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Speaker 1: n a A CP Image Awards dot net. Spain, I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastard. Actually, yeah, Spain,
Speaker 1: that's what I got. This is Behind the Bastards. It's
Speaker 1: actually Behind the Insurrections special Behind the Bastards miniseries talking
Speaker 1: about the history of fascist attempts to seize power from democracies. Yes. Um,
Speaker 1: we started our our first opening of this episode with
Speaker 1: me shouting, what's bombing my Guernica's But then we decided
Speaker 1: that would get me canceled and was a bad idea. Um,
Speaker 1: so we will be talking about me. I would have
Speaker 1: just gone, yeah, I just shouted the name Spain prop
Speaker 1: alternate pitch what about Yeah, there we go. There we go,
Speaker 1: There we go. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Spanish is mostly
Speaker 1: limited to buying drugs. That's an NBA player from that
Speaker 1: that was a really great laker. But you know, has
Speaker 1: really good seafood. You can say that about Spain. I can. Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, yes, I have had some amazing piea. One
Speaker 1: of the pie as I had was partly responsible for
Speaker 1: me vomiting on the limousine of the King of Spain.
Speaker 1: But um, that's amazing. That's a story for another day.
Speaker 1: Best friend, my best friend died in Spain. I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: that's a great thing to say. That's years ago. My
Speaker 1: old DJ, he flew to Spain. He was actually doing
Speaker 1: a he was doing a master chef class with his pis.
Speaker 1: He's Filipino, dude. He was going to do this like
Speaker 1: piea adobo. It was this crazy Filipino Spanish. He sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and he had like and he just his
Speaker 1: blood pressure dropped. His zero. Oh ship died in his Airbnb.
Speaker 1: That's horrible. That's horrible. Well, I'm kid. We are going
Speaker 1: to talk about a lot of people dying in Spain today.
Speaker 1: So that's the PDJ effect though, love you doubt that
Speaker 1: that's there's actually this is actually gonna be a very
Speaker 1: sad episode in a lot of ways. So that's an
Speaker 1: appropriate emotional tone to start it off with. Yes, that
Speaker 1: the buck Spain throws down his current Spain is not
Speaker 1: your fault. Um. So we're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War today. Uh. And we left off last
Speaker 1: time with the establishment of an actual, like real fat
Speaker 1: organized fascist party in Spain. The philogists, Um, they went
Speaker 1: the first, but they were the first to kind of like,
Speaker 1: I don't get it right as a weird phrase to
Speaker 1: apply to fascism, but they were. They were the Spanish
Speaker 1: fascists who would um become kind of the watchword for
Speaker 1: Spanish fascism. When people talk about the fascists in Spain,
Speaker 1: they're talking about the philogists, you know, Yeah, the philangers
Speaker 1: um fa lenx is, which kind of also I think
Speaker 1: that I think philanges comes from fai lenx because it's
Speaker 1: that word for that Greek military you know, where you
Speaker 1: have a shiploaded dudes standing in like a series of lines,
Speaker 1: all supporting each other in kind of like a hand.
Speaker 1: I don't know that'd be, my guests, I'm not a
Speaker 1: worder So the oddest thing about the phlogists, um is
Speaker 1: that alone among fascists pretty much any period I'm aware of,
Speaker 1: they well except for maybe the modern period, they were
Speaker 1: giant wosses to start out with. And this may be
Speaker 1: due to the fact talked a lot about how like
Speaker 1: World War One is why the Italian and German fascists
Speaker 1: were terrifying people, um, because they, you know, we're very
Speaker 1: comfortable killing people. Spain stayed out of World War One.
Speaker 1: Most of the early fascists were like more on this
Speaker 1: like fascist intellectuals than street fighters, and they weren't initially
Speaker 1: very willing to use force. Now they talked about violence
Speaker 1: a lot um. And Jose Antonio, their leader, was definitely
Speaker 1: a fascist, but he was very uncomfortable with physical violence,
Speaker 1: even when when it was directed at him and it
Speaker 1: was repeatedly, he was loath to actually organize retaliatory violence.
Speaker 1: During his speech he gave after his party's unification with
Speaker 1: the John Seasta's, a leftist gunman opened fire, intending to
Speaker 1: kill Jose Antonio, and instead killing a spectator and wounding
Speaker 1: for other people. The fascists launched no reprisals against the
Speaker 1: left in response, which is like you you look at
Speaker 1: Germany or Italy's is very strange. Yeah, very different than
Speaker 1: it was elsewhere. Um. And the kind of unwillingness in
Speaker 1: this period of the Fascionists to use violence lead one
Speaker 1: columnist for a right wing newspaper to note sarcastically, so
Speaker 1: that everything will be incongruous here it is that the
Speaker 1: fascists who are made to swallow castor oil, which is
Speaker 1: referring to the fact that in Italy the fascists would
Speaker 1: force castor oil down the throats of their enemies to
Speaker 1: make them ship themselves, sometimes to death. Like it was
Speaker 1: a horrible torture, Like they thought it was funny, but
Speaker 1: it killed people. And this guy's being like in Italy
Speaker 1: the fascists make their enemies drink castor oil. Here we
Speaker 1: have to drink the castor oil, right, because we're not
Speaker 1: willing to use violence. Um. That's weird. It is very odd.
Speaker 1: It does not last. But this is a period of
Speaker 1: time early in the fascist So also, every black person's
Speaker 1: grandma made them drink castor oil at some point. Sucks
Speaker 1: one of those you know that you know that, Um
Speaker 1: that image Macro from from the movie Predator, where uh,
Speaker 1: those two guys are shaking hands and the meeting in
Speaker 1: the middle Italian fascists. Black. Grandma's feeding people castor oil. Yes,
Speaker 1: grandma's stomach was just just give me. Look, it had
Speaker 1: been fine. Just let me drink some water. God drink
Speaker 1: this castle. Can't teller no either, tell the black woman no,
Speaker 1: I dare you? And they were, you know, the Italians
Speaker 1: were giving people much larger to like it killed people sometimes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Other Phalangists leaders were happier to endorse physical violence than
Speaker 1: Jose Antonio was, but for a little while, initially a
Speaker 1: number of them kind of felt like it was good
Speaker 1: to have some of their members gutted down by the left.
Speaker 1: When one Phalangist was killed in the movement's first street fight,
Speaker 1: it was thought that the brawl had been a successful
Speaker 1: baptism of fire. Basically, we're trying to ramp these people
Speaker 1: up to violence, so it's good that we're like this.
Speaker 1: It's positive for us that we're being tested with like
Speaker 1: deadly force. Um. This was some people's attitude initially, but
Speaker 1: the deaths kept coming, and for a while they were
Speaker 1: entirely caused by leftists. Most of this violence occurred between
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four and nineteen thirties six, during a period
Speaker 1: of escalating political violence that historians call the militarization of
Speaker 1: politics during the Second Republic, And when you're talking about
Speaker 1: at least the violence that was between fascists and the left,
Speaker 1: it was pretty one sided for a while. While fascists
Speaker 1: being fascists always talked about violence, Jose Antonio particularly resisted
Speaker 1: putting the party on a militant footing. Now, this was
Speaker 1: unpopular within the movement, and one internal meeting, Jose Antonio
Speaker 1: expressed his desire to engage the left in the dialectic
Speaker 1: of fists and pistols, but he was kind of being
Speaker 1: more metaphorical than anything right, like we're gonna have like
Speaker 1: the verbal equivalent of war, And he was kind of
Speaker 1: himming and hawing around because he wasn't really willing to
Speaker 1: commit fully at this point. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues
Speaker 1: in the same meeting expressed a desire to treat leftists
Speaker 1: as enemies in a state of war. Now, there were
Speaker 1: discussions within the party of overthrowing Jose Antonio and replacing
Speaker 1: him with a more violent fascist because he just wasn't
Speaker 1: willing to kill fast enough. Um and these suggestions were
Speaker 1: shot down because they couldn't really exist without him. At
Speaker 1: this point, the police kept shutting down their party offices,
Speaker 1: so the only place they could gather was Jose Antonio's
Speaker 1: law offices. He was also like the one who had money,
Speaker 1: um and so they couldn't A lot of people were
Speaker 1: angry at him, but they couldn't really exist without him.
Speaker 1: Um on A. Simo Redondo, who was another Phalangeious leader
Speaker 1: uh and probably the one who urged violence most openly
Speaker 1: around the same time, was very willing to kind of
Speaker 1: go against Jose Antonio and say people like we should
Speaker 1: be we should be ready to kill people in the streets.
Speaker 1: In December of nineteen thirty three, he promised his followers
Speaker 1: a situation of absolute violences approaching. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: now from a speech he gave to phalangeiost youth, young workers,
Speaker 1: young Spaniards. Prepare your weapons, get used to the crack
Speaker 1: of the pistol. Caress your dagger. Be inseparable from your
Speaker 1: vindictive club. Young people must be trained in physical combat,
Speaker 1: must love violence as a system, must arm themselves with
Speaker 1: whatever they can, and must be prepared to finish off
Speaker 1: by whatever means. A few dozen Marxist imbosts there's a
Speaker 1: lot that in there. Yeah, I'm really and when he's
Speaker 1: saying there, when he especially when he says they must
Speaker 1: love violence as a system, he's kind of yeah, spanishifying
Speaker 1: the concept the Italians had and that the Germans developed
Speaker 1: of like the cult of action for action's sake, the
Speaker 1: almost this almost worship of violence as an an end
Speaker 1: in and of itself. Um, you're seeing that start to
Speaker 1: percolate into Spanish fascist culture in this period. Now more
Speaker 1: than a dozen Phalangists and other fascists were killed by
Speaker 1: anarchists and communists before the fascist right properly organized itself
Speaker 1: for violence, but organized themselves for violence they did. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from the book Fascism in Spain.
Speaker 1: The point of inflection in the political violence took place
Speaker 1: on Sunday, June tenth. The Chibberries of the Young Socialists
Speaker 1: had been prohibited by authorities from marching in the streets
Speaker 1: of Madrid, but during the warm weather organized regular weekend
Speaker 1: outings to the Cassa de Campo recreation area on the
Speaker 1: west side of Madrid. On the tenth a group of
Speaker 1: Phalangists intercepted them, and the usual fight took place, and
Speaker 1: he teen year old Phalangeists Juan Queler, son of a
Speaker 1: police inspector, was killed and his corpse was subsequently mutilated,
Speaker 1: his head apparently crushed with rocks. One of ensaldo squads
Speaker 1: was quick to respond, allegedly without obtaining approval from the
Speaker 1: tree Embers who directed the party the Fascist Party. Later
Speaker 1: that evening, as a bus transporting the young socialist excursionists
Speaker 1: unloaded some of them in Madrid, a car full of
Speaker 1: Phalangist Pistolero's, personally led by Ensaldo, who's a Fascist militant,
Speaker 1: was waiting. It slowly passed the young couple on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: spraying them with bullets. A twenty year old shop clerk,
Speaker 1: Juanito Rico, was killed. The Phalangists claimed she had been
Speaker 1: involved in desecrating the corpse. Her twenty one year old
Speaker 1: brother was left permanently disabled and several others were wounded.
Speaker 1: Four days earlier, a Phalangist smallholder in Torre perogl Jane
Speaker 1: Province had been killed during a farm workers strike, so
Speaker 1: that Queller was the fifteenth or sixteenth John Cista or
Speaker 1: Phialangist killed since the John Ceesta teenager had been slain
Speaker 1: by assault guards, which are like socialist militants, and uh
Speaker 1: May of nineteen thirty two, all the others had been
Speaker 1: killed by the left, though numerous leftists had been injured
Speaker 1: by philogists and street of phrase and university assaults, Rico
Speaker 1: was the first leftist fatality at their hands. For years,
Speaker 1: she would be commemorated as the first victim of fascism
Speaker 1: in Spain. So that's really the start of Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much there, man. Like first of all, I'm
Speaker 1: still dangling at the phrase dialectic of fists and pencils.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's that's raptists and pistols. Yeah, I thought pencils. No,
Speaker 1: no fist, dialectic fist like a conversation, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I I actually yeah, yours is better. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: like yeah, I was like, yo, those are bars man, Okay.
Speaker 1: And then also, you know, there's there's a part of
Speaker 1: like you know, and then it's a strange like survival
Speaker 1: tactic or just just a byproduct of like just being
Speaker 1: around like inner city just kind of like gang violence
Speaker 1: that like you the desensitization of it, like where you're
Speaker 1: just like you know, people die daily. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like you just kind of like get used
Speaker 1: to and used to such a bad word to explain
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say. But no, no, you but
Speaker 1: you get it. It's like violence is just a part
Speaker 1: of life and and it. But it's still like even
Speaker 1: knowing that, you know, I'm an adult, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: moved out with you know, done so many different things
Speaker 1: now and it's not like I still don't live in
Speaker 1: an active community. But like, um, at the same time, though,
Speaker 1: like like I was crazy, like Okay, so that shooting,
Speaker 1: the shooting at that walmart in Texas, Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: chance shooting. Yeah a chance shooting. Yeah. Like I watched
Speaker 1: the video of like a cell phone video of like
Speaker 1: you know, like a hood dude that was at the
Speaker 1: walmart that I've when the shooting started. He was just
Speaker 1: like that, that's crazy fool shooting. We probably better slide out.
Speaker 1: How calm he was is because of how we grew up,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So you're just like somebody
Speaker 1: gotta tech. All that's a tech I know what that is,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And it's like it's so
Speaker 1: weird because it's just a weird thing. So we so
Speaker 1: when I hear this, when I hear y'all talk, when
Speaker 1: you know, we talk about this like moment of this
Speaker 1: like political upheaval, there's still part of me that goes,
Speaker 1: but I still don't understand why you're killing each other,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And then and then the
Speaker 1: idea of how I gave that whole preference to say,
Speaker 1: it's still jolting to hear the type of like mutilation.
