Behind the Insurrections - How Fascism Won The Spanish Civil War, Part 2

The incredible, heartbreaking story of the antifascist struggle in Spain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Spain. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. But actually, yeah, Spain,
that's what I got. This is Behind the Bastards. It's
actually Behind the Insurrections special Behind the Bastards miniseries talking
about the history of fascist attempts to seize power from democracies. Yes, um,

(00:22):
we started our our first opening of this episode with
me shouting, what's bombing Mike Guernica's But then we decided
that would get me canceled and was a bad idea. Um,
we would be talking about what I mean. I would
have just gone, yeah, I just shouted the name Spain.
Alternate pitch what about Yeah, there we go, There we go,

(00:46):
There we go power. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Spanish is
mostly limited to buying drugs. That's the NBA player from
that that was a really great laker. But you know
has really good seafood. You can say that about Spain.
I can. Oh my god, Yes, I have had some
amazing piea. One of the pie as I had was

(01:07):
partly responsible for me vomiting on the limousine of the
King of Spain. But um, that's amazing. That's a story
for another day. Best friend, my best friend died in Spain.
I don't know. No, that's a great thing to say.
That's years ago. My old DJ flew to Spain. He
was actually doing a he was doing a master chef
class with his pias. He's Filipino, dude, he was going

(01:27):
to do this like piea adobo. It was this crazy
Filipino Spanish. He sounds amazing. Yeah, yeah, and he had
like and he just his blood pressure dropped his zero.
Oh ship died in his airbnb. That's horrible. That's horrible. Well,
we are going to talk about a lot of people
dying in Spain today, so that's the effect, though, love

(01:51):
you doubt that that's there's Actually this is actually gonna
be a very sad episode in a lot of ways.
So that's an appropriate emotional tone to start it off with. Ye,
the fuck Spain throws down a current Spain is not
your fault. Um. So we're gonna be talking about the
Spanish Civil War today. Uh. And we left off last

(02:13):
time with the establishment of an actual, like real, fat,
organized fascist party in Spain. The Philogists, Um, they went
the first, but they were the first to kind of like,
I don't get it right, is a weird phrase to
apply to fascism, but they were. They were the Spanish
fascists who would, um become kind of the watchword for
Spanish fascism. When people talk about the fascists in Spain,

(02:34):
they're talking about the philogists, you know, yeah, the philangers
um fa lenx is, which kind of also I think
that I think philanges comes from fai lenx because it's
that word for that Greek military. You know, we have
a shiploaded dudes standing in like a series of lines,
all supporting each other in kind of like a hand
I don't know, that'd be my guess. I'm not a worder.

(02:56):
So the oddest thing about the phlogists, um is that
alone among fascists pretty much any period I'm aware of,
they well except for maybe the modern period, they were
giant wusses to start out with. And this may be
due to the fact we've talked a lot about how
like World War One is why the Italian and German
fascists were terrifying people, um because they, you know, we're

(03:18):
very comfortable killing people. Spain stayed out of World War One.
Most of the early fascists were like more on this,
like fascist intellectuals than street fighters, and they weren't initially
very willing to use force. Now they talked about violence
a lot. Um and Jose Antonio, their leader, was definitely
a fascist, but he was very uncomfortable with physical violence,

(03:40):
even when when it was directed at him and it
was repeatedly, he was loath to actually organize retaliatory violence.
During his speech he gave after his party's unification with
the John Seasta's, a leftist gunman opened fire, intending to
kill Jose Antonio and instead killing a spectator and wounding
for other people. The fascists launched no reprisals against theft
in response, which is like you you look at Germany

(04:02):
or Italy's is very strange, yeah, very different than it
was elsewhere. Um. And the kind of unwillingness in this
period of the fascists to use violence lead one columnist
for a right wing newspaper to note sarcastically, so that
everything will be incongruous here, it is that the fascists
who are made to swallow castor oil, which is referring

(04:23):
to the fact that in Italy the fascists would force
castor oil down the throats of their enemies to make
them ship themselves sometimes to death, like it was a
horrible torture, Like they thought it was funny, but it
killed people. And this guy's being like in Italy, the
fascists make their enemies drink castor oil. Here, we have
to drink the castor oil, right, because we're not willing
to use violence. Um, that's weird. It is very odd.

(04:45):
It does not last. But this is a period of
time early in the fascist So also, every black person's
grandma made them drink castor oil at some point. Sucks
one of those you know that, you know that that
image macro from from the movie Predator where uh those
two guys are shaking hands and meeting in the middle. Yeah,

(05:08):
Italian fascists and black grandma's feeding people castor oil. Yes,
dang it. Grandma's stomach was just just give me. Look,
it had been fine. Just let me drink some water.
God drink this cast or. Can't tell her no either,
tell the black woman no, I dare you. And they were,

(05:28):
you know, the Italians were giving people much larger like
it killed people sometimes. Yeah, other Phalangists leaders were happier
to endorse physical violence than Jose Antonio was. But for
a little while. Initially, a number of them kind of
felt like it was good to have some of their
members gutted down by the left. When one Phalangist was
killed in the movement's first street fight, it was thought
that the brawl had been a successful baptism of fire. Basically,

(05:52):
we're trying to ramp these people up to violence, so
it's good that we're like this. It's positive for us
that we're being tested with like deadly force. Um. This
was some people's attitude initially, but the deaths kept coming,
and for a while they were entirely caused by leftists.
Most of this violence occurred between nineteen thirty four and
nineteen thirty six, during a period of escalating political violence

(06:12):
that historians call the militarization of politics during the Second Republic.
And when you're talking about at least the violence that
was between fascists and the left, it was pretty one
sided for a while. While fascists being fascists always talked
about violence, Jose Antonio particularly resisted putting the party on
a militant footing. Now, this was unpopular within the movement,

(06:34):
and one internal meeting, Jose Antonio expressed his desire to
engage the left in the dialectic of fists and pistols.
But he was kind of being more metaphorical than anything right,
like we're gonna have like the verbal equivalent of war,
and he was kind of himing and hawing around because
he wasn't really willing to commit fully at this point. Meanwhile,
one of his colleagues in the same meeting expressed a

(06:54):
desire to treat leftists as enemies in a state of war. Now,
there were discussions with the party of overthrowing Jose Antonio
and replacing him with a more violent fascist because he
just wasn't willing to kill fast enough um and these
suggestions were shot down because they couldn't really exist without him.
At this point. The police kept shutting down their party offices,
so the only place they could gather was Jose Antonio's

(07:16):
law offices. He was also like the one who had money,
um and so they couldn't A lot of people were
angry at him, but they couldn't really exist without him.
Um on A Simo Redondo, who was another phalangeious leader
uh and probably the one who urged violence most openly
around the same time, was very willing to kind of
go against Jose Antonio and say people like we should

(07:37):
be we should be ready to kill people in the streets.
In December of nineteen thirty three, he promised his followers
a situation of absolute violences approaching. And I'm gonna quote
now from a speech he gave to Phalangeist youth, young workers,
young Spaniards. Prepare your weapons, get used to the crack
of the pistol. Caress your dagger. Be inseparable from your
vindictive club. Young people must be trained in physical combat,

(08:00):
must love violence as a system, must arm themselves with
whatever they can, and must be prepared to finish off
by whatever means. A few dozen Marxist impostors. There's a
lot that's in there. Yeah, I'm really And when he's
saying there, when he especially when he says they must
love violence as a system, he's kind of yeah, spanishifying
the concept the Italians had and that the Germans developed

(08:22):
of like the cult of action for action's sake, the
almost this almost worship of violence as an an end
in and of itself. Um, you're seeing that start to
percolate into Spanish fascist culture in this period. Now more
than a dozen Phalangists and other fascists were killed by
anarchists and communists before the fascist right properly organized itself

(08:43):
for violence, but organized themselves for violence they did, and
I'm gonna quote now from the book Fascism in Spain.
The point of inflection in the political violence took place
on Sunday, June tenth. The Chibberries of the Young Socialists
had been prohibited by authorities from marching in the streets
of Madrid, but during the warm weather organized regular weekend
outings to the Casa de Campo recreation area on the

(09:04):
west side of Madrid. On the tenth a group of
Phalangists intercepted them, and the usual fight took place. An
eighteen year old Phalangists, Juan Queler, son of a police inspector,
was killed and his corpse was subsequently mutilated, his head
apparently crushed with rocks. One of Ansaldo's squads was quick
to respond, allegedly without obtaining approval from the tree embers
who directed the party. The Fascist Party later that evening,

(09:26):
as a bus transporting the Young Socialist excursionists unloaded some
of them in Madrid, a car full of Phalangist Pistolero's
personally led by Ensaldo, who's a fascist militant, was waiting.
It slowly passed the young couple on the sidewalk, spraying
them with bullets. A twenty year old shop clerk, Juanito Rico,
was killed. The Phalangists claimed she had been involved in
desecrating the corpse. Her twenty one year old brother was

(09:47):
left permanently disabled and several others were wounded. Four days earlier,
a Phalangist smallholder in Torre perogl Jane Province had been
killed during a farm workers strike. So that Queller was
the fifteenth or sixteenth John Cisto or Phale and just
killed since the John ceased to teenager had been slain
by assault guards, which are like socialist militants, and uh
May of nineteen thirty two, all the others had been

(10:09):
killed by the left. Though numerous leftists had been injured
by philogists and street of phrase and university assaults, Rico
was the first leftist fatality at their hands for years.
She would be commemorated as the first victim of fascism
in Spain. So that's really the start of Yeah, yeah,
there's so much there, man, Like, first of all, I'm
still dangling at the phrase dialectic of fists and pencils.

(10:33):
I'm like, that's that's raptists and pistols. Yeah and pencils. No, no,
fist dialectic a fist like a conversation that involves yeah, yeah, yeah,
no I I actually yeah, yours is better. Yeah. I
was like yeah, I was like yo, those are bars man, Okay.
And then also, you know, there's there's a part of

(11:02):
you know, and then it's a strange like survival tactic
or just just a byproduct of like just being around
like inner city just kind of like gang violence that
like you the desensitization of it, like where you're just like,
you know, people die daily, you know what I'm saying,

(11:23):
Like you just kind of like get used to and
used to such a bad word to explain what I'm
trying to say. But no, no, you, but you get it.
It's like violence is just a part of life and
and it but it's still like even knowing that, you know,
I'm an adult, you know, and I'm moved out, we
you know, done so many different things now and it's
not like I still don't live in an active community.

(11:45):
But like, um, at the same time, though, like you know,
like I was crazy, Like, okay, so that shooting, the
shooting at that walmart in Texas, Uh yeah, yeah, the
A Chance shooting. Yeah, Like I watched the video of

(12:07):
like a cell phone video of like you know, like
a hood dude that was at the walmart that I
when the shooting started, he was just like that, that's
crazy fool shooting. We probably better slide out. How calm
he was is because of how we grew up, you
know what I'm saying. So you're just like somebody got
a tech. That's a tech. I know what that is.
You know what I'm saying. And it's like it's so weird.

