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In SA, the apartheid government was predicted in advance. The surprise was actually that they weren’t as extreme as expected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Smuts_Goes
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