Speaker 1: Now you have somebody with a rock and then like
Speaker 1: like got dog, like you know, you know, like crazy
Speaker 1: you gotta be to blunt force trauma killer person like
Speaker 1: that's It's just I don't know anyway, it's just going
Speaker 1: on here. I think you're It's very important to point
Speaker 1: out the desensitization that occurs during this that that's why
Speaker 1: the phrase is used that like um um, the militarization
Speaker 1: of politics, it's a process that starts in thirty one
Speaker 1: and doesn't really reach its apothesis until nineteen thirty six
Speaker 1: when the Civil War starts. But it's a process of
Speaker 1: getting people ready to that of escalating street violence. And
Speaker 1: you see that just within the Fascist Party, where initially
Speaker 1: the fascists are willing to fight. There's brawls in the
Speaker 1: street from day one, right as soon as there's fascists,
Speaker 1: before the Jones Eastas merge with UM with Jose Antonio's group,
Speaker 1: there's street fighting and stuff. But it when the killing
Speaker 1: starts a lot of these fascists because these are not
Speaker 1: and and again we get to the civil war, A
Speaker 1: significant chunk of the fascist military are combat veterans, and
Speaker 1: and these are the guys who come up from Africa. Um.
Speaker 1: But these these dudes who are actually in Iberia, they
Speaker 1: don't have experience killing people, not not by and large.
Speaker 1: And it takes number one, it takes time of some
Speaker 1: of them being killed before they really start responding with
Speaker 1: deadly violence. As a matter of course, and once you
Speaker 1: have that on both sides, once you have anarchists and
Speaker 1: communists and and other kinds of like left socialists killing
Speaker 1: fascists in the streets and fascists committing murder right back
Speaker 1: and vice versa, then you have this. It starts to
Speaker 1: ramp up the whole kind of level of comfort with
Speaker 1: deadly violence in society up to a level that you
Speaker 1: can have the kind of war that we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about. But you're right, it is a process, um.
Speaker 1: And I think in terms of like how people would
Speaker 1: justify like bashing the kid's head in with Iraq and
Speaker 1: desecrating his corpse, It's less about that guy. It's not
Speaker 1: that individual, dude. They were probably angry, but they're looking
Speaker 1: at what's happening in Spain and in Germany and what
Speaker 1: fashion the concentration camps that have already been set up,
Speaker 1: the mass executions of leftists in Italy and in Germany,
Speaker 1: the thousands who are already dead, and they're going the
Speaker 1: only way to stop that here is to kill as
Speaker 1: many of And and you can argue that was that
Speaker 1: that was the wrong tact. Take that. You could argue that,
Speaker 1: you could argue that it actually raised the level of
Speaker 1: violence to a point where you were able to have
Speaker 1: this open conflict that the left doesn't win. But at
Speaker 1: the time, all they know is they see what's happening
Speaker 1: in Germany and in Italy, and they think, I don't
Speaker 1: know what else to do but be vient, you know,
Speaker 1: And I yeah, it's it's fucked like the whole situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, that's the thing where you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: they you know, the streets. Shit, that's like you know,
Speaker 1: they take one, we take four exactly one of ours.
Speaker 1: We kill for yours, you know. And and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be the Trent. And that means like, okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm saying this to say, don't kill ours. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you call it, I mean it is street ship. But
Speaker 1: it's also like U S military policy massive retaliation. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is what speaking of us in speaking of
Speaker 1: like US history, recent history and the history of like
Speaker 1: terrorism on the right. Tim McVeigh when he blew up
Speaker 1: the Murrah building was very consciously being like, I this
Speaker 1: is the kind of reaction. Uh, this is like I
Speaker 1: am attacking the government because they killed all these people
Speaker 1: in Waco, and I learned that this is an acceptable
Speaker 1: His argument was, I learned this was an acceptable way
Speaker 1: to respond to violence because that's how the military trained me. Right.
Speaker 1: You can quibble with how honest McVeigh was being there,
Speaker 1: but like hard not to see some through lines. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at the first Iraq War or the more
Speaker 1: reason like right, it's it is the way everything works, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how how the idea of how the idea of Pearl Harbor, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is equivalent to Roshima. Yeah right, yeah, Well you take
Speaker 1: out a base, we take out an island. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, and collective punishment. There's a lot to
Speaker 1: say about all of that. We need to move on
Speaker 1: to the yeah, because I'm pretty sure you wrote seventy yeah,
Speaker 1: more or less. Now, while all of this was happening,
Speaker 1: while the Philangists were starting to commit murder and stuff,
Speaker 1: and and the fighting between left and right is escalating
Speaker 1: in Spain, well, all this is happening on the ground,
Speaker 1: the political situation and like the actual like elected politics
Speaker 1: and stuff is continuing to unravel. And this is due
Speaker 1: in large part to the fact that the Africanistas, who
Speaker 1: were again the members of the Spanish military who had
Speaker 1: fought in Morocco, were increasingly frustrated with the Republic in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, So just like a year after the
Speaker 1: Republic starts, one general, a guy named san Juro, launches
Speaker 1: a coup that fails. But rather than wonder if the
Speaker 1: African Eastas weren't a problem and a threat to democracy,
Speaker 1: the government brought in Franco and his foreign legion to
Speaker 1: massacre anarchists and communists during their nineteen thirty four uprising.
Speaker 1: Where the foreign legion executes more than a thousand people. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the Republic knows that the military, these African veterans are
Speaker 1: a problem and also uses them to crush the left
Speaker 1: when the left rises up, because you know, governments generally
Speaker 1: not smart. Um. So a gap begins to form during
Speaker 1: the Republican period between the the the the junta's officers
Speaker 1: in the peninsula who supported the Republic, and the Africanistas
Speaker 1: who the junta is called stormtroopers. Um. Now, by nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, the political situation, which had simmered for years,
Speaker 1: broke out into an open boil. The explanation as to
Speaker 1: why starts with the Popular Front. In nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: the USSR announced that given the worldwide advance of fascism,
Speaker 1: it was now acceptable for good communists to make political
Speaker 1: alliances with other left wing groups. This included both moderate
Speaker 1: liberals and people like anarchists and even in some cases
Speaker 1: like Trotskyists, which communists trot Skits are communists too. They
Speaker 1: don't like each other, right, um, And this is this
Speaker 1: is a real big change. And we talked about in
Speaker 1: our in our the non Nazi bastards who made Hitler
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why the left failed to stop
Speaker 1: the Nazis is that the Communist Party in Germany, which
Speaker 1: was you know, generally under orders from Moscow UH, called
Speaker 1: the Social Democrats social fascists. And I'll admit right now
Speaker 1: we weren't entirely fair to the Communists in that episode.
Speaker 1: The Social diffic It's did some really fucked up stuff
Speaker 1: to the Communist that we will talk about later in
Speaker 1: this very series. UM. They had good reasons to distress
Speaker 1: the Social Democrats. That said, the failure to work with
Speaker 1: them to stop Hitler was very clearly a mistake. Like
Speaker 1: and the USSR admits that is like, you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it's necessary in countries facing fascism for there
Speaker 1: to be for for us to allow communists are kind
Speaker 1: of communist at least to have a broad popular front
Speaker 1: with other people in the left. UM. And this is
Speaker 1: a very successful idea politically, UM. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: was also a popular Front in France that that succeeded
Speaker 1: in pushing some major reforms, and we will talk about
Speaker 1: that later too. The tactic worked very well politically electorally
Speaker 1: in Spain. The Popular Front swept the nineteen thirty six elections. UM.
Speaker 1: But in a way that will be familiar to everyone listening.
Speaker 1: They did so in a way that enraged the right wing.
Speaker 1: And it's not hard to see why the right felt
Speaker 1: like they've been cheated. Right Wing parties pulled four million,
Speaker 1: five hundred and five thousand, five hundred two votes and
Speaker 1: gained a twenty four seats in the nineteen thirty six election. Now,
Speaker 1: the Popular Front only got about a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: thousand more votes, but they gained two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: eight seats, So they get a hundred and sixty thousand
Speaker 1: more votes in an election with nine or ten million
Speaker 1: votes twice as many seats. You can see why people
Speaker 1: on the right would be like kind of piste about
Speaker 1: this right. Um, and there may have been cheating. I
Speaker 1: don't really know, Like it's I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into whether or not there was cheating. What's important is
Speaker 1: that the right felt that they had been cheated, right.
Speaker 1: That's what actually matters, as opposed to whether or not
Speaker 1: there was um any kind of electoral malfeasance. UM. And
Speaker 1: of course the c e d A that Catholic kind
Speaker 1: of right wing party, that's the dominant right wing party,
Speaker 1: and the Phalangists, the fascists absolutely would have cheated themselves
Speaker 1: in this election, and they actually they probably did. Um
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, when Roblez, the head
Speaker 1: of the c E d A, realized that he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be appointed prime minister after the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six election, he started negotiating with African EASTA generals to
Speaker 1: try to convince them to do a coup to force it, like,
Speaker 1: to put him into power um as a dictator basically.
Speaker 1: Uh And he failed, but there was a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for the ideal. While the left looked at the
Speaker 1: Phalanges and the c E d A and saw Hitler
Speaker 1: and Mussolini, the right looked at the Popular Front and
Speaker 1: saw it as the inevitable prelude to Soviet style state communism.
Speaker 1: Uh And I'm going to quote from a write up
Speaker 1: in lumen dot UK right now. When this coalition came
Speaker 1: to power, popular unrest in the countryside exploded into land seizures,
Speaker 1: encouraged by radical anarchists. So as soon as like the
Speaker 1: Popular Front wins the election, the anarchists are like, we're
Speaker 1: we're going to do our thing now, like it's time
Speaker 1: to it's time to take power for the people. There
Speaker 1: was little attempt by the anarchists to moderate their behavior
Speaker 1: and no demands to allow the Popular Front to reassure
Speaker 1: moderate elements. In Spain, a c and T, which is
Speaker 1: an anarchist party conference held in May nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: was full of revolutionary language. It seemed that the New
Speaker 1: Republic had not been able to control the major revolutionary group.
Speaker 1: The murder of a former finance minister, Jose Calvo Sotelo,
Speaker 1: on thirteenth July nineteen thirty six, was the trigger for
Speaker 1: the war, and much the same way as the assassination
Speaker 1: of arch Franz Ferdinand had sparked the First World War.
Speaker 1: So Tello had been an exile from nineteen to thirty four,
Speaker 1: but had returned to become a leading right wing figure
Speaker 1: associated with the Spanish Fascists and a deputy for the
Speaker 1: Spanish Revival Group. He clashed with the Socialists and the
Speaker 1: Assembly and was murdered by left wing members of the
Speaker 1: Civil Guard. So you have a couple of things happened.
Speaker 1: The Popular Front wins election, the anarchists just start seizing
Speaker 1: the ship out of land and saying, like the revolution,
Speaker 1: we're doing a revolution um it's happening. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, another left wing group of left wing people
Speaker 1: murders a popular right wing politician. Um. So this all
Speaker 1: kind of snowballs into the start of the Civil war,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, Now, when the c E d A
Speaker 1: lost the election, that was kind of it for them, um,
Speaker 1: and most of the party, like after failing to win
Speaker 1: in thirty six, just kind of gets fully on board
Speaker 1: with authoritarianism. One scholar writes that everyone got the message
Speaker 1: to quote, abandon the ballot box and take up arms.
Speaker 1: The c E d a s youth movement collapses. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so like the the Young Republicans. Basically they collapse
Speaker 1: overnight and they all joined the Phalange. So all of
Speaker 1: the young like conservatives who had been in the c
Speaker 1: e d A and trying to get out the vote
Speaker 1: immediately joined the fascist party and start picking up guns. Um,
Speaker 1: And street fighting and political murders reach a fever pitch
Speaker 1: in this in this period. Now, the quote I read
Speaker 1: earlier mentioned land seizures by the CNT and other groups
Speaker 1: of anarchists. Um. And it's actually true that in the
Speaker 1: trade unions major strongholds, the areas where the anarchists the
Speaker 1: anarchist Trade Union was most powerful Barcelona, Zaragosa and Seville.
Speaker 1: There was actually very little in the way of like
Speaker 1: strikes or mass demonstrations in the lead up to the war.
Speaker 1: The CNT tried to keep their people kind of calm um.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of their anarchists, right, A
Speaker 1: lot of them aren't part of the CNT, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of them and a bunch of socialists occupy land
Speaker 1: in battles which took over seventh And like this land occupation.
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the start of the Republic that they
Speaker 1: took about ten percent of the undeveloped land and gave
Speaker 1: it to peasants. This occupation of land and batty yaws
Speaker 1: takes seven times that much land and starts redistributing it
Speaker 1: to like peasants um. And this fucking terrifies the rich
Speaker 1: people in Spain. If you've at this point, the anarchists
Speaker 1: have fucked with the money, right, I'm talked about about
Speaker 1: the money. You funked up the money I talked about
Speaker 1: how like Trump a big part of why on the
Speaker 1: day on the six, like all these fucking banks started
Speaker 1: coming out of like Chase Bank and Chevron are like
Speaker 1: like condemning President Trumble because with the money, you can't
Speaker 1: suck up the money. Doc can't suck up the money.
Speaker 1: And of course anarchists are all about like they want
Speaker 1: to funk up. That's the point, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things I like about them, not saying that's wrong,
Speaker 1: but they funk up the money, and that that gets
Speaker 1: a lot of the a lot of rich people, a
Speaker 1: lot of like the Spanish, kind of like ruling class
Speaker 1: on board some sort of revolution against the left. Now
Speaker 1: in Spain, the seizure of Batta Yaws convinces a lot
Speaker 1: of these like rich people that the government can't guarantee
Speaker 1: stability anymore. So while past coup attempts by generals had
Speaker 1: generally folded due to a lack of support from the
Speaker 1: dominant classes, who didn't want to see a coup, right,
Speaker 1: they didn't like the left, but I don't want to
Speaker 1: have like a coup again, by nineteen thirty six a
Speaker 1: lot more of those folks are like, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's either a coup or we don't get to be
Speaker 1: rich people anymore. And they do what rich people do.
Speaker 1: Who it is, who it is. So the government had
Speaker 1: known that the African easta generals weren't super trustworthy, which
Speaker 1: is why they tried to post the ring leaders, General
Speaker 1: Franco and a guy named General Mola to the Canary
Speaker 1: Islands and Pamplona, respectively, right keep them out of the
Speaker 1: center of ship. But these guys were still collaborating with
Speaker 1: a codra of other officers, and on July seventeenth, under
Speaker 1: orders from Franco, troops and Morocco rebelled, and obviously the
Speaker 1: foreign legion are kind of like the core of this.
