The Spanish Civil War


A couple of months ago, with a few hours to spare, and having already eaten ice scream at Amy's (it was a hot day), Francois and I decided to roam over to Quarter Price Book Store. We drive by it all the time, but I've never dropped in.

Couldn't find any sci-fi books that I wanted to read, but I was suddenly reminded to check up on books on the Spanish Civil War. Ever since reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, a dozen years ago, I've wanted to learn more about this conflict, but just never ran into the right occasion. Well, this time I was lucky. On the shelves was a copy of classic text, Antony Beevor's The Spanish Civil War .

And just across the shelves was a 1st edition copy of Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. it's a HUGE book; I guess I'll tackle it soon, but Beevor's book came first -- it's much shorter.

Or, at least it appeared to be. Turned out to be pretty dense prose; small print filled out it's 283 pages, and it was also a bit difficult to follow. Not because of Beevor's writing -- he actually writes quite well, and the story was captivating to read -- it's just that the story is so complicated, and so many names and parties are involved, I often found myself re-reading passages just to remember who's who.

The Spanish Civil War was an amazing period of history, but is sadly neglected in our school curriculums (at least hear in the U.S.). It was a major prelude to World War II -- Hitler and Mussolini sent not only troops, but advanced equipment (planes and guns) and strategies to experiment with. Stalin also contributed considerable material. Sadly, France, Britain, and the U.S. failed to contribute, holding themselves to a "Non-Interventionist" treaty that Germany and Italy completely ignored. These allies in essence doomed the Spanish government, left-leaning but democratically elected, to the fascist might of Franco and his backers.

Another amazing aspect of the conflict was all the internal wranglings. Orwell had given me a hint to some of these internal divisions. He had joined the POUM, a socialist group led by Andres Nin, until they were purged by the Communists, backed by Stalin. And the Communists weren't too kind to the left Anarchists either, who for a brief time had free reign in Catalonia, setting up worker-directed factories, agricultural communes, and peoples' committees to voluntarily run government functions. But, the centralist government, and the Communists, themselves, wouldn't have much of that, and forcibly crushed the Anarchists, murdering several leaders, right in the midst of their battle against Franco!

And, somewhere in the political middle were the Basques -- definitely not communists, not even left-leaning, but because of their desire for independence, allied themselves with the Republican government against Franco. Reading this book made me more interested in the Basques, who these days are typically depicted just as terrorists. So, recently, I picked up a interesting book on the history of the Basque people and language. I'll let you know how that comes out.

Despite the U.S. government's lack of backing for democracy in Spain, several thousand American volunteers enlisted in the war effort, joining citizens from several countries in the famed International Brigades, attracting not only Orwell, but other writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Humphrey Slater to join the war effort, and artists Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso to support the cause with their works. Picasso's famed Guernica, painted after Germany's aerial bombardment and slaughter of most of the civilian population of this Basque town, speaks volumes about the tragedy of this war. Really, the Spanish Civil War should be a central topic in our school's world history curriculum.

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Posted: Tue - August 3, 2004 at 01:24 PM

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