(12:31):
It's just a weird thing. So we So when I
hear this, when I hear y'all talk, when you know,
we talk about this like moment of this like political upheaval,
there's still part of me that goes, but I still
don't understand why you're killing each other, you know what
I'm saying. And then and then the idea of how
I gave that whole preference to say, it's still jolting

(12:57):
to hear the type of like mutilation now he has
with a rock. And then like like got dog, like
you know, you know, I like crazy, you gotta be
to blunt force trauma killer person like that's it's just
I don't know anyway, it's just going on here. I

(13:19):
think you're It's very important to point out the desensitization
that occurs during this that that's why the phrase is
used that like um um, the militarization of politics. It's
a process that starts in thirty one and doesn't really
reach its apothesis until ninety six when the Civil War starts.
But it's a process of getting people ready to that

(13:40):
of escalating street violence. And you see that just within
the Fascist party, where initially the fascists are willing to fight.
There's brawls in the street from day one, right as
soon as there's fascists, before the John Z Eastas merge
with UM with Jose Antonio's group, there's street fighting and stuff.
But it when the killing starts, a lot of these
fascists because these are not and and again we get

(14:01):
to the civil war, a significant chunk of the fascist
military are combat veterans, and and these are the guys
who come up from Africa. Um. But these these dudes
who are actually in Iberia, they don't have experience killing people,
not not by and large, and it takes number one,
it takes time of some of them being killed before
they really start responding with deadly violence as a matter

(14:23):
of course. And once you have that on both sides,
once you have anarchists and communists and and other kinds
of like left socialists killing fascists in the streets and
fascists committing murder right back and vice versa, then you
have this. It starts to ramp up the whole kind
of level of comfort with deadly violence in society up
to a level that you can have the kind of

(14:44):
war that we're about to talk about it. But you're right,
it is a process um and I think in terms
of like how people would justify like bashing the kid's
head in with Iraq and desecrating his corpse, It's less
about that guy. It's not that individual dude. They were
probably angry, but they're looking at what's happening in Spain
and in Germany and what fashion the concentration camps that
have already been set up, the mass executions of leftists

(15:06):
in Italy and in Germany, the thousands who are already dead,
and they're going the only way to stop that here
is to kill as many of And and you can
argue that was that that was the wrong tact. Take that.
You could argue that you could argue that it actually
raised the level of violence to a point where you
were able to have this open conflict that the left
doesn't win. But at the time, all they know is

(15:28):
they see what's happening in Germany and in Italy, and
they think, I don't know what else to do but
be violent, you know, and I yeah, it's it's fucked
like the whole situation. But yeah, it's like, yeah, that's
the thing where you're like, okay, they you know, the
streets that that's like, you know, they take one, we
take four exactly one of ours. We kill for yours,

(15:48):
you know. And and it's supposed to be the turrent.
And that means like, okay, so I'm saying this to say,
don't kill ours. Yeah, and you call it, I mean,
it is street ship. But it's also like U S
military policy and massive retaliation, right, And this is what yes,
speaking of us in speaking of like US history, recent

(16:08):
history and the history of like terrorism on the right.
Tim McVeigh when he blew up the Murra Building was
very consciously being like, this is the kind of reaction. Uh,
this is like I am attacking the government because they
killed all these people in Waco, and I learned that
this is an acceptable His argument was, I learned this
was an acceptable way to respond to violence because that's
how the military trained me. Right. You can quibble with

(16:31):
how honest McVeigh was being there, but like hard not
to see some through lines. You know, you look at
the first Iraq War or the more reason like, right,
it's it is the way everything works, right, yeah, how
how the idea of how the idea of Pearl Harbor,
Yeah is equivalent to rosiuma yeah right, yeah, well you
take out a base, we take out an island. Yeah,

(16:53):
it's like yeah yeah, and collective punishment. There's a lot
to say about all of that. We need to move
on to the rest. T Yeah, this because I'm pretty
sure you wrote seventy yeah, more or less. Now, while
all of this was happening, while the Philangists were starting
to commit murder and stuff, and and the street fighting
between left and right is escalating in Spain, well, all

(17:13):
this is happening on the ground, the political situation and
like the actual like elected politics and stuff, is continuing
to unravel, and this is due in large part to
the fact that the Africanistas, who were again the members
of the Spanish military who had fought in Morocco, were
increasingly frustrated with the Republic in nineteen thirty two, So
just like a year after the Republic starts, one general,

(17:33):
a guy named san Juro, launches a coup that fails.
But rather than wonder if the African Eestas weren't a
problem and a threat to democracy, the government brought in
Franco and his foreign legion to massacre anarchists and communists
during their nineteen thirty four uprising, where the foreign legion
executes more than a thousand people. Um. So, the Republic
knows that the military these African veterans are a problem

(17:56):
and also uses them to crush the left when the
left rises up because you know, governments generally smart. Um
So a gap begins to form during the Republican period
between the the the the junta's officers and the Peninsula
who supported the Republic, and the African and Eistas who
the Junta is called stormtroopers. Um. Now, by nineteen thirty six,

(18:19):
the political situation, which had simmered for years, broke out
into an open boil. The explanation as to why starts
with the Popular Front. In nineteen thirty four, the USSR
announced that given the worldwide advance of fascism, it was
now acceptable for good communists to make political alliances with
other left wing groups. This included both moderate liberals and
people like anarchists and even in some cases like Trotskyists,

(18:41):
which communists trot Skits are communists too. They don't like
each other, right, Um, and this is this is a
real big change. And we talked about in our in
our the non Nazi bastards who made Hitler. One of
the reasons why the left failed to stop the Nazis
is that the Communist Party in Germany, which you know,
generally under orders from Moscow UH called the Social Democrats

(19:04):
social fascists. And I'll admit right now we weren't entirely
fair to the Communists in that episode. The Social Democrats
did some really fucked up stuff to the Communists that
we will talk about later in this very series. Um,
they had good reasons to distrust the Social Democrats, that said,
the failure to work with them to stop Hitler was
very clearly a mistake. Like, and the USSR admits them

(19:25):
is like, you know what, maybe maybe it's necessary in
countries facing fascism for there to be for for us
to allow communists are kind of communists at least to
have a broad popular front with other people in the left. UM.
And this is a very successful idea politically. UM. And
in fact, there was also a Popular Front in France
that that succeeded in pushing some major reforms, and we
will talk about that later too. The tactic worked very

(19:48):
well politically electorally in Spain. The Popular Front swept the
nineteen thirty six elections UM, but in a way that
will be familiar to everyone listening. They did so in
a way that enraged the right wing, and it's not
hard to see why the right felt like they've been cheated.
Right Wing parties pulled four million, five hundred and five thousand,
five hundred and twenty four votes and gained a hundred

(20:10):
and twenty four seats in the ninety six election. Now,
the Popular Front only got about a hundred and sixty
thousand more votes, but they gained two hundred and seventy
eight seats, So they get a hundred and sixty thousand
more votes in an election with nine or ten million
votes twice as many seats. You can see why people
on the right would be like kind of piste about this. Right. Um,
and there may have been cheating. I don't really know,

(20:31):
like it's I'm not going to get into whether or
not there was cheating. What's important is that the right
felt that they had been cheated, right. That's what actually matters,
as opposed to whether or not there was um any
kind of electoral malfeasance. Um. And of course the c
e d A, that Catholic kind of right wing party
that's the dominant right wing party, and the Phalangists the
fascists absolutely would have cheated themselves in this election and

(20:53):
they actually they probably did. Um. And as a matter
of fact, when Roblez, the head of the c e
d A, realized that he wasn't going to be a
winted prime minister after the nineteen thirty six election, he
started negotiating with Africans to generals to try to convince
them to do a coup, to force it, like, to
put him into power um as a dictator basically uh.
And he failed, but there was a lot of sympathy

(21:13):
for the ideal. While the left looked at the Phalanges
and the C. E. D A and saw Hitler and Mussolini,
the right looked at the Popular Front and saw it
as the inevitable prelude to Soviet style state communism. Uh
and I'm going to quote from a write up in
lumen dot UK right now. When this coalition came to power,
popular unrest in the countryside exploded into land seizures, encouraged

(21:35):
by radical anarchists. So as soon as like the Popular
Front wins the election, the anarchists are like, we're we're
going to do our thing now, like it's time to
it's time to take power for the people. There was
little attempt by the anarchists to moderate their behavior and
no demands to allow the Popular Front to reassure moderate elements.
In Spain, a C and T, which is an anarchist
party conference held in May nineteen thirty six, was full

(21:55):
of revolutionary language. It seemed that the New Republic had
not been able to control the major revolutionary group. The
murder of a former finance minister, Jose Calvo Sotelo, on
thirteenth July nineteen thirty six was the trigger for the war,
and much the same way as the assassination of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand had sparked the First World War. Sotelo had
been an exile from nineteen thirty one to thirty four,

(22:15):
but had returned to become a leading right wing figure
associated with the Spanish Fascists and a deputy for the
Spanish Revival Group. He clashed with the socialists and the
Assembly and was murdered by left wing members of the
Civil Guard. So you have a couple of things happened.
The Popular Front wins election, the anarchists just start seizing
the ship out of land and saying, like the revolution,
We're doing a revolution. Um, it's happening. And at the

(22:38):
same time, another left wing group of left wing people
murders a popular right wing politician. Um. So this all
kind of snowballs into the start of the Civil War,
you know, Uh Okay, Now, when the c e d
A lost the election, that was kind of it for them. Um,
and most of the party, like after failing to win

(22:59):
in thirty six, just kind of gets fully on board
with authoritarianism. One scholar writes that everyone got the message
to quote abandon the ballot box and take up arms.
The c E d AS youth movement collapses. Yeah, yeah,
that's so like the the Young Republicans. Basically they collapse
overnight and they all joined the Falange. So all of

(23:19):
the young like conservatives who had been in the c
E d A and trying to get out the vote,
immediately joined the Fascist Party and start picking up guns. Um,
and street fighting and political murders reach a fever pitch
in this in this period. Now, the quote I read
earlier mentioned land seizures by the CNT and other groups
of anarchists um, And it's actually true that in the

(23:40):
trade unions major strongholds, the areas where the anarchists the
Anarchist Trade Union was most powerful Barcelona, Zaragosa and Seville,
there was actually very little in the way of like
strikes or mass demonstrations in the lead up to the war.
The CNT tried to keep their people kind of calm um.
But there are a lot of their anarchists, right, A
lot of them aren't part of the CNT, and a

(24:00):
bunch of them and a bunch of socialists occupy land
in battle Yaws which took over seventh and like this
land occupation. I mentioned at the start of the Republic
that they took about ten percent of the undeveloped land
and gave it to peasants. This occupation of land in
battle Yaws takes seven times that much land and starts
redistributing it to like peasants um. And this fucking terrifies

(24:21):
the rich people in Spain. If you've at this point,
the anarchists have fucked with the money, right, I've talked
about about the money, funked up the money. I talked
about how like Trump a big part of why on
the day on the six, like all these fucking banks
started coming out of like Chase Bank and Chevron or
like yeah, like condemning President Trumble because with the money,
you can't suck up the money. Dot can't suck up

(24:43):
the money. And of course anarchists are all about like
they want to funk up the point, which is one
of the things I like about them, not saying that's wrong,
but they funk up the money, and that that gets
a lot of the a lot of rich people, a
lot of like the Spanish kind of like ruling class
on board some sort of revolution and against the left.
Now in Spain. The seizure of about yas convinces a

(25:06):
lot of these like rich people that the government can't
guarantee stability anymore. So while past coup attempts by generals
had generally folded due to a lack of support from
the dominant classes who didn't want to see a coup right,
they didn't like the left, but I don't want to
have like a coup again, by nineteen thirty six, a
lot more of those folks are like, you know what,
it's either a coup or we don't get to be
rich people anymore. And they do what rich people do.