Speaker 1: Over the next three days, military units and commanders all
Speaker 1: over Spain rose up against the legitimate government, and the
Speaker 1: hope from Franco and his fellows had been that they
Speaker 1: would swiftly take control of major cities, jail their political opponents,
Speaker 1: and install a dictator like they've done with de Revere
Speaker 1: and not all that long ago. Right very comes to
Speaker 1: power like a decade or so earlier, so they were
Speaker 1: hoping it would follow that trend. But the left was
Speaker 1: way more organized now and it did not work out
Speaker 1: that way. And I'm gonna quote now from a write
Speaker 1: up in the New Left Review. Confidence in a rapid
Speaker 1: rebel victory was quickly dispelled when the insurrection in most
Speaker 1: major cities, notably Madrid and Barcelona, was crushed in the
Speaker 1: streets by a combination of loyal security forces and political
Speaker 1: and trade union militants. Where this combination failed or the
Speaker 1: security forces went over to the rebels, the rising was
Speaker 1: almost immediately successful, as in Seville and Saragosa. The fact
Speaker 1: that less than half the army and security forces united
Speaker 1: behind the rebellion was the principal reason why the coup
Speaker 1: failed in its principal objective and turned into a civil war.
Speaker 1: Now that's not the unified opinion on things, right, the
Speaker 1: idea that yeah, they're they're significant debate over why the
Speaker 1: coup failed, right, because he does fail. Right, the speciest
Speaker 1: win in the end, But they don't get they don't
Speaker 1: succeed by coup. They have to fight a war. And
Speaker 1: a lot of scholars will actually argue a lot of
Speaker 1: them will argue that, well, it was the security because
Speaker 1: most of the security forces didn't go with the rebels,
Speaker 1: that's why the rebels didn't win immediately. A lot of
Speaker 1: scholars will also argue that actually the bulk of the
Speaker 1: credit for halting rebel victory goes to local militias, which
Speaker 1: are kind of spontaneously organized just because a bunch of
Speaker 1: people started picking up guns. The argument is that in
Speaker 1: the wake of the coup, the Spanish military and the
Speaker 1: Republican government lost basically all cohesion incredibility, which they did, right,
Speaker 1: like half of your military like decides to overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of people had to have faith in
Speaker 1: the government. And the arrest of all can't stop these
Speaker 1: people from taking my land from me. Yeah, like y'all.
Speaker 1: And the reason that Franco and his allies, these the
Speaker 1: scholars who will kind of take this out of it,
Speaker 1: argue that the reason Franco and his allies didn't win
Speaker 1: immediately is that hundreds of thousands of civilians took to
Speaker 1: the streets and these is a general rule in the
Speaker 1: early days, these citizens militias. Um, these people were just
Speaker 1: like picking up their grandpa's hunting rifle or in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases looting sporting goods stores, like busting like
Speaker 1: busting into like a fucking a sportsman warehouse and just
Speaker 1: taking all the guns. Okay, like we need guns, these
Speaker 1: guys have them, let's grab them. Um. And you know
Speaker 1: there's later too, there's looting off like military barracks is
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, they just get whatever guns they fucking
Speaker 1: can and they start fighting the African Eastas, who are
Speaker 1: at that point very experienced, disciplined and well equipped veterans. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's like this mix if you've got hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of men and women, because women are a part
Speaker 1: of the fighting forces briefly in this period, just picking
Speaker 1: up whatever guns they can get and going to war
Speaker 1: against one of the most veteran military units in all
Speaker 1: of Europe. Um. In his nineteen six essay on the matter,
Speaker 1: Morae book Chin writes quote to have stopped Franco's Army
Speaker 1: of Africa, composed of foreign legionnaires and Moorish mercenaries, perhaps
Speaker 1: the bloodthirsty ist and certainly one of the most professionalized
Speaker 1: troops at the disposal of any European nation at the time,
Speaker 1: and it's well trained civil guards and political auxiliaries would
Speaker 1: have been thing less than miraculous once it established a
Speaker 1: strong base on the Spanish mainland. That hastily formed, untrained
Speaker 1: and virtually unequipped militiamen and women slowed Franco's Army's advance
Speaker 1: on Madrid for four months and essentially stopped it on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the Capitol is a feat for which
Speaker 1: they have rarely earned the proper tribute from writers on
Speaker 1: the Civil War of the past century. Wow yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: just everyone picking up their guns and being like fuck
Speaker 1: these guys, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 1: think there's like this you know, um yeah. The miracle
Speaker 1: that they was actually able to stop this fool or
Speaker 1: these dudes is like yeah, it's I mean, obviously ultimately
Speaker 1: they don't. But like that, I think about like what
Speaker 1: we used to call like like dad strong. You know,
Speaker 1: like you you just you're you don't you know your
Speaker 1: dad's strong, but you don't, like you don't really believe it,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And then you're like then
Speaker 1: you're sixteen and you want to like throw hands with him,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and then he just lays
Speaker 1: you out flat, you know what I mean. You're like,
Speaker 1: I don't I I didn't expect you to be this strong.
Speaker 1: You know that. To me sometimes it's like I feel
Speaker 1: like that with like military dudes that are like super trained,
Speaker 1: where it's like you think, you think you can take them,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, oh, yeah, no, you're actually trained.
Speaker 1: This is not a game. So so knowing that, but
Speaker 1: then the fact that just the that these just untrained
Speaker 1: militias were still able to like, yeah, pull this off,
Speaker 1: you know, four months of brutal fighting. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: lose a funk load of thousands, like and it and
Speaker 1: it is. It is a very lopsided kill ratio at
Speaker 1: this point, right, because you're you are these are some
Speaker 1: of the most veteran military units in all of Europe, right, Um,
Speaker 1: going up against like fucking Grandpa and grandma with hunting rifles, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's ugly, It is ugly. But they they slow,
Speaker 1: They stopped Franco from winning in the thirties six, you know,
Speaker 1: and there seems to be very little debate about that
Speaker 1: that they were Some people argue how critical, but they
Speaker 1: were critical in stopping the nationalists, which is what the
Speaker 1: other thing the rebels are called at the Gates of Madrid,
Speaker 1: and that they're not the only ones. We'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the We're gonna talk about the international
Speaker 1: brigades in a second, um, but first you have to
Speaker 1: take an ad break, sir. You know who else would
Speaker 1: have stopped Franco at the gates of Madrid, Sophie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sophie would have Um Sophie would have backed by the
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Speaker 1: and for a brief time in nineteen thirty six, the
Speaker 1: Spanish Republican military was vastly dominated by, as opposed to
Speaker 1: like a kind of traditional military, a dizzying array of independent,
Speaker 1: interlocking and largely democratic militias. Most of the militias are
Speaker 1: either anarchist or trotskyist, So there's the c n T
Speaker 1: and the p o U M, and then there's groups
Speaker 1: that aren't a part of this, but like a largely
Speaker 1: they're either anarchist or kind of trotskyist, and both are
Speaker 1: heavily democratic. So men and women take up arms together,
Speaker 1: they vote for their leaders, so their officers are elected.
Speaker 1: It in recallable. Um and yeah, it's it's it, it is.
Speaker 1: You know, there's critiques to make up the system. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that a bit, but that's what the military
Speaker 1: is at this point in ninety six. It's largely just
Speaker 1: a funckload of these militias because the actual military is
Speaker 1: not in a good way, you know, very chaotic and
Speaker 1: disorganized itself. And in a lot of cases, because of
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of the military had rebelled,
Speaker 1: soldiers will leave their units and join militias. So it's
Speaker 1: very complicated. Please do not take this as a comprehensive
Speaker 1: or particularly in depth explanation of what happens with the
Speaker 1: Spanish militia system in the Republican like. It is incredibly complicated.
Speaker 1: This is an overview. This is all an overview. The
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil war is is very very complex. Um So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and while this is happening, while while all these democratic
Speaker 1: militias are rising up to fight the fascists in the countryside,
Speaker 1: behind the lines and sometimes right up to the lines,
Speaker 1: something equally interesting is happening. I'm gonna quote Marae book
Speaker 1: Chains article here in. The wave of collectivizations that swept
Speaker 1: over Spain in the summer and autumn of nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six has been described in a recent BBC Granada documentary
Speaker 1: as the greatest experiment and workers self management. Western Europe
Speaker 1: has ever seen a revolution more far reaching than any
Speaker 1: which occurred in Russia during nineteen seventeen to twenty one
Speaker 1: and the years before and after it an anarchist industrial
Speaker 1: areas like Catalonia and estimated three quarters of the economy
Speaker 1: was placed under workers control as it was an anarchist
Speaker 1: rural areas like Aragon. The figure of tapers downward, where
Speaker 1: the U, G T, which is another group shared power
Speaker 1: with the C and T or else predominated fifty percent
Speaker 1: in anarchist and socialist Valencia and thirty percent in socialist
Speaker 1: In liberal Madrid and more thoroughly anarchist areas, particularly among
Speaker 1: the agrarian collectives, Money was eliminated and the material means
Speaker 1: of life were allocated strictly according to need rather than work,
Speaker 1: following the traditional concepts of a libertarian communist society. As
Speaker 1: the BBC Granada television documentary puts it, the ancient dream
Speaker 1: of a collective society without profit or property was made reality.
Speaker 1: In the villages of Aragon, all forms of production were
Speaker 1: owned by the community, run by their workers. And again,
Speaker 1: as books and notes, this is not you know, this
Speaker 1: is different everywhere that in Republican Spain. But in Catalonia,
Speaker 1: which has a lot of industrial areas, three quarters of
Speaker 1: the industrial economy is directly controlled by the workers manning
Speaker 1: these factories, as opposed to them like even having elected
Speaker 1: bosses and stuff. Um, which is really interesting. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's something that doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah, Like how long
Speaker 1: was it like kind of working. There's debate as to
Speaker 1: how long it worked, but a couple of yeah, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: a year or two. You know, It's it's different in
Speaker 1: different regions. We're going to talk about what happens there. Um.
Speaker 1: Bookshon continues. The administrative apparatus of Republican Spain belonged almost
Speaker 1: entirely to the unions and their political organizations. Police in
Speaker 1: many cities were replaced by armed workers patrols. Militia units
Speaker 1: were formed everywhere in factories, on farms, and in socialist
Speaker 1: and anarchist community centers and union halls, initially including women
Speaker 1: as well as men. A vast network of local revolutionary
Speaker 1: committees coordinated the feeding of the cities, the operations of
Speaker 1: the economy, and the meeting out of justice. Indeed almost
Speaker 1: every facet of Spanish life, from production to culture, bringing
Speaker 1: the whole of Spanish society and the Republican zone into
Speaker 1: a well organized and coherent whole. This historically unprecedented appropriation
Speaker 1: of society by its most oppressed sectors, including women, who
Speaker 1: were liberated from all the constraints of a highly traditional
Speaker 1: Catholic country, be it the prohibition of abortion or and divorce,
Speaker 1: or a degraded stats in the economy, was the work
Speaker 1: of the Spanish proletariat and peasantry. It was a movement
Speaker 1: from below that overwhelmed even the revolutionary organizations of the impressed,
Speaker 1: including the C and T. Significantly, no left organization issued
Speaker 1: calls for revolutionary takeovers of factories, workplaces or the land,
Speaker 1: observes Ronald Fraser and one of the most up to
Speaker 1: date accounts of the popular movement. Indeed, the C and
Speaker 1: T leadership in Barcelona, epicenter of urban anarcho syndicalism, went
Speaker 1: further rejecting the offer of power presented to it by
Speaker 1: President Companies, the head of the Catalan government. It decided
Speaker 1: that the libertarian revolution must stand aside for collaboration with
Speaker 1: the Popular Front forces to defeat the common enemy. The
Speaker 1: revolution that transformed Barcelona in a matter of days into
Speaker 1: a city virtually run by the working class sprang initially
Speaker 1: from individual c and t unions impelled by their most
Speaker 1: advanced militants, and as their example spread, it was not
Speaker 1: only large enterprises, but small workshops and businesses that were
Speaker 1: being taken over. So a bookstion is saying there is
Speaker 1: this is a true bottom up revolution. And even in
Speaker 1: some cases this the anarchist trade union is like, don't
Speaker 1: do this, we need to work with the government. We're
Speaker 1: not calling for revolution, and the individual groups of workers
Speaker 1: are like, no, we're just going to take over our office.
Speaker 1: We're just taking over. That's fine, it's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 1: And it proves to be a mixed bag, like we'll
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this. There's fair critiques about what happens,
Speaker 1: but it is amazing and unprecedented and one of the
Speaker 1: great what ifs of histories. If there had not also
Speaker 1: been this massive civil war in this just invasion, might
Speaker 1: it have worked you know, and they're under a pressure
Speaker 1: that is kind of impossible to overcome in this intention,
Speaker 1: but it is an interesting question. What is yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: what is strange? Like it was strange because we've just
Speaker 1: never seen it, but like, yeah, what was that year?
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying, like name rates were,
Speaker 1: like what was the I don't say like petty crimes,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, one of these days
Speaker 1: I will do because I I don't know nearly enough
Speaker 1: about this. One of these days I would like to
Speaker 1: do like a hardcore history link, like a twelve hour
Speaker 1: deep dive into the Spanish Civil War where it's mostly
Speaker 1: focused on like, yeah, what what are these? Like what
Speaker 1: are these? You your place? The cops with like citizens patrols?
Speaker 1: How did that actually work? What was that? Like? What
Speaker 1: are what are what are kind of like the first
Speaker 1: person accounts we can have of those. Um, obviously we
Speaker 1: don't have the time to go into that much detail today,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely like, yeah, that would that would call
Speaker 1: for like a twelve hour Yes, yes, it's a very
Speaker 1: complicated and this is just I'm hoping what this mostly
Speaker 1: does is wet people's appetite to read more themselves, right,
Speaker 1: which I am also going to do. But it's a
Speaker 1: very interesting period of history. Now, obviously this system had
Speaker 1: a number of upsides, if you want to call it
Speaker 1: a system. What happens in Spain in this period has
Speaker 1: a number of upsides. That mobilizes a huge portion of
Speaker 1: the republic citizenry very quickly. Um it brings a people
Speaker 1: into arms very rapidly, more rapidly probably than a central
Speaker 1: government could have done. And these people were highly motivated
Speaker 1: to resist fascism, but they also in large part weren't
Speaker 1: motivated to live under the republic. And coordination between all
Speaker 1: of these groups was very difficult and sometimes impossible. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the rebels the nationalists had a strict military hierarchy, and
Speaker 1: that's a benefit in a war sometimes, right, it can
Speaker 1: also be you know, you can you can look at
Speaker 1: the Germans in World War Two. It doesn't always work out.
