How Fascism Won The Spanish Civil War, Part 2

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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n a A CP Image Awards dot net. Spain, I'm

(01:53):
Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastard. Actually, yeah, Spain,
that's what I got. This is Behind the Bastards. It's
actually Behind the Insurrections special Behind the Bastards miniseries talking
about the history of fascist attempts to seize power from democracies. Yes. Um,
we started our our first opening of this episode with

(02:15):
me shouting, what's bombing my Guernica's But then we decided
that would get me canceled and was a bad idea. Um,
so we will be talking about me. I would have
just gone, yeah, I just shouted the name Spain prop
alternate pitch what about Yeah, there we go. There we go,

(02:36):
There we go. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Spanish is mostly
limited to buying drugs. That's an NBA player from that
that was a really great laker. But you know, has
really good seafood. You can say that about Spain. I can. Oh,
my god, yes, I have had some amazing piea. One
of the pie as I had was partly responsible for

(02:57):
me vomiting on the limousine of the King of Spain.
But um, that's amazing. That's a story for another day.
Best friend, my best friend died in Spain. I don't know. No,
that's a great thing to say. That's years ago. My
old DJ, he flew to Spain. He was actually doing
a he was doing a master chef class with his pis.
He's Filipino, dude. He was going to do this like

(03:18):
piea adobo. It was this crazy Filipino Spanish. He sounds amazing.
Yeah yeah, and he had like and he just his
blood pressure dropped. His zero. Oh ship died in his Airbnb.
That's horrible. That's horrible. Well, I'm kid. We are going
to talk about a lot of people dying in Spain today.
So that's the PDJ effect though, love you doubt that

(03:41):
that's there's actually this is actually gonna be a very
sad episode in a lot of ways. So that's an
appropriate emotional tone to start it off with. Yes, that
the buck Spain throws down his current Spain is not
your fault. Um. So we're gonna be talking about the
Spanish Civil War today. Uh. And we left off last

(04:02):
time with the establishment of an actual, like real fat
organized fascist party in Spain. The philogists, Um, they went
the first, but they were the first to kind of like,
I don't get it right as a weird phrase to
apply to fascism, but they were. They were the Spanish
fascists who would um become kind of the watchword for
Spanish fascism. When people talk about the fascists in Spain,

(04:23):
they're talking about the philogists, you know, Yeah, the philangers
um fa lenx is, which kind of also I think
that I think philanges comes from fai lenx because it's
that word for that Greek military you know, where you
have a shiploaded dudes standing in like a series of lines,
all supporting each other in kind of like a hand.
I don't know that'd be, my guests, I'm not a

(04:45):
worder So the oddest thing about the phlogists, um is
that alone among fascists pretty much any period I'm aware of,
they well except for maybe the modern period, they were
giant wosses to start out with. And this may be
due to the fact talked a lot about how like
World War One is why the Italian and German fascists
were terrifying people, um, because they, you know, we're very

(05:08):
comfortable killing people. Spain stayed out of World War One.
Most of the early fascists were like more on this
like fascist intellectuals than street fighters, and they weren't initially
very willing to use force. Now they talked about violence
a lot um. And Jose Antonio, their leader, was definitely
a fascist, but he was very uncomfortable with physical violence,

(05:30):
even when when it was directed at him and it
was repeatedly, he was loath to actually organize retaliatory violence.
During his speech he gave after his party's unification with
the John Seasta's, a leftist gunman opened fire, intending to
kill Jose Antonio, and instead killing a spectator and wounding
for other people. The fascists launched no reprisals against the
left in response, which is like you you look at

(05:51):
Germany or Italy's is very strange. Yeah, very different than
it was elsewhere. Um. And the kind of unwillingness in
this period of the Fascionists to use violence lead one
columnist for a right wing newspaper to note sarcastically, so
that everything will be incongruous here it is that the
fascists who are made to swallow castor oil, which is

(06:12):
referring to the fact that in Italy the fascists would
force castor oil down the throats of their enemies to
make them ship themselves, sometimes to death. Like it was
a horrible torture, Like they thought it was funny, but
it killed people. And this guy's being like in Italy
the fascists make their enemies drink castor oil. Here we
have to drink the castor oil, right, because we're not
willing to use violence. Um. That's weird. It is very odd.

(06:34):
It does not last. But this is a period of
time early in the fascist So also, every black person's
grandma made them drink castor oil at some point. Sucks
one of those you know that you know that, Um
that image Macro from from the movie Predator, where uh,
those two guys are shaking hands and the meeting in

(06:55):
the middle Italian fascists. Black. Grandma's feeding people castor oil. Yes,
grandma's stomach was just just give me. Look, it had
been fine. Just let me drink some water. God drink
this castle. Can't teller no either, tell the black woman no,

(07:16):
I dare you? And they were, you know, the Italians
were giving people much larger to like it killed people sometimes. Yeah.
Other Phalangists leaders were happier to endorse physical violence than
Jose Antonio was, but for a little while, initially a
number of them kind of felt like it was good
to have some of their members gutted down by the left.
When one Phalangist was killed in the movement's first street fight,

(07:37):
it was thought that the brawl had been a successful
baptism of fire. Basically, we're trying to ramp these people
up to violence, so it's good that we're like this.
It's positive for us that we're being tested with like
deadly force. Um. This was some people's attitude initially, but
the deaths kept coming, and for a while they were
entirely caused by leftists. Most of this violence occurred between

(07:58):
nineteen thirty four and nineteen thirties six, during a period
of escalating political violence that historians call the militarization of
politics during the Second Republic, And when you're talking about
at least the violence that was between fascists and the left,
it was pretty one sided for a while. While fascists
being fascists always talked about violence, Jose Antonio particularly resisted

(08:18):
putting the party on a militant footing. Now, this was
unpopular within the movement, and one internal meeting, Jose Antonio
expressed his desire to engage the left in the dialectic
of fists and pistols, but he was kind of being
more metaphorical than anything right, like we're gonna have like
the verbal equivalent of war, And he was kind of
himming and hawing around because he wasn't really willing to

(08:39):
commit fully at this point. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues
in the same meeting expressed a desire to treat leftists
as enemies in a state of war. Now, there were
discussions within the party of overthrowing Jose Antonio and replacing
him with a more violent fascist because he just wasn't
willing to kill fast enough. Um and these suggestions were
shot down because they couldn't really exist without him. At

(09:00):
this point, the police kept shutting down their party offices,
so the only place they could gather was Jose Antonio's
law offices. He was also like the one who had money,
um and so they couldn't A lot of people were
angry at him, but they couldn't really exist without him.
Um on A. Simo Redondo, who was another Phalangeious leader
uh and probably the one who urged violence most openly

(09:21):
around the same time, was very willing to kind of
go against Jose Antonio and say people like we should
be we should be ready to kill people in the streets.
In December of nineteen thirty three, he promised his followers
a situation of absolute violences approaching. And I'm gonna quote
now from a speech he gave to phalangeiost youth, young workers,
young Spaniards. Prepare your weapons, get used to the crack

(09:42):
of the pistol. Caress your dagger. Be inseparable from your
vindictive club. Young people must be trained in physical combat,
must love violence as a system, must arm themselves with
whatever they can, and must be prepared to finish off
by whatever means. A few dozen Marxist imbosts there's a
lot that in there. Yeah, I'm really and when he's

(10:02):
saying there, when he especially when he says they must
love violence as a system, he's kind of yeah, spanishifying
the concept the Italians had and that the Germans developed
of like the cult of action for action's sake, the
almost this almost worship of violence as an an end
in and of itself. Um, you're seeing that start to
percolate into Spanish fascist culture in this period. Now more

(10:26):
than a dozen Phalangists and other fascists were killed by
anarchists and communists before the fascist right properly organized itself
for violence, but organized themselves for violence they did. And
I'm gonna quote now from the book Fascism in Spain.
The point of inflection in the political violence took place
on Sunday, June tenth. The Chibberries of the Young Socialists
had been prohibited by authorities from marching in the streets

(10:48):
of Madrid, but during the warm weather organized regular weekend
outings to the Cassa de Campo recreation area on the
west side of Madrid. On the tenth a group of
Phalangists intercepted them, and the usual fight took place, and
he teen year old Phalangeists Juan Queler, son of a
police inspector, was killed and his corpse was subsequently mutilated,
his head apparently crushed with rocks. One of ensaldo squads

(11:09):
was quick to respond, allegedly without obtaining approval from the
tree Embers who directed the party the Fascist Party. Later
that evening, as a bus transporting the young socialist excursionists
unloaded some of them in Madrid, a car full of
Phalangist Pistolero's, personally led by Ensaldo, who's a Fascist militant,
was waiting. It slowly passed the young couple on the sidewalk,
spraying them with bullets. A twenty year old shop clerk,

(11:30):
Juanito Rico, was killed. The Phalangists claimed she had been
involved in desecrating the corpse. Her twenty one year old
brother was left permanently disabled and several others were wounded.
Four days earlier, a Phalangist smallholder in Torre perogl Jane
Province had been killed during a farm workers strike, so
that Queller was the fifteenth or sixteenth John Cista or
Phialangist killed since the John Ceesta teenager had been slain

(11:52):
by assault guards, which are like socialist militants, and uh
May of nineteen thirty two, all the others had been
killed by the left, though numerous leftists had been injured
by philogists and street of phrase and university assaults, Rico
was the first leftist fatality at their hands. For years,
she would be commemorated as the first victim of fascism
in Spain. So that's really the start of Yeah, yeah,

(12:15):
there's so much there, man. Like first of all, I'm
still dangling at the phrase dialectic of fists and pencils.
I'm like, that's that's raptists and pistols. Yeah, I thought pencils. No,
no fist, dialectic fist like a conversation, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
I I actually yeah, yours is better. Yeah. I was

(12:36):
like yeah, I was like, yo, those are bars man, Okay.
And then also, you know, there's there's a part of
like you know, and then it's a strange like survival
tactic or just just a byproduct of like just being

(13:02):
around like inner city just kind of like gang violence
that like you the desensitization of it, like where you're
just like you know, people die daily. You know what
I'm saying, Like you just kind of like get used
to and used to such a bad word to explain
what I'm trying to say. But no, no, you but
you get it. It's like violence is just a part

(13:23):
of life and and it. But it's still like even
knowing that, you know, I'm an adult, you know, I'm
moved out with you know, done so many different things
now and it's not like I still don't live in
an active community. But like, um, at the same time, though,
like like I was crazy, like Okay, so that shooting,

(13:45):
the shooting at that walmart in Texas, Uh yeah, yeah,
chance shooting. Yeah a chance shooting. Yeah. Like I watched
the video of like a cell phone video of like
you know, like a hood dude that was at the
walmart that I've when the shooting started. He was just
like that, that's crazy fool shooting. We probably better slide out.

(14:06):
How calm he was is because of how we grew up,
you know what I'm saying. So you're just like somebody
gotta tech. All that's a tech I know what that is,
you know what I'm saying. And it's like it's so
weird because it's just a weird thing. So we so
when I hear this, when I hear y'all talk, when
you know, we talk about this like moment of this

(14:27):
like political upheaval, there's still part of me that goes,
but I still don't understand why you're killing each other,
you know what I'm saying. And then and then the
idea of how I gave that whole preference to say,
it's still jolting to hear the type of like mutilation.