(25:28):
Who it is, who it is. So the government had
known that the African EASTA generals weren't super trustworthy, which
is why they tried to post the ring leaders, General
Franco and a guy named General Mola to the Canary
Islands and Pamplona, respectively, right keep them out of the
center of ship. But these guys were still collaborating with
a codra of other officers, and on July seventeenth, under

(25:49):
orders from Franco, troops and Morocco rebelled and obviously the
foreign legion are kind of like the core of this
over the next three days, military units and commanders all
over Spain rose up against the legitimate government, and the
hope from Franco and his fellows had been that they
would swiftly take control of major cities, jail their political opponents,
and install a dictator like they've done with de Rivera,

(26:10):
not all that long ago, right, Vera comes to power
like a decade or so earlier. So they were hoping
it would follow that trend. But the left was way
more organized now and it did not work out that way.
And I'm gonna quote now from a write up in
the New Left Review. Confidence in a rapid rebel victory
was quickly dispelled when the insurrection in most major cities,
notably Madrid and Barcelona, was crushed in the streets by

(26:33):
a combination of loyal security forces and political and trade
union militants. Where this combination failed or the security forces
went over to the rebels, the rising was almost immediately successful,
as in Seville and Saragosa. The fact that less than
half the army and security forces united behind the rebellion
was the principal reason why the coup failed in its
principal objective and turned into a civil war. Now that's

(26:54):
not the unified opinion on things, right, the idea that yeah,
they're they're significan a debate over why the coup failed, right,
because who does fail? Right? The speciest win in the end,
but they don't get they don't succeed by coup. They
have to fight a war, and a lot of scholars
will actually argue A lot of them will argue that, well,
it was the security because most of the security forces

(27:16):
didn't go with the rebels. That's why the rebels didn't
win immediately. A lot of scholars will also argue that
actually the bulk of the credit for halting rebel victory
goes to local militias, which are kind of spontaneously organized
just because a bunch of people started picking up guns.
The argument is that in the wake of the coup,
the Spanish military and the Republican government lost basically all

(27:37):
cohesion incredibility, which they did, right, Like half of your
military like decides to overthrow the government. Not a lot
of people had to have faith in the government and
the arrest of all can stop these people from taking
my land from me? Yeah, like y'all. And the reason
that Franco and his allies these scholars who will kind
of take this out of it argue that the reason

(27:57):
Frankoin his allies didn't win immediately that hundreds of thousands
of civilians took to the streets and these is a
general rule in the early days, these citizens militias. Um.
These people were just like picking up their grandpa's hunting
rifle or in a lot of cases, looting sporting goods stores,
like busting like busting into like a fucking a sportsman
warehouse and just taking all the guns. Okay, like we

(28:18):
need guns, these guys have them, let's grab them. Um.
And you know there's later too, there's looting off like
military barracks is. But like, yeah, they just get whatever
guns they fucking can and they start fighting the Africanistas,
who are at that point very experienced, disciplined and well
equipped veterans. UM. So it's like this mix if you've
got hundreds of thousands of men and women, because women

(28:40):
are a part of the fighting forces briefly in this period,
just picking up whatever guns they can get and going
to war against one of the most veteran military units
in all of Europe. Um in his nineteen eight six
essay on the matter, Morae. Book Chin writes quote to
have stopped Franco's Army of Africa, composed of foreign legionnaires
and Moorish mercenary perhaps the bloodthirsty ist and certainly one

(29:02):
of the most professionalized troops at the disposal of any
European nation at the time, and it's well trained civil
guards and political auxiliaries would have been nothing less than
miraculous once it established a strong base on the Spanish mainland.
That hastily formed untrained and virtually unequipped militiamen and women
slowed Franco's army's advance on Madrid for four months and
essentially stopped it on the outskirts of the capitol, is

(29:24):
a feat for which they have rarely earned the proper
tribute from writers on the civil war of the past century. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
just everyone picking up their guns and being like fuck
these guys, right, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I
think there's like this, you know, um yeah. The miracle

(29:45):
that they was actually able to stop this fool or
these dudes is like yeah, it's I mean, obviously ultimately
they don't, but like that, I think about like what
we used to call like like dad strong, you know,
like you just you're you don't you know, your dad's strong,
but you don't, like you don't really believe it, you

(30:06):
know what I'm saying. And then you're like, then you're
sixteen and you want to like throw hands with him,
you know what I'm saying, and then he just lays
you out flat, you know what I mean. You're like,
I don't I I didn't expect you to be this strong,
you know that? To me sometimes it's like I feel
like that with like military dudes that are like super trained,
where it's like you think, you think you can take them,

(30:30):
and then you're like, oh, yeah, no, you're actually trained.
This is not a game. So so knowing that, but
then the fact that just the that these just untrained
militias were still able to like, yeah, pull this off,
you know, in four months of brutal fighting. Yeah, and
they lose a funk load of thousands like and it

(30:53):
and it is. It is a very lopsided kill ratio
at this point, right because you're you are these are
some of the most veteran military units in all of Europe,
right um, going up against like fucking grandpa and grandma
with hunting rifles right, Yeah, it's it's ugly. It is ugly,
but they they slow, They stopped Franco from winning in

(31:16):
the thirties six, you know, and there seems to be
very little debate about that that they were Some people
argue how critical, but they were critical in stopping the nationalists,
which is what the other thing. The rebels are called
at the gates of Madrid, and they're not the only ones.
We'll talk a little bit about the We're gonna talk
about the international brigades in a second, Um, but first
you have to take an ad break, sir. You know

(31:37):
who else would have stopped Franco at the Gates of Madrid, Sophie. Yeah,
Sophie would have. Um, Sophie would have backed by the
militant products and services that support this podcast, Yes, including
Sportsman's warehouse where you two can steal guns to fight
the fat Well now, okay, maybe not not. I might

(31:58):
be the wisest. Okay, we're back back and for a
brief time in nineteen thirty six, the Spanish Republican military
was vastly dominated by, as opposed to like a kind
of traditional military, a dizzying array of independent, interlocking, and

(32:21):
largely democratic militias. Most of the militias are either anarchist
or trotskyist, So there's the the c n T and
the p o u M, and then there's groups that
aren't a part of those, but like a lot, largely
they're either anarchist or kind of trotskyist, and both are
heavily democratic. So men and women take up arms together,
they vote for their leaders, so their officers are elected
in recallable um and yeah, it's it's it is. You know,

(32:44):
there's critiques to make up the system. We'll talk about
that a bit, but that's what the military is at
this point in nineteen thirty six. It's largely just a
funkload of these militias because the actual military is not
in a good way, you know, very chaotic and and
disorganized itself. And in a lot of cases, because of
the fact that a lot of the military had rebelled,
soldiers will leave their units and join militias. So it's

(33:07):
a very complicated Please do not take this as a
comprehensive or particularly in depth explanation of what happens with
the Spanish militia system in the Republican like. It is
incredibly complicated. This is an overview. This is all an overview.
The Spanish Civil War is is very very complex. Um so, yeah.

(33:27):
And while this is happening, while while all these democratic
militias are rising up to fight the fascists in the countryside,
behind the lines and sometimes right up to the lines,
something equally interesting is happening. I'm gonna quote Moray Bookchin's
article here again. The wave of collectivizations that swept over
Spain in the summer and autumn of nineteen thirty six
has been described in a recent BBC Granada documentary as

(33:48):
the greatest experiment and workers self management. Western Europe has
ever seen a revolution more far reaching than any which
occurred in Russia during nineteen seventeen to twenty one and
the years before and after it an anarchist industrial areas
like Catalonia and estimated three quarters of the economy was
placed under workers control as it was an anarchist rural
areas like Aragon. The figure of tapers downward, where the

(34:11):
U G T, which is another group shared power with
the C and T or else predominated fifty and anarchist
and socialist Valencia and thirty in socialist and liberal Madrid
and more thoroughly anarchist areas, particularly among the agrarian collectives.
Money was eliminated and the material means of life were
allocated strictly according to need rather than work, following the
traditional concepts of a libertarian communist society. As the BBC

(34:33):
Granada television documentary puts it, the ancient dream of a
collective society without profit or property was made reality. In
the villages of Aragon, all forms of production were owned
by the community, run by their workers. And again, as
books to notes, this is not you know, this is
different everywhere that in Republican Spain. But in Catalonia, which
has a lot of industrial areas, three quarters of the

(34:54):
industrial economy is directly controlled by the workers manning these
factories as opposed to them like even having elected bosses
and stuff. Um, which is really interesting. Um, it's it's
something that doesn't happen. Yeah, Like how long was it
like kind of working. There's debate as to how long

(35:16):
it worked, but a couple of ye generally speaking, a
year or two. You know, It's it's different in different regions.
We're going to talk about what happens there. Um. Bookshon continues,
the administrative apparatus of Republican Spain belonged almost entirely to
the unions and their political organizations. Police in many cities
were replaced by armed workers patrols. Militia units were formed

(35:37):
everywhere in factories, on farms, and in socialist and anarchist
community centers and union halls, initially including women as well
as men. A vast network of local revolutionary committees coordinated
the feeding of the cities, the operations of the economy,
and the meeting out of justice. Indeed, almost every facet
of Spanish life, from production to culture, bringing the whole
of Spanish society and the Republican zone into a well

(35:58):
organized and coherent whole. This historically unprecedented appropriation of society
by its most oppressed sectors, including women, who were liberated
from all the constraints of a highly traditional Catholic country,
be it the prohibition of abortion and divorce, or a
degraded status in the economy, was the work of the
Spanish proletariat and peasantry. It was a movement from below
that overwhelmed even the revolutionary organizations of the impressed, including

(36:22):
the C and T. Significantly, no left organization issued calls
for revolutionary takeovers of factories, workplaces or the land, observes
Ronald Fraser and one of the most up to date
accounts of the popular movement. Indeed, the C and T
leadership in Barcelona, epicenter of urban anarcho syndicalism, went further
rejecting the offer of power presented to it by President Companies,

(36:43):
the head of the Catalan government. It decided that the
libertarian revolution must stand aside for collaboration with the Popular
Front forces to defeat the common enemy. The revolution that
transformed Barcelona in a matter of days into a city
virtually run by the working class sprang initially from individual
C and T Union impelled by their most advanced militants,
and as their example spread, it was not only large enterprises,

(37:05):
but small workshops and businesses that were being taken over.
So what Bookstion is saying there is this is a
true bottom up revolution. And even in some cases this
the anarchist trade union is like, don't do this, we
need to work with the government. We're not calling for revolution,
and the individual groups of workers are like, no, we're
just going to take over our office. We're just taking over.
That's fine, it's fine. That's fine, um, And it proves

(37:28):
to be a mixed bag, like we'll we'll talk about this.
There's fair critiques about what happens, but it is amazing
and unprecedented and one of the great what ifs of histories.
If there had not also been this massive civil war
and this fascist invasion, might it have worked? You know?
And they're under a pressure that is kind of impossible
to overcome in this invasion. But it is an interesting
question what is Yeah, dude, what is strange? Like it

(37:52):
was strange because we've never seen it, but like, yeah,
what was that year? Like you know what I'm saying,
Like rates were, like what was the I don't say
like petty crimes, you know what I'm saying. Like, one
of these days I will do because I don't know
nearly enough about this. One of these days I would
like to do like a hardcore history link, like a
twelve hour deep dive into the Spanish Civil War where

(38:13):
it's mostly focused on like, yeah, what what are these?
Like what are these your place? The cops with like
citizens patrols? How did that actually work? What was that? Like?
What are what are what are kind of like the
first person accounts we can have of those. Um, obviously
we don't have the time to go into that much
detail today, so but it's definitely like, yeah, that would
that would call for like a twelve hour Yes, yes,

(38:35):
it's a very complicated and this is just I'm hoping
what this mostly does is wet people's appetite to read
more themselves, right, which I am also going to do.
But it's a very interesting period of history. Now, obviously
this system had a number of upsides, if you want
to call it a system. What happens in Spain in
this period has a number of upsides. That mobilizes a
huge portion of the republic citizenry very quickly. Um, it