Speaker 1: But when you've got one side that's made up of
Speaker 1: a thousand different fractious people who agree on some things
Speaker 1: and disagree on a lot, that can deplete your ability
Speaker 1: to counter attack and to organize effectively. Meanwhile, Franco winds
Speaker 1: up and you know there's a scess he's not initially
Speaker 1: the only guy, but eventually he's the only dude whose
Speaker 1: opinion really matters. He's the guy at the top um
Speaker 1: And and that happens fairly quickly, and Franco is able
Speaker 1: to coordinate a centralized military in order to like like
Speaker 1: attack this very decentralized folks. He's a sneaky guy. There's
Speaker 1: also one of his fellow generals dies in a plane crash,
Speaker 1: so some of it's just like dumb lot um. Now,
Speaker 1: since the c E d A had failed that he
Speaker 1: didn't he Franco didn't really want to like wrap himself
Speaker 1: in the c E d a s flag because they've
Speaker 1: gotten their asses kicked in the thirty six election. And
Speaker 1: he kind of winds up embracing the philogists. And this
Speaker 1: is part of why people argue with Franco himself was
Speaker 1: really a fascist. If he was just kind of co
Speaker 1: opting fascism, I don't really see the point in getting
Speaker 1: involved in that. Franco gets in like wraps himself in
Speaker 1: the Phalange Party and like like they become kind of
Speaker 1: a dominant right wing force in this in the nationalist cause. Now,
Speaker 1: Jose Antonio, who had been the leader of the Phalangists
Speaker 1: had been arrested by the republic right at the start
Speaker 1: of the rebellion, and he was almost immediately executed for sedition,
Speaker 1: even though he'd been incarcerated when the rebellion cooked off. Like,
Speaker 1: if you want to argue how just it was, he
Speaker 1: didn't really have much to do with it. Um. But
Speaker 1: they kill him, Um, And I'm not, I don't care
Speaker 1: he's a fascist, Like, I'm not, I'm not gonna weep
Speaker 1: over him. But Franco takes Jose Antonio and turns him
Speaker 1: into a martyr, right, Um. And he also imprisons the
Speaker 1: guy who takes over the Phalangists after Jose Antonio so
Speaker 1: that he can turn the Phalangists into his own basically
Speaker 1: like cult of personality, Yeah, exactly, um. And Franco co
Speaker 1: opting the fascists had the side effect of making this war,
Speaker 1: which had started as a conflict between Spanish left and
Speaker 1: right and a conflict between you know, the Africanist military
Speaker 1: and and the Republic, into the world's first open battle
Speaker 1: ground between fascism and democracy, and the first three months
Speaker 1: of the civil war were some of the bloodiest. Both
Speaker 1: sides carried out a horrific series of assassinations is a
Speaker 1: very the early period, there's this amazing rising up of
Speaker 1: of the people to defend themselves, and there's also a
Speaker 1: ton of fucking vigilante murders, and it does occur on
Speaker 1: both sides. It's really ugly. And I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a quote from the New Left Review here. Even so,
Speaker 1: there were significant differences between the massacres on the left
Speaker 1: and the right. Many voices unheard on the rebel side
Speaker 1: were raised in the Republican Zone against the slaughter. By
Speaker 1: early September, a new government under Largo Caballero began to
Speaker 1: create a semblance of public order, which slowly put an
Speaker 1: endo the killings there, but not soon enough. News of
Speaker 1: the anti clerical violence, which included the disinternament of nun's coffins,
Speaker 1: widespread burning of churches, and desecration of religious objects, was
Speaker 1: broadcast around the world, creating extremely negative international image of
Speaker 1: the Republican Zone. Does not not good optics yet. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: look man, yeah, you messing with the nuns. Like we
Speaker 1: all like, yeah that the nuns are fine guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we've talked earlier about how like you can you know,
Speaker 1: there's arguments to be made about like, obviously there's a
Speaker 1: lot of problematic priests part of but disentering nun's coffins,
Speaker 1: there's really that I know of. They're like, come on, okay, guys, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it it is bad for the early rebel pr Now,
Speaker 1: on the rebel side, with occasional exception, tight censorship kept
Speaker 1: the assassinations out of the news. The church, which would
Speaker 1: soon sanctify the insurgents war, is a religious crusade turned
Speaker 1: a blind eye though hundreds of clergy were witnessed through
Speaker 1: oppression executed not only by the military but by Philangists
Speaker 1: and normally law abiding conservative Catholic citizens. So of course
Speaker 1: the church is both victim and perpetrator and a lot
Speaker 1: of and the death toll is much higher in terms
Speaker 1: of people killed by the right than people killed by
Speaker 1: the left. Um and again on in the republic there's
Speaker 1: outcries against the vigilante violence, and on the right there's like,
Speaker 1: don't talk about it, keep killing people, don't talk stop
Speaker 1: just stop putting it on TV, Like, I mean, do
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. But hey, yeah, Now, on the
Speaker 1: Republican side, the two largest left wing groups at the
Speaker 1: start of the war, because the Communists are very small
Speaker 1: at the start of the war. Again, because Spain doesn't
Speaker 1: industrialize into a lot later than a lot of the
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a very powerful communist party at this period.
Speaker 1: At the start of things, the two largest and left
Speaker 1: wing groups are the anarchists and the Trotskyists, and they
Speaker 1: were immediately torn between stopping fascism at all costs and
Speaker 1: of course funk the state right like there's a there's
Speaker 1: This is a tough choice for them. Now. The CNT,
Speaker 1: the largest anarchist organization, lands on the side of allying
Speaker 1: with the state to fight fascism, but many local workers
Speaker 1: councils were not on board. Now. While this is happening
Speaker 1: in the early part of the war, the communists very
Speaker 1: quickly come to hold significant power within the confusing and
Speaker 1: fractious Republican military establishment now and they grow rapidly at
Speaker 1: this period too, And this is due to the pretty
Speaker 1: sensible fact that the communists had a communist state, the USSR,
Speaker 1: that they could go to and beg for aid right
Speaker 1: the like the USSR is provides aid we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that a bit more to the republicans, And so the
Speaker 1: communists very quickly gained a lot of power within the
Speaker 1: military establishment of the Republic. Now, unfortunately, the fascists also
Speaker 1: had states they could go to for help, Italy and Germany,
Speaker 1: And from the very beginning of this war they're Italian
Speaker 1: and German troops fighting on the ground alongside the nationalist
Speaker 1: Spanish troops. Um and unfortunately for everybody, the fascist states
Speaker 1: were way more willing to provide direct aid to their
Speaker 1: side than the Communists were. I'm gonna quote again from
Speaker 1: the New Left Review here. Without Fascist aid, most of
Speaker 1: it provided on credit, the rebels would not long have
Speaker 1: been able to continue the war, let alone win it.
Speaker 1: Aside from the Nazis condor legion, Germany and Italy together
Speaker 1: provided tens of thousands of troops, mainly Italian, nearly six
Speaker 1: hundred war planes, thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of
Speaker 1: field guns. Equally important were the three point five million
Speaker 1: tons of oil provided on credit by Texico and Shell,
Speaker 1: double the amount imported by the Republic, without which Franco's
Speaker 1: army could not have maneuvered as rapidly as it did so. Yes,
Speaker 1: the victory of the fascists in Spain owes a great
Speaker 1: deal to our good friends Texico and Shell. My Texico
Speaker 1: and Shell. Should we back fascists or not fashion fascists?
Speaker 1: Of course we're Texico. Yeah yeah, Oh my god, they
Speaker 1: don't talk about that. No more. No, let me tell
Speaker 1: you the last two names. I thought you was going
Speaker 1: to say right now, yeah, Texico and Shell. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, wait what yeah? Yeah? Uh so.
Speaker 1: Not wanting to provoke Britain and France, with whom he
Speaker 1: was still seeking an anti fascist alliance, Stalin initially held back,
Speaker 1: but blatant Nazi and Fascist intervention increasingly alarmed him, ensuring
Speaker 1: that all European powers were made aware that Soviet aid
Speaker 1: to the Republic was not in support of advancing revolution.
Speaker 1: In October nineteen thirty six, the first Soviet shipment of
Speaker 1: arms and the first contingent of the International Brigades reached
Speaker 1: Madrid and the nick of time to help prevent the
Speaker 1: capital's fall. And all the Soviet unions since seven hundred
Speaker 1: war planes and four armored vehicles, plus some two thousand pilots, engineers,
Speaker 1: military advisers, and in kV the secret police. Now there's
Speaker 1: a lot. We're going to talk a lot about criticisms
Speaker 1: of Soviet aid and of Soviet policy and this, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of valid ones to give, but
Speaker 1: it's also worth noting that Soviet AID was absolutely crucial
Speaker 1: in stopping Madrid from falling when Franco made his first advance, right,
Speaker 1: the milicias slowed it down, but without this hardcore military
Speaker 1: equipment they probably don't stop Franco from taking Madrid in
Speaker 1: ninety six. You know, I was gonna say, like, uh
Speaker 1: that like tradition of like Communist Russia AID, I've been
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that a little bit, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm stretching this as far as this this idea that
Speaker 1: like the way that they exported AID in Communists like
Speaker 1: block countries, like you know, at the like there was
Speaker 1: once upon a time like North Korea was actually doing
Speaker 1: way better than South Korea, you know, because of this
Speaker 1: Communists AID. You know what I'm saying a number of
Speaker 1: other reasons to like the nature of the Japanese invasion,
Speaker 1: but yeah, absolutely, you know, and then when I think
Speaker 1: about like Cuba, and I got I got friends from
Speaker 1: like you know, South Africa, Western African countries, Zambia, all
Speaker 1: these things, and they're like yo, you could say whatever
Speaker 1: you want. They're like every every every nation in Africa
Speaker 1: got a Cuban doctor. You know what I'm saying. It
Speaker 1: just this idea that like it was like, it's just
Speaker 1: like when you the more I traveled, the more I
Speaker 1: started going day. Maybe they just think about aid and
Speaker 1: they this is Understaalin. It's very like, for one thing,
Speaker 1: the Cuban medical aid, which is incredible. The way that
Speaker 1: the Cuban government sends out doctors, what Cuban doctors do
Speaker 1: and have been doing for decades is absolutely amazing. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, it is done without any sort
Speaker 1: of hope of recompense. The Soviets are getting paid very well.
Speaker 1: So when when Republican Spain happens, when there's the split,
Speaker 1: the Republic winds up with Spain's gold stockpile, which is
Speaker 1: the largest gold reserves on planet Earth at the time,
Speaker 1: about eight hundred and five million dollars and that that
Speaker 1: time's currency. Um And while the fascists provided aid to
Speaker 1: Franco on credit, right, Italy and Germany are like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to pay now, We'll just give you stuff
Speaker 1: and you'll owe us. You'll pay us later, right, um.
Speaker 1: Stalin's like, you know I'm gonna need some cash up,
Speaker 1: do you I'm I'm Joseph Stalin. Like, I don't just
Speaker 1: give people ship, you know. Um, he does later in
Speaker 1: the war a bit he was him alone. But where
Speaker 1: he they they So about eight hundred five million dollars
Speaker 1: is what Spain's gold reserves the Republican Spain's gold reserves
Speaker 1: are at the start of the war. They pour more
Speaker 1: than five hundred million dollars in gold into the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union by the end of the war. Um and because
Speaker 1: a lot yeah, and also they have to they have
Speaker 1: to burn a bunch of money on like shady arms
Speaker 1: dealers and like it's a very bad like and a
Speaker 1: lot of the blame also goes to France, who makes
Speaker 1: it difficult to get shipped through the border, which is
Speaker 1: why they have to go with arms smugglers as opposed
Speaker 1: to just getting weapons directly imported. Um, it's very messy.
Speaker 1: The fascists also had the benefit of receiving much better guns. Um.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much you can blame the
Speaker 1: Soviets for this. The Germans had the best weaponry and
Speaker 1: the planet at this point in time. So the quality
Speaker 1: of arms that Franco receives blows everything Soviet out of
Speaker 1: the water. Now, a lot of the blame for the
Speaker 1: Republic's loss tends to go to Stalin and the USSR.