(14:51):
Now you have somebody with a rock and then like
like got dog, like you know, you know, like crazy
you gotta be to blunt force trauma killer person like
that's It's just I don't know anyway, it's just going
on here. I think you're It's very important to point
out the desensitization that occurs during this that that's why

(15:14):
the phrase is used that like um um, the militarization
of politics, it's a process that starts in thirty one
and doesn't really reach its apothesis until nineteen thirty six
when the Civil War starts. But it's a process of
getting people ready to that of escalating street violence. And
you see that just within the Fascist Party, where initially

(15:35):
the fascists are willing to fight. There's brawls in the
street from day one, right as soon as there's fascists,
before the Jones Eastas merge with UM with Jose Antonio's group,
there's street fighting and stuff. But it when the killing
starts a lot of these fascists because these are not
and and again we get to the civil war, A
significant chunk of the fascist military are combat veterans, and

(15:56):
and these are the guys who come up from Africa. Um.
But these these dudes who are actually in Iberia, they
don't have experience killing people, not not by and large.
And it takes number one, it takes time of some
of them being killed before they really start responding with
deadly violence. As a matter of course, and once you
have that on both sides, once you have anarchists and

(16:16):
communists and and other kinds of like left socialists killing
fascists in the streets and fascists committing murder right back
and vice versa, then you have this. It starts to
ramp up the whole kind of level of comfort with
deadly violence in society up to a level that you
can have the kind of war that we're about to
talk about. But you're right, it is a process, um.

(16:37):
And I think in terms of like how people would
justify like bashing the kid's head in with Iraq and
desecrating his corpse, It's less about that guy. It's not
that individual, dude. They were probably angry, but they're looking
at what's happening in Spain and in Germany and what
fashion the concentration camps that have already been set up,
the mass executions of leftists in Italy and in Germany,

(16:57):
the thousands who are already dead, and they're going the
only way to stop that here is to kill as
many of And and you can argue that was that
that was the wrong tact. Take that. You could argue that,
you could argue that it actually raised the level of
violence to a point where you were able to have
this open conflict that the left doesn't win. But at
the time, all they know is they see what's happening

(17:18):
in Germany and in Italy, and they think, I don't
know what else to do but be vient, you know,
And I yeah, it's it's fucked like the whole situation. Yeah,
it's like, yeah, that's the thing where you're like, okay,
they you know, the streets. Shit, that's like you know,
they take one, we take four exactly one of ours.
We kill for yours, you know. And and it's supposed

(17:39):
to be the Trent. And that means like, okay, so
I'm saying this to say, don't kill ours. Yeah, and
you call it, I mean it is street ship. But
it's also like U S military policy massive retaliation. Right,
And this is what speaking of us in speaking of
like US history, recent history and the history of like

(17:59):
terrorism on the right. Tim McVeigh when he blew up
the Murrah building was very consciously being like, I this
is the kind of reaction. Uh, this is like I
am attacking the government because they killed all these people
in Waco, and I learned that this is an acceptable
His argument was, I learned this was an acceptable way
to respond to violence because that's how the military trained me. Right.
You can quibble with how honest McVeigh was being there,

(18:22):
but like hard not to see some through lines. You know,
you look at the first Iraq War or the more
reason like right, it's it is the way everything works, right, Yeah,
how how the idea of how the idea of Pearl Harbor, Yeah,
is equivalent to Roshima. Yeah right, yeah, Well you take
out a base, we take out an island. Yeah, it's

(18:42):
like yeah, yeah, and collective punishment. There's a lot to
say about all of that. We need to move on
to the yeah, because I'm pretty sure you wrote seventy yeah,
more or less. Now, while all of this was happening,
while the Philangists were starting to commit murder and stuff,
and and the fighting between left and right is escalating
in Spain, well, all this is happening on the ground,

(19:04):
the political situation and like the actual like elected politics
and stuff is continuing to unravel. And this is due
in large part to the fact that the Africanistas, who
were again the members of the Spanish military who had
fought in Morocco, were increasingly frustrated with the Republic in
nineteen thirty two, So just like a year after the
Republic starts, one general, a guy named san Juro, launches

(19:25):
a coup that fails. But rather than wonder if the
African Eastas weren't a problem and a threat to democracy,
the government brought in Franco and his foreign legion to
massacre anarchists and communists during their nineteen thirty four uprising.
Where the foreign legion executes more than a thousand people. Um. So,
the Republic knows that the military, these African veterans are

(19:45):
a problem and also uses them to crush the left
when the left rises up, because you know, governments generally
not smart. Um. So a gap begins to form during
the Republican period between the the the the junta's officers
in the peninsula who supported the Republic, and the Africanistas
who the junta is called stormtroopers. Um. Now, by nineteen

(20:07):
thirty six, the political situation, which had simmered for years,
broke out into an open boil. The explanation as to
why starts with the Popular Front. In nineteen thirty four,
the USSR announced that given the worldwide advance of fascism,
it was now acceptable for good communists to make political
alliances with other left wing groups. This included both moderate
liberals and people like anarchists and even in some cases

(20:30):
like Trotskyists, which communists trot Skits are communists too. They
don't like each other, right, um, And this is this
is a real big change. And we talked about in
our in our the non Nazi bastards who made Hitler
one of the reasons why the left failed to stop
the Nazis is that the Communist Party in Germany, which
was you know, generally under orders from Moscow UH, called

(20:53):
the Social Democrats social fascists. And I'll admit right now
we weren't entirely fair to the Communists in that episode.
The Social diffic It's did some really fucked up stuff
to the Communist that we will talk about later in
this very series. UM. They had good reasons to distress
the Social Democrats. That said, the failure to work with
them to stop Hitler was very clearly a mistake. Like

(21:13):
and the USSR admits that is like, you know what,
maybe maybe it's necessary in countries facing fascism for there
to be for for us to allow communists are kind
of communist at least to have a broad popular front
with other people in the left. UM. And this is
a very successful idea politically, UM. And in fact, there
was also a popular Front in France that that succeeded
in pushing some major reforms, and we will talk about

(21:35):
that later too. The tactic worked very well politically electorally
in Spain. The Popular Front swept the nineteen thirty six elections. UM.
But in a way that will be familiar to everyone listening.
They did so in a way that enraged the right wing.
And it's not hard to see why the right felt
like they've been cheated. Right Wing parties pulled four million,

(21:56):
five hundred and five thousand, five hundred two votes and
gained a twenty four seats in the nineteen thirty six election. Now,
the Popular Front only got about a hundred and sixty
thousand more votes, but they gained two hundred and seventy
eight seats, So they get a hundred and sixty thousand
more votes in an election with nine or ten million
votes twice as many seats. You can see why people
on the right would be like kind of piste about

(22:17):
this right. Um, and there may have been cheating. I
don't really know, Like it's I'm not going to get
into whether or not there was cheating. What's important is
that the right felt that they had been cheated, right.
That's what actually matters, as opposed to whether or not
there was um any kind of electoral malfeasance. UM. And
of course the c e d A that Catholic kind
of right wing party, that's the dominant right wing party,

(22:38):
and the Phalangists, the fascists absolutely would have cheated themselves
in this election, and they actually they probably did. Um
And as a matter of fact, when Roblez, the head
of the c E d A, realized that he wasn't
going to be appointed prime minister after the nineteen thirty
six election, he started negotiating with African EASTA generals to
try to convince them to do a coup to force it, like,
to put him into power um as a dictator basically.

(23:00):
Uh And he failed, but there was a lot of
sympathy for the ideal. While the left looked at the
Phalanges and the c E d A and saw Hitler
and Mussolini, the right looked at the Popular Front and
saw it as the inevitable prelude to Soviet style state communism.
Uh And I'm going to quote from a write up
in lumen dot UK right now. When this coalition came
to power, popular unrest in the countryside exploded into land seizures,

(23:24):
encouraged by radical anarchists. So as soon as like the
Popular Front wins the election, the anarchists are like, we're
we're going to do our thing now, like it's time
to it's time to take power for the people. There
was little attempt by the anarchists to moderate their behavior
and no demands to allow the Popular Front to reassure
moderate elements. In Spain, a c and T, which is
an anarchist party conference held in May nineteen thirty six,

(23:44):
was full of revolutionary language. It seemed that the New
Republic had not been able to control the major revolutionary group.
The murder of a former finance minister, Jose Calvo Sotelo,
on thirteenth July nineteen thirty six, was the trigger for
the war, and much the same way as the assassination
of arch Franz Ferdinand had sparked the First World War.
So Tello had been an exile from nineteen to thirty four,

(24:05):
but had returned to become a leading right wing figure
associated with the Spanish Fascists and a deputy for the
Spanish Revival Group. He clashed with the Socialists and the
Assembly and was murdered by left wing members of the
Civil Guard. So you have a couple of things happened.
The Popular Front wins election, the anarchists just start seizing
the ship out of land and saying, like the revolution,
we're doing a revolution um it's happening. And at the

(24:27):
same time, another left wing group of left wing people
murders a popular right wing politician. Um. So this all
kind of snowballs into the start of the Civil war,
you know. Okay, Now, when the c E d A
lost the election, that was kind of it for them, um,
and most of the party, like after failing to win

(24:48):
in thirty six, just kind of gets fully on board
with authoritarianism. One scholar writes that everyone got the message
to quote, abandon the ballot box and take up arms.
The c E d a s youth movement collapses. Yeah, yeah,
that's so like the the Young Republicans. Basically they collapse
overnight and they all joined the Phalange. So all of

(25:09):
the young like conservatives who had been in the c
e d A and trying to get out the vote
immediately joined the fascist party and start picking up guns. Um,
And street fighting and political murders reach a fever pitch
in this in this period. Now, the quote I read
earlier mentioned land seizures by the CNT and other groups
of anarchists. Um. And it's actually true that in the

(25:29):
trade unions major strongholds, the areas where the anarchists the
anarchist Trade Union was most powerful Barcelona, Zaragosa and Seville.
There was actually very little in the way of like
strikes or mass demonstrations in the lead up to the war.
The CNT tried to keep their people kind of calm um.
But there are a lot of their anarchists, right, A
lot of them aren't part of the CNT, and a

(25:49):
bunch of them and a bunch of socialists occupy land
in battles which took over seventh And like this land occupation.
I mentioned at the start of the Republic that they
took about ten percent of the undeveloped land and gave
it to peasants. This occupation of land and batty yaws
takes seven times that much land and starts redistributing it
to like peasants um. And this fucking terrifies the rich

(26:11):
people in Spain. If you've at this point, the anarchists
have fucked with the money, right, I'm talked about about
the money. You funked up the money I talked about
how like Trump a big part of why on the
day on the six, like all these fucking banks started
coming out of like Chase Bank and Chevron are like
like condemning President Trumble because with the money, you can't
suck up the money. Doc can't suck up the money.

(26:33):
And of course anarchists are all about like they want
to funk up. That's the point, which is one of
the things I like about them, not saying that's wrong,
but they funk up the money, and that that gets
a lot of the a lot of rich people, a
lot of like the Spanish, kind of like ruling class
on board some sort of revolution against the left. Now
in Spain, the seizure of Batta Yaws convinces a lot

(26:55):
of these like rich people that the government can't guarantee
stability anymore. So while past coup attempts by generals had
generally folded due to a lack of support from the
dominant classes, who didn't want to see a coup, right,
they didn't like the left, but I don't want to
have like a coup again, by nineteen thirty six a
lot more of those folks are like, you know what,
it's either a coup or we don't get to be
rich people anymore. And they do what rich people do.

(27:18):
Who it is, who it is. So the government had
known that the African easta generals weren't super trustworthy, which
is why they tried to post the ring leaders, General
Franco and a guy named General Mola to the Canary
Islands and Pamplona, respectively, right keep them out of the
center of ship. But these guys were still collaborating with
a codra of other officers, and on July seventeenth, under

(27:39):
orders from Franco, troops and Morocco rebelled, and obviously the
foreign legion are kind of like the core of this.
Over the next three days, military units and commanders all
over Spain rose up against the legitimate government, and the
hope from Franco and his fellows had been that they
would swiftly take control of major cities, jail their political opponents,
and install a dictator like they've done with de Revere

(28:00):
and not all that long ago. Right very comes to
power like a decade or so earlier, so they were
hoping it would follow that trend. But the left was
way more organized now and it did not work out
that way. And I'm gonna quote now from a write
up in the New Left Review. Confidence in a rapid
rebel victory was quickly dispelled when the insurrection in most
major cities, notably Madrid and Barcelona, was crushed in the

(28:22):
streets by a combination of loyal security forces and political
and trade union militants. Where this combination failed or the
security forces went over to the rebels, the rising was
almost immediately successful, as in Seville and Saragosa. The fact
that less than half the army and security forces united
behind the rebellion was the principal reason why the coup
failed in its principal objective and turned into a civil war.