(38:57):
brings a people into arms very rapid more rapidly probably
than a central government could have done. And these people
were highly motivated to resist fascism. But they also in
large part weren't motivated to live under the republic, and
coordination between all of these groups was very difficult and
sometimes impossible. Meanwhile, the rebels the nationalists had a strict

(39:17):
military hierarchy, and that's a benefit in a war sometimes, right,
it can also be you know, you can you can
look at the Germans in World War DWO. It doesn't
always work out. But when you've got one side that's
made up of a thousand different fractious people who agree
on some things and disagree on a lot, that can
deplete your ability to counterattack and to organize effectively. Meanwhile,
Franco winds up, and you know there's a process. He's

(39:40):
not initially the only guy, but eventually he's the only
dude whose opinion really matters. He's the guy at the
top um and and that happens fairly quickly, and Franco
is able to coordinate a centralized military in order to
like like attack this very decentralized folks. Motherfucker. He's a

(40:00):
sneaky guy. There's also one of his fellow generals dies
in a plane crash, so some of it's just like
dumb lock um. Now, since the c E d A
had failed, that he didn't he Franco didn't really want
to like wrap himself in the c E d a
s flag because they've gotten their asses kicked in the
thirty six selection. And he kind of winds up embracing
the Phalangists. And this is part of why people argue
of Franco himself was really a fascist. If he was

(40:22):
just kind of co opting fascism, I don't really see
the point in getting involved in that. Franco gets in
like wraps himself in the Phalange Party and like like
they become kind of a dominant right wing force in
this in the nationalist cause. Now, Jose Antonio, who had
been the leader of the Phalangists, had been arrested by
the republic right at the start of the rebellion, and
he was almost immediately executed for sedition even though he'd

(40:45):
been incarcerated when the rebellion cooked off. Like, if you
want to argue how just it was, he didn't really
have much to do with it. Um. But they kill him. Um,
And I'm not, I don't care he's a fascist. Like,
I'm not, I'm not gonna weep over him. But Franco
takes Jose Antonio and turns him into a martyr right. Um.
And he also imprisons the guy who takes over the

(41:05):
Phalangists after Jose Antonio, so that he can turn the
Phalangists into his own basically like cult of personality. Yeah, exactly, um,
And Franco co opting the fascists had the side effect
of making this war, which had started as a conflict
between Spanish left and right and a conflict between you know,
the Africanist military and and the Republic, into the world's

(41:26):
first open battle ground between fascism and democracy. And the
first three months of the civil war were some of
the bloodiest. Both sides carried out a horrific series of assassinations.
Is a very the the early period. There's this amazing
rising up of of the people to defend themselves, and
there's also a ton of fucking vigilante murders, and it
does occur on both sides. It's really ugly. And I'm

(41:47):
going to read a quote from the New Left Review here.
Even so, there were significant differences between the massacres on
the left and the right. Many voices unheard on the
rebel side were raised in the Republican zone against the slaughter.
By early September, a new government under Largo Caballero began
to create a semblance of public order, which slowly put
it into the killings there, but not soon enough. News

(42:08):
of the anti clerical violence, which included the disinternament of nuns, coffins,
widespread burning of churches and desecration of religious objects, was
broadcast around the world, creating extremely negative international image of
the Republican zone does not not good optics yet. Yeah yeah, yeah,
look man, yeah, you messing with the nuns. Like we
all like, yeah that the nuns are fine guys. Yeah,

(42:30):
and we felt earlier about how like you can you know,
there's arguments to be made about like obviously there's a
lot of problematic priests part, but disentering nun's coffins, there's
really not that I know of. They're like, come on, okay, guys. Yeah,
and it it is bad for the early rebel pr

(42:51):
Now on the rebel side, with occasional exception, tight censorship
kept the assassinations out of the news. The Church, which
would soon sanctify the insurgents War a religious crusade, turned
a blind eye, though hundreds of clergy were witnessed the
oppression executed not only by the military but by Philangists
and normally law abiding conservative Catholic citizens. So, of course
the church is both victim and perpetrator and a lot

(43:13):
of and the death toll is much higher in terms
of people killed by the right than people killed by
the left. Um and again on in the Republic there's
outcries against the vigilante violence, and on the right there's like,
don't talk about it, keep killing people, don't talk stop
just stop putting it on TV, like do what you
gotta do. But hey, yeah, Now, on the Republican side,

(43:35):
the two largest left wing groups at the start of
the war, because the communists are very small at the
start of the war. Again, because Spain doesn't industrialize into
a lot later than a lot of the it doesn't
have a very powerful communist party at this period. At
the start of things, the two largest and left wing
groups are the anarchists and the Trotskyists, and they were
immediately torn between stopping fascism at all costs and of

(43:56):
course funk the state right like there's a there's this
is a tough choice for them. Now. The CNT, the
largest anarchist organization, lands on the side of allying with
the state to fight fascism, but many local workers councils
were not on board. Now. While this is happening in
the early part of the war, the communists very quickly
come to hold significant power within the confusing and fractious

(44:18):
Republican military establishment. Now and they grow rapidly at this
period too, and this is due to the pretty sensible
fact that the communists had a communist state, the USSR,
that they could go to and beg for aid, right
the like the USSR is provides aid. We'll talk about
that a bit more to the Republicans. And so the
Communists very quickly gain a lot of power within the

(44:40):
military establishment of the Republic. Now, unfortunately, the fascists also
had states they could go to for help, Italy and Germany,
and from the very beginning of this war they're Italian
and German troops fighting on the ground alongside the nationalist
Spanish troops um And unfortunately for everybody, the fascist states
were way more willing to provide direct aid to their
side than the Communists were. I'm gonna quote again from

(45:02):
the New Left Review here. Without Fascist aid, most of
it provided on credit, the rebels would not long have
been able to continue the war, let alone win it.
Aside from the Nazis condor legion, Germany and Italy together
provided tens of thousands of troops, mainly Italian, nearly six
hundred war planes, thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of
field guns. Equally important were the three point five million

(45:24):
tons of oil provided on credit by Texico and Shell,
double the amount imported by the Republic, without which Franco's
army could not have maneuvered as rapidly as it did. So. Yes,
the victory of the fascists in Spain is a great
deal to our good friends Texico and Shell. O my
Texico and Shell. Should we back fascists or not? Fashion fascists?

(45:46):
Of course we're Texico. Yeah. Yeah, Oh my god. They
don't talk about that no more. No, let me tell
you the last two names. I thought you was going
to say right now, yeah, Texico and Shell. Like I
was like, wait, wait what yah? Yeah? Uh So. Not

(46:07):
wanting to provoke Britain and France, with whom he was
still seeking an anti fascist alliance, Stalin initially held back,
but blatant Nazi and Fascist intervention increasingly alarmed him, ensuring
that all European powers were made aware that Soviet aid
to the Republic was not in support of advancing revolution.
In October nineteen thirty six, the first Soviet shipment of
arms and the first contingent of the International Brigades reached

(46:28):
Madrid and the nick of time to help prevent the
capital's fall and all the Soviet unions since seven hundred
war planes and four hundred armored vehicles, plus some two
thousand pilots, engineers, military advisers, and in k v D
secret police. Now there's a lot. We're going to talk
a lot about criticisms of Soviet AID and of Soviet
policy in this and there are a lot of valid
ones to give. But it's also worth noting that Soviet

(46:49):
AID was absolutely crucial in stopping Madrid from falling when
Franco made his first advance, right, the militias slowed it down,
but without this hard core military equipment, they probably don't
stop Franco from taking Madrid in ninety six. You know,
I was gonna say, like, uh, that like tradition of
like Communist Russia AID, I've been I've been thinking about

(47:17):
that a little bit, Like you know, I'm I'm stretching
this as far as this this idea that like the
way that they exported AID in communists like block countries
like you know, at the like there was once upon
a time, like North Korea was actually doing way better
than South Korea, you know, because of this Communists AID.

(47:39):
You know what I'm saying, a number of other reasons
to like the nature of the Japanese invasion. But yeah, absolutely,
you know. And then when I think about like Cuba
and I got I got friends from like you know,
South Africa, Western African countries, Zambia, all these things, and
they're like, yo, you could say whatever you want. They're
like every every every nation in Africa got a Cuban doctor.

(48:04):
You know what I'm saying. It just this idea that
like it was like it's just like when you the
more I traveled, the more I started going day, maybe
they just think about aid and they this is Understaalin.
It's very like, for one thing, the Cuban medical aid,
which is incredible. The way that the Cuban government sends
out doctors, what Cuban doctors do and have been doing

(48:27):
for decades is absolutely amazing, and as far as I know,
it is done without any sort of hope of recompense.
The Soviets are getting paid very well. So when when
Republican Spain happens, when there's this split, the Republic winds
up with Spain's gold stockpile, which is the largest gold
reserves on planet Earth at the time, about eight hundred
and five million dollars and that that time's currency. Um

(48:50):
And while the fascists provided aid to Franco on credit right,
Italy and Germany are like, you don't have to pay now,
We'll just give you stuff and you'll owe us. You'll
pay us later. Um. Stalin's like, I you know, I'm
gonna need some cash up, ye do you? I'm I'm
Joseph Stalin, Like, I don't just give people ship you know.

(49:12):
Um he does later in the war a bit he
was him alone. But where he they they so about
eight five million dollars is what Spain's gold reserves the
Republican Spain's gold reserves are. At the start of the war,
they pour more than five hundred million dollars in gold
into the Soviet Union by the end of the war.
Um And because a lot yeah, and also they have

(49:35):
to they have to burn a bunch of money on
like shady arms dealers and like it's very bad. Like
and a lot of the blame also goes to France,
who makes it difficult to get shipped through the border,
which is why they have to go with arms smugglers
as opposed to just getting weapons directly imported. Um, it's
very messy. The fascists also had the benefit of receiving
much better guns um. And I don't know how much

(49:56):
you can blame the Soviets for this. The Germans had
the best weaponry and the planet at this point in time,
so the quality of arms that Franco receives blows everything
Soviet out of the water. Now, a lot of the
blame for the Republic's loss tends to go to Stalin
and the u s s R. But if we're really
being and that like when you read articles trying to
like a lay blame, a lot of people will put

(50:17):
blame on Stalin in the USSR, and there are very
legitimate things to criticize them about. But if we're truly
being fair, the foreign nations most responsible for the victory
of fascism in Spain where the United States, England and
France um, because the entire free world basically engaged in
a policy of non intervention within the Spanish Civil War.