Speaker 1: But if we're really being and that, like when you
Speaker 1: read articles trying to like allay blame, a lot of
Speaker 1: people will put blame on Stalin in the USSR, and
Speaker 1: there are very legitimate things to criticize them about. But
Speaker 1: if we're truly being fair, the foreign nations most responsible
Speaker 1: for the victory of fascism in Spain where the United States,
Speaker 1: England and France um because the entire free world basically
Speaker 1: engaged in a policy of non intervention within the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War. This is part of the appeasement policy that
Speaker 1: the British were doing with the Germans at the time,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to get the Germans basically agreed
Speaker 1: to neutrality in the war, and Germany would put some
Speaker 1: lip services at this, but they didn't like. They sent
Speaker 1: soldiers and planes and arms, and both fascist states intervened directly,
Speaker 1: which meant that the Republic of Spain was standing on
Speaker 1: their own against the entire fascist international, fascist Spain, fascist Italy,
Speaker 1: fascist Germany. And they have some backup from the Soviets,
Speaker 1: and that's it, right, Everyone else is like, fuck you,
Speaker 1: the French closed the border. We're not jumping in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Democrats And this is again part of why this
Speaker 1: the communists their criticisms of decisions made by Communist advisors
Speaker 1: and Communist leaders in the Spanish Republican cause. The reason
Speaker 1: the Communists wind up in power largely in the Spanish
Speaker 1: Republican side is because the democracies are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: don't want any part in this ship. Right, could have
Speaker 1: been different if you know, damn right. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: can't blame the USSR here, you know, Yeah, that's good dude,
Speaker 1: because it's like, yeah, you get you see a homeboy
Speaker 1: getting like lept, you know what I'm saying, Like somebody
Speaker 1: just brought the night will just knocking the held me out,
Speaker 1: and then everybody jumping into help. And you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I thought we all agreed we weren't going to jump in,
Speaker 1: But like you, if your friends throwing a haymaker, it's
Speaker 1: not really his fault. He fucking tried. You're the one
Speaker 1: none of y'all was jumping in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the like the failure of the democratic world, so to speak,
Speaker 1: to get involved in any kind of organized way is
Speaker 1: one of the great tragedies and maybe one of the
Speaker 1: reasons World War two happens, right, maybe one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why no, no, no, this is a this is
Speaker 1: FDR FDR Yeah, because I watched the speech about this
Speaker 1: time of him explaining why he was like, we don't
Speaker 1: want no parts of this. I remember, I remember exactly,
Speaker 1: but I remember being really interested in the fact that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, awesome, Like look, we like some isolation
Speaker 1: and stuff on someone. Look, man, we've got our own
Speaker 1: problems here. Man, we look, we just we can't even
Speaker 1: feed ourselves. Like I'm not gonna like sind people. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should stay out of this one. Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: That is very much the attitude and the the fascists
Speaker 1: use Spain, particularly Germany. You Spain as a testing ground
Speaker 1: for new weapons and tactics, particularly their new air force,
Speaker 1: because the air and the concept of an air force
Speaker 1: is very new. There have been air forces in World
Speaker 1: War One, but they mostly just shot at each other
Speaker 1: and like spotted right for artillery and ship. Now you've
Speaker 1: got bombers right now, Now you have air tactical air
Speaker 1: support that can destroy armor and stuff. And the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil Wars the first time this really comes together in
Speaker 1: an organized way, and it provides the LEFTWAFFA, the Nazi
Speaker 1: Air Force with a way to test out its tactics
Speaker 1: and bombs on Spanish cities and civilians in many cases.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that a little bit later in
Speaker 1: the episode two. But first, you know who won't attack
Speaker 1: Spanish cities and civilians with Stuka dive bombers want so Sofie,
Speaker 1: we might, though she started messing with her products and Cyrus.
Speaker 1: I have been worried about Sophie's cash off Stuka dive bombers.
Speaker 1: I am consuner. I'm saying, why you have so many
Speaker 1: cut to check where my contract? That's Sophie, So she
Speaker 1: might If they don't, she might. They don't say money,
Speaker 1: she might bomb Spain. You know, I've always said that
Speaker 1: about Sophie. Spain's lucky they gave us pogosol or else
Speaker 1: things might be different beyond our way. Al Right, here's
Speaker 1: some products. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe
Speaker 1: de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by
Speaker 1: my friends and cast mates Hannah, Simone and Lamar and
Speaker 1: Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl. Join
Speaker 1: us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite
Speaker 1: New Girl episodes, revealed the truth behind the legendary game
Speaker 1: True American, and discuss how this show got made with
Speaker 1: the writer's, guest stars, and directors who made the show
Speaker 1: so special. Fans have been begging us to do a
Speaker 1: New Girl recap for years, and we finally meet a
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Speaker 1: Plus each week you'll hear hilarious stories like this at
Speaker 1: the end when he says, you got some schmid on
Speaker 1: your face. I feel like I pitched that joke. I
Speaker 1: believe that. I feel like I did. I'm not on
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Speaker 1: tossed that without Listen to the Welcome to Our Show
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Speaker 1: get to explore some of the weirdest questions in the universe,
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Speaker 1: your podcasts. All right, so we're back now. While the
Speaker 1: Republic lacked official international support, uh so again, the the
Speaker 1: governments of the democratic world like, uh, fun, you guys,
Speaker 1: like you're on your own, right. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: an awful lot of their citizens, and citizens from like
Speaker 1: Poland is a huge number of these guys, an awful
Speaker 1: lot of people from around the world. Individual people correctly
Speaker 1: see that, like, well, I don't live in Spain, but
Speaker 1: I don't like fascism, and I think that whatever happens
Speaker 1: in Spain will probably directly impact my future. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to go travel to Spain and try to get
Speaker 1: ahold of a rifle and shoot some fucking fascists. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people do this movie. There's a couple
Speaker 1: and there's being worked on right now that I hope
Speaker 1: will wind up being good. Yeah, there's this scene where
Speaker 1: big holl Me like uh, gives this big speech about
Speaker 1: why he's still willing to like from America go volunteer
Speaker 1: in this war. I forget the name of this movie.
Speaker 1: But it was like a resting seen about this time
Speaker 1: that like, Okay, the government saying we're not going to
Speaker 1: do it, but that don't stop me. I could fly
Speaker 1: out there, I hope. Yeah. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of these are the people who recognize what is a
Speaker 1: timeless truth, which is that, um, fascism and authoritarianism in
Speaker 1: in one part of the world is a threat to
Speaker 1: freedom everywhere in the world. And that's the way it's
Speaker 1: always been. And we can talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: fallout from what happened in Syria. Um, but you know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of stories of
Speaker 1: that in history, you know. Um So while the Republic lacked, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a funklet of people, eventually something close to forty
Speaker 1: people will wind up volunteering to fight in Spain. And
Speaker 1: two of the first foreigners to volunteer to fight in
Speaker 1: Spain where a twenty one year old classics graduate from
Speaker 1: Cambridge named Bernard Knox and his friend John Cornford. They
Speaker 1: took with them an old pistol that had belonged to
Speaker 1: John cornfora it's a weird name. Um. They took with
Speaker 1: them an old yes Cornford Sophie. They took with him.
Speaker 1: He dies fighting ashes. He's a good guy, but alright,
Speaker 1: they took with them an old pistol okay, Sophie. So
Speaker 1: they traveled to Spain together with just like nothing but
Speaker 1: an old handgun that had belonged to John's dad in
Speaker 1: the First World War. Knox had to carry a gun.
Speaker 1: The gun because his friend had already been to Spain
Speaker 1: once before. And the British policy of non intervention mean
Speaker 1: they did everything, meant that Britain like was trying to
Speaker 1: actively stop people from going to Spain to fight fascism. Um.
Speaker 1: But but Cornford and his buddy join a militia, like
Speaker 1: get to Spain, they joined a militia as soon as
Speaker 1: they land. Um, which is like at this point one
Speaker 1: of the many groups that had taken up arms to
Speaker 1: fight against the military coup. Um. And as I had
Speaker 1: said the early days of this war, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of women who are fighting in the militia's. This ends
Speaker 1: at like the end of nineteen thirty six when Largo
Speaker 1: Caballero comes to power because he kind of he argues
Speaker 1: that women are needed behind the lines, so they're not
Speaker 1: really fighting in the front. After this point, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty brief period. And that's again a criticism. One of
Speaker 1: the criticisms of the Spanish Republican government is like, well,
Speaker 1: I lost out on a lot of soldiers. Huh yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, people will in a suit. You told him
Speaker 1: stay home. In those early days of revolutionary ardor though,
Speaker 1: when Cornford and his friend arrive in Spain, uh, like,
Speaker 1: Spain is kind of like overtaken by this this feeling
Speaker 1: of revolution um and and this is swelled by the
Speaker 1: fact that the people of Republican Spain had literally taken
Speaker 1: to the streets to defend themselves in mass and it
Speaker 1: lent cities like Barcelona a revolutionary air that international volunteers noticed.
Speaker 1: One of those volunteers was a young George Orwell, and
Speaker 1: he described the atmosphere in Barcelona as startling and overwhelming
Speaker 1: and like a positive sense, just like so incredible, this
Speaker 1: like outpouring of of of liberty. Now, the Communist International
Speaker 1: or common tern quickly realized that volunteers like Cornford represented
Speaker 1: a massive opportunity, so they devoted some of their resources
Speaker 1: to organize in what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: International Brigades. So it's it's the Communist who put together
Speaker 1: the National Brigades, which are a huge factor in in
Speaker 1: both why the Republic last so long and why um
Speaker 1: it becomes so internationally famous. Although a lot of these
Speaker 1: volunteers are anarchists and not communists, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of different kinds and Trotsky like a bunch of
Speaker 1: different kinds of people volunteer. And I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: a rite up on the International Brigades and the Guardian.
Speaker 1: Another recruit, Winston Churchill's rebel nephew, Esmond Romilly, had cycled
Speaker 1: across France fueled by coffee and kognac before volunteering and
Speaker 1: declaring himself a member of that very large class of
Speaker 1: unskilled laborers with a public school accent. He sailed on
Speaker 1: a boat from Marseilles with watch duties split in two
Speaker 1: hour shifts between French, German Poles, Italians, Yugoslav's, Belgians, Flemish
Speaker 1: and Russian speakers. And it's yeah, it's very kind of dope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's we're gonna talk mostly is very depe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Winster Churchill's nephew is showing up. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: coffee and come out here with the homies, like on
Speaker 1: the streets right now. I look, I want to quote
Speaker 1: with school. How you get this accent? I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, okay, and it's um and and it's
Speaker 1: it's there's a couple of things going on there. Um.
Speaker 1: One of them is that like by public school that
Speaker 1: in England actually means like a fancy school. So he's like,
Speaker 1: I I have I have a public school accent. But
Speaker 1: I too am like whatever you call what I call
Speaker 1: it an unskilled laborer, like I identified Okay, that's that's
Speaker 1: actually it is because I don't have to do this, okay.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of like, you know, that common people
Speaker 1: thing where it's like I want to be, you know,
Speaker 1: like a labor is like, well, I want to be
Speaker 1: like a laborer. So I'm gonna go stand with a
Speaker 1: rifle next to them and fight the fascist, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna talk to you about
Speaker 1: you for doing that. Um And. It's also worth noting
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk mostly about American volunteers UM here. One
Speaker 1: of the largest nations that that a lot of people
Speaker 1: volunteer to fight in Spain from is Poland. UM And
Speaker 1: obviously Poland becomes the first one of the first large
Speaker 1: national victim at least of nazism um. So you and
Speaker 1: you can see why, right, like a lot of Poles
Speaker 1: looking at Germany on their doorstep, agitating about taking back
Speaker 1: land given to them by versaillae, or like we should
Speaker 1: probably go try to stop this, yea. So the invasion
Speaker 1: of Madrid was the first terrible battle of the Civil
Speaker 1: War the verse like really massive and important one, I think.
Speaker 1: And Franco's colonial army, including the Spanish foreign Legion, were
Speaker 1: airlifted from Morocco to Seville by German planes in order
Speaker 1: to fight there in an operation that Hitler himself named
Speaker 1: Operation Magic Fire, which is based on a part of
Speaker 1: a Wagner opera, Franco's Fast. So they and again the
Speaker 1: bulk of the nationalist troops don't get out of Africa
Speaker 1: to fight in Spain without Hitler's airlift. They did they
Speaker 1: had they would have had because the navy doesn't go fascist.
Speaker 1: The Spanish navy, such as it is, stays loyal um
Speaker 1: in large part because like there's actually a lot of
Speaker 1: Spanish naval officers who try to go against the Republic
Speaker 1: and then their crews killed them and stuff, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So the only reason that Franco's army gets to Iberi
Speaker 1: is because the Nazis airlift them. Um. Now, Franco's fascist
Speaker 1: towards tour through Republic territory on their way to Madrid.
Speaker 1: They were slowed by the militias um and eventually turned
Speaker 1: back by a significant amount of Soviet armored aid um.
Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of people sacrificed to stop them.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the credit for finally stopping the
Speaker 1: fascist advanced on Madrid goes to the International Brigades who
Speaker 1: turned back the fascists at a place called University City,
Speaker 1: which is like a college campus, in a heroic defense
Speaker 1: that has become like very like famous in history. Now,
Speaker 1: most of the International Brigade members at this point were untrained, inexperienced,
Speaker 1: and nearly all of them were poorly armed. They found
Speaker 1: themselves confronting a battle hardened army with cutting edge German weaponry,
Speaker 1: and somehow they held the line. Cornford Squad operated a
Speaker 1: machine gun nest in the philosophy faculty offices of the
Speaker 1: University City campus. They built barricades out of books in
Speaker 1: order to stop fascist bullets. The Guardian notes okay. Quote
Speaker 1: enemy bullets gave up before reaching page three fifty, making
Speaker 1: them believe old tales of soldiers saved by bibles in
Speaker 1: their breast pockets. I think I killed a fascist, Cornford,
Speaker 1: a former pacifist, wrote excitedly to his girlfriend Margot Hyneman
Speaker 1: on eighth December fifteen or sixteen of them were running
Speaker 1: from a bombardment. If it is true, it's a fluke,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, yeah yeah, building this entire like building barricades
Speaker 1: out of philosophy books to stop fascist bullets. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's yes, that is punk rock. He was like to
Speaker 1: that about page three as they can get yeah. Uh. Now.
Speaker 1: The achievement of the International Brigades at University City turned
Speaker 1: them into a symbol, both in Spain and worldwide of
Speaker 1: resistance to fascism. They also received more international attention because
Speaker 1: their numbers included men who spoke dozens of different languages.
Speaker 1: They were like fifty four nations represented eventually, and this
Speaker 1: made it really easy for the foreign press to to
Speaker 1: embed with people because they could find people that they
Speaker 1: could talk to, you know, like it like it's just
Speaker 1: speaking of somebody who's done war zone reporting. If there's
Speaker 1: a group of people like that that I can embed with.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna do because I'll meet other people
Speaker 1: who are English speakers and it's way easier to conduct
Speaker 1: interviews and stuff that. Um. And, of course, the United
Speaker 1: States was well represented among the international volunteers. Now, it
Speaker 1: was very illegal for U. S citizens to join a
Speaker 1: foreign military force at this time, but still hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds joined what came to be known as the Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln Battalion. These soldiers underwent two weeks of clandestine training
Speaker 1: near New York City before shipping out. New York, by
Speaker 1: the way, was the source of a huge number of
Speaker 1: Lincoln Battalion troops. It is worth noting that about one
Speaker 1: tenth of foreign Spanish volunteers were Jewish, so of all
Speaker 1: of the people who could like and again, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing as the polls. A lot of Jewish folks
Speaker 1: are like, looking at Nazi German are like, should probably
Speaker 1: go do something about this problem. There's gonna be a
Speaker 1: problem for us, I think, um. And in fact, American
Speaker 1: historian and international veteran Albert Prago called the International Brigades
Speaker 1: quote the vehicle through which Jews could offer the first
Speaker 1: armed resistance to European fascism, and that's pretty rad Now.
