Posted on 07/17/2006 6:29:12 AM PDT by BerlinStrausbaugh
The men of the International Brigade failed in their mission, but they still bask in the memory of a just cause, writes our correspondent.
TOURISTS on the London Eye this morning may wonder why the rousing strains of the Internationale, the anthem of world socialism, are drifting skywards from the South Bank far below.
The date — the 70th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War — will probably escape them. But in the pantheon of the political Left it remains one of the highest causes for which they went to fight — and lost.
Around a memorial in Jubilee Gardens, beneath the Eye, a handful of frail survivors will gather to remember in particular the 2,400 Britons who volunteered to join the International Brigades in support of Spain’s democratically elected Republican Government against the rebel Fascist forces of General Francisco Franco.
There are 24 remaining and the youngest is 90. Between 1936 and 1938 they lost 526 comrades on the Iberian battlefields. To have been there is still a badge of honour among socialists, communists and trade unionists. For them it was when the working class took up arms in a noble cause: to stop the encroaching menace of Fascism and thereby prevent the looming Second World War. But idealism was not enough to halt Panzer tanks and the overweening ambitions of the Third Reich.
Through the International Brigade Memorial Trust, the survivors hold a small ceremony every year — and today for the first time an official representative of the Spanish Government will attend. Carlos Miranda, Madrid’s Ambassador to London, will lay a wreath.
There will be readings, a new book of brigaders’ poems, and an appearance by the best-known surviving brigader — Jack Jones, the former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, who is the trust’s president. Mr Jones, 93, was wounded in the shoulder in 1938 and sent home.
“I felt an obligation to fight for freedom and liberation,” he said. “The awful realisation that black Fascism was on the march right across Europe created a strong desire to act. The march had started with Mussolini, had gained terrible momentum with Hitler, and was being carried forward by Franco.”
Marlene Sidaway, secretary of the trust, which now has some 700 members including veterans, veterans’ families, friends and interested academics, said: “The Spanish Civil War has been largely forgotten. People felt then that if they stopped fascism in Spain, they would prevent the Second World War. But the last battle of the first war was more or less the first battle of the second.”
More than 35,000 volunteers from 50 countries flocked to Spain, including a galaxy of writers and intellectuals: Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Cecil Day-Lewis. There were aristocratic young adventurers such as Jessica Mitford, who eloped to Spain with her distant cousin Esmond Romilly, having asked him while he was on home leave to take her with him when he returned.
Also in Spain were young men later to make a mark in British politics: Clement Attlee, who visited Republican forces with fellow British Labour MPs; a young Edward Heath, part of a student delegation invited by the Republicans; and one Marxist member of the brigades, Alfred Sherman, who subsequently modified his views to the extent that he became a guru of Margaret Thatcher.
But most of the British volunteers were ordinary working men who left the factory or the dole queue in search of excitement as well as honour.
Many of the Irish volunteers were unwilling to take orders from former members of the British Army who provided some of the brigade officers: they went off and fought alongside the American volunteers.
Despite some military successes, the Republicans and their international supporters never really stood a chance. Franco’s forces were better trained and equipped: Mr Jones’s military experience had consisted of basic training with the Territorial Army. Germany flew tough units of the Spanish rebel army back from Morocco, and provided the bombers for the world’s first deliberate air raid on civilians at Guernica.
To this day brigaders blame the inaction of Stanley Baldwin and his successor at No 10, Neville Chamberlain, and that of other European leaders who turned a blind eye, refusing to supply the democratic government with arms lest it upset the Nazi regime in Berlin.
But there is another side to it all. Terry Charman, an historian and a specialist on the subject at the Imperial War Museum, said: “For all his very many faults, Franco kept Spain out of the Second World War. He took control of an exhausted country which had lost one million citizens, and was more than a match for Hitler who wanted Spain as an ally in the crusade to control Europe. Franco even had the bottle to keep Hitler waiting at a planned meeting, much to the Führer’s fury.”
Mr Charman added: “If the Republican side had won, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the Panzer divisions would have stopped at the Pyrenees.”
Some historians believe that the Spanish Civil War is too often seen through the romantic prism of Hemingway and his like, rather as Byron saw Greece set upon by Turkey.
“The Spanish Civil War was just that — a Spanish civil war between the forces of progress and the forces of reaction. It was the old Spain versus the new, and the old temporarily won,” Mr Charman said.