(50:37):
This was part of the appeasement policy that the British
were doing with the Germans at the time, and they
were trying to get the Germans basically agreed to neutrality
in the war, and Germany would put some lip services
at this, but they didn't like they sent soldiers and
planes and arms in both fascist states intervened directly, which
meant that the Republic of Spain was standing on their
own against the entire fascist international fact Spain, fascist Italy,

(51:01):
fascist Germany. And they have some backup from the Soviets,
and that's it, right. Everyone else is like fuck you,
the French closed the border. We're not jumping in. Yeah,
the Democrats and this is again part of why this
the communists their criticisms of decisions made by Communist advisors
and communist leaders in the Spanish Republican cause. The reason
the Communists wind up in power largely in the Spanish

(51:24):
Republican side is because the democracies are like, oh, we
don't want any part in this ship. Right, could have
been different, if you know, damn right. Yeah, so I
can't blame the USSR here, you know. Yeah that's good dude,
because it's like, yeah, you getting you see a homeboy
getting like slept, you know what I'm saying, Like somebody
just brought the night quill, just knocking the holme me out,
and then everybody jumping into help, and you're like, well,

(51:46):
I thought we all agreed we weren't going to jump in. Yeah,
but like, if you isn't good at throwing a haymaker,
it's not really his fault. He fucking tried. You're the one.
None of y'all was jumping in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um So,
the like the failure of the democratic world, so to speak,
to get involved in any kind of organized way is

(52:08):
one of the great tragedies and maybe one of the
reasons World War two happens, right, maybe one of the
reasons why no, no, no, this is this is FDR FDR. Yeah,
because I watched the speech about this time of him
explaining why he was like, we don't want no parts
of this. I remember, I remember exactly, but I remember

(52:29):
being really interested in the fact that like, yeah, like
you know, awesome, Like look, we like some isolation and stuff, awesome,
Like look, man, we got our own problems here. Man.
We look, we just we can't even feed ourselves. Like
I'm not gonna like send people. Maybe we should stay
out of this one. Yeah, that's that. That is very
much the attitude and the the fascists use Spain, particularly Germany,

(52:53):
you Spain as a testing ground for new weapons and tactics,
particularly their new air force because the air and the
concept of an air force is very new. There had
been air forces in World War One, but they mostly
just shot at each other and like spotted right for
artillery and ship. Now you've got bombers right now, Now
you have air tactical air support that can destroy armor
and stuff. And the Spanish civil wars the first time

(53:15):
this really comes together in an organized way, and it
provides the LEFTWAFFA, the Nazi Air Force with a way
to test out its tactics and bombs on Spanish cities
and civilians in many cases. And we'll talk about that
a little bit later in the episode two. But first,
you know who won't attack Spanish cities and civilians with
Stuka dive bombers, And Sophie won't. So Sophie, we might, though,

(53:39):
if you start messing with her products and cyrus. I
have been worried about Sophie's cash of Stuka dive bombers.
I am consumed saying why you have so many cut
to check where my contract? So she might If they don't,
she might they don't money, she might bomb Spain. You
know I've always said that about Sophie. Spain's lucky they
gave us pogosol, or else things might be different. Alright,

(54:05):
here's some products. All right, so we're back now. While
the Republic lacked official international support. Uh so again, the
the governments of the democratic world like, uh, fun, you guys,
like you're on your own right. I don't know, but

(54:26):
an awful lot of their citizens and citizens from like
Poland is a huge number of these guys, an awful
lot of people from around the world. Individual people correctly
see that, like, well, I don't live in Spain, but
I don't like fascism, and I think that whatever happens
in Spain will probably directly impact my future. So I'm
going to go travel to Spain and try to get
ahold of a rifle and shoot some fucking fascists. Um,

(54:50):
A lot of people do this movie. There's a couple
and there's being worked on right now that I hope
will wind up being good. Yeah. There's this c where
Big HOMEI like, uh gives this big speech about why
he's still willing to like from America go volunteer in
this war. I forget the name of this movie, but
it was like a it's an interesting scene about this

(55:11):
time that like, Okay, the government saying we're not going
to do it, but that don't stop me. I could
fly out there, I hope. Yeah. Yeah, you know, there's
a lot of These are the people who recognize what
is a timeless truth, which is that, um, fascism and
authoritarianism in in one part of the world is a
threat to freedom everywhere in the world. And that's the
way it's always been. And we can talk a lot

(55:32):
about the fallout from what happened in Syria. Um, but
you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of
stories of that in history, you know. Um, So while
the Republic lacked, Yeah, so a funklet of people, eventually
something close to forty people will wind up volunteering to
fight in Spain. And two of the first foreigners to

(55:53):
volunteer to fight in Spain where a twenty one year
old classics graduate from Cambridge named Bernard Knox and his
friend John Cornford. They took with them an old pistol
that had belonged to John's Cornfia it's a weird name. Um.
They took with them an old pistol. Yes, Cornford, Sophie,
they took with him. He dies fighting fascists. He's a
good guy. But alright, they took with them an old pistol. Okay, Sophie, sorry,

(56:20):
So they traveled to Spain together with just like nothing
but an old handgun that had belonged to John's dad
in the First World War. Knox had to carry a gun.
The gun because his friend had already been to Spain
once before. And the British policy of non intervention mean
they did everything, meant that Britain like was trying to
actively stop people from going to Spain to fight fascism. Um.
But but Cornford and his buddy join a militia, like

(56:43):
get to Spain, they joined a militia as soon as
they land. Um, which is like at this point one
of the many groups that had taken up arms to
fight against the military coup. Um. And as I had said,
the early days of this war, there's a lot of
women who are fighting in the militia's. This ends at
like the end of nineteen thirty six when Largo Caballero
comes to power because he kind of he argues that
women are needed behind the lines, so they're not really

(57:04):
fighting in the front. After this point, it's a pretty
brief period and that's again a criticism, one of the
good criticisms of the Spanish Republican government is like, well,
I lost out on a lot of soldiers. Huh yeah,
so yeah, people will in a suit. You told him
stay home. In those early days of revolutionary ardor though,
when Cornford and his friend arrive in Spain, uh, like,

(57:27):
Spain is kind of like overtaken by this this feeling
of revolution um and and this is swellowed by the
fact that the people of Republican Spain had literally taken
to the streets to defend themselves in mass and it
lent cities like Barcelona a revolutionary air that international volunteers noticed.
One of those volunteers was a young George Orwell, and
he described the atmosphere in Barcelona as startling and overwhelming

(57:51):
and like a positive sense, just like so incredible, this
like outpouring of of of liberty. Now, the Communist International
or common turn quickly re allies that volunteers like Cornford
represented a massive opportunity, so they devoted some of their
resources to organize in what came to be known as
the International Brigades. So it's it's the Communist who put
together the International Brigades, which are a huge factor in

(58:13):
in both why the republic last so long and why
um it becomes so internationally famous. Although a lot of
these volunteers are anarchists and not communists, you know, it's
a bunch of different kinds and Trotsky like a bunch
of different kinds of people volunteer. And I'm gonna quote
from a rite up on the International Brigades and the Guardian.
Another recruit, Winston Churchill's rebel nephew, Esmond Romilly, had cycled

(58:36):
across France fueled by coffee and kognac before volunteering and
declaring himself a member of that very large class of
unskilled laborers with a public school accent. He sailed on
a boat from Marseilles with watch duties split in two
hour shifts between French, German Poles, Italians, Yugoslav's, Belgians, Flemish
and Russian speakers. And it's yeah, it's very dope. Yeah,

(59:00):
it's it's we're gonna talk mostly it is very dope. Yeah,
Winster Churchill's nephew is showing up. Yeah. It was like
coffee and cone out here with the hobbies, like we're
on the streets right now. I look, I went to
public school, Hobbie. You get this accent? I love it.
I'm like, okay, okay, and it's um and and it's
it's there's a couple of things going on there. Um.
One of them is that like by public school that

(59:21):
in England actually means like a fancy school. So he's like,
I I have I have a public school accent. But
I too am like whatever you call what I call
it an unskilled labor, like I identified okay, that's that's
actually even cooler it is because I don't have to
do this, okay. It's the opposite of like, you know,
that common people thing where it's like I want to be,
you know, like a labor. Is like, well, I want

(59:43):
to be like a laborer. So I'm gonna go stand
with a rifle next to them and fight the fascist,
which yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna talk to
you about you for doing that. And it's also worth
noting we're gonna talk mostly about American volunteers um here.
One of the largest nation is that that a lot
of people volunteer to fight in Spain from is Poland. UM.

(01:00:04):
And obviously Poland becomes the first one of the first
large national victim at least of nazism um. So you
and you can see why, right, Like a lot of
Poles looking at Germany on their doorstep, agitating about taking
back land given to them by Versailla, and you're like,
we should probably go try to stop this. Yeah. So
the invasion of Madrid was the first terrible battle of

(01:00:25):
the Civil War the verse like really massive and important one,
I think. And Franco's colonial army, including the Spanish foreign Legion,
were airlifted from Morocco to Seville by German planes in
order to fight there in an operation that Hitler himself
named Operation Magic Fire, which is based on a part
of a Wagner opera, Franco's Fast. So they and again

(01:00:46):
the bulk of the nationalist troops don't get out of
Africa to fight in Spain without Hitler's airlift. They did,
they had, they would have had because the navy doesn't
go fascist. The Spanish navy, such as it is, stays
loyal um in large part because like there's actually a
lot of spam fish naval officers who try to go
against the Republic and then their crews killed them and stuff.
You know. Um, so the only reason that Franco's army

(01:01:09):
gets to Iberia is because the Nazis airlift them. Um. Now,
Franco's fascist towards tour through Republic territory on their way
to Madrid. They were slowed by the militias um and
eventually turned back by a significant amount of Soviet armored
aid UM. And you know, a lot of people sacrificed
to stop them. But a lot of the credit for

(01:01:30):
finally stopping the fascist advanced on Madrid goes to the
International Brigades who turned back the fascists at a place
called University City, which is like a college campus, in
a heroic defense that has become like very like famous
in history. Now, most of the International Brigade members at
this point were untrained, inexperienced, and nearly all of them

(01:01:51):
were poorly armed. They found themselves confronting a battle hardened
army with cutting edge German weaponry, and somehow they held
the line. Cornford Squad operated a machine gun nest in
the philosophy faculty offices of the University City campus. They
built barricades out of books in order to stop fascist bullets.
The Guardian notes, yeah, okay quote enemy bullets gave up

(01:02:14):
before reaching page three fifty, making them believe old tales
of soldiers saved by bibles in their breast pockets. I
think I killed a fascist, Cornford, a former pacifist, wrote
excitedly to his girlfriend Margot Hyneman on eighth December fifteen
or sixteen of them were running from a bombardment. If
it is true, it's a fluke, that's yeah, yeah yeah,

(01:02:35):
building this entire like building barricades out of philosophy books
to stop fascist bullets. Yeah, it's it's yes. That is
punk rock. He was like about page three as they
can get. Yeah. Uh. Now. The achievement of the International

(01:02:56):
Brigades at University City turned them into a symbol both
in Spain and in worldwide of resistance to fascism. They
also received more international attention because their numbers included men
who spoke dozens of different languages. They were like fifty
four nations represented eventually, and this made it really easy
for the foreign press to to embed with people because
they could find people that they could talk to, you know,

(01:03:16):
like it like as just speaking of somebod who's done
war zone reporting. If there's a group of people like
that that I can embed with. That's what I'm gonna
do because I'll meet other people who are English speakers
and it's way easier to conduct interviews and stuff that. Um.
And of course, the United States was well represented among
the international volunteers. Now, it was very illegal for U.
S citizens to join a foreign military force at this time,

(01:03:39):
but still hundreds and hundreds joined what came to be
known as the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. These soldiers underwent two
weeks of clandestine training near New York City before shipping out.
New York, by the way, was the source of a
huge number of Lincoln Battalion troops. It is worth noting
that about one tenth of foreign Spanish volunteers were Jewish,
so of all of the people who could like and again,

(01:04:00):
it's the same thing as the polls, a lot of
Jewish folks are like, looking at Nazi Germany are like,
we should probably gonna do something about this problem. There's
gonna be a problem for us, I think. Um. And
in fact, American historian and international veteran Albert Prago called
the International Brigades quote the vehicle through which Jews could
offer the first armed resistance to European fascism, and that's

(01:04:23):
pretty rad Now. One of the most notable aspects of
the Abraham Lincoln Battalion is that, in an era in
which racism was almost unbelievably present in American society, and
there in which even the military was heavily segregated, the
Abraham Lincoln Battalion was completely unsegregated. Black men could not
only join, they could become officers and command white troops

(01:04:44):
in battle, and this had never happened in the U.
S s. This point that I am aware of this
brings me to the incredible story of El Word Luteal McDaniels,
and I'm going to quote from a writ up in
the Smithsonian Magazine here. L Lord Lute McDaniels traveled across
the Atlantic in nineteen thirty seven to fight fascists in
the Spanish Civil War, where he became known as El

(01:05:04):
Fantastico for his prowess with a grenade. As a platoon
sergeant with the McKenzie Papinau Battalion of the International Brigades,
the twenty five year old African American from Mississippi commanded
white troops and led them into battle against the forces
of General Franco, men who saw him as less than human.
It might seem strange for a black man to go
to such links to fight in a white man's war

(01:05:24):
so far from home. Wasn't there enough racism to fight
in the United States, But McDaniels was convinced that anti
fascism and anti racism were one and the same. I
saw the invaders of Spain were the same people I've
been fighting all my life, McDaniels says. I've seen lynching
and starvation, and I know my people's enemies. Let's go
First of all, Man's last name is McDaniels, which already

(01:05:48):
tells you someone Yep, you know what I'm saying, So
we know his family story. You know what I'm saying.
And yeah, that just and the Fanessa just just the
culture that you get there and get a nickname immediately,
you know what I'm saying, Like El fantastical because she's
really good at killing fascist at this ship, Dan, I

(01:06:08):
was crazy, I was gonna say that that. Yeah, that
like a stut, like you know, like the observation of
just like where we're just like, look, man, you gotta
trust us. Like I'm trying to tell you this is
the same same ease, like this is the same people
to the people trying to tell you the same problem. Yeah. Now.

