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