The most distinguished chronicler of international solidarity with Spain was Orwell. In Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938, when the Republicans looked like losing the fight, he wrote: “I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. They have a generosity, a species of nobility, that really do not belong to the twentieth century. It is this that makes one hope that in Spain even Fascism may take a comparatively loose and bearable form. Few Spaniards possess the damnable efficiency and consistency that a modern totalitarian state needs.”
Spain had to wait another 37 years before Franco died and democracy was restored, by King Juan Carlos, in 1975 — and was subsequently defended against an abortive coup. The men of the International Brigade failed in their mission, but they still bask in the memory of a just cause.
BATTLES FOUGHT AND LIVES LOST
13th July 1936: opposition leader Calvo Sotelo killed, providing a casus belli for rebellious generals.
50,000 killed in the opening days, from both sides of the conflict.
3 years of fighting ensue between left-wing Republicans and General Franco’s right-wing Nationalists.
60,000 Italian troops sent by Mussolini to aid Franco.
2,000 Russian soldiers deployed on the Republican side.
40,000 foreign volunteers fought in the International Brigades.
1/2 million or more people died, mostly in mass executions on both sides.
12 bishops, 283 nuns 2,365 monks and 4,184 priests were also killed.
1st April 1939: victory declared by the Nationalists, after Valencia falls
36 years of dictatorship follow until Franco’s death in 1975
500 bodies have so far been exhumed from 67 mass graves
There was a joke, amongst Spaniards, during Franco's regime.
A leftist New York Times reporter traveled to Spain in order to find out what the average Spaniard really felt about El Caudillo.
He found a man on the street and asked him how he felt about Franco. The man said he would tell him if he'd rent a boat and take him far out on the Mediterranean in order not to be overheard.
The "journalist" did and when out about 5 miles he asked the Spaniard the question "Now tell me exactly what you feel about Francisco Franco."
The Spaniard replied, "I like him."
Thanks for the authors, title and the synopsis.
The ROP list of atrocities on your home page is excellent. Do we have a permanent WOT thread on FR where it could be placed?
Yes, Hayek spoke clearly to the fallacies of the "isms" and the danger to human freedom inherent in them.
Thank you for posting this and for your excellent comments.
Thank you for posting. Your comments are informed and well-written, a pleasure to read.
Thank you so much Barset for your kind comments.
I'd be really surprised if that's not somewhere on backhoe's ROP page.
This is absolute nonsense.
Spain provided safe haven for 60,000 Jews fleeing Hitler. NO nazi criminals were ever protected by Franco. Where did you come up with that snippet of mis-information?
Throughout Stalin's life, he was consistently underestimated by his rivals. His intellectually arrogant opponents, starting with Trotsky on down to FDR, were routinely defeated by the brutal cunning of the Boss. Say what you will about Stalin, the man knew how to manipulate people to get what he wanted. He's part of a common theme in history--the perceived mediocrity destroying his seemingly superior opponents and seizing the ship of state.
Such a bizarre figure. He trusted no one except for the man who betrayed him, and who no one should have trusted--Hitler. Hitler and Franco are others who fit into the rubric of the mediocrity becoming a historical giant.
Unfortunately, those days have long passed.
Francisco Franco did much for Spain (not only in instituting that 10:00 PM dinner hour) and is wholly responsible for keeping it out of WWII, although a Condor Division was sent to fight his old enemy, the USSR, on the Russian front. That was to be the fish he threw to Hitler to keep him in check and from invading Spain in order to conquer Gibraltar.
By socialist/communist standards (of course) Franco was a blackguard who threw the communists and their easily influenced youthful travelers, such as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (only about 10% of whose numbers knew as much about communism as a hog knows about Sunday school) out of Spain defeated.
A mostly successful campaign was waged to bring the communist killers of priests, nuns and other innocents to justice and subsequent execution.
There was no catch and release with communist killers and desecrators.
There was nothing mediocre about the accomplishments of Francisco Franco.
Hitler never belonged in the same league as Franco.
Hitler was a despot plain and simple; Franco a benevolent dictator and a masterful statesman. History has alread proven that the world without a Franco in power in Spain would mean a Soviet takeover of much more than Easten Europe.
Franco was indeed a humanitarian whose personal actions saved the lives of thousands of jews.
As far as kindly "Uncle Joe" Stalin is concerned, he was the greatest mass murderer in history. There is absolutely nothing to admire about this crude, satanic figure. I would indeed compare Stalin to our current enemies: the Muslim killers.
If you read my post carefully, you would have seen that I said they were perceived mediocrities. Perhaps I should have written it again in the selection you quoted to drive that home. Franco was viewed as a mediocrity by his contemporaries--they thought him crude and slow-witted. That wasn't the case at all--it's just how they viewed him.