(01:06:30):
The United States in this period also banned black men
from serving as fighter pilots, but three black pilots, James Peck,
Patrick Roosevelt, and Paul Williams, served in Spain. Canute Wilson,
a black American volunteer, was the head mechanic for the
International Garage, which maintained all of the Brigades fighting vehicles.
He wrote this of his reasons for volunteering to fight

(01:06:50):
in Spain, and a letter home to his family. We
are no longer in isolated minority group fighting hopelessly against
an immense giant, because, my dear, we have joined with
and become an active part of a great progressive force
on whose soldiers rests the responsibility of saving human civilization
from the planned destruction of a small group of degenerates

(01:07:10):
gone mad in their lust for power. Because if we
crush fascism here, we'll save our people in America and
in other parts of the world from the vicious persecution,
wholesale imprisonment, and slaughter which the Jewish people suffered and
our suffering under Hitler's fascist heels. That is that is sentenced,
that is that is I think there's like this like this,

(01:07:34):
this part of this like longing and I'm going to
speak in like generalities, but just this longing in that
like that African American like the black community, I think
that's gone. That goes very far back to say, surely
not all white people are like this. Yeah, you know
what I'm saying, Like you have you're like this. It
can't be. It can't be all of y'all, you know

(01:07:57):
what I'm saying. So like when you when you find
like I mean, obviously I'm marketing back to history, but
when you like like when you see when you see, uh,
during like the Harlem Renaissance, you see black people going
to going to France and being like, look, there's reasonable
white people. Like I'm telling you there they have to exist,

(01:08:17):
you know, there has it has to exist, you know
what I'm saying. So like it's it's almost like I
hear that in this guy's statement, like look, dude, the
reasonable white people. Yeah. Well, and in speaking about you
know the fact that L word's last name is McDaniels, right,
that probably means that like an Irish person owned his ancestors,

(01:08:40):
not all that far back. We're talking about like like
like let like not all that long ago, like his grandpa. Yeah. Now,
because of the realities of the war, babe, when it
were there were a funkload of Irish volunteers and Irish
American volunteers, which means it's conceivably like part of what
probably happened here is he was leading irishman, Irish descendediment

(01:09:02):
into battles man who had been enslaved by an Irish descendent,
leading them into into combat, which is amazing. Shit happens,
and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, during its brief and and yeah,
it's it's amazing. In some ways, during its brief period
of existence, wartime Republican Spain was in some ways almost
impossibly progressive. In nineteen thirty six, Largo Caballero appointed Federica

(01:09:27):
monts Ceni, a female anarchist, to be the nation's Minister
of Health. Federica immediately set to work focusing the embattled
nations health infrastructure to serve the needs of the poor
and the working class. She believed that health care should
be decentralized, locally organized, and based around prevention rather than treatment.
She was also responsible for making Republican Spain the first

(01:09:48):
nation on Earth to legalize on demand abortion. Wow yeah,
now yeah, there's a lot of really interesting ship yeah
now months Senny was a controversial figure in anarchists, and
she engaged in some pretty officious arguments with Emma Goldman,
who is another very famous anarchist. In particular, and the
general focus of criticism on Monsini and other anarchists who

(01:10:09):
take part in the Republican government, um is on the
subject of whether or not it was ethical for anarchists
to coordinate with governments and with Marxists, because obviously in
the Soviet Union they kill a funkload of anarchists too,
you know. Um, this is a recurring theme in anarchist
history and it's something that's very hotly debated to this day.
I could note here that Nestor mak know who we
talked about in our Christmas episode, also had to thread

(01:10:32):
this moral needle because he collaborated with the post revolutionary
government of Russia, which he didn't like, to fight against
the white forces which were worse. You know, it's a
it's a debate that anarchists have had a number of
times in history, and is never really settled to a
satisfactory degree. But it happens now. A decent number of
the anarchists who fought for Republican Spain would in fact

(01:10:52):
come to regret their collaboration with the government and the communists,
and they had some good reasons to do that. For
one thing, Republican Spain has lost the war. For another thing,
the broad left unity that characterized some of the early
stages of the war did not last. The government of
Republican Spain, which did at one point include four anarchist ministers,
as well as a number of communists and of course

(01:11:13):
many more moderate Republicans, made a lot of tremendous errors.
For one thing, the government fled Madrid while Franco was advancing,
something which hampered their ability to capitalize on the moral
victory of halting the fascists. Right, you can't brag about
it as much because you ran away. You know you
ran though. Yeah. For another reason, starting in late nineteen
thirty six, the Republic's new government embarked on what they

(01:11:34):
called militarization. This involved involved integrating the hundreds of different
militias into the formal Spanish military. On the surface, this
was a sensible call and it may have been the
right one, and it was one that was heavily backed
by communist advisors the USSR had sent in. Many historians
will argue that it was necessary um and and some
of the evidence for this is that, like in February
of nineteen thirty seven, Malaga fell due in part to

(01:11:57):
the fact that it was defended by a patchwork of
militia's that we're not well coordinated. UM. But these militias
that are being inducted into the formal military establishment, a
lot of them have been again anarchist and Trotskyist, and
they've been free democratic fighting units. This led to problems
and there were cases where you know, like whole battalions
would vote to leave combat zones while the fighting was happening.

(01:12:18):
This happened in the Battle of Madrid with when a
guy named Drudy gets killed with like his guys leave UM.
But it also meant so it's not like obviously before militarization,
they decided to militarize because there's a lot of problems
with the fact that all these militias are so decentralized.
These militias are also very motivated and very resistant to
the idea of losing their democratic rights and bring brought

(01:12:39):
under military discipline. UM. So, while a lot of militias
were integrated to the Republican military, a significant number of
fighters refused to join UM And whether or not this
was a good idea is still hotly debated. And George,
a lot of people will argue that because there's kind
of a broad consensus, I would say among a lot
of historians, I read that after the initial period where

(01:13:00):
they were necessary, the militia's kind of hindered things more
than they helped because of how disorganized they were. George
Orwell himself argued against that um and argued in his
opinion at least and he was, you know, his opinion
was as a ground level soldier, that the shortcomings of
the militias system had less to do with the fact
that they were democratic and decentralized and more to do
with the fact that they were inexperienced. And I'm gonna

(01:13:22):
quote Orwell here it's a good argument. Later it became
the fashion to decry the militias and therefore to pretend
that the faults, which were due to lack of training
and weapons, were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually,
a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob,
not because the officers called the private comrade, but because
raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. And a worker's

(01:13:43):
army discipline is theoretically based on class loyalty, while the
discipline of a bourgeoisie conscript army is based ultimately on fear.
The popular army that replaced the militias was midway between
the two types. When a man refused to obey an order,
you did not immediately get him punished. You first appealed
to him and name of comradeship. Cynical people with no
experience handling men, will say instantly that this would never work,

(01:14:05):
but as a matter of fact, it does work in
the long run. Revolutionary discipline depends on an understanding of
why orders must be obeyed. It takes time to diffuse this,
but it also takes time to drill a man into
an automaton on the barracks square. And it is a
tribute to the strength of the revolutionary discipline that the
militias state in the field at all. And or Well
has a good point here, that's a that's a whole

(01:14:28):
there's a whole like worldview, philosophy in those two approaches.
I'm about to compare this to parenting, but yeah, because
like there's parts of me that go, Man, if I
just parented the way I was parented, I see why

(01:14:49):
my parents quicker. You know what I'm saying. It's like,
you know, you're just it's like it's less emotional work
to just be like, hey, it's time to do the dishes.
Wh what why you ever say what I'm saying, dude,
the you got five seconds to get up and do
the dishes, you know what I'm saying. Right, So, and

(01:15:11):
I'm like, y'all, don't care if you you scrunch up
your face how you want to scrunch up your face.
You better hide your emotions. I don't need to see it,
you know what I'm saying, Like that you live here,
you washing dishes? I bought you know, I'm using using water.
I'm paying for him. So I'm black dadding on you.
But like that's the way we was raised, you know
what I'm saying. So Like, but it's just like but

(01:15:32):
I know, the whole time I'm doing this, I'm just like, man,
I can't wait to get out of this house. Man always.
You know what I'm saying, Like I'm just salty. I'm
gonna do it, and I'm not gonna say nothing to it. Yes, sir,
you know what I'm saying. But like I don't like you,
I don't respect this ship. You know what I'm saying.
I'm not doing this because I understand that the dishes
are dirty. I'm doing this because I don't wanna hear

(01:15:54):
your mouth. You know what I'm saying. I don't want
the I don't want the consequences with my child. Now
it's like, hey, the we have we have budgeted the
amount of money we have for our water bill, which
means that we can run our our dishwasher this many
times we need it by We needs to happen by

(01:16:15):
two because when we start cooking dinner, since we in
this quarantine, we need to have clean dishes to do
this or it's gonna pile up. And now it's gonna
be two runs instead of one. So, like you, I
make sure you finish this by two so we can
have plates to eat off when it's time for dinner.
She goes, all right, and it's like and so now
it's like I've included you into this, so you have

(01:16:37):
a steak into Like it's not me being a bully,
it's just I mean it's functional, like we need we
need place to eat off and the dishes are your chore,
so just so do it. So just do it, you
know what I'm saying. And and when she tell me
she don't feel like it, like now I'm not appealing
to like while i'm your father, you do it because

(01:16:58):
I tell you to. I'm appealing to like, yeah, you
don't feel like doing it either, but I also want
something to eat off on dinner. You have saying it.
So she's like all right, yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Like so, and I think, yeah, you can make an
argument that like, you know, you get the dishes done
faster if you're just the If you don't do the dishes,
there's fucking consequences. Then if you explain why it's necessary,

(01:17:19):
but it's a long term results are probably better. The
long term is probably better. So now it's like now
she actually, you know, if some drama going on or
her little friends, she's actually willing to talk to me,
rather like this is oritarian ruler that tells me what
to do all the time. You know, the Will's argument
is that like the long term would have been better

(01:17:40):
if they had stuck with a malicious system, maybe with
some reforms and stuff now and again, a lot of
why a lot of historians will kind of just assume like, yeah,
it was bad, like that the malicious system like needed
to be reformed, it needed to be militarized. It was
the only way to do things. It's what the communists felt,
It's what most of like the cinterests and and stuff felt.