(28:43):
Now that's not the unified opinion on things, right, the
idea that yeah, they're they're significant debate over why the
coup failed, right, because he does fail. Right, the speciest
win in the end, But they don't get they don't
succeed by coup. They have to fight a war. And
a lot of scholars will actually argue a lot of
them will argue that, well, it was the security because

(29:03):
most of the security forces didn't go with the rebels,
that's why the rebels didn't win immediately. A lot of
scholars will also argue that actually the bulk of the
credit for halting rebel victory goes to local militias, which
are kind of spontaneously organized just because a bunch of
people started picking up guns. The argument is that in
the wake of the coup, the Spanish military and the

(29:24):
Republican government lost basically all cohesion incredibility, which they did, right,
like half of your military like decides to overthrow the government.
Not a lot of people had to have faith in
the government. And the arrest of all can't stop these
people from taking my land from me. Yeah, like y'all.
And the reason that Franco and his allies, these the
scholars who will kind of take this out of it,

(29:46):
argue that the reason Franco and his allies didn't win
immediately is that hundreds of thousands of civilians took to
the streets and these is a general rule in the
early days, these citizens militias. Um, these people were just
like picking up their grandpa's hunting rifle or in a
lot of cases looting sporting goods stores, like busting like
busting into like a fucking a sportsman warehouse and just
taking all the guns. Okay, like we need guns, these

(30:09):
guys have them, let's grab them. Um. And you know
there's later too, there's looting off like military barracks is
but like, yeah, they just get whatever guns they fucking
can and they start fighting the African Eastas, who are
at that point very experienced, disciplined and well equipped veterans. UM.
So it's like this mix if you've got hundreds of
thousands of men and women, because women are a part

(30:30):
of the fighting forces briefly in this period, just picking
up whatever guns they can get and going to war
against one of the most veteran military units in all
of Europe. Um. In his nineteen six essay on the matter,
Morae book Chin writes quote to have stopped Franco's Army
of Africa, composed of foreign legionnaires and Moorish mercenaries, perhaps
the bloodthirsty ist and certainly one of the most professionalized

(30:53):
troops at the disposal of any European nation at the time,
and it's well trained civil guards and political auxiliaries would
have been thing less than miraculous once it established a
strong base on the Spanish mainland. That hastily formed, untrained
and virtually unequipped militiamen and women slowed Franco's Army's advance
on Madrid for four months and essentially stopped it on
the outskirts of the Capitol is a feat for which

(31:14):
they have rarely earned the proper tribute from writers on
the Civil War of the past century. Wow yeah yeah,
just everyone picking up their guns and being like fuck
these guys, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
think there's like this you know, um yeah. The miracle

(31:35):
that they was actually able to stop this fool or
these dudes is like yeah, it's I mean, obviously ultimately
they don't. But like that, I think about like what
we used to call like like dad strong. You know,
like you you just you're you don't you know your
dad's strong, but you don't, like you don't really believe it,

(31:56):
you know what I'm saying. And then you're like then
you're sixteen and you want to like throw hands with him,
you know what I'm saying, and then he just lays
you out flat, you know what I mean. You're like,
I don't I I didn't expect you to be this strong.
You know that. To me sometimes it's like I feel
like that with like military dudes that are like super trained,
where it's like you think, you think you can take them,

(32:20):
and then you're like, oh, yeah, no, you're actually trained.
This is not a game. So so knowing that, but
then the fact that just the that these just untrained
militias were still able to like, yeah, pull this off,
you know, four months of brutal fighting. Yeah, and they

(32:40):
lose a funk load of thousands, like and it and
it is. It is a very lopsided kill ratio at
this point, right, because you're you are these are some
of the most veteran military units in all of Europe, right, Um,
going up against like fucking Grandpa and grandma with hunting rifles, right, Yeah,
it's it's ugly, It is ugly. But they they slow,

(33:04):
They stopped Franco from winning in the thirties six, you know,
and there seems to be very little debate about that
that they were Some people argue how critical, but they
were critical in stopping the nationalists, which is what the
other thing the rebels are called at the Gates of Madrid,
and that they're not the only ones. We'll talk a
little bit about the We're gonna talk about the international
brigades in a second, um, but first you have to

(33:25):
take an ad break, sir. You know who else would
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(33:47):
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(34:10):
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Force Service and the AD Council. We're back. We're back,
and for a brief time in nineteen thirty six, the

(35:33):
Spanish Republican military was vastly dominated by, as opposed to
like a kind of traditional military, a dizzying array of independent,
interlocking and largely democratic militias. Most of the militias are
either anarchist or trotskyist, So there's the c n T
and the p o U M, and then there's groups
that aren't a part of this, but like a largely
they're either anarchist or kind of trotskyist, and both are

(35:54):
heavily democratic. So men and women take up arms together,
they vote for their leaders, so their officers are elected.
It in recallable. Um and yeah, it's it's it, it is.
You know, there's critiques to make up the system. We'll
talk about that a bit, but that's what the military
is at this point in ninety six. It's largely just
a funckload of these militias because the actual military is

(36:15):
not in a good way, you know, very chaotic and
disorganized itself. And in a lot of cases, because of
the fact that a lot of the military had rebelled,
soldiers will leave their units and join militias. So it's
very complicated. Please do not take this as a comprehensive
or particularly in depth explanation of what happens with the
Spanish militia system in the Republican like. It is incredibly complicated.

(36:39):
This is an overview. This is all an overview. The
Spanish Civil war is is very very complex. Um So. Yeah,
and while this is happening, while while all these democratic
militias are rising up to fight the fascists in the countryside,
behind the lines and sometimes right up to the lines,
something equally interesting is happening. I'm gonna quote Marae book
Chains article here in. The wave of collectivizations that swept

(37:03):
over Spain in the summer and autumn of nineteen thirty
six has been described in a recent BBC Granada documentary
as the greatest experiment and workers self management. Western Europe
has ever seen a revolution more far reaching than any
which occurred in Russia during nineteen seventeen to twenty one
and the years before and after it an anarchist industrial
areas like Catalonia and estimated three quarters of the economy

(37:24):
was placed under workers control as it was an anarchist
rural areas like Aragon. The figure of tapers downward, where
the U, G T, which is another group shared power
with the C and T or else predominated fifty percent
in anarchist and socialist Valencia and thirty percent in socialist
In liberal Madrid and more thoroughly anarchist areas, particularly among
the agrarian collectives, Money was eliminated and the material means

(37:46):
of life were allocated strictly according to need rather than work,
following the traditional concepts of a libertarian communist society. As
the BBC Granada television documentary puts it, the ancient dream
of a collective society without profit or property was made reality.
In the villages of Aragon, all forms of production were
owned by the community, run by their workers. And again,

(38:06):
as books and notes, this is not you know, this
is different everywhere that in Republican Spain. But in Catalonia,
which has a lot of industrial areas, three quarters of
the industrial economy is directly controlled by the workers manning
these factories, as opposed to them like even having elected
bosses and stuff. Um, which is really interesting. Um, it's
it's something that doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah, Like how long

(38:32):
was it like kind of working. There's debate as to
how long it worked, but a couple of yeah, generally speaking,
a year or two. You know, It's it's different in
different regions. We're going to talk about what happens there. Um.
Bookshon continues. The administrative apparatus of Republican Spain belonged almost
entirely to the unions and their political organizations. Police in

(38:53):
many cities were replaced by armed workers patrols. Militia units
were formed everywhere in factories, on farms, and in socialist
and anarchist community centers and union halls, initially including women
as well as men. A vast network of local revolutionary
committees coordinated the feeding of the cities, the operations of
the economy, and the meeting out of justice. Indeed almost
every facet of Spanish life, from production to culture, bringing

(39:15):
the whole of Spanish society and the Republican zone into
a well organized and coherent whole. This historically unprecedented appropriation
of society by its most oppressed sectors, including women, who
were liberated from all the constraints of a highly traditional
Catholic country, be it the prohibition of abortion or and divorce,
or a degraded stats in the economy, was the work
of the Spanish proletariat and peasantry. It was a movement

(39:38):
from below that overwhelmed even the revolutionary organizations of the impressed,
including the C and T. Significantly, no left organization issued
calls for revolutionary takeovers of factories, workplaces or the land,
observes Ronald Fraser and one of the most up to
date accounts of the popular movement. Indeed, the C and
T leadership in Barcelona, epicenter of urban anarcho syndicalism, went

(40:00):
further rejecting the offer of power presented to it by
President Companies, the head of the Catalan government. It decided
that the libertarian revolution must stand aside for collaboration with
the Popular Front forces to defeat the common enemy. The
revolution that transformed Barcelona in a matter of days into
a city virtually run by the working class sprang initially
from individual c and t unions impelled by their most

(40:21):
advanced militants, and as their example spread, it was not
only large enterprises, but small workshops and businesses that were
being taken over. So a bookstion is saying there is
this is a true bottom up revolution. And even in
some cases this the anarchist trade union is like, don't
do this, we need to work with the government. We're
not calling for revolution, and the individual groups of workers

(40:41):
are like, no, we're just going to take over our office.
We're just taking over. That's fine, it's fine, that's fine.
And it proves to be a mixed bag, like we'll
we'll talk about this. There's fair critiques about what happens,
but it is amazing and unprecedented and one of the
great what ifs of histories. If there had not also
been this massive civil war in this just invasion, might
it have worked you know, and they're under a pressure

(41:04):
that is kind of impossible to overcome in this intention,
but it is an interesting question. What is yeah, dude,
what is strange? Like it was strange because we've just
never seen it, but like, yeah, what was that year?
Like you know what I'm saying, like name rates were,
like what was the I don't say like petty crimes,
you know what I'm saying, Like, one of these days
I will do because I I don't know nearly enough

(41:27):
about this. One of these days I would like to
do like a hardcore history link, like a twelve hour
deep dive into the Spanish Civil War where it's mostly
focused on like, yeah, what what are these? Like what
are these? You your place? The cops with like citizens patrols?
How did that actually work? What was that? Like? What
are what are what are kind of like the first
person accounts we can have of those. Um, obviously we
don't have the time to go into that much detail today,

(41:51):
but it's definitely like, yeah, that would that would call
for like a twelve hour Yes, yes, it's a very
complicated and this is just I'm hoping what this mostly
does is wet people's appetite to read more themselves, right,
which I am also going to do. But it's a
very interesting period of history. Now, obviously this system had
a number of upsides, if you want to call it
a system. What happens in Spain in this period has

(42:11):
a number of upsides. That mobilizes a huge portion of
the republic citizenry very quickly. Um it brings a people
into arms very rapidly, more rapidly probably than a central
government could have done. And these people were highly motivated
to resist fascism, but they also in large part weren't
motivated to live under the republic. And coordination between all

(42:31):
of these groups was very difficult and sometimes impossible. Meanwhile,
the rebels the nationalists had a strict military hierarchy, and
that's a benefit in a war sometimes, right, it can
also be you know, you can you can look at
the Germans in World War Two. It doesn't always work out.
But when you've got one side that's made up of
a thousand different fractious people who agree on some things
and disagree on a lot, that can deplete your ability

(42:54):
to counter attack and to organize effectively. Meanwhile, Franco winds
up and you know there's a scess he's not initially
the only guy, but eventually he's the only dude whose
opinion really matters. He's the guy at the top um
And and that happens fairly quickly, and Franco is able
to coordinate a centralized military in order to like like