Speaker 1: One of the most notable aspects of the Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: Battalion is that, in an era in which racism was
Speaker 1: almost unbelievably present in American society, and there in which
Speaker 1: even the military was heavily segregated, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion
Speaker 1: was completely unsegregated. Black men could not only join, they
Speaker 1: could become officers and command white troops in battle, and
Speaker 1: this had never happened in Uss. This point that I
Speaker 1: am aware of. This brings me to the incredible story
Speaker 1: of l Lord Luteal McDaniels, and I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from a writ up in the Smithsonian Magazine here. L
Speaker 1: Lord Lute McDaniels traveled across the Atlantic in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven to fight fascists in the Spanish Civil War, where
Speaker 1: he became known as El Fantastico for his prowess with
Speaker 1: a grenade. As a platoon sergeant with the McKenzie Papinau
Speaker 1: Battalion of the International Gads, the twenty five year old
Speaker 1: African American from Mississippi commanded white troops and led them
Speaker 1: into battle against the forces of General Franco, men who
Speaker 1: saw him as less than human. It might seem strange
Speaker 1: for a black man to go to such links to
Speaker 1: fight in a white man's war so far from home.
Speaker 1: Wasn't there enough racism to fight in the United States?
Speaker 1: But McDaniels was convinced that anti fascism and anti racism
Speaker 1: were one and the same. I saw the invaders of
Speaker 1: Spain were the same people I've been fighting all my life,
Speaker 1: McDaniels says. I've seen lynching and starvation, and I know
Speaker 1: my people's enemies. Let's go first of all, Man's last
Speaker 1: name is McDaniels, which already tells you someone Yep, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, So we know his family story.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. And yeah, that just and
Speaker 1: the Fanessa just just the culture that you get there
Speaker 1: and get a nickname immediately, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like l fantastical because she's really good at killing fascist.
Speaker 1: I'm good at this ship. Dann. I was crazy. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say that that. Yeah, that like a stut,
Speaker 1: like you know, like the observation of just like where
Speaker 1: we're just like, look, man, you gotta trust us. Like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to tell you this is the same same ease,
Speaker 1: like this is the same people to the people. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to tell you the same problem. Yeah. Now. The
Speaker 1: United States in this period also banned black men from
Speaker 1: serving as fighter pilots, but three black pilots, James Peck,
Speaker 1: Patrick Roosevelt, and Paul Williams, served in Spain. Canute Wilson,
Speaker 1: a black American volunteer, was the head mechanic for the
Speaker 1: International Garage, which maintained all of the Brigades fighting vehicles.
Speaker 1: He wrote this of his reasons for volunteering to fight
Speaker 1: in Spain, and a letter home to his family. We
Speaker 1: are no longer an isolated minority group fighting hopelessly against
Speaker 1: an immense giant, because, my dear, we have joined with
Speaker 1: and become an active part of a great progressive force
Speaker 1: on whose soldiers rests the responsibility of saving human civilization
Speaker 1: from the planned destruction of a small group of degenerates
Speaker 1: gotten mad in their lust for power. Because if we
Speaker 1: crush fascism here, we'll save our people in America and
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world from the vicious persecution,
Speaker 1: wholesale imprisonment, and slaughter which the Jewish people suffered and
Speaker 1: our suffering under Hitler's fascist heels, that is, that is sentenced.
Speaker 1: That is I think it's like this, like this, this
Speaker 1: part of this like longing and I'm gonna speak in
Speaker 1: like generalities, but just this longing in that like that
Speaker 1: African American like the black community, I think that's gone.
Speaker 1: That goes very far back to say, surely not all
Speaker 1: white people are like this. Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like you have you're like this, It can't be. It
Speaker 1: can't be all of y'all, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So like when you when you find it like I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm marketing back to history, but when you like
Speaker 1: like when you see when you see, uh, during like
Speaker 1: the Harlem Renaissance, you see black people going to going
Speaker 1: to France and being like, look, there's reasonable white people.
Speaker 1: Like I'm telling you there they have to exist, you know,
Speaker 1: there has it has to exist, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So like it's it's almost like I hear that in
Speaker 1: this guy's statement, like dude, I found them reasonable white people. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and in speaking about you know the fact that L
Speaker 1: word's last name is McDaniels, right, that probably means that
Speaker 1: like an Irish person owned his ancestors, not all that
Speaker 1: far back. We're talking about like like like like not
Speaker 1: all that long ago, like his grandpa. Yeah. Now, because
Speaker 1: of the realities of the war, babe, when it were
Speaker 1: there were a funkload of Irish volunteers and Irish American volunteers,
Speaker 1: which means it's conceivable, like part of what probably happened
Speaker 1: here is he was leading irishman Irish descendedment into battles
Speaker 1: man who had been enslaved by an Irish descendent, leading
Speaker 1: them into into combat, which is amazing. Ship happens, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh Now during its brief and and yeah, it's it's amazing.
Speaker 1: In some ways, during its brief period of existence, wartime
Speaker 1: Republican Spain was in some ways almost impossibly progressive. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, Largo Caballero appointed Federica mont Senni, a
Speaker 1: female anarchist, to be the nation's Minister of Health. Federica
Speaker 1: immediately set to work focusing the embattled nation's health infrastructure
Speaker 1: to serve the needs of the poor and the working class.
Speaker 1: She believed that health care should be decentralized, locally organized
Speaker 1: and based around prevention rather than treatment. She was also
Speaker 1: responsible for making Republican Spain the first nation on Earth
Speaker 1: to legalize on demand abortion. Wow yeah, now yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really interesting ship. Yeah now months City
Speaker 1: was a controversial figure among anarchists, and she engaged in
Speaker 1: some pretty officious arguments with Emma Goldman, who is another
Speaker 1: very famous anarchist. In particular, and the general focus of
Speaker 1: criticism on Montseny and other anarchists who take part in
Speaker 1: the Republican government, um is on the subject of whether
Speaker 1: or not it was ethical for anarchists to coordinate with
Speaker 1: governments and with Marxists, because obviously in the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: they kill a funkload of anarchists too, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a recurring theme in anarchist history and it's
Speaker 1: something that's very hotly debated to this day. I could
Speaker 1: note here that Nestor mak know who we talked about
Speaker 1: in our Christmas episode, also had to thread this moral
Speaker 1: needle because he collaborated with the post revolutionary government of Russia,
Speaker 1: which he didn't like, to fight against the white forces
Speaker 1: which were worse. You know, it's a it's a debate
Speaker 1: that anarchists have had a number of times in history,
Speaker 1: and is never really settled to a satisfactory degree. But
Speaker 1: it happens now. A decent number of the anarchists who
Speaker 1: fought for Republican Spain would in fact come to regret
Speaker 1: their collaboration with the government and the communists, and they
Speaker 1: had some good reasons to do that. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Republican Spain has lost the war. For another thing, the
Speaker 1: broad left unity that characterized some of the early stages
Speaker 1: of the war did not last. The government of Republican Spain,
Speaker 1: which did at one point include four anarchists ministers, as
Speaker 1: well as a number of communists and of course many
Speaker 1: more moderate Republicans, made a lot of tremendous errors. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the government fled Madrid while Franco was advancing,
Speaker 1: something which hampered their ability to capitalize on the moral
Speaker 1: victory of halting the fascists. Right, you can't brag about
Speaker 1: it as much because you ran away. You know you
Speaker 1: ran though. Yeah. For another reason, starting in late nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, the Republic's new government embarked on what they
Speaker 1: called militarization. This involved involved integrating the hundreds of different
Speaker 1: militias into the formal Spanish military. On the surface, this
Speaker 1: was a sensible call and it may have been the
Speaker 1: right one, and it was one that was heavily backed
Speaker 1: by communist advisors the USSR had sent in. Many historians
Speaker 1: will argue that it was necessary um and and some
Speaker 1: of the evidence for this is that, like in February
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty seven, Malaga fell due in part to
Speaker 1: the fact that it was defended by a patchwork of
Speaker 1: militias that were not well coordinated. UM. But these militias
Speaker 1: that are being inducted into the formal military establishment, a
Speaker 1: lot of them had been again anarchist and Trotskyist, and
Speaker 1: they'd been free democratic fighting units. This led to problems
Speaker 1: and there were cases where you know, like whole battalions
Speaker 1: would vote to leave combat zones while the fighting was happening.
Speaker 1: This happened in the Battle of Madrid with when a
Speaker 1: guy named Drudy gets killed with like his guys leave. Um.
Speaker 1: But it also meant so it's not like obviously before militarization,
Speaker 1: they decided to militarize because there's a lot of problems
Speaker 1: with the fact that all these militias are so decentralized.
Speaker 1: These militias are also very motivated and very resistant to
Speaker 1: the idea of losing their democratic rights and bring brought
Speaker 1: under military discipline. UM. So, while a lot of militias
Speaker 1: were integrated to the Republican military, a significant number of
Speaker 1: fighters refused to join UM And whether or not this
Speaker 1: was a good idea is still hotly debated. And George,
Speaker 1: a lot of people will argue that because there's kind
Speaker 1: of a broad consensus, I would say among a lot
Speaker 1: of historians, I read that after the initial period where
Speaker 1: they were necessary, the militia's kind of hindered things more
Speaker 1: than they helped because of how disorganized they were. George
Speaker 1: Orwell himself argued against that um and argued in his
Speaker 1: pay at least, and he was, you know, his opinion
Speaker 1: was as a ground level soldier that the shortcomings of
Speaker 1: the militias system had less to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that they were democratic and be centralized, and more to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that they were inexperienced. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote Orwell here it's a good argument. Later it
Speaker 1: became the fashion to decry the militias and therefore to
Speaker 1: pretend that the faults, which were due to lack of
Speaker 1: training and weapons, were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually,
Speaker 1: a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob,
Speaker 1: not because the officers called the private comrade, but because
Speaker 1: raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. And a worker's
Speaker 1: army discipline is theoretically based on class loyalty, while the
Speaker 1: discipline of a bourgeoisie conscript army is based ultimately on fear.
Speaker 1: The popular army that replaced the militias was midway between
Speaker 1: the two types. When a man refused to obey an order,
Speaker 1: you did not immediately get him punished. You first appealed
Speaker 1: to him in the name of comradeship. Cynical people with
Speaker 1: no experience handling men, will say instantly that this would
Speaker 1: never work, but as a matter of fact, it does
Speaker 1: work in the long run. Revolutionary discipline depends on an
Speaker 1: under standing of why orders must be obeyed. It takes
Speaker 1: time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to
Speaker 1: drill a man into an automaton on the barracks square.
Speaker 1: And it is a tribute to the strength of the
Speaker 1: revolutionary discipline that the militias state in the field at all.
Speaker 1: And or Well has a good point here. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a whole there's a whole like worldview, philosophy in
Speaker 1: those two approaches. I'm about to compare this to parenting,
Speaker 1: but yeah, because like there's parts of me that go, Man,
Speaker 1: if I just parented the way I was parented, I
Speaker 1: see why my parents is quicker. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you're just it's like it's less
Speaker 1: emotional work to just be like, hey, it's time to
Speaker 1: do the dishes. Why what why you never say what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Dude, you got five seconds to get up
Speaker 1: and do the dishes, you know what I'm saying. Right, So,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, y'all, don't care if you scrunch up
Speaker 1: your face how you want to scrunch up your face.
Speaker 1: You better hide your emotions. I don't need to see it,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like that you live here,
Speaker 1: you you washing dishes? I bought you know, I'm using
Speaker 1: using water. I'm paying for him. So I'm black dadding
Speaker 1: on you. But like that's the way we was raised,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So Like, but it's just
Speaker 1: like but I know, the whole time I'm doing this,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, man, I can't wait to get out
Speaker 1: of this house. Man always. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm just salty. I'm gonna do it, and I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say nothing to it. Yes, sir, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. But like I don't like you, I don't
Speaker 1: respect this ship. You know what what I'm saying. I'm
Speaker 1: not doing this because I understand that the dishes are dirty.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this because I don't wanna hear your mouth.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. You don't want the I
Speaker 1: don't want the consequences with my child. Now it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: the we have we have budgeted the amount of money
Speaker 1: we have for our water bill, which means that we
Speaker 1: can run our our dishwasher this many times we need
Speaker 1: it by We needs to happen by two because when
Speaker 1: we start cooking dinner, since we in this quarantine, we
Speaker 1: need to have clean dishes to do this or it's
Speaker 1: gonna pile up. And now it's gonna be two runs
Speaker 1: instead of one. So like, you make sure you finish
Speaker 1: this by two so we can have plates to eat
Speaker 1: off when it's time for dinner. She goes, all right,
Speaker 1: and it's like and so now it's like I've included
Speaker 1: you into this, so you have a steak into Like
Speaker 1: it's not me being a bully, it's just I mean
Speaker 1: it's functional, like we need we need place to eat
Speaker 1: off and the dishes are your chore, so just so
Speaker 1: do it. So just do it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And it and when she tell me she don't feel
Speaker 1: like it, like now I'm not appealing to like while
Speaker 1: i'm your father, you do it because I tell you to,
Speaker 1: I'm appealing to like, yeah, I don't feel like doing
Speaker 1: it either, but I also want something to eat off
Speaker 1: on dinner, you know what I'm saying it. So she's
Speaker 1: like all right, yeah, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: and I think, yeah, you can make an argument that like,
Speaker 1: you know, you get the dishes done faster if you're
Speaker 1: just the If you don't do the dishes, there's fucking consequences.