(01:18:01):
And you know, there's very strong arguments to be made
that that's that that's true just based on military history.
There's also strong arguments to be made that like, well,
you guys were just like that's what all of you assumed,
because all of you are the kind of people who
are in favor of some form of centralized state and
in favor of us why of a centralized military, and

(01:18:21):
that you're listening to like standard military people's attitudes, which
aren't always right, and maybe this could have worked and
other things. Systems like it have worked in other militaries
for different periods of time. I get interesting results when
I bring up the idea of a democratically, of of
a military that votes democratically on its officers. Um when

(01:18:43):
I talk, because that's what how these militias worked. And
I've talked to some friends of mine who are veterans,
and it's interesting some of some people say, like, I
don't see how that could work. I've had a good
friend of mine who is a veteran say, oh, you
know what, that makes sense because when you've been in
combat with a group of people, you know who you
trust to give orders, like right, you know who you was?
Like yeah, yeah, it's like I know you got the ranks.

(01:19:05):
Mom listening to him because this boy kept me alive. Yeah, yeah,
so sure, yes, sir, I'm not gonna I'm certainly not
going to say I know more about this than a
number of historians who will say that militarization was really
the only option they had. I'm just saying there's argument
about that, and it's something you should read about. I'm
not going to make a harsh stance on it, because
like an expert on war or an expert on the

(01:19:27):
Spanish Civil War, there's there's there, there's something that we
said at least to like to make sure that your
militia knows what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely, that needs to happen.
At least some level of cohesiveness of communications seems like
it has to be necessary. There's some degree you at
least need, like a centralized communication network to make sure
people know. But I think anyway, one of the tragedies

(01:19:49):
of the Spanish Civil War is that there's a lot
of cool what ifs that because there's this horrible war happening,
nobody gets the time to really figure out, Right, maybe
this could have worked if they hadn't been at the
edge of extermination, right, Yeah, we weren't facing a minute. Yeah. Now,
The unrest between anarchists and Trotskyists and communists within Republican
Spain eventually led to bloodshed in the streets of Barcelona

(01:20:11):
as anarchists and Trotskyist militants fought in the streets against
communists and socialists. This right up from the New Left Review,
does I think a fair job of explaining how this
all got underway. Quote, under the revolutionary ferment, a struggle
for power and control of scarce arms was being waged.
That was the real meaning of the Barcelona fighting. The
Communist Party's increasing influence in the army and political life

(01:20:32):
and the growth of its membership do mainly to Soviet
aid direct government interventions stop finally stopped the fighting in
the streets and shortly thereafter ended the revolutions. Consolidation that
has ended the the anarchists and sort of trotsky Is
the far left like consolid like gaining of power, taking
of businesses, all that sort of stuff. The immediate beneficiary
of the crisis was Juan Nigrin, a forty five year

(01:20:54):
old socialist physiologist, polyglot and acknowledged expert in financial affairs.
As Treasury Minister, he organized the dispatch of gold to Moscow,
whom President Azana appointed Prime Minister. To put an end
to the indiscipline and disarray in the rear Guard, especially
in Catalonia and Aragon, the government took over public order
in Catalonia, dissolved the anarchist dominated a Council of Aragon,

(01:21:14):
and sent Enrique Lister's Communist Army Division to break up
the rural Aragonese collectives more easily expedited the p O
U WIM trotsky Is, which is the trotsky Ist militia,
which they called trotsky Is provocateurs and fascist spies. Clamored.
The Spanish Communist Party was outlawed, its army division disbanded,
and its leader, Andrew Ninn, one of Trotsky's former secretaries,
was disappeared, in fact, kidnapped and murdered by the n

(01:21:37):
k v D. The affair further deepened the distrust between
Communists and the rest of the political organizations, especially the
anarchists and left socialists, and it made clear to the
republic serious ongoing problems of internal political discord, which were
a considerable stumbling block to winning the war. On the
other side of the lines, there was no such problem.
Franco By, now head of the so called nationalist side,

(01:21:57):
crushed dissent in the bud forcibly unite the Phalangen Carlists
the only permitted civilian political organizations now. And there's a
lot of debate about what happens in Barcelona orwell was
there for most of this part He was. He took
part in the fighting in Barcelona, and he was with
the p o u M. He's with this Trotskyist militia,
and his recollections of the purging of the po U

(01:22:19):
M are available for free in his book Homage to Catalonia.
He reserves tremendous criticisms for the Communist Party, in large
part because they murdered some of his friends. There are
of course very good critiques of Orwell's narrow perspective in this,
because he's on the ground, and long after the war
he would admit himself that he was somewhat myopic and
unfair to the Republican government and the communists In this.

(01:22:41):
Critics will point out that the C and T and
the p o u M undermined coordination and unity in
the Republic, and that the violent certain anarchists carried out
against the clergy in particular, helped dissuade foreign governments from
wanting to help. So this is again a complicated issue,
but the fact that the left is literally in fighting
here is a big part of what underminds their ability
to fight the fascists. Although historians are very split as

(01:23:05):
to how much of a factor the behavior of the
Spanish Communists or which were directed by Moscow played in
the Republican defeat. Um Julian Casanova directly credits the Republic's
defeat mostly to the international situation. So he says, you
can talk about what the communists did wrong with the
anarchist did wrong. The reason Republican Spain lost is because
nobody helped them out except for the communists a bit,

(01:23:27):
whereas the fascists had to modern states throwing huge amounts
of aid in military forces. It right, That's why they lost.
It's like you can debate who made mistakes. Everybody made mistakes.
They lost because nobody, like almost only the communists helped
them in. You know, you just out in the fascists
had a lot, Yeah, the fascists had a lot more help,
you know. Yeah. Um. Now, while I think it's fair

(01:23:49):
to criticize the nature of the help the USSR sent,
both of its reduced quantity relative to the fascists and
the fact that it made the republic pay up front,
you have to be fair here and note that the
Russian Civil War had not been over for all that
long when the Spanish Civil War started, and like nine
million people had died in that country. After nine million
had died in World War One, and it was fucking devastated,
Italy and Germany were in comparatively better shape and able

(01:24:11):
to provide more aid. Now. British military historian Anthony Beaver, however,
does blame the Republic's high command, which was Communists dominated
and Soviet military advisors, for their quote disastrous conduct of
the war, and he has some very fair critiques here.
Um He criticizes them for engaging in multiple disastrous conventional offensives,
which where this happened a few times, where they get

(01:24:32):
a huge number of soldiers together, most of which were
not super well trained, and send them on these massive
offensives that would they would get mowed down. And the
purpose of this was for propaganda to be able to show, look,
we're advancing against the fascists, and of course the fascists
are better armed in train and would just dig in
and massacre these people. Um And and Anthony Beaver will

(01:24:52):
argue that these this series of horrible, horrible decisions taken
for mainly propaganda quote gradually destroyed the re Public's army
and resistance. Now, no matter what kind of leftist or
liberal or whatever you happen to be, there are aspects
of your ideology that should be challenged by observing the
way the Spanish Civil War went. Speaking as an anarchist,

(01:25:13):
it is impossible to ignore the fact that the fascists
had the great advantage of centralized control and particularly food distribution. Meanwhile,
Republican territories had more than twenty independent food collectives. Workers
in many of these collectives were hostile to the government
because they were anarchists, and in some areas money had
been entirely abolished, and since money did exist in the

(01:25:35):
rest of the Republic, that made cooperation difficult. Food shortages
were common in the Republic and this also contributed to
their defeat. UM And again it's the kind of thing
where like this system of local sort of food exchanges
might have worked, if they might have figured out how
to make it work had there not been a war on.
But it's hard. It is hard to beta test an

(01:25:55):
entire system of social organization while fighting a war of
exter the nation. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get
all grey people to fight for you, you know what
I'm saying, Like if we hung gry, it's like, well,
oh no, who got the food? And it's it's worth
noting that of all the people fighting, you know, about
half of the prisoners of war the fascists took wound
up fighting for the fascists. They were organized into into

(01:26:19):
fighting units UM and a significant number of the captured
fascists wound up fighting in units for the Republics. Like
that happened on both sides. A lot of these guys
are just dudes, you know. Um, They're not all like
the Internet. The International Volunteers tend to be very ideological.
That's not all in the case with a lot of soldiers.
In early nineteen thirty seven, Franco's forces had recovered from
their defeat outside of Madrid, and they launched an invasion

(01:26:41):
of the northern Basque territories of the Republic. The success
of this offensive is largely credited to the Condor Legion,
a German led air force that spent the Spanish Civil
War experimenting with new textniques the Loofwava would later use.
This experimentation started in earnest with the bombing of Madrid
in nineteen thirty six, which killed and wounded a lot
of civilians, like hundreds of people killed and wounded, but

(01:27:02):
did nothing but harden Republican resistance. And the Germans realized this,
Like the guys in charge of the Condor Legion of like,
just bombing a bunch of civilian targets seems to piss
them off and make them want to fight harder. Perhaps
that's not the best tactic. Um. Now, several cities were
bombarded by the Condor Legion during the advance in Tabasque territory,
leading to a lot of civilian casualties, but none of

(01:27:23):
these bombings were more famous than the city of Guernica
and their significant debate over Guernica. As well, historians will
note that the command or of the Condor Legion was
more or less abiding by the rules of war UM,
striking at bridges and roads and cities, like aiming primarily
for targets of military value. Um. There were civilian casualties
because precision bombing is a myth, but the goal was

(01:27:44):
not what's called terror bombing, which they kind of rejected
after Madrid, And like this guy goes to trial in
Nuremberg and that is kind of the conclusion of the
Allied militaries, Like his bombing of Guernica was part of
a military action. Like you to repeat the line that
you precision bombing is a myth. Precision bombing is absolutely
a myth, as someone who who watched it is a myth.

(01:28:07):
Now it was even more of a mythent. Yes, I
have a friend who lives in Iraq, and he's like, yeah, no,
there's no such thing. No, No, you're just blowing up neighborhoods, guys.
Yeah yeah, Um, Now how much of a difference it
makes that their goal was not terror bombing? You know
what they did. They killed a funkload of civilians and
leveled a lot of Guernica. And it's it's horrible, horrible,

(01:28:29):
horrible thing. I'm not trying to justify it, um, But
what's happened in what actually happened and what is kind
of like remembered about Guernaka are sometimes two different things.
Because the bombing of Guernica, for whatever reason, horrifies the
entire world. It becomes and there's when I say thout
every reason, because there are other cities that are bombed
in a similar manner that don't get as famous in

(01:28:50):
this period of time. Um, it's not the first time
that the civilian population is bombed as a part of
a war, but it becomes the most famous. The Republicans
made a lot out of it and used it for
propagate and purposes. They would claim that sixteen hundred people
had died, a figure that's likely impossible because they calculated
basically when you're looking at like civilian casualties. There are

(01:29:10):
calculations you can do to estimate them by estimating the
number of people killed per tonnage of bombs dropped. And
if sixteen hundred people died in Guernica, it would meant
that it would have meant that the Condor Legion were
killing more civilians than the US did during its bombings
of like Dresden, like like per per tonnage, you know,
which is not possible really like um, credible death counts

(01:29:30):
range from as low as a hundred and fifty to
the to the low hundreds, which is terrible, Like that's
hundreds of civilians killed by bombs from the sky. It's
it's horrible. I'm not saying it's not. But again it's
also seeing the Republicans see this as a way to like, oh,
this is something we can use to get international support,
which we desperately need. Um. And while Republican forces used

(01:29:50):
Guernica to try to generate international sympathy, the fascists used
it as a cudgel. When Hitler met with the Premiere
of Austria prior to the Angelus, which is when they
Kapaie Austria, he brings the commander of the Condor Legion
with him as a not so subtle threat to Vienna,
because the the the image internationally is that Guernack has