(43:16):
attack this very decentralized folks. He's a sneaky guy. There's
also one of his fellow generals dies in a plane crash,
so some of it's just like dumb lot um. Now,
since the c E d A had failed that he
didn't he Franco didn't really want to like wrap himself
in the c E d a s flag because they've
gotten their asses kicked in the thirty six election. And

(43:37):
he kind of winds up embracing the philogists. And this
is part of why people argue with Franco himself was
really a fascist. If he was just kind of co
opting fascism, I don't really see the point in getting
involved in that. Franco gets in like wraps himself in
the Phalange Party and like like they become kind of
a dominant right wing force in this in the nationalist cause. Now,
Jose Antonio, who had been the leader of the Phalangists

(43:59):
had been arrested by the republic right at the start
of the rebellion, and he was almost immediately executed for sedition,
even though he'd been incarcerated when the rebellion cooked off. Like,
if you want to argue how just it was, he
didn't really have much to do with it. Um. But
they kill him, Um, And I'm not, I don't care
he's a fascist, Like, I'm not, I'm not gonna weep
over him. But Franco takes Jose Antonio and turns him

(44:21):
into a martyr, right, Um. And he also imprisons the
guy who takes over the Phalangists after Jose Antonio so
that he can turn the Phalangists into his own basically
like cult of personality, Yeah, exactly, um. And Franco co
opting the fascists had the side effect of making this war,
which had started as a conflict between Spanish left and
right and a conflict between you know, the Africanist military

(44:44):
and and the Republic, into the world's first open battle
ground between fascism and democracy, and the first three months
of the civil war were some of the bloodiest. Both
sides carried out a horrific series of assassinations is a
very the early period, there's this amazing rising up of
of the people to defend themselves, and there's also a
ton of fucking vigilante murders, and it does occur on

(45:06):
both sides. It's really ugly. And I'm going to read
a quote from the New Left Review here. Even so,
there were significant differences between the massacres on the left
and the right. Many voices unheard on the rebel side
were raised in the Republican Zone against the slaughter. By
early September, a new government under Largo Caballero began to
create a semblance of public order, which slowly put an
endo the killings there, but not soon enough. News of

(45:28):
the anti clerical violence, which included the disinternament of nun's coffins,
widespread burning of churches, and desecration of religious objects, was
broadcast around the world, creating extremely negative international image of
the Republican Zone. Does not not good optics yet. Yeah, yeah,
look man, yeah, you messing with the nuns. Like we
all like, yeah that the nuns are fine guys. Yeah,

(45:51):
And we've talked earlier about how like you can you know,
there's arguments to be made about like, obviously there's a
lot of problematic priests part of but disentering nun's coffins,
there's really that I know of. They're like, come on, okay, guys, yeah,
and it it is bad for the early rebel pr Now,

(46:12):
on the rebel side, with occasional exception, tight censorship kept
the assassinations out of the news. The church, which would
soon sanctify the insurgents war, is a religious crusade turned
a blind eye though hundreds of clergy were witnessed through
oppression executed not only by the military but by Philangists
and normally law abiding conservative Catholic citizens. So of course
the church is both victim and perpetrator and a lot

(46:33):
of and the death toll is much higher in terms
of people killed by the right than people killed by
the left. Um and again on in the republic there's
outcries against the vigilante violence, and on the right there's like,
don't talk about it, keep killing people, don't talk stop
just stop putting it on TV, Like, I mean, do
what you gotta do. But hey, yeah, Now, on the

(46:54):
Republican side, the two largest left wing groups at the
start of the war, because the Communists are very small
at the start of the war. Again, because Spain doesn't
industrialize into a lot later than a lot of the
it doesn't have a very powerful communist party at this period.
At the start of things, the two largest and left
wing groups are the anarchists and the Trotskyists, and they
were immediately torn between stopping fascism at all costs and

(47:16):
of course funk the state right like there's a there's
This is a tough choice for them. Now. The CNT,
the largest anarchist organization, lands on the side of allying
with the state to fight fascism, but many local workers
councils were not on board. Now. While this is happening
in the early part of the war, the communists very
quickly come to hold significant power within the confusing and

(47:37):
fractious Republican military establishment now and they grow rapidly at
this period too, And this is due to the pretty
sensible fact that the communists had a communist state, the USSR,
that they could go to and beg for aid right
the like the USSR is provides aid we'll talk about
that a bit more to the republicans, And so the

(47:58):
communists very quickly gained a lot of power within the
military establishment of the Republic. Now, unfortunately, the fascists also
had states they could go to for help, Italy and Germany,
And from the very beginning of this war they're Italian
and German troops fighting on the ground alongside the nationalist
Spanish troops. Um and unfortunately for everybody, the fascist states
were way more willing to provide direct aid to their

(48:19):
side than the Communists were. I'm gonna quote again from
the New Left Review here. Without Fascist aid, most of
it provided on credit, the rebels would not long have
been able to continue the war, let alone win it.
Aside from the Nazis condor legion, Germany and Italy together
provided tens of thousands of troops, mainly Italian, nearly six
hundred war planes, thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of

(48:41):
field guns. Equally important were the three point five million
tons of oil provided on credit by Texico and Shell,
double the amount imported by the Republic, without which Franco's
army could not have maneuvered as rapidly as it did so. Yes,
the victory of the fascists in Spain owes a great
deal to our good friends Texico and Shell. My Texico

(49:03):
and Shell. Should we back fascists or not fashion fascists?
Of course we're Texico. Yeah yeah, Oh my god, they
don't talk about that. No more. No, let me tell
you the last two names. I thought you was going
to say right now, yeah, Texico and Shell. I was like,
I was like, wait, wait what yeah? Yeah? Uh so.

(49:27):
Not wanting to provoke Britain and France, with whom he
was still seeking an anti fascist alliance, Stalin initially held back,
but blatant Nazi and Fascist intervention increasingly alarmed him, ensuring
that all European powers were made aware that Soviet aid
to the Republic was not in support of advancing revolution.
In October nineteen thirty six, the first Soviet shipment of
arms and the first contingent of the International Brigades reached

(49:49):
Madrid and the nick of time to help prevent the
capital's fall. And all the Soviet unions since seven hundred
war planes and four armored vehicles, plus some two thousand pilots, engineers,
military advisers, and in kV the secret police. Now there's
a lot. We're going to talk a lot about criticisms
of Soviet aid and of Soviet policy and this, and
there are a lot of valid ones to give, but
it's also worth noting that Soviet AID was absolutely crucial

(50:11):
in stopping Madrid from falling when Franco made his first advance, right,
the milicias slowed it down, but without this hardcore military
equipment they probably don't stop Franco from taking Madrid in
ninety six. You know, I was gonna say, like, uh
that like tradition of like Communist Russia AID, I've been

(50:36):
I've been thinking about that a little bit, Like you know,
I'm stretching this as far as this this idea that
like the way that they exported AID in Communists like
block countries, like you know, at the like there was
once upon a time like North Korea was actually doing
way better than South Korea, you know, because of this

(50:58):
Communists AID. You know what I'm saying a number of
other reasons to like the nature of the Japanese invasion,
but yeah, absolutely, you know, and then when I think
about like Cuba, and I got I got friends from
like you know, South Africa, Western African countries, Zambia, all
these things, and they're like yo, you could say whatever
you want. They're like every every every nation in Africa

(51:22):
got a Cuban doctor. You know what I'm saying. It
just this idea that like it was like, it's just
like when you the more I traveled, the more I
started going day. Maybe they just think about aid and
they this is Understaalin. It's very like, for one thing,
the Cuban medical aid, which is incredible. The way that

(51:43):
the Cuban government sends out doctors, what Cuban doctors do
and have been doing for decades is absolutely amazing. As
far as I know, it is done without any sort
of hope of recompense. The Soviets are getting paid very well.
So when when Republican Spain happens, when there's the split,
the Republic winds up with Spain's gold stockpile, which is

(52:03):
the largest gold reserves on planet Earth at the time,
about eight hundred and five million dollars and that that
time's currency. Um And while the fascists provided aid to
Franco on credit, right, Italy and Germany are like, you
don't have to pay now, We'll just give you stuff
and you'll owe us. You'll pay us later, right, um.
Stalin's like, you know I'm gonna need some cash up,

(52:27):
do you I'm I'm Joseph Stalin. Like, I don't just
give people ship, you know. Um, he does later in
the war a bit he was him alone. But where
he they they So about eight hundred five million dollars
is what Spain's gold reserves the Republican Spain's gold reserves
are at the start of the war. They pour more
than five hundred million dollars in gold into the Soviet

(52:50):
Union by the end of the war. Um and because
a lot yeah, and also they have to they have
to burn a bunch of money on like shady arms
dealers and like it's a very bad like and a
lot of the blame also goes to France, who makes
it difficult to get shipped through the border, which is
why they have to go with arms smugglers as opposed
to just getting weapons directly imported. Um, it's very messy.

(53:11):
The fascists also had the benefit of receiving much better guns. Um.
And I don't know how much you can blame the
Soviets for this. The Germans had the best weaponry and
the planet at this point in time. So the quality
of arms that Franco receives blows everything Soviet out of
the water. Now, a lot of the blame for the
Republic's loss tends to go to Stalin and the USSR.

(53:32):
But if we're really being and that, like when you
read articles trying to like allay blame, a lot of
people will put blame on Stalin in the USSR, and
there are very legitimate things to criticize them about. But
if we're truly being fair, the foreign nations most responsible
for the victory of fascism in Spain where the United States,
England and France um because the entire free world basically

(53:53):
engaged in a policy of non intervention within the Spanish
Civil War. This is part of the appeasement policy that
the British were doing with the Germans at the time,
and they were trying to get the Germans basically agreed
to neutrality in the war, and Germany would put some
lip services at this, but they didn't like. They sent
soldiers and planes and arms, and both fascist states intervened directly,

(54:14):
which meant that the Republic of Spain was standing on
their own against the entire fascist international, fascist Spain, fascist Italy,
fascist Germany. And they have some backup from the Soviets,
and that's it, right, Everyone else is like, fuck you,
the French closed the border. We're not jumping in. Yeah,
the Democrats And this is again part of why this
the communists their criticisms of decisions made by Communist advisors

(54:37):
and Communist leaders in the Spanish Republican cause. The reason
the Communists wind up in power largely in the Spanish
Republican side is because the democracies are like, oh, we
don't want any part in this ship. Right, could have
been different if you know, damn right. Yeah, so I
can't blame the USSR here, you know, Yeah, that's good dude,
because it's like, yeah, you get you see a homeboy

(54:59):
getting like lept, you know what I'm saying, Like somebody
just brought the night will just knocking the held me out,
and then everybody jumping into help. And you're like, well,
I thought we all agreed we weren't going to jump in,
But like you, if your friends throwing a haymaker, it's
not really his fault. He fucking tried. You're the one
none of y'all was jumping in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um. So,

(55:21):
the like the failure of the democratic world, so to speak,
to get involved in any kind of organized way is
one of the great tragedies and maybe one of the
reasons World War two happens, right, maybe one of the
reasons why no, no, no, this is a this is
FDR FDR Yeah, because I watched the speech about this

(55:41):
time of him explaining why he was like, we don't
want no parts of this. I remember, I remember exactly,
but I remember being really interested in the fact that like, yeah,
like you know, awesome, Like look, we like some isolation
and stuff on someone. Look, man, we've got our own
problems here. Man, we look, we just we can't even

(56:01):
feed ourselves. Like I'm not gonna like sind people. Maybe
we should stay out of this one. Yeah, that's that.
That is very much the attitude and the the fascists
use Spain, particularly Germany. You Spain as a testing ground
for new weapons and tactics, particularly their new air force,
because the air and the concept of an air force
is very new. There have been air forces in World

(56:22):
War One, but they mostly just shot at each other
and like spotted right for artillery and ship. Now you've
got bombers right now, Now you have air tactical air
support that can destroy armor and stuff. And the Spanish
Civil Wars the first time this really comes together in
an organized way, and it provides the LEFTWAFFA, the Nazi
Air Force with a way to test out its tactics

(56:42):
and bombs on Spanish cities and civilians in many cases.
And we'll talk about that a little bit later in
the episode two. But first, you know who won't attack
Spanish cities and civilians with Stuka dive bombers want so Sofie,
we might, though she started messing with her products and Cyrus.
I have been worried about Sophie's cash off Stuka dive bombers.