Hitler and Stalin were also dismissed as not worthy of attention. They were able to defeat those who thought little of them without much difficulty. Unlike you, I am able to admire the rise of figures who were born in penury to rise to rule a great parcel of the Earth. You might not like what they did once they achieved that, but I see them to be geniuses--evil geniuses, but geniuses nonetheless.
I try to view history through a cold lens--indeed, I think I am a cold person when dealing with macro events. I could pretend that I am enraged by what Stalin did to the kulaks, but in sooth I just see it as a means to breaking the back of resistance to his rule. It's a character flaw, but I think it serves me well in historical analysis. I try to separate what a person did, how they did it, and whether it was worth the cost or not. With Stalin that is particularly hard because he killed so many yet did so much for his country (I won't say people). Feel free to disagree--you can do that as long as a Stalin isn't in charge.
Can you give me some titles? I've been buying Spanish Civil War books on ebay but most of the recommendations I've been able to find have been from Republican-leaning sources. I have got that really cool fighter-pilot's book (title escapes me at present). It all started when I read Ann Bridge's novel, Frontier Passage.
According to Paul Preston's anti-Franco screed, "FRANCO" the answer could reside in Franco's ancestry. In the first chapter Preston says; " There has been much idle speculation that Franco's family was Jewish on the basis of Franco's appearance an because both his father's surname, Franco, and his mother's surname Bahamonde, are common Jewish surnames in Spain."
I believe that had Franco sent his Spanish Jews, he would have had to get on the train himself. I know we don't have a lot of hard evidence, but given the history of Galicia with it's Jewish population pre 1492, there is a good possibility Franco was Jewish, and probably even greater possibility that Franco knew that he had the blood of Sephardic Jewery pulsating through his body.
Interesting. Thanks for supplying the name of a good bio of Franco---I've been looking for one to read.
I hate when I overween.
It always raises blisters.
Hitler Stopped by Franco (2001) Author Info: Jane Boyar - Between the 'Government in Exile' and the Comintern the Americans are being trained to misunderstand Spaniards. And we're not easy to understand under the best conditions. -Francisco Franco, Hitler Stopped by Franco There's something poignant and touching about two authors, Jane and Burt Boyar, who feel the need--in jacket blurbs, an authors' note, and a prologue which features an imagined alternative future--to justify writing positively about their subject : Generalissimo Francisco Franco. It is also a mistake, for a couple of reasons. First, the quotes they include on the cover are alternately : from too marginal a source to be helpful (The American Sephardi); incomplete (a quote from Churchill praising Franco but promising details of his service to the Allies elsewhere); and, finally, from Stanley G. Payne, who though a leading authority on Franco, is rather hostile to the Boyar's view of the General. This all serves to create a somewhat off-putting package which actually surrounds a terrific book, one which does not need such defensive armament.
This is not to say that the anticipated resistance to their topic that the authors are trying to overcome is not real. Francisco Franco committed one of the few crimes that is truly unforgivable to the intellectuals, academics, and politicians of the Left--who dominate the opinion-making class--he was an anti-communist. And, of course, he was not just any anti-communist; he successfully led the Nationalist forces to victory over the Communists, and other parties of the Left, in the Spanish Civil War, that cause celebre of Leftists throughout Western Europe and America. Literature of the period is rife with romantic novels featuring idealistic young Americans and Englishmen heading off to join the Republican forces in their noble struggle against fascism. Hemingway is but one of the authors who worked this theme, which has persistently clung in the Western imagination despite such devastating factual rebuttals as George Orwell's great Homage to Catalonia. At best, Orwell convinced the open-minded that the Republicans were in fact a tool of the Soviets, but hardly anyone has ever sought to vindicate Franco and the Nationalists. (Paul Johnson is one of the rare exceptions in his outstanding conservative revisionist history, Modern Times. See his excellent review of Paul Preston's biography of Franco in the NY Times Book Review.)
This prejudice against Franco is particularly odd if you simply take an impartial look at the historical record and at how Spain fared throughout and after WWII. Despite repressive measures taken against Leftists and a substantial number of summary executions, Franco's Spain had no gulags. Nor did his government pursue a systematic genocide against any segment of the population. In fact, Spain was a safe haven for European Jews and went out of its way to rescue the Sephardim, European Jews of Spanish descent (hence, the previously mentioned favorable cover blurb). By keeping Spain, for the most part, out of the actual combat of WWII, Franco preserved Spanish lives, maintained Spanish independence, and continued laying the groundwork for a stable society, one which would eventually become a democracy. More than this though, neither he nor the Spanish people were responsible for the kind of large scale slaughter which other leaders and nations engaged in throughout the war--there are no Dresdens, or Nankings, or Hiroshimas, or Stalingrads, etc., to trouble the Spanish conscience.