Speaker 1: Then if you explain why it's necessary, but it's a
Speaker 1: long term results are probably better. The long term is
Speaker 1: probably better. So now it's like now she actually, you know,
Speaker 1: if some drama going on or her little friends, she's
Speaker 1: actually willing to talk to me rather like this is
Speaker 1: I Thinkian ruler that tells me what to do all
Speaker 1: the time. You know. The Will's argument is that, like
Speaker 1: the long term would have been better if they had
Speaker 1: stuck with a malicious system, maybe with some reforms and
Speaker 1: stuff now and again, a lot of why a lot
Speaker 1: of historians will kind of just assume like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was bad, like that the malicious system like needed to
Speaker 1: be reformed, It needed to be militarized. It was the
Speaker 1: only way to do things. It's what the communists felt,
Speaker 1: It's what most of like the cinterests and stuff felt.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's very strong arguments to be made
Speaker 1: that that's that that's true, just based on military history.
Speaker 1: There's also strong arguments to be made that like, well,
Speaker 1: you guys were just like that's what all of you assumed,
Speaker 1: because all of you are the kind of people who
Speaker 1: are in favor of some form of centralized state and
Speaker 1: in favor of us why of a centralized military, and
Speaker 1: that you're listening to like standard military people's attitudes, which
Speaker 1: aren't always right, and maybe this could have worked and
Speaker 1: other things. Systems like it have worked in other militaries
Speaker 1: for different periods of time. I get interesting results when
Speaker 1: I bring up the idea of a democratically of of
Speaker 1: a military that votes democratically on its officers. Um when
Speaker 1: I talk, because that's what how these militias worked. And
Speaker 1: I've talked to some friends of mine who are veterans,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting some of some people say, like, I
Speaker 1: don't see how that could work. I've had a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine who is a veteran say, oh, you
Speaker 1: know what, that makes sense because when you've been in
Speaker 1: combat with a group of people, you know who you
Speaker 1: trust to give orders, like, right, you know who you Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I know you got the ranks. Mom listening
Speaker 1: to him, because this boy kept me alive. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So sure, yes, sir, I'm not gonna I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: going to say I know more about this than a
Speaker 1: number of historians who will say that militarization was really
Speaker 1: the only option they had. I'm just saying there's argument
Speaker 1: about that, and it's something you should read about. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to make a harsh stance on it, because,
Speaker 1: like I thought, an expert on war, or an expert
Speaker 1: on the Spanish Civil War, there's there's there, there's something
Speaker 1: that we said. At least they like to make sure
Speaker 1: that your militia knows what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely, that
Speaker 1: needs to happen. At least some level of cohesiveness of
Speaker 1: communications seems like it has to be necessary. There's some
Speaker 1: degree you at least need, like a centralized communication network
Speaker 1: to make sure people know. But I think anyway, one
Speaker 1: of the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War is that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cool what ifs that because there's
Speaker 1: this horrible war happening, nobody gets the time to really
Speaker 1: figure out, Right, maybe this could have worked if they
Speaker 1: hadn't been at the edge of extermination. Yeah, we weren't
Speaker 1: facing a minute. Yeah. Now, the unrest between anarchists and
Speaker 1: Trotskyists and communists within Republican Spain eventually led to bloodshed
Speaker 1: in the streets of Barcelona as anarchist and Trotskyist militants
Speaker 1: fought in the streets against communists and socialists. This right
Speaker 1: up from the New Left Review, does I think a
Speaker 1: fair job of explaining how this all got underway. Quote,
Speaker 1: under the revolutionary ferment, a struggle for power and control
Speaker 1: of scarce arms was being waged. That was the real
Speaker 1: meaning of the Barcelona fighting. The Communist Party's increasing influence
Speaker 1: in the army and political life and the growth of
Speaker 1: its membership do mainly to Soviet aid direct government interventions
Speaker 1: stop finally stopped the fighting in the streets and shortly
Speaker 1: thereafter ended the revolutions. Consolidation that has ended the the
Speaker 1: anarchist and sort of trotsky Is the far left like
Speaker 1: consolid like gaining of power, taking of businesses, all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. The immediate beneficiary of the crisis was
Speaker 1: Jan Nigrin, a forty five year old socialist physiologist, polyglot
Speaker 1: and acknowledged expert in financial affairs. As Treasury Minister, he
Speaker 1: organized the dispatch of gold to Moscow, whom President Azana
Speaker 1: appointed Prime Minister. To put an end to the indiscipline
Speaker 1: and disarray in the rear Guard, especially in Catalonia and Arragon,
Speaker 1: the government took over pub order in Catalonia, dissolved the
Speaker 1: anarchist dominated a Council of Aragon and sent Enrique Lister's
Speaker 1: Communist Army Division to break up the rural Aragonese collectives
Speaker 1: more easily expedited the p O U WIM trotsky Is,
Speaker 1: which is the trotsky Ist militia, which they called trotsky
Speaker 1: Is provocateurs and fascist spies. Clamored. The Spanish Communist Party
Speaker 1: was outlawed, its army division disbanded, and its leader Andrew Ninn,
Speaker 1: one of Trotsky's former secretaries, was disappeared, in fact, kidnapped
Speaker 1: and murdered by the n k v D. The affair
Speaker 1: further deepened the distrust between Communists and the rest of
Speaker 1: the political organizations, especially the anarchists and left socialists, and
Speaker 1: it made clear to the republic serious ongoing problems of
Speaker 1: internal political discord, which were a considerable stumbling block to
Speaker 1: winning the war. On the other side of the lines,
Speaker 1: there was no such problem. Franco By, now head of
Speaker 1: the so called nationalist side, crushed dissent in the bud
Speaker 1: forcibly uniting the Phalangen Carlists, the only permitted civilian political
Speaker 1: organizations now. And there's a lot of debate about what
Speaker 1: happens in Barcelona orwell was there for most of this part.
Speaker 1: He was. He took part in the fighting in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: and he was with the p o u M. He's
Speaker 1: with this Trotskyist militia, and his recollections of the purging
Speaker 1: of the po U M are available for free in
Speaker 1: his book Homage to Catalonia. He reserves tremendous criticisms for
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, in large part because they murdered some
Speaker 1: of his friends. There are of course, very good critiques
Speaker 1: of Orwell's narrow perspective in this, because he's on the ground,
Speaker 1: and long after the war he would admit himself that
Speaker 1: he was somewhat myopic and unfair to the Republican government
Speaker 1: and the communists In this. Critics will point out that
Speaker 1: the c and T and the p O U WIM
Speaker 1: undermined coordination and unity in the Republic, and that the
Speaker 1: violent certain anarchists carried out against the clergy in particular,
Speaker 1: helped dissuade foreign governments from wanting to help. So this
Speaker 1: is again a complicated issue, but the fact that the
Speaker 1: left is literally in fighting here is a big part
Speaker 1: of what undermines their ability to fight the fascists. Although
Speaker 1: historians are very split as to how much of a
Speaker 1: factor the behavior of the Spanish Communists or which were
Speaker 1: directed by Moscow played in the Republic can defeat um.
Speaker 1: Julian Casanova directly credits the Republic's defeat mostly to the
Speaker 1: international situation, So he says, you can talk about what
Speaker 1: the communists did wrong with the anarchist did wrong. The
Speaker 1: reason Republican Spain lost is because nobody helped them out
Speaker 1: except for the communists a bit, whereas the fascists had
Speaker 1: to modern states throwing huge amounts of aid in military forces.
Speaker 1: It right, That's why they lost. It's like you can
Speaker 1: debate who made mistakes. Everybody made mistakes. They lost because nobody,
Speaker 1: like almost only the communists helped them in. You know,
Speaker 1: you just out in the fascists had a lot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fascists had a lot more help, you know. Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: while I think it's fair to criticize the nature of
Speaker 1: the help the USSR sent, both in its reduced quantity
Speaker 1: relative to the fascists and the fact that it made
Speaker 1: the republic pay up front, you have to be fair
Speaker 1: here and note that the Russian Civil War had not
Speaker 1: been over for all that long when the Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War started, and like nine million people had died in
Speaker 1: that country. After nine million had died in World War One,
Speaker 1: and it was fucking devastated, Italy and Germany were in
Speaker 1: comparatively better shape and able to provide more aid. Now.
Speaker 1: British military historian Anthony Beaver, however, does blame the Republic's
Speaker 1: high command, which was Communist dominated and Soviet military advisors,
Speaker 1: for their quote disastrous conduct of the war, and he
Speaker 1: has some very fair critiques here. Um He criticizes them
Speaker 1: for engaging in multiple disastrous conventional offensives, which where this
Speaker 1: happened a few times, where they get a huge number
Speaker 1: of soldiers together, most of which were not super well trained,
Speaker 1: and send them on these massive offensives that would they
Speaker 1: would get mowed down. And the purpose of this was
Speaker 1: for propaganda to be able to show, look, we're advancing
Speaker 1: against the fascists, and of course the fascists are better
Speaker 1: armed in train and would just dig in and massacre
Speaker 1: these people. Um And and Anthony Beaver will argue that
Speaker 1: these this series of horrible, horrible decisions taken for mainly
Speaker 1: propaganda quote gradually destroyed the Republic's army and resistance. Now,
Speaker 1: no matter what kind of leftist or liberal or whatever
Speaker 1: you happen to be, there are aspects of your ideology
Speaker 1: that should be challenged by observing the way the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War win. Speaking as an anarchist, it is impossible
Speaker 1: to ignore the fact that the fascists had the great
Speaker 1: advantage of centralized control and particularly food distribution. Meanwhile, Republican
Speaker 1: territories had more than independent food collectives. Workers in many
Speaker 1: of these collectives were hostile to the government because they
Speaker 1: were anarchists, and in some areas money had been entirely abolished,
Speaker 1: and since money did exist in the rest of the Republic,
Speaker 1: that made cooperation difficult. Food shortages were common in the Republic,
Speaker 1: and this also contributed to their defeat. UM. And again
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing where like this system of
Speaker 1: local sort of food exchanges might have worked, if they
Speaker 1: might have figured out how to make it work had
Speaker 1: there not been a war on. But it's hard. It
Speaker 1: is hard to beta test an entire system of social
Speaker 1: organization while fighting a war of extermination. Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get hungry people to fight for you,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, if we hungry, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: oh no, who got the food? And it's it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that of all the people fighting, you know, about
Speaker 1: half of the prisoners of war the fascists took wound
Speaker 1: up fighting for the fascists. They were organized into into
Speaker 1: fighting units um and a significant number of the captured
Speaker 1: fascists wound up fighting in units for the republics. Like
Speaker 1: that happened on both sides. A lot of these guys
Speaker 1: are just dudes, you know. Um, they're not all like
Speaker 1: the Internet. The International volunteers tend to be very ideological.
Speaker 1: That's not all the case with a lot of soldiers.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen thirty seven, Franco's forces had recovered from
Speaker 1: their defeat outside of Madrid, and they launched an invasion
Speaker 1: of the northern Basque territories of the Republic. The success
Speaker 1: of this offensive is largely credited to the Condor Legion,
Speaker 1: a German led air force that spent the Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War experimenting with new textniques. The Loofwava would it later use.
Speaker 1: This experimentation started in earnest with the bombing of Madrid
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six, which killed and wounded a lot
Speaker 1: of civilians, like hundreds of people killed and wounded, but
Speaker 1: did nothing but harden Republican resistance. And the Germans realized this,
Speaker 1: Like the guys in charge of the Condor Legion of like,
Speaker 1: just bombing a bunch of civilian targets seems to piss
Speaker 1: them off and make them want a fight harder. Perhaps
Speaker 1: that's not the best tactic. Um. Now, several cities were
Speaker 1: bombarded by the Condor Legion during the advance in Tabasque territory,
Speaker 1: leading to a lot of civilian casualties, but none of
Speaker 1: these bombings were more famous than the city of Guernica
Speaker 1: and their significant debate over Guernica. As well, historians will
Speaker 1: note that the command or of the Condor Legion was
Speaker 1: more or less abiding by the rules of war um,
Speaker 1: striking at bridges and roads and cities, like aiming primarily
Speaker 1: for targets of military value. Um. There were civilian casualties
Speaker 1: because precision bombing is a myth, but the goal was
Speaker 1: not what's called terror bombing, which they kind of rejected
Speaker 1: after Madrid, and like this guy goes to trial in
Speaker 1: Nuremberg and that is kind of the conclusion of the
Speaker 1: Allied militaries, Like his bombing of Guernica was part of
Speaker 1: a military action. Like you to repeat the line that
Speaker 1: you said, precision bombing is a myth. Precision bombing is
Speaker 1: absolutely a myth. As someone who who watched it as
Speaker 1: now it was even more of avent. Yes, I have
Speaker 1: a friend who lives in Iraq and he's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing. No, No, you're just blowing up neighborhoods, guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Um, Now how much of a difference it
Speaker 1: makes that their goal was not terror bombing? You know
Speaker 1: what they did. They killed a funkload of civilians and
Speaker 1: leveled a lot of Guernica. And it's it's horrible, horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible thing. I'm not trying to justify it, um, But
Speaker 1: what's happened in what actually happened and what is kind
Speaker 1: of like remembered about Guernaka are sometimes two different things.
Speaker 1: Because the bombing of Guernica, for whatever reason, horrifies the
Speaker 1: entire world. It becomes and there's what I say, forout
Speaker 1: ever reason, because there are other cities that are bombed
Speaker 1: in a similar manner that don't get as famous in
Speaker 1: this period of time. Um, it's not the first time
Speaker 1: that the civilian population is bombed as a part of
Speaker 1: a war, but it becomes the most famous. The Republicans
Speaker 1: made a lot out of it and used it for
Speaker 1: propaganda purposes. They would claim that six people had died,
Speaker 1: a figure that's likely impossible because they calculated. Basically, when
Speaker 1: you're looking at like civilian casualties, there are calculate aations.
Speaker 1: You can do to estimate them by estimating the number
Speaker 1: of people killed per tonnage of bombs dropped. And if
Speaker 1: six people died in Guernica, it would meant that it
Speaker 1: would have meant that the Condor Legion were killing more
Speaker 1: civilians than the US did during its bombings of like Dresden,
Speaker 1: like like per per tonnage, you know, which is not possible,
Speaker 1: really credible. Deaf counts range from as low as a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty to the to the low hundreds, which
Speaker 1: is terrible, Like that's hundreds of civilians killed by bombs
Speaker 1: from the sky. It's it's horrible. I'm not saying it's not.