(57:05):
I am consuner. I'm saying, why you have so many
cut to check where my contract? That's Sophie, So she
might If they don't, she might. They don't say money,
she might bomb Spain. You know, I've always said that
about Sophie. Spain's lucky they gave us pogosol or else
things might be different beyond our way. Al Right, here's

(57:26):
some products. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe
de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by
my friends and cast mates Hannah, Simone and Lamar and
Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl. Join
us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast,
where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite
New Girl episodes, revealed the truth behind the legendary game

(57:48):
True American, and discuss how this show got made with
the writer's, guest stars, and directors who made the show
so special. Fans have been begging us to do a
New Girl recap for years, and we finally meet a
podcast where we answer all your burning questions like is
there really a bear? In every episode of New Girl.
Plus each week you'll hear hilarious stories like this at

(58:11):
the end when he says, you got some schmid on
your face. I feel like I pitched that joke. I
believe that. I feel like I did. I'm not on
a thousand percent. I want to say that was I
tossed that without Listen to the Welcome to Our Show
podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert Lamd and
I'm Joe McCormick, and we're the hosts of the science

(58:32):
podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where every week we
get to explore some of the weirdest questions in the universe,
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(58:54):
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(59:15):
Mind podcast New episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday, with
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Mind on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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(59:38):
Laura Vanderkam teaches you how to make the most of
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the practical suggestions you need to get more done with
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as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent
of pumping iron. Listen to before Breakfast wherever you get
your podcasts. All right, so we're back now. While the

(01:00:04):
Republic lacked official international support, uh so again, the the
governments of the democratic world like, uh, fun, you guys,
like you're on your own, right. I don't know, but
an awful lot of their citizens, and citizens from like
Poland is a huge number of these guys, an awful
lot of people from around the world. Individual people correctly

(01:00:24):
see that, like, well, I don't live in Spain, but
I don't like fascism, and I think that whatever happens
in Spain will probably directly impact my future. So I'm
going to go travel to Spain and try to get
ahold of a rifle and shoot some fucking fascists. Um,
a lot of people do this movie. There's a couple
and there's being worked on right now that I hope

(01:00:46):
will wind up being good. Yeah, there's this scene where
big holl Me like uh, gives this big speech about
why he's still willing to like from America go volunteer
in this war. I forget the name of this movie.
But it was like a resting seen about this time
that like, Okay, the government saying we're not going to
do it, but that don't stop me. I could fly
out there, I hope. Yeah. You know, there's a lot

(01:01:07):
of these are the people who recognize what is a
timeless truth, which is that, um, fascism and authoritarianism in
in one part of the world is a threat to
freedom everywhere in the world. And that's the way it's
always been. And we can talk a lot about the
fallout from what happened in Syria. Um, but you know
there's a lot of there's a lot of stories of

(01:01:28):
that in history, you know. Um So while the Republic lacked, Yeah,
so a funklet of people, eventually something close to forty
people will wind up volunteering to fight in Spain. And
two of the first foreigners to volunteer to fight in
Spain where a twenty one year old classics graduate from
Cambridge named Bernard Knox and his friend John Cornford. They

(01:01:49):
took with them an old pistol that had belonged to
John cornfora it's a weird name. Um. They took with
them an old yes Cornford Sophie. They took with him.
He dies fighting ashes. He's a good guy, but alright,
they took with them an old pistol okay, Sophie. So

(01:02:10):
they traveled to Spain together with just like nothing but
an old handgun that had belonged to John's dad in
the First World War. Knox had to carry a gun.
The gun because his friend had already been to Spain
once before. And the British policy of non intervention mean
they did everything, meant that Britain like was trying to
actively stop people from going to Spain to fight fascism. Um.
But but Cornford and his buddy join a militia, like

(01:02:32):
get to Spain, they joined a militia as soon as
they land. Um, which is like at this point one
of the many groups that had taken up arms to
fight against the military coup. Um. And as I had
said the early days of this war, there's a lot
of women who are fighting in the militia's. This ends
at like the end of nineteen thirty six when Largo
Caballero comes to power because he kind of he argues
that women are needed behind the lines, so they're not

(01:02:53):
really fighting in the front. After this point, it's a
pretty brief period. And that's again a criticism. One of
the criticisms of the Spanish Republican government is like, well,
I lost out on a lot of soldiers. Huh yeah,
so yeah, people will in a suit. You told him
stay home. In those early days of revolutionary ardor though,

(01:03:13):
when Cornford and his friend arrive in Spain, uh, like,
Spain is kind of like overtaken by this this feeling
of revolution um and and this is swelled by the
fact that the people of Republican Spain had literally taken
to the streets to defend themselves in mass and it
lent cities like Barcelona a revolutionary air that international volunteers noticed.
One of those volunteers was a young George Orwell, and

(01:03:36):
he described the atmosphere in Barcelona as startling and overwhelming
and like a positive sense, just like so incredible, this
like outpouring of of of liberty. Now, the Communist International
or common tern quickly realized that volunteers like Cornford represented
a massive opportunity, so they devoted some of their resources
to organize in what came to be known as the
International Brigades. So it's it's the Communist who put together

(01:03:59):
the National Brigades, which are a huge factor in in
both why the Republic last so long and why um
it becomes so internationally famous. Although a lot of these
volunteers are anarchists and not communists, you know, it's a
bunch of different kinds and Trotsky like a bunch of
different kinds of people volunteer. And I'm gonna quote from
a rite up on the International Brigades and the Guardian.

(01:04:21):
Another recruit, Winston Churchill's rebel nephew, Esmond Romilly, had cycled
across France fueled by coffee and kognac before volunteering and
declaring himself a member of that very large class of
unskilled laborers with a public school accent. He sailed on
a boat from Marseilles with watch duties split in two
hour shifts between French, German Poles, Italians, Yugoslav's, Belgians, Flemish

(01:04:42):
and Russian speakers. And it's yeah, it's very kind of dope. Yeah,
it's it's we're gonna talk mostly is very depe. Yeah,
Winster Churchill's nephew is showing up. Yeah, it was like
coffee and come out here with the homies, like on
the streets right now. I look, I want to quote
with school. How you get this accent? I love it.

(01:05:03):
I'm like, okay, okay, and it's um and and it's
it's there's a couple of things going on there. Um.
One of them is that like by public school that
in England actually means like a fancy school. So he's like,
I I have I have a public school accent. But
I too am like whatever you call what I call
it an unskilled laborer, like I identified Okay, that's that's
actually it is because I don't have to do this, okay.

(01:05:26):
It's the opposite of like, you know, that common people
thing where it's like I want to be, you know,
like a labor is like, well, I want to be
like a laborer. So I'm gonna go stand with a
rifle next to them and fight the fascist, which yeah,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna talk to you about
you for doing that. Um And. It's also worth noting
we're gonna talk mostly about American volunteers UM here. One

(01:05:48):
of the largest nations that that a lot of people
volunteer to fight in Spain from is Poland. UM And
obviously Poland becomes the first one of the first large
national victim at least of nazism um. So you and
you can see why, right, like a lot of Poles
looking at Germany on their doorstep, agitating about taking back
land given to them by versaillae, or like we should
probably go try to stop this, yea. So the invasion

(01:06:12):
of Madrid was the first terrible battle of the Civil
War the verse like really massive and important one, I think.
And Franco's colonial army, including the Spanish foreign Legion, were
airlifted from Morocco to Seville by German planes in order
to fight there in an operation that Hitler himself named
Operation Magic Fire, which is based on a part of
a Wagner opera, Franco's Fast. So they and again the

(01:06:35):
bulk of the nationalist troops don't get out of Africa
to fight in Spain without Hitler's airlift. They did they
had they would have had because the navy doesn't go fascist.
The Spanish navy, such as it is, stays loyal um
in large part because like there's actually a lot of
Spanish naval officers who try to go against the Republic
and then their crews killed them and stuff, you know. Um,

(01:06:56):
So the only reason that Franco's army gets to Iberi
is because the Nazis airlift them. Um. Now, Franco's fascist
towards tour through Republic territory on their way to Madrid.
They were slowed by the militias um and eventually turned
back by a significant amount of Soviet armored aid um.
And you know, a lot of people sacrificed to stop them.

(01:07:18):
But a lot of the credit for finally stopping the
fascist advanced on Madrid goes to the International Brigades who
turned back the fascists at a place called University City,
which is like a college campus, in a heroic defense
that has become like very like famous in history. Now,
most of the International Brigade members at this point were untrained, inexperienced,

(01:07:39):
and nearly all of them were poorly armed. They found
themselves confronting a battle hardened army with cutting edge German weaponry,
and somehow they held the line. Cornford Squad operated a
machine gun nest in the philosophy faculty offices of the
University City campus. They built barricades out of books in
order to stop fascist bullets. The Guardian notes okay. Quote

(01:08:02):
enemy bullets gave up before reaching page three fifty, making
them believe old tales of soldiers saved by bibles in
their breast pockets. I think I killed a fascist, Cornford,
a former pacifist, wrote excitedly to his girlfriend Margot Hyneman
on eighth December fifteen or sixteen of them were running
from a bombardment. If it is true, it's a fluke,

(01:08:22):
that's yeah, yeah yeah, building this entire like building barricades
out of philosophy books to stop fascist bullets. Yeah, it's
it's yes, that is punk rock. He was like to
that about page three as they can get yeah. Uh. Now.

(01:08:44):
The achievement of the International Brigades at University City turned
them into a symbol, both in Spain and worldwide of
resistance to fascism. They also received more international attention because
their numbers included men who spoke dozens of different languages.
They were like fifty four nations represented eventually, and this
made it really easy for the foreign press to to
embed with people because they could find people that they

(01:09:04):
could talk to, you know, like it like it's just
speaking of somebody who's done war zone reporting. If there's
a group of people like that that I can embed with.
That's what I'm gonna do because I'll meet other people
who are English speakers and it's way easier to conduct
interviews and stuff that. Um. And, of course, the United
States was well represented among the international volunteers. Now, it
was very illegal for U. S citizens to join a

(01:09:26):
foreign military force at this time, but still hundreds and
hundreds joined what came to be known as the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion. These soldiers underwent two weeks of clandestine training
near New York City before shipping out. New York, by
the way, was the source of a huge number of
Lincoln Battalion troops. It is worth noting that about one
tenth of foreign Spanish volunteers were Jewish, so of all

(01:09:48):
of the people who could like and again, it's the
same thing as the polls. A lot of Jewish folks
are like, looking at Nazi German are like, should probably
go do something about this problem. There's gonna be a
problem for us, I think, um. And in fact, American
historian and international veteran Albert Prago called the International Brigades
quote the vehicle through which Jews could offer the first

(01:10:08):
armed resistance to European fascism, and that's pretty rad Now.
One of the most notable aspects of the Abraham Lincoln
Battalion is that, in an era in which racism was
almost unbelievably present in American society, and there in which
even the military was heavily segregated, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion
was completely unsegregated. Black men could not only join, they