Compare this record to that of FDR and America. America too stayed neutral, until provoked by the attack on Pearl Harbor. FDR refused to allow Jewish refugees into the United States. We rounded up innocent Americans of Japanese descent and shipped them to concentration camps. Over four hundred thousand Americans died fighting the War and Lord only knows how many we killed, including hundreds of thousands of civilians in nuclear blasts and fire bombings. And at the end of the day, what did we achieve ? We merely replaced a homicidal German regime with a homicidal Russian one, locking ourselves into an additional fifty years of deadly and expensive Cold War. Given this context, which leader, FDR or Franco, better deserves to have his War performance lauded ?
All of which brings us to the Boyars' excellent historical novel. Having lived in Spain for nearly thirty years and become friends with folks like their landlady, Franco's daughter, Carmen, they found both Franco's Spain and Franco's reputation in Spain to be much different within the country than they were perceived from without. With such connections, the authors were given extraordinary access to members of Franco's family and inner circle and to former government ministers. They have combined this access with what was obviously quite extensive research to produce a scrupulously documented (how often have you read a novel with citations and footnotes) account of how Franco kept Spain out of the War, focussing on the years from 1940 to 1943, when Spanish acquiescence to Hitler's demands would have allowed Axis forces to use the Spanish coast as a staging area for an attack on Gibraltar and eventually complete control of the Mediterranean and North Africa.
The weaknesses of the book are mostly a function of the task it is trying to perform. Characters are required to recite large chunks of historical background, which is obviously artificial and somewhat pedantic, but is also probably the most effective way of conveying the necessary information (it is certainly less disruptive than the technique that Herman Wouk used in Winds of War, where he interspersed chapters of an imaginary history of WWII). And in almost every instance, the authors give Franco the benefit of the doubt in regards to his motivations and the farsightedness of his vision. This creates the impression, which even I find unlikely, that he never seriously considered joining the Axis and intended all along to simply hold Hitler at bay until America joined the War and swung the balance of power.
On the other hand, Franco has been treated so viciously by almost every other author (H. G. Wells called him the "murderous little Christian gentleman"), that it's hard to begrudge one overly favorable treatment. Moreover, it is entirely plausible that Franco, who had after all fought to preserve a traditional Spain, based on Church, Crown, and commerce, never seriously intended to allow the Nazis a free hand in Spain. No true patriot, which Franco must by any measure be considered, would fight off the Comintern only to put his nation at the disposal of the National Socialists.
Meanwhile, the books strengths are significant. First, there is a very real tension to the story, even though we know its outcome, as this small and recently wartorn nation holds off Hitler, who is perched on their border just waiting to pounce. Second, there's the fascination of seeing people like Franco and Canaris presented as three dimensional beings and as genuine heroes in the resistance to Hitler, rather than as enemies of humanity, simply because they too were fascists. Finally, books that challenge our precious preconceived versions of events are so rare that it is always a good thing when one, especially a really good one, comes along.
If you are the kind of person who thinks Pat Buchanan committed a thought crime when he suggested that America was well served by staying out of the War for as long as she did, this book is not for you. If you found intolerable Niall Ferguson's argument, in The Pity of War, that participating in WWI was an unmitigated disaster for the British, you'll not enjoy Hitler Stopped by Franco. If you were infuriated when Sam Tanenhaus rehabilitated Whittaker Chambers or when Scott Berg did the same for Charles Lindbergh, don't even bother to crack the covers of this book.
If you thought it an insult to your intelligence when Lewis Sorley, in A Better War, wrote that America had the Vietnam War won, but then squandered the victory, all you'll find here is more insults. For you all, I suggest David McCullough's biography of Truman, or any Doris Kearns Goodwin hagiography of a Democrat President.
But if you are willing to look at the past with a fresh pair of eyes, to call into doubt the official history that the professors and the historians have spoon fed us, then this is a book that you will love. I can't recommend it highly enough. Whatever you do, don't let the cover or the prologue stop you--buy it and read it. You won't be sorry. (Reviewed:23-Jun-01) Grade: (A)
Thank you for posting this, Mr. M.
I'm pinging livius to this thread. She knows a lot about Spain, has lived there, and knows the language and literature.
She has a classically trained mind and her posts are always thoughtful and well-reasoned.
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