Speaker 1: But again, it's also seeing the Republicans see this as
Speaker 1: a way to like, oh, this is something we can
Speaker 1: use to get international support, which we desperately need. Um
Speaker 1: And while Republican forces used Guernica to try to generate
Speaker 1: international sympathy, the fascists used it as a cudgel. When
Speaker 1: Hitler met with the Premiere of Austria prior to the Angelus,
Speaker 1: which is when they occupy Austria, he brings the commander
Speaker 1: of the Condor Legion with him as a not so
Speaker 1: subtle threat to Vienna because the the the image internationally
Speaker 1: is that Guerna has been wiped out by the Condor Legions.
Speaker 1: So Hitler once this guy is sitting next to him,
Speaker 1: so that when he meets with the premiere of Austria,
Speaker 1: this guy's like, they're gonna level Vienna if I don't,
Speaker 1: if I don't agree to whatever Hitler wants, you know.
Speaker 1: So Hitler makes a lot of use out of the
Speaker 1: terrible reputation that the Condor Legion gets, regardless of how
Speaker 1: much that reputation may be earned. Um now, the battle
Speaker 1: and I mainly quibble on how terrible the Condor Legion
Speaker 1: was because by any objective measure, the United States Air
Speaker 1: Force was a lot worse in World War Two in
Speaker 1: terms of it's its willingness to kill civilians, not in
Speaker 1: terms of its goals obviously, but to blast. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: the yeah. I I I still can't because I mean
Speaker 1: I've never lived in like an actual active war zone,
Speaker 1: you know. But obviously more more humans alive now have
Speaker 1: lived in active war zones than not hand So, like,
Speaker 1: I know that I'm in the minority for that, and
Speaker 1: it's a very privileged position, but I still can picture
Speaker 1: or having a hard time wrapping my mind around the
Speaker 1: idea that like death is coming from the sky. It's fun.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like that's yeah, that's it changes, you, I
Speaker 1: mean it changes. And just to have that experience for
Speaker 1: a few days. Um, it's something else, man, just like
Speaker 1: seeing breathing in the dust that includes pulverized concrete and
Speaker 1: incinerated bodies. Um. An air strike is yeah, unreal that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a laser from space, like you can't. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like it's the hammer of God, you know. Yeah, it's terrible, Yeah, terrifying. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the battle over Guernica was very consequential. The city's fall
Speaker 1: helped enable Franco's forces to cut Republican held territory in two,
Speaker 1: so to separate the two chunks of Republican territory, the
Speaker 1: north from the south. Um. Now, around the same time,
Speaker 1: the French, like Germany, occupies Austria and the French start
Speaker 1: getting really scared of the Nazis um and so they
Speaker 1: reopen their border. And this allows thousands of tons of
Speaker 1: war material to flow into the Republic freely for the
Speaker 1: first time, and the Republic is able to like gin
Speaker 1: up a new Republican army made up in part of
Speaker 1: prisoners of war and conscripts as young as sixteen UM.
Speaker 1: And this what's known as the Army of the Ebro,
Speaker 1: launches what would come to be known as the last
Speaker 1: great Republican assault of the war. And like there are
Speaker 1: other great assaults, it was a fucking disaster. Thirty thousand
Speaker 1: Republican fighters died to just sixty Fascist casualties. UM. Just
Speaker 1: an absolute nightmare. Now, the war officially ended in April
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty nine with the unconditional surrender of the
Speaker 1: Republicans to the fascist Francisco Franco. In the areas the
Speaker 1: Fascist retook they were as brutal as you might expect.
Speaker 1: The most egregious example of this happened in August of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six and bat Ayas, which we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: That's where the anarchists and socialists take a huge amount
Speaker 1: of land and give it to the people. Well, the
Speaker 1: fascists take back bat of Yaws and they just they
Speaker 1: massacre everyone then get their fucking hands on. More than
Speaker 1: four thousand people, mostly civilians and prisoners, gunned down, including
Speaker 1: hundreds of people who are dragged into the bowl, ring
Speaker 1: to the stadium where they hold bullfights and surrounded by
Speaker 1: machine guns and just massacred in a circle by the
Speaker 1: foreign legion. Um. Now, brutality knows no allegiance in war.
Speaker 1: Somewhere around fifty thousand civilians were killed in the Republican
Speaker 1: zone over the course of the war, and acts of
Speaker 1: brutality that many in the Republican government deplored. Federica Montseny
Speaker 1: described the slaughter as a lust for blood, inconceivable and
Speaker 1: honest man before But republic war crimes bore little resemblance
Speaker 1: to the crimes of the fascists, who in the same
Speaker 1: period of time murdered more than a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: thousand civilians. And those deaths, of course occurred during the war.
Speaker 1: During his decades in power, Franco's forced labor, concentration camps,
Speaker 1: torture and execution of political enemies led to another thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty thousand deaths, and as we know, that would
Speaker 1: make Franco one of the less deadly fascist dictators in history.
Speaker 1: Got um, But yeah, you can compare with the number
Speaker 1: of people kill. Yeah, what is it about? Just what's
Speaker 1: the point of being in charge? If you kill everybody
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be in charge of, because you're killing
Speaker 1: all the people you don't like that you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be in charge of. That's easier than arguing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well touche. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, they're killing.
Speaker 1: There's like, we just killed people disagree with us. We
Speaker 1: just kill we disgree with us. Yeah yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: my bad. I understand your logic. Now. Yeah, obviously the
Speaker 1: Republicans lost their war, UM, but many of the more
Speaker 1: than thirty five thousand men who joined the International Brigades,
Speaker 1: and something like ten thousand of them died in the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War. UM. Many of those guys would continue
Speaker 1: fighting fascism in World War Two. Some of them fought
Speaker 1: in the French Resistance, some of them fought in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army after being by the way, when US veterans like
Speaker 1: l Ward come home, they get like spied on by
Speaker 1: the FBI because they're suspected of being communists sympathy and
Speaker 1: stuff like, and some of those people. Some of that
Speaker 1: stops when the war starts. People like, ah, maybe you
Speaker 1: had a point. It doesn't all stop, but a number
Speaker 1: of these guys continue fighting UM and while they failed
Speaker 1: in their ultimate goals. The battle cry of the Spanish
Speaker 1: anti fascists, they shall not pass or no passeran still
Speaker 1: rings loudly and anti fascist rallies today, and that's you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fight isn't over. They didn't win in Spain. They
Speaker 1: didn't succeed in in turning back fascism and bringing in
Speaker 1: a new golden age for humanity there. But it didn't
Speaker 1: end in the fight didn't end in Spain either, you know,
Speaker 1: and it it continues to this day, Yes it does.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Yeah, let's let's let that one breathe for
Speaker 1: a second. Yeah, okay, everybody take a deep breath, yeah,
Speaker 1: breath anyway. Man, So at some point we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about when Spain stops being fascist. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do episodes on Franco at some point that will that
Speaker 1: will get into that history. Um. But this is more
Speaker 1: specifical about vomiting on the King's limits. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: This is about fascism. You know, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about how the fascist gained power in Spain. This is
Speaker 1: and it's like it's such a like because of like
Speaker 1: you said, because of the enormity of other fascist reasimes.
Speaker 1: This guy gets so overlooked, but it's so such a
Speaker 1: pivotal moment in just even just the meta narrative. But
Speaker 1: what we understand is like western modern, Western civilization, like
Speaker 1: you have to have this moment, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: not talking about it, it's like you the storyline. I
Speaker 1: feel like the storyline doesn't make sense if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get from World War One to World War Two,
Speaker 1: and why all the players are on the play are
Speaker 1: on the board game the way that they are if
Speaker 1: you don't include the Spanish Civil War, and you you
Speaker 1: can argue in a lot of people historians will that
Speaker 1: had the Republic one, we might not have had a
Speaker 1: Second World War because that might have been a check
Speaker 1: to fascist ambitions. Now, I don't know how much I
Speaker 1: agree with that, it's certainly arguable that had there been
Speaker 1: a concerted had the had the democracies of the world
Speaker 1: been willing to take concerted action against the fascists in Spain, uh,
Speaker 1: that probably would have meant they would have been willing
Speaker 1: to take concerted actions to stop Hitler from gaining from
Speaker 1: taking over Czechoslovakia, Austria, eventually Poland, Um and then the
Speaker 1: Nazi state would have collapsed because it was never based
Speaker 1: on anything but stealing land from other people, and without
Speaker 1: the ability to do that, it would not have lasted.
Speaker 1: The economy would have collapsed, it would have been some
Speaker 1: sort of a revolution. Um, and maybe we would have
Speaker 1: not had World War two. Um, that's a pretty solid
Speaker 1: argument you can make. Obviously, any any historical debate like
Speaker 1: that is like, who knows what the truth is? I
Speaker 1: wonder what I wonder how the Cold War would have
Speaker 1: looked if we had at some point or if it
Speaker 1: would have been I would have been like, I guess
Speaker 1: the communists, I mean, I mean it's that bad, you know,
Speaker 1: because like you know, Stalin not a big fan of Stalin. Um.
Speaker 1: But you can argue, like, well, one of the best
Speaker 1: things that happened to Stalin's personal power was World War Two.
Speaker 1: If there's no World War Two, and if there's less
Speaker 1: open conflict between you know, fascism and communism to stalin
Speaker 1: state in power, does the does the Soviet Union take
Speaker 1: a different path that maybe more resembles what a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who fought for it initially wanted. Um,
Speaker 1: how like or yeah, I mean, who knows or does
Speaker 1: all of the Western world go to war in Russia
Speaker 1: and as many people die and an even dumber war,
Speaker 1: like who the funding nobody? Right, Yeah, but it's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting conversation to have, and I think, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I am I'm always intrigued by some of these
Speaker 1: like counterfactual but you know, what we what we know
Speaker 1: is what happened. What happened is um a very flawed
Speaker 1: alliance of a lot of brave people and a lot
Speaker 1: of messy people did their best and ultimately failed to
Speaker 1: stop fascism before the Holocaust. You know, it isn't kind,
Speaker 1: isn't at all of history a bunch of messy people
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, just trying to figure this ship out, man,
Speaker 1: Damn Yeah, damn Robert. Yeah, there's a lot of lessons
Speaker 1: in there, a lot of lessons in the story of
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War. And obviously I'm not I hope
Speaker 1: no one takes this is like anything comprehensive or or
Speaker 1: like anything. But here's an overview of stuff you might
Speaker 1: want to read more about. Yeah, totally have a lot
Speaker 1: more reading to do, you know. Yeah, it's it's important
Speaker 1: that like, you know, the the current American does we
Speaker 1: Yeah that that like that you know, American exceptionalism is
Speaker 1: to the hell of a drug that like you, we
Speaker 1: think that all of our issues are unique, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Because we're uniquely special where God's little boy,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So like this stuff is
Speaker 1: important to know, Like I mean, we we hammer it
Speaker 1: all the time, but just to be like, man, look
Speaker 1: at all these different moments throughout history, Like this ship
Speaker 1: is not new, you know what I'm saying, Like we
Speaker 1: are toddlers when it comes to the world scene, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, and that's you know, Spain is going
Speaker 1: through a lot of the same as our colonial as
Speaker 1: our power as a colonial nation, ebbs, as the result
Speaker 1: of horrible decisions we've made and the fact that colonialism
Speaker 1: is never a very stable platform. We're dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of the same issues that Spain was dealing with,
Speaker 1: you know, and in the ramp up as fascism came
Speaker 1: to Spain because it's fascism is in part a reaction
Speaker 1: to like fail failures of colonialism fail, like the like
Speaker 1: like like you need to have some sort of golden
Speaker 1: age you can market back to, right, the Italians, the Germans, Spanish,
Speaker 1: I'll have that um and so do American fascists, and
Speaker 1: so while you should never treat it all as if
Speaker 1: it's too similar, you also shouldn't ignore that there are
Speaker 1: some real similarities. Yeah, I love it anyway you could,
Speaker 1: you could follow Sophie and why Sophie? Why Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: I threw that one in there. That's a little curveball,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Oh god, yeah, now profit
Speaker 1: fop dot com. I knew what you was gonna say. Uh,
Speaker 1: follow me a prop hip hop and I'll be looking
Speaker 1: at all y'all's replies because I'll tell you what, man,
Speaker 1: this pod has got some amazing fans and followers. I
Speaker 1: like y'all. Yes, you're like you're weird in the right ways,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Like, you know, you know
Speaker 1: people like got like a thing. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like you want to you want to be a
Speaker 1: little weird. You know, you're a little weird in the
Speaker 1: right ways. And I feel like if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not weird, I'm not a yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: can't be just we don't need no like low sodium khaki,
Speaker 1: you know, beige fans, you know what I'm saying. Man,
Speaker 1: ah man, You're not wonder brid y'all like Brios. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think I'm done. You had cooked my brain? Boy,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm cooked, and I'm ready to cook
Speaker 1: another meal for next week, when we close out Behind
Speaker 1: the Insurrections with episodes on the fascists that failed and
Speaker 1: a retrospective of some anti fascists throughout history where we'll
Speaker 1: talk about some fun shit. Um, but that's all for
Speaker 1: this week. Um, So go read about the International Brigades
Speaker 1: and the anarchist militias of Spain. Uh. Um. Read George
Speaker 1: Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. But remember that it's a single
Speaker 1: dude's perspective who had no understanding of the broader tactical
Speaker 1: situation because he was just a dude fighting. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of great George Orwell talking about what grenades
Speaker 1: are best to kill people. George Orwell was very good
Speaker 1: with grenade. That's the thing. Nobody, nobody told me when
Speaker 1: we were reading nineteen eighty four that George Orwell had
Speaker 1: extensively written about which grenades are best to kill fascists with.
Speaker 1: I probably would have paid much more attention. If I
Speaker 1: knew the man was like, I would have paid more attention.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, it's the It's one of the coolest
Speaker 1: things you can be good with. That's why they called
Speaker 1: that other data fantastic. You know. Mr Williams, who was
Speaker 1: my who's my teacher? Mr Pollicky? He was Mr Pollicky
Speaker 1: Polosh Dude. I was like, they should have led with
Speaker 1: that and lead with the fact that the guy grenade Jesus. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: spots over, what's up? What's up? This is Robin Dixon,
Speaker 1: co host of reason Doable Shadey, which has just been
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