(01:10:31):
could become officers and command white troops in battle, and
this had never happened in Uss. This point that I
am aware of. This brings me to the incredible story
of l Lord Luteal McDaniels, and I'm going to quote
from a writ up in the Smithsonian Magazine here. L
Lord Lute McDaniels traveled across the Atlantic in nineteen thirty
seven to fight fascists in the Spanish Civil War, where

(01:10:52):
he became known as El Fantastico for his prowess with
a grenade. As a platoon sergeant with the McKenzie Papinau
Battalion of the International Gads, the twenty five year old
African American from Mississippi commanded white troops and led them
into battle against the forces of General Franco, men who
saw him as less than human. It might seem strange
for a black man to go to such links to

(01:11:12):
fight in a white man's war so far from home.
Wasn't there enough racism to fight in the United States?
But McDaniels was convinced that anti fascism and anti racism
were one and the same. I saw the invaders of
Spain were the same people I've been fighting all my life,
McDaniels says. I've seen lynching and starvation, and I know
my people's enemies. Let's go first of all, Man's last

(01:11:35):
name is McDaniels, which already tells you someone Yep, you
know what I'm saying, So we know his family story.
You know what I'm saying. And yeah, that just and
the Fanessa just just the culture that you get there
and get a nickname immediately, you know what I'm saying,
Like l fantastical because she's really good at killing fascist.
I'm good at this ship. Dann. I was crazy. I

(01:11:58):
was gonna say that that. Yeah, that like a stut,
like you know, like the observation of just like where
we're just like, look, man, you gotta trust us. Like
I'm trying to tell you this is the same same ease,
like this is the same people to the people. I'm
trying to tell you the same problem. Yeah. Now. The

(01:12:19):
United States in this period also banned black men from
serving as fighter pilots, but three black pilots, James Peck,
Patrick Roosevelt, and Paul Williams, served in Spain. Canute Wilson,
a black American volunteer, was the head mechanic for the
International Garage, which maintained all of the Brigades fighting vehicles.
He wrote this of his reasons for volunteering to fight

(01:12:39):
in Spain, and a letter home to his family. We
are no longer an isolated minority group fighting hopelessly against
an immense giant, because, my dear, we have joined with
and become an active part of a great progressive force
on whose soldiers rests the responsibility of saving human civilization
from the planned destruction of a small group of degenerates

(01:13:00):
gotten mad in their lust for power. Because if we
crush fascism here, we'll save our people in America and
in other parts of the world from the vicious persecution,
wholesale imprisonment, and slaughter which the Jewish people suffered and
our suffering under Hitler's fascist heels, that is, that is sentenced.
That is I think it's like this, like this, this

(01:13:23):
part of this like longing and I'm gonna speak in
like generalities, but just this longing in that like that
African American like the black community, I think that's gone.
That goes very far back to say, surely not all
white people are like this. Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Like you have you're like this, It can't be. It

(01:13:43):
can't be all of y'all, you know what I'm saying.
So like when you when you find it like I mean,
obviously I'm marketing back to history, but when you like
like when you see when you see, uh, during like
the Harlem Renaissance, you see black people going to going
to France and being like, look, there's reasonable white people.
Like I'm telling you there they have to exist, you know,

(01:14:08):
there has it has to exist, you know what I'm saying.
So like it's it's almost like I hear that in
this guy's statement, like dude, I found them reasonable white people. Yeah. Well,
and in speaking about you know the fact that L
word's last name is McDaniels, right, that probably means that
like an Irish person owned his ancestors, not all that

(01:14:29):
far back. We're talking about like like like like not
all that long ago, like his grandpa. Yeah. Now, because
of the realities of the war, babe, when it were
there were a funkload of Irish volunteers and Irish American volunteers,
which means it's conceivable, like part of what probably happened
here is he was leading irishman Irish descendedment into battles

(01:14:52):
man who had been enslaved by an Irish descendent, leading
them into into combat, which is amazing. Ship happens, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh Now during its brief and and yeah, it's it's amazing.
In some ways, during its brief period of existence, wartime
Republican Spain was in some ways almost impossibly progressive. In

(01:15:12):
nineteen thirty six, Largo Caballero appointed Federica mont Senni, a
female anarchist, to be the nation's Minister of Health. Federica
immediately set to work focusing the embattled nation's health infrastructure
to serve the needs of the poor and the working class.
She believed that health care should be decentralized, locally organized
and based around prevention rather than treatment. She was also

(01:15:34):
responsible for making Republican Spain the first nation on Earth
to legalize on demand abortion. Wow yeah, now yeah, there's
a lot of really interesting ship. Yeah now months City
was a controversial figure among anarchists, and she engaged in
some pretty officious arguments with Emma Goldman, who is another
very famous anarchist. In particular, and the general focus of

(01:15:56):
criticism on Montseny and other anarchists who take part in
the Republican government, um is on the subject of whether
or not it was ethical for anarchists to coordinate with
governments and with Marxists, because obviously in the Soviet Union
they kill a funkload of anarchists too, you know. Um,
this is a recurring theme in anarchist history and it's
something that's very hotly debated to this day. I could

(01:16:16):
note here that Nestor mak know who we talked about
in our Christmas episode, also had to thread this moral
needle because he collaborated with the post revolutionary government of Russia,
which he didn't like, to fight against the white forces
which were worse. You know, it's a it's a debate
that anarchists have had a number of times in history,
and is never really settled to a satisfactory degree. But
it happens now. A decent number of the anarchists who

(01:16:39):
fought for Republican Spain would in fact come to regret
their collaboration with the government and the communists, and they
had some good reasons to do that. For one thing,
Republican Spain has lost the war. For another thing, the
broad left unity that characterized some of the early stages
of the war did not last. The government of Republican Spain,
which did at one point include four anarchists ministers, as

(01:17:00):
well as a number of communists and of course many
more moderate Republicans, made a lot of tremendous errors. For
one thing, the government fled Madrid while Franco was advancing,
something which hampered their ability to capitalize on the moral
victory of halting the fascists. Right, you can't brag about
it as much because you ran away. You know you
ran though. Yeah. For another reason, starting in late nineteen

(01:17:21):
thirty six, the Republic's new government embarked on what they
called militarization. This involved involved integrating the hundreds of different
militias into the formal Spanish military. On the surface, this
was a sensible call and it may have been the
right one, and it was one that was heavily backed
by communist advisors the USSR had sent in. Many historians
will argue that it was necessary um and and some

(01:17:41):
of the evidence for this is that, like in February
of nineteen thirty seven, Malaga fell due in part to
the fact that it was defended by a patchwork of
militias that were not well coordinated. UM. But these militias
that are being inducted into the formal military establishment, a
lot of them had been again anarchist and Trotskyist, and
they'd been free democratic fighting units. This led to problems

(01:18:02):
and there were cases where you know, like whole battalions
would vote to leave combat zones while the fighting was happening.
This happened in the Battle of Madrid with when a
guy named Drudy gets killed with like his guys leave. Um.
But it also meant so it's not like obviously before militarization,
they decided to militarize because there's a lot of problems
with the fact that all these militias are so decentralized.

(01:18:22):
These militias are also very motivated and very resistant to
the idea of losing their democratic rights and bring brought
under military discipline. UM. So, while a lot of militias
were integrated to the Republican military, a significant number of
fighters refused to join UM And whether or not this
was a good idea is still hotly debated. And George,
a lot of people will argue that because there's kind

(01:18:44):
of a broad consensus, I would say among a lot
of historians, I read that after the initial period where
they were necessary, the militia's kind of hindered things more
than they helped because of how disorganized they were. George
Orwell himself argued against that um and argued in his
pay at least, and he was, you know, his opinion
was as a ground level soldier that the shortcomings of
the militias system had less to do with the fact

(01:19:06):
that they were democratic and be centralized, and more to
do with the fact that they were inexperienced. And I'm
gonna quote Orwell here it's a good argument. Later it
became the fashion to decry the militias and therefore to
pretend that the faults, which were due to lack of
training and weapons, were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually,
a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob,
not because the officers called the private comrade, but because

(01:19:29):
raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. And a worker's
army discipline is theoretically based on class loyalty, while the
discipline of a bourgeoisie conscript army is based ultimately on fear.
The popular army that replaced the militias was midway between
the two types. When a man refused to obey an order,
you did not immediately get him punished. You first appealed
to him in the name of comradeship. Cynical people with

(01:19:51):
no experience handling men, will say instantly that this would
never work, but as a matter of fact, it does
work in the long run. Revolutionary discipline depends on an
under standing of why orders must be obeyed. It takes
time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to
drill a man into an automaton on the barracks square.
And it is a tribute to the strength of the
revolutionary discipline that the militias state in the field at all.

(01:20:13):
And or Well has a good point here. That's a
that's a whole there's a whole like worldview, philosophy in
those two approaches. I'm about to compare this to parenting,
but yeah, because like there's parts of me that go, Man,

(01:20:34):
if I just parented the way I was parented, I
see why my parents is quicker. You know what I'm saying.
It's like, you know, you're just it's like it's less
emotional work to just be like, hey, it's time to
do the dishes. Why what why you never say what
I'm saying. Dude, you got five seconds to get up

(01:20:57):
and do the dishes, you know what I'm saying. Right, So,
and I'm like, y'all, don't care if you scrunch up
your face how you want to scrunch up your face.
You better hide your emotions. I don't need to see it,
you know what I'm saying, Like that you live here,
you you washing dishes? I bought you know, I'm using
using water. I'm paying for him. So I'm black dadding
on you. But like that's the way we was raised,

(01:21:17):
you know what I'm saying. So Like, but it's just
like but I know, the whole time I'm doing this,
I'm just like, man, I can't wait to get out
of this house. Man always. You know what I'm saying, Like,
I'm just salty. I'm gonna do it, and I'm not
gonna say nothing to it. Yes, sir, you know what
I'm saying. But like I don't like you, I don't
respect this ship. You know what what I'm saying. I'm

(01:21:38):
not doing this because I understand that the dishes are dirty.
I'm doing this because I don't wanna hear your mouth.
You know what I'm saying. You don't want the I
don't want the consequences with my child. Now it's like, hey,
the we have we have budgeted the amount of money
we have for our water bill, which means that we

(01:22:00):
can run our our dishwasher this many times we need
it by We needs to happen by two because when
we start cooking dinner, since we in this quarantine, we
need to have clean dishes to do this or it's
gonna pile up. And now it's gonna be two runs
instead of one. So like, you make sure you finish
this by two so we can have plates to eat
off when it's time for dinner. She goes, all right,

(01:22:21):
and it's like and so now it's like I've included
you into this, so you have a steak into Like
it's not me being a bully, it's just I mean
it's functional, like we need we need place to eat
off and the dishes are your chore, so just so
do it. So just do it, you know what I'm saying.
And it and when she tell me she don't feel

(01:22:42):
like it, like now I'm not appealing to like while
i'm your father, you do it because I tell you to,
I'm appealing to like, yeah, I don't feel like doing
it either, but I also want something to eat off
on dinner, you know what I'm saying it. So she's
like all right, yeah, you know what I'm saying. So
and I think, yeah, you can make an argument that like,
you know, you get the dishes done faster if you're
just the If you don't do the dishes, there's fucking consequences.