(01:30:11):
been wiped out by the Condor Legions. So Hitler once
this guy is sitting next to him, so that when
he meets with the premiere of Austria, this guy's like,
They're gonna level Vienna if I don't, if I don't
agree to whatever Hitler wants, you know. So Hitler makes
a lot of use out of the terrible reputation that
the Condor Legion gets, regardless of how much that reputation
may be earned. Um now, the battle and I mainly

(01:30:34):
quibble on how terrible the Condor Legion was because by
any objective measure, the United States Air Force was a
lot worse in World War Two in terms of its
its willingness to kill civilians, not in terms of its
goals obviously, but to blast. Yeah there's the yeah, I
I I still can't because I mean, I've never lived
in like an actual active war zone, you know. But

(01:30:55):
obviously more more humans alive now have lived in active
war zones than not, So like I know that I'm
in the minority for that, and it's a very privileged position.
But I still can picture or having a hard time
wrapping my mind around the idea that like death is

(01:31:15):
coming from the sky. It's fun. I'm saying, like that's yeah,
that's it changes you, I mean it changes. And just
to have that experience for a few days, Um, it's
something else, man, Just like seeing breathing in the dust
that includes pulverized concrete and incinerated bodies. Um, Like an

(01:31:37):
air strike is yeah, unreal that like, yeah, it's a
laser from space, like you can't. Yeah, there's like it's
the hammer of God, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's terrible, Yeah, terrifying. Yeah. Now,
the battle over Guernica was very consequential. The city's fall
helped enable Franco's forces to cut Republican held territory in two,

(01:31:58):
so to separate the two junks of Republican territory, the
north from the south. Um. Now, around the same time,
the French, like Germany, occupies Austria and the French start
getting really scared of the Nazis um and so they
reopened their border and this allows thousands of tons of
war material to flow into the Republic freely for the
first time, and the republic is able to like gin

(01:32:19):
up a new Republican army made up in part of
prisoners of war and conscripts as young as sixteen UM.
And this what's known as the Army of the Ebro,
launches what would come to be known as the last
great Republican assault of the war. And like there are
other great assaults, it was a fucking disaster. Thirty thousand
Republican fighters died to just sixty Fascist casualties. UM. Just

(01:32:40):
an absolute nightmare. Now, the war officially ended in April
of nineteen thirty nine with the unconditional surrender of the
Republicans to the fascist Francisco Franco. In the areas the
Fascist retook, they were as brutal as you might expect.
The most egregious example of this happened in August of
nineteen thirty six and Batillas, which we talked about earlier,
that where the anarchists and socialists take a huge amount

(01:33:02):
of land and give it to the people while the
fascists take back bad of yaws and they just they
massacre everyone. Then get their fucking hands on more than
four thousand people, mostly civilians and prisoners gunned down, including
hundreds of people who are dragged into the bowl ring
to the stadium where they hold bullfights and surrounded by
machine guns and just massacred in a circle by the

(01:33:24):
foreign legion. Um. Now, brutality knows no allegiance in war.
Somewhere around fifty thousand civilians were killed in the Republican
zone over the course of the war, and acts of
brutality that many in the Republican government deplored. Federica Montseny
described the slaughter as a lust for blood, inconceivable and
honest man before but republic War crimes bore little resemblance

(01:33:47):
to the crimes of the fascists, who in the same
period of time murdered more than a hundred and thirty
thousand civilians. And those deaths, of course, occurred during the war.
During his decades in power, Franco's forced labor, concentration camps,
torture and execution of political enemies led to another thirty
to fifty thousand deaths, and as we know, that would
make Franco one of the less deadly fascist dictators in history. Um.

(01:34:11):
But yeah, you can compare the number of people kill Yeah,
what is it? About just what's the point of being
in charge if you kill everybody you're supposed to be
in charge of. Because you're killing all the people you
don't like that you're supposed to be in charge of.
That's easier than arguing dad, Yeah, well touche. Yeah, I

(01:34:31):
guess you're right. Yeah, they're killing. There's like, we just
killed people disagree with us. We just kill we disagree
with us. Yeah, okay, so my bad. I understand your logic. Now. Yeah,
obviously the Republicans lost their war, UM, but many of
the more than thirty five thousand men who joined the
International Brigades, and something like ten thousand of them died

(01:34:51):
in the Spanish Civil War. UM. Many of those guys
would continue fighting fascism in World War Two. Some of
them fought in the French Resistance. Some of them fought
in the U. S. Army after being by the way,
when US veterans like l Ward come home, they get
like spite on by the FBI because they're suspected of
being communist sympathizers and stuff like, and some of those people.

(01:35:14):
Some of that stops when the war starts. People like, ah,
maybe you had a point. It doesn't all stop. Um.
But a number of these guys continue fighting. Um. And
while they failed in their ultimate goals, the battle cry
of the Spanish anti fascists, they shall not pass or
no pass Ian still rings loudly and anti fascist rallies today.

(01:35:34):
And that's you know, yeah, the fight isn't over. They
didn't win in Spain. They didn't succeed in in turning
back fascism and bringing in a new golden age for
humanity there. But it didn't end in the fight didn't
end in Spain either, you know, and it it continues
to this day, Yes it does. Oh man, Yeah, let's

(01:35:58):
let's let that one breathe for a second. Yeah, okay,
everybody take a deep breath. Yeah. Anyway, man, So at
some point we're going to talk about when Spain stops
being fascist. Yeah, I'm gonna do episodes on Franco at

(01:36:19):
some point that will that will get into that history. Um.
But this is more specifically about vomiting on the King's limits. Yeah,
this was this is about fascism. You know, I wanted
to talk about how the fascists gained power in Spain.
This is and it's like it's such a like because
of like you said, because of the enormity of other

(01:36:42):
fascist reasimes, this guy gets so overlooked. But it's so
such a pivotal moment in just even just the meta narrative.
But what we understand is like western modern, Western civilization,
like you have to have this moment, you know, if
you're not talking about it, it's like you the story line.
I feel like the storyline doesn't make sense if you're

(01:37:03):
trying to get from World War One to World War Two,
and why all the players are on the play are
on the board game the way that they are if
you don't include the Spanish Civil War, and you you
can argue in a lot of people, the historians will
that had the Republic one, we might not have had
a Second World War because that might have been a

(01:37:25):
check to fascist ambitions. Now I don't know how much
I agree with that. It's certainly arguable that had there
been a concerted had the had the democracies of the
world been willing to take concerted action against the fascists
in Spain, uh, that probably would have meant they would
have been willing to take considered actions to stop Hitler
from gaining from taking over Czechoslovakia. Austria eventually Poland UM.

(01:37:48):
And then the Nazi state would have collapsed because it
was never based on anything but stealing land from other people,
and without the ability to do that, it would not
have lasted. The economy would have apps, there would have
been some sort of a revolution um, and maybe we
would have not had World War two. Um. That's a
pretty solid argument you can make. Obviously, any any historical

(01:38:11):
debate like that is like, who knows what the truth is?
I wonder what I wonder how the cold would have
looked if we had at some point, or if it
would have been if would have been like I guess
the communists, I mean, I mean it's that bad, you know,
because like you know, Stalin not a big fan of Stalin. Um.
But you can argue, like, well, one of the best

(01:38:31):
things that happened to Stalin's personal power was World War Two.
If there's no World War Two, and if there's less
open conflict between you know, fascism and communism, to Stalin
stay in power, does the does the Soviet Union take
a different path that maybe more resembles what a lot
of the people who fought for it initially wanted. Um,
How like or yeah, I mean, who knows or does

(01:38:53):
all of the Western world go to war in Russia
and as many people die and an even dumber war,
like who the funding? Nobody, nobody's fan fiction right here. Yeah,
but it's it's an interesting conversation to have, and I think, like, yeah,
I I am, I'm always intrigued by some of these
like counterfactuals. But you know, what we what we know
is what happened. What happened is um a very flawed

(01:39:16):
alliance of a lot of brave people and a lot
of messy people did their best and ultimately failed to
stop fascism before the Holocaust. You know it isn't isn't
at all of history a bunch of messy people and yeah, yeah,
just trying to figure to ship out man. Damn yeah,
damn Robert. Yeah, there's a lot of lessons in there,

(01:39:39):
a lot of lessons in the story of the Spanish
Civil War. And obviously I'm not I hope no one
takes this is like anything comprehensive or or like anything.
But here's an overview of stuff you might want to
read more about. Yeah, I have a lot more reading
to do, you know. Yeah, it's important that like you
know the the current American does we Yeah that that

(01:40:06):
like that, you know, American exceptionalism is such a hell
of a drug that, like you, we think that all
of our issues are unique, you know what I'm saying,
Because we're uniquely special where God's little boy, you know
what I'm saying. So like this stuff is important to know,
Like I mean, we we hammer it all the time,
but just to be like, man, look at all these
different moments throughout history, like this ship is not new,

(01:40:29):
you know what I'm saying, Like we are toddlers when
it comes to the world scene, you know. So yeah, yeah,
And that's you know, Spain is going through a lot
of the same as our colonial is, our power as
a colonial nation, ebbs, as the result of horrible decisions
we've made and the fact that colonialism is never a

(01:40:50):
very stable platform. We're dealing with a lot of the
same issues that Spain was dealing with, you know, and
in the ramp up as fascism came to Spain, because
it's fascism is in part a reacttion too, like fail
failures of colonialism fail like the like, like like you
need to have some sort of golden age you can
harken back to write the Italians, the Germans, Spanish, I'll

(01:41:10):
have that um and so do American fascists. And so
while you should never treat it all as if it's
too similar, you also shouldn't ignore that there are some
real similarities. Yeah, I love it anyway you could. You
can follow Sophie and why Sophie, Why Hell yeah, I
threw that one in there. That's a little curveball. Yeah

(01:41:31):
say yea, oh god yeah, no profit pop dot com.
I knew what you was gonna say. Uh, follow me
at prop hip Hop and I'll be looking at all
y'all's replies because I'll tell you what, man, this pod
has got some amazing fans and followers. I like, y'all, Yes,

(01:41:57):
you're like you're weird in the right ways, you know
what I'm saying, And like, you know, you know, people
like got like a thing. You know, it's like it's
like you want to you want to be a little weird.
You know, you're a little weird in the right ways.
And I feel like if you're if you're not weird,
I'm not. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like, can't
be just we don't need know, like low sodium khaki.
You know, beige fans. You know what I'm saying. Wonder man,

(01:42:20):
ah man, You're not wonder bread y'all like brio. I
don't know. I think I'm done. You'd cooked my brain, boy, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm cooked, and I'm ready to cook another meal for
next week, when we close out Behind the Insurrections with
episodes on the fascists that failed and a retrospective of

(01:42:42):
some anti fascists throughout history, where we'll talk about some
fun shit umn. But that's all for this week. Um,
So go read about the International Brigades and the anarchist
militias of Spain. Uh Um. Read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.

(01:43:03):
But remember that it's a single dude's perspective who had
no understanding of the broader tactical situation because he was
just a dude fighting. But there's a lot of great
George Orwell talking about what grenades are best to kill people.
George Orwell was very good with grenade. That's the thing. Nobody,
nobody told me when we were reading nineteen eighty four

(01:43:23):
that George Orwell had extensively written about which grenades are
best to kill fascists with. I probably would have paid
much more attention. Was like, I would have paid more attention,
you know. Yeah, it's the It's one of the coolest
things you can do good with. That's why they called
that other data fantastic. You know. Mr Williams, who was

(01:43:46):
my who's my teacher? Mr Pollicky, he was Mr Pollicky,
Polish dude. I was like, they should have led with
that man. Lead with the fact that the guy grenade
gad Jesus. Alright, alright, alright, uh spots over by bye
mm hm