(01:23:05):
Then if you explain why it's necessary, but it's a
long term results are probably better. The long term is
probably better. So now it's like now she actually, you know,
if some drama going on or her little friends, she's
actually willing to talk to me rather like this is
I Thinkian ruler that tells me what to do all

(01:23:25):
the time. You know. The Will's argument is that, like
the long term would have been better if they had
stuck with a malicious system, maybe with some reforms and
stuff now and again, a lot of why a lot
of historians will kind of just assume like, yeah, it
was bad, like that the malicious system like needed to
be reformed, It needed to be militarized. It was the
only way to do things. It's what the communists felt,

(01:23:46):
It's what most of like the cinterests and stuff felt.
And you know, there's very strong arguments to be made
that that's that that's true, just based on military history.
There's also strong arguments to be made that like, well,
you guys were just like that's what all of you assumed,
because all of you are the kind of people who
are in favor of some form of centralized state and

(01:24:07):
in favor of us why of a centralized military, and
that you're listening to like standard military people's attitudes, which
aren't always right, and maybe this could have worked and
other things. Systems like it have worked in other militaries
for different periods of time. I get interesting results when
I bring up the idea of a democratically of of

(01:24:28):
a military that votes democratically on its officers. Um when
I talk, because that's what how these militias worked. And
I've talked to some friends of mine who are veterans,
and it's interesting some of some people say, like, I
don't see how that could work. I've had a good
friend of mine who is a veteran say, oh, you
know what, that makes sense because when you've been in
combat with a group of people, you know who you
trust to give orders, like, right, you know who you Yeah? Yeah,

(01:24:53):
it's like I know you got the ranks. Mom listening
to him, because this boy kept me alive. Yeah, yeah,
So sure, yes, sir, I'm not gonna I'm certainly not
going to say I know more about this than a
number of historians who will say that militarization was really
the only option they had. I'm just saying there's argument
about that, and it's something you should read about. I'm
not going to make a harsh stance on it, because,

(01:25:13):
like I thought, an expert on war, or an expert
on the Spanish Civil War, there's there's there, there's something
that we said. At least they like to make sure
that your militia knows what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely, that
needs to happen. At least some level of cohesiveness of
communications seems like it has to be necessary. There's some
degree you at least need, like a centralized communication network

(01:25:34):
to make sure people know. But I think anyway, one
of the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War is that
there's a lot of cool what ifs that because there's
this horrible war happening, nobody gets the time to really
figure out, Right, maybe this could have worked if they
hadn't been at the edge of extermination. Yeah, we weren't
facing a minute. Yeah. Now, the unrest between anarchists and

(01:25:55):
Trotskyists and communists within Republican Spain eventually led to bloodshed
in the streets of Barcelona as anarchist and Trotskyist militants
fought in the streets against communists and socialists. This right
up from the New Left Review, does I think a
fair job of explaining how this all got underway. Quote,
under the revolutionary ferment, a struggle for power and control
of scarce arms was being waged. That was the real

(01:26:17):
meaning of the Barcelona fighting. The Communist Party's increasing influence
in the army and political life and the growth of
its membership do mainly to Soviet aid direct government interventions
stop finally stopped the fighting in the streets and shortly
thereafter ended the revolutions. Consolidation that has ended the the
anarchist and sort of trotsky Is the far left like
consolid like gaining of power, taking of businesses, all that

(01:26:38):
sort of stuff. The immediate beneficiary of the crisis was
Jan Nigrin, a forty five year old socialist physiologist, polyglot
and acknowledged expert in financial affairs. As Treasury Minister, he
organized the dispatch of gold to Moscow, whom President Azana
appointed Prime Minister. To put an end to the indiscipline
and disarray in the rear Guard, especially in Catalonia and Arragon,

(01:26:58):
the government took over pub order in Catalonia, dissolved the
anarchist dominated a Council of Aragon and sent Enrique Lister's
Communist Army Division to break up the rural Aragonese collectives
more easily expedited the p O U WIM trotsky Is,
which is the trotsky Ist militia, which they called trotsky
Is provocateurs and fascist spies. Clamored. The Spanish Communist Party
was outlawed, its army division disbanded, and its leader Andrew Ninn,

(01:27:22):
one of Trotsky's former secretaries, was disappeared, in fact, kidnapped
and murdered by the n k v D. The affair
further deepened the distrust between Communists and the rest of
the political organizations, especially the anarchists and left socialists, and
it made clear to the republic serious ongoing problems of
internal political discord, which were a considerable stumbling block to
winning the war. On the other side of the lines,

(01:27:43):
there was no such problem. Franco By, now head of
the so called nationalist side, crushed dissent in the bud
forcibly uniting the Phalangen Carlists, the only permitted civilian political
organizations now. And there's a lot of debate about what
happens in Barcelona orwell was there for most of this part.
He was. He took part in the fighting in Barcelona,
and he was with the p o u M. He's

(01:28:04):
with this Trotskyist militia, and his recollections of the purging
of the po U M are available for free in
his book Homage to Catalonia. He reserves tremendous criticisms for
the Communist Party, in large part because they murdered some
of his friends. There are of course, very good critiques
of Orwell's narrow perspective in this, because he's on the ground,
and long after the war he would admit himself that

(01:28:25):
he was somewhat myopic and unfair to the Republican government
and the communists In this. Critics will point out that
the c and T and the p O U WIM
undermined coordination and unity in the Republic, and that the
violent certain anarchists carried out against the clergy in particular,
helped dissuade foreign governments from wanting to help. So this
is again a complicated issue, but the fact that the

(01:28:45):
left is literally in fighting here is a big part
of what undermines their ability to fight the fascists. Although
historians are very split as to how much of a
factor the behavior of the Spanish Communists or which were
directed by Moscow played in the Republic can defeat um.
Julian Casanova directly credits the Republic's defeat mostly to the
international situation, So he says, you can talk about what

(01:29:08):
the communists did wrong with the anarchist did wrong. The
reason Republican Spain lost is because nobody helped them out
except for the communists a bit, whereas the fascists had
to modern states throwing huge amounts of aid in military forces.
It right, That's why they lost. It's like you can
debate who made mistakes. Everybody made mistakes. They lost because nobody,
like almost only the communists helped them in. You know,

(01:29:31):
you just out in the fascists had a lot, Yeah,
the fascists had a lot more help, you know. Yeah. Um. Now,
while I think it's fair to criticize the nature of
the help the USSR sent, both in its reduced quantity
relative to the fascists and the fact that it made
the republic pay up front, you have to be fair
here and note that the Russian Civil War had not
been over for all that long when the Spanish Civil
War started, and like nine million people had died in

(01:29:53):
that country. After nine million had died in World War One,
and it was fucking devastated, Italy and Germany were in
comparatively better shape and able to provide more aid. Now.
British military historian Anthony Beaver, however, does blame the Republic's
high command, which was Communist dominated and Soviet military advisors,
for their quote disastrous conduct of the war, and he

(01:30:13):
has some very fair critiques here. Um He criticizes them
for engaging in multiple disastrous conventional offensives, which where this
happened a few times, where they get a huge number
of soldiers together, most of which were not super well trained,
and send them on these massive offensives that would they
would get mowed down. And the purpose of this was
for propaganda to be able to show, look, we're advancing

(01:30:33):
against the fascists, and of course the fascists are better
armed in train and would just dig in and massacre
these people. Um And and Anthony Beaver will argue that
these this series of horrible, horrible decisions taken for mainly
propaganda quote gradually destroyed the Republic's army and resistance. Now,
no matter what kind of leftist or liberal or whatever

(01:30:55):
you happen to be, there are aspects of your ideology
that should be challenged by observing the way the Spanish
Civil War win. Speaking as an anarchist, it is impossible
to ignore the fact that the fascists had the great
advantage of centralized control and particularly food distribution. Meanwhile, Republican
territories had more than independent food collectives. Workers in many

(01:31:16):
of these collectives were hostile to the government because they
were anarchists, and in some areas money had been entirely abolished,
and since money did exist in the rest of the Republic,
that made cooperation difficult. Food shortages were common in the Republic,
and this also contributed to their defeat. UM. And again
it's the kind of thing where like this system of
local sort of food exchanges might have worked, if they

(01:31:38):
might have figured out how to make it work had
there not been a war on. But it's hard. It
is hard to beta test an entire system of social
organization while fighting a war of extermination. Yeah, it's hard.
It's hard to get hungry people to fight for you,
you know what I'm saying, Like, if we hungry, it's like, well,
oh no, who got the food? And it's it's worth

(01:31:59):
noting that of all the people fighting, you know, about
half of the prisoners of war the fascists took wound
up fighting for the fascists. They were organized into into
fighting units um and a significant number of the captured
fascists wound up fighting in units for the republics. Like
that happened on both sides. A lot of these guys
are just dudes, you know. Um, they're not all like
the Internet. The International volunteers tend to be very ideological.

(01:32:22):
That's not all the case with a lot of soldiers.
In early nineteen thirty seven, Franco's forces had recovered from
their defeat outside of Madrid, and they launched an invasion
of the northern Basque territories of the Republic. The success
of this offensive is largely credited to the Condor Legion,
a German led air force that spent the Spanish Civil
War experimenting with new textniques. The Loofwava would it later use.

(01:32:42):
This experimentation started in earnest with the bombing of Madrid
in nineteen thirty six, which killed and wounded a lot
of civilians, like hundreds of people killed and wounded, but
did nothing but harden Republican resistance. And the Germans realized this,
Like the guys in charge of the Condor Legion of like,
just bombing a bunch of civilian targets seems to piss
them off and make them want a fight harder. Perhaps

(01:33:02):
that's not the best tactic. Um. Now, several cities were
bombarded by the Condor Legion during the advance in Tabasque territory,
leading to a lot of civilian casualties, but none of
these bombings were more famous than the city of Guernica
and their significant debate over Guernica. As well, historians will
note that the command or of the Condor Legion was
more or less abiding by the rules of war um,

(01:33:23):
striking at bridges and roads and cities, like aiming primarily
for targets of military value. Um. There were civilian casualties
because precision bombing is a myth, but the goal was
not what's called terror bombing, which they kind of rejected
after Madrid, and like this guy goes to trial in
Nuremberg and that is kind of the conclusion of the
Allied militaries, Like his bombing of Guernica was part of

(01:33:44):
a military action. Like you to repeat the line that
you said, precision bombing is a myth. Precision bombing is
absolutely a myth. As someone who who watched it as
now it was even more of avent. Yes, I have
a friend who lives in Iraq and he's like, yeah, no,
there's no such thing. No, No, you're just blowing up neighborhoods, guys.

(01:34:06):
Yeah yeah, Um, Now how much of a difference it
makes that their goal was not terror bombing? You know
what they did. They killed a funkload of civilians and
leveled a lot of Guernica. And it's it's horrible, horrible,
horrible thing. I'm not trying to justify it, um, But
what's happened in what actually happened and what is kind
of like remembered about Guernaka are sometimes two different things.

(01:34:28):
Because the bombing of Guernica, for whatever reason, horrifies the
entire world. It becomes and there's what I say, forout
ever reason, because there are other cities that are bombed
in a similar manner that don't get as famous in
this period of time. Um, it's not the first time
that the civilian population is bombed as a part of
a war, but it becomes the most famous. The Republicans
made a lot out of it and used it for
propaganda purposes. They would claim that six people had died,

(01:34:52):
a figure that's likely impossible because they calculated. Basically, when
you're looking at like civilian casualties, there are calculate aations.
You can do to estimate them by estimating the number
of people killed per tonnage of bombs dropped. And if
six people died in Guernica, it would meant that it
would have meant that the Condor Legion were killing more
civilians than the US did during its bombings of like Dresden,

(01:35:13):
like like per per tonnage, you know, which is not possible,
really credible. Deaf counts range from as low as a
hundred and fifty to the to the low hundreds, which
is terrible, Like that's hundreds of civilians killed by bombs
from the sky. It's it's horrible. I'm not saying it's not.
But again, it's also seeing the Republicans see this as
a way to like, oh, this is something we can

(01:35:34):
use to get international support, which we desperately need. Um
And while Republican forces used Guernica to try to generate
international sympathy, the fascists used it as a cudgel. When
Hitler met with the Premiere of Austria prior to the Angelus,
which is when they occupy Austria, he brings the commander
of the Condor Legion with him as a not so
subtle threat to Vienna because the the the image internationally

(01:35:58):
is that Guerna has been wiped out by the Condor Legions.
So Hitler once this guy is sitting next to him,
so that when he meets with the premiere of Austria,
this guy's like, they're gonna level Vienna if I don't,
if I don't agree to whatever Hitler wants, you know.
So Hitler makes a lot of use out of the
terrible reputation that the Condor Legion gets, regardless of how
much that reputation may be earned. Um now, the battle

(01:36:22):
and I mainly quibble on how terrible the Condor Legion
was because by any objective measure, the United States Air
Force was a lot worse in World War Two in
terms of it's its willingness to kill civilians, not in
terms of its goals obviously, but to blast. Yeah, there's
the yeah. I I I still can't because I mean
I've never lived in like an actual active war zone,

(01:36:44):
you know. But obviously more more humans alive now have
lived in active war zones than not hand So, like,
I know that I'm in the minority for that, and
it's a very privileged position, but I still can picture
or having a hard time wrapping my mind around the
idea that like death is coming from the sky. It's fun.

(01:37:06):
I'm saying, like that's yeah, that's it changes, you, I
mean it changes. And just to have that experience for
a few days. Um, it's something else, man, just like
seeing breathing in the dust that includes pulverized concrete and
incinerated bodies. Um. An air strike is yeah, unreal that like, yeah,

(01:37:30):
it's a laser from space, like you can't. Yeah, there's
like it's the hammer of God, you know. Yeah, it's terrible, Yeah, terrifying. Yeah. Now,
the battle over Guernica was very consequential. The city's fall
helped enable Franco's forces to cut Republican held territory in two,
so to separate the two chunks of Republican territory, the

(01:37:50):
north from the south. Um. Now, around the same time,
the French, like Germany, occupies Austria and the French start
getting really scared of the Nazis um and so they
reopen their border. And this allows thousands of tons of
war material to flow into the Republic freely for the
first time, and the Republic is able to like gin
up a new Republican army made up in part of

(01:38:10):
prisoners of war and conscripts as young as sixteen UM.
And this what's known as the Army of the Ebro,
launches what would come to be known as the last
great Republican assault of the war. And like there are
other great assaults, it was a fucking disaster. Thirty thousand
Republican fighters died to just sixty Fascist casualties. UM. Just
an absolute nightmare. Now, the war officially ended in April

(01:38:34):
of nineteen thirty nine with the unconditional surrender of the
Republicans to the fascist Francisco Franco. In the areas the
Fascist retook they were as brutal as you might expect.
The most egregious example of this happened in August of
nineteen thirty six and bat Ayas, which we talked about earlier.
That's where the anarchists and socialists take a huge amount
of land and give it to the people. Well, the

(01:38:54):
fascists take back bat of Yaws and they just they
massacre everyone then get their fucking hands on. More than
four thousand people, mostly civilians and prisoners, gunned down, including
hundreds of people who are dragged into the bowl, ring
to the stadium where they hold bullfights and surrounded by
machine guns and just massacred in a circle by the
foreign legion. Um. Now, brutality knows no allegiance in war.

(01:39:18):
Somewhere around fifty thousand civilians were killed in the Republican
zone over the course of the war, and acts of
brutality that many in the Republican government deplored. Federica Montseny
described the slaughter as a lust for blood, inconceivable and
honest man before But republic war crimes bore little resemblance
to the crimes of the fascists, who in the same
period of time murdered more than a hundred and thirty

(01:39:40):
thousand civilians. And those deaths, of course occurred during the war.
During his decades in power, Franco's forced labor, concentration camps,
torture and execution of political enemies led to another thirty
to fifty thousand deaths, and as we know, that would
make Franco one of the less deadly fascist dictators in history.
Got um, But yeah, you can compare with the number

(01:40:01):
of people kill. Yeah, what is it about? Just what's
the point of being in charge? If you kill everybody
you're supposed to be in charge of, because you're killing
all the people you don't like that you're supposed to
be in charge of. That's easier than arguing. Yeah, yeah,
well touche. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, they're killing.

(01:40:22):
There's like, we just killed people disagree with us. We
just kill we disgree with us. Yeah yeah, okay, so
my bad. I understand your logic. Now. Yeah, obviously the
Republicans lost their war, UM, but many of the more
than thirty five thousand men who joined the International Brigades,
and something like ten thousand of them died in the
Spanish Civil War. UM. Many of those guys would continue

(01:40:45):
fighting fascism in World War Two. Some of them fought
in the French Resistance, some of them fought in the U. S.
Army after being by the way, when US veterans like
l Ward come home, they get like spied on by
the FBI because they're suspected of being communists sympathy and
stuff like, and some of those people. Some of that
stops when the war starts. People like, ah, maybe you

(01:41:06):
had a point. It doesn't all stop, but a number
of these guys continue fighting UM and while they failed
in their ultimate goals. The battle cry of the Spanish
anti fascists, they shall not pass or no passeran still
rings loudly and anti fascist rallies today, and that's you know, Yeah,
the fight isn't over. They didn't win in Spain. They

(01:41:28):
didn't succeed in in turning back fascism and bringing in
a new golden age for humanity there. But it didn't
end in the fight didn't end in Spain either, you know,
and it it continues to this day, Yes it does.
Oh man, Yeah, let's let's let that one breathe for
a second. Yeah, okay, everybody take a deep breath, yeah,

(01:41:57):
breath anyway. Man, So at some point we're going to
talk about when Spain stops being fascist. Yeah, I'm gonna
do episodes on Franco at some point that will that
will get into that history. Um. But this is more
specifical about vomiting on the King's limits. Yeah, this was
This is about fascism. You know, I wanted to talk

(01:42:18):
about how the fascist gained power in Spain. This is
and it's like it's such a like because of like
you said, because of the enormity of other fascist reasimes.
This guy gets so overlooked, but it's so such a
pivotal moment in just even just the meta narrative. But

(01:42:41):
what we understand is like western modern, Western civilization, like
you have to have this moment, you know, if you're
not talking about it, it's like you the storyline. I
feel like the storyline doesn't make sense if you're trying
to get from World War One to World War Two,
and why all the players are on the play are
on the board game the way that they are if
you don't include the Spanish Civil War, and you you

(01:43:05):
can argue in a lot of people historians will that
had the Republic one, we might not have had a
Second World War because that might have been a check
to fascist ambitions. Now, I don't know how much I
agree with that, it's certainly arguable that had there been
a concerted had the had the democracies of the world
been willing to take concerted action against the fascists in Spain, uh,

(01:43:27):
that probably would have meant they would have been willing
to take concerted actions to stop Hitler from gaining from
taking over Czechoslovakia, Austria, eventually Poland, Um and then the
Nazi state would have collapsed because it was never based
on anything but stealing land from other people, and without
the ability to do that, it would not have lasted.

(01:43:48):
The economy would have collapsed, it would have been some
sort of a revolution. Um, and maybe we would have
not had World War two. Um, that's a pretty solid
argument you can make. Obviously, any any historical debate like
that is like, who knows what the truth is? I
wonder what I wonder how the Cold War would have
looked if we had at some point or if it
would have been I would have been like, I guess

(01:44:10):
the communists, I mean, I mean it's that bad, you know,
because like you know, Stalin not a big fan of Stalin. Um.
But you can argue, like, well, one of the best
things that happened to Stalin's personal power was World War Two.
If there's no World War Two, and if there's less
open conflict between you know, fascism and communism to stalin

(01:44:31):
state in power, does the does the Soviet Union take
a different path that maybe more resembles what a lot
of the people who fought for it initially wanted. Um,
how like or yeah, I mean, who knows or does
all of the Western world go to war in Russia
and as many people die and an even dumber war,
like who the funding nobody? Right, Yeah, but it's it's

(01:44:53):
an interesting conversation to have, and I think, like, yeah,
I I am I'm always intrigued by some of these
like counterfactual but you know, what we what we know
is what happened. What happened is um a very flawed
alliance of a lot of brave people and a lot
of messy people did their best and ultimately failed to
stop fascism before the Holocaust. You know, it isn't kind,

(01:45:17):
isn't at all of history a bunch of messy people
And yeah, yeah, just trying to figure this ship out, man,
Damn Yeah, damn Robert. Yeah, there's a lot of lessons
in there, a lot of lessons in the story of
the Spanish Civil War. And obviously I'm not I hope
no one takes this is like anything comprehensive or or

(01:45:37):
like anything. But here's an overview of stuff you might
want to read more about. Yeah, totally have a lot
more reading to do, you know. Yeah, it's it's important
that like, you know, the the current American does we
Yeah that that like that you know, American exceptionalism is

(01:46:00):
to the hell of a drug that like you, we
think that all of our issues are unique, you know
what I'm saying, Because we're uniquely special where God's little boy,
you know what I'm saying. So like this stuff is
important to know, Like I mean, we we hammer it
all the time, but just to be like, man, look
at all these different moments throughout history, Like this ship
is not new, you know what I'm saying, Like we

(01:46:20):
are toddlers when it comes to the world scene, you know.
So yeah, yeah, and that's you know, Spain is going
through a lot of the same as our colonial as
our power as a colonial nation, ebbs, as the result
of horrible decisions we've made and the fact that colonialism
is never a very stable platform. We're dealing with a

(01:46:41):
lot of the same issues that Spain was dealing with,
you know, and in the ramp up as fascism came
to Spain because it's fascism is in part a reaction
to like fail failures of colonialism fail, like the like
like like you need to have some sort of golden
age you can market back to, right, the Italians, the Germans, Spanish,
I'll have that um and so do American fascists, and

(01:47:02):
so while you should never treat it all as if
it's too similar, you also shouldn't ignore that there are
some real similarities. Yeah, I love it anyway you could,
you could follow Sophie and why Sophie? Why Hell yeah,
I threw that one in there. That's a little curveball,
you know what I'm saying. Oh god, yeah, now profit

(01:47:26):
fop dot com. I knew what you was gonna say. Uh,
follow me a prop hip hop and I'll be looking
at all y'all's replies because I'll tell you what, man,
this pod has got some amazing fans and followers. I
like y'all. Yes, you're like you're weird in the right ways,

(01:47:48):
you know what I'm saying. Like, you know, you know
people like got like a thing. You know, it's like
it's like you want to you want to be a
little weird. You know, you're a little weird in the
right ways. And I feel like if you're if you're
not weird, I'm not a yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like,
can't be just we don't need no like low sodium khaki,
you know, beige fans, you know what I'm saying. Man,

(01:48:09):
ah man, You're not wonder brid y'all like Brios. I
don't know. I think I'm done. You had cooked my brain? Boy,
Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm cooked, and I'm ready to cook
another meal for next week, when we close out Behind
the Insurrections with episodes on the fascists that failed and

(01:48:30):
a retrospective of some anti fascists throughout history where we'll
talk about some fun shit. Um, but that's all for
this week. Um, So go read about the International Brigades
and the anarchist militias of Spain. Uh. Um. Read George

(01:48:50):
Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. But remember that it's a single
dude's perspective who had no understanding of the broader tactical
situation because he was just a dude fighting. But there's
a lot of great George Orwell talking about what grenades
are best to kill people. George Orwell was very good
with grenade. That's the thing. Nobody, nobody told me when

(01:49:10):
we were reading nineteen eighty four that George Orwell had
extensively written about which grenades are best to kill fascists with.
I probably would have paid much more attention. If I
knew the man was like, I would have paid more attention.
You know. Yeah, it's the It's one of the coolest
things you can be good with. That's why they called
that other data fantastic. You know. Mr Williams, who was

(01:49:36):
my who's my teacher? Mr Pollicky? He was Mr Pollicky
Polosh Dude. I was like, they should have led with
that and lead with the fact that the guy grenade Jesus. Alright, alright,
spots over, what's up? What's up? This is Robin Dixon,

(01:49:59):
co host of reason Doable Shadey, which has just been
nominated for an in Double A CP Image Award in
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Visit vote dot in double A CP Image Awards dot

(01:50:19):
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