[kearnyirish2]

“Indeed there is a school of historical thought that argues that French elites, especially the military, would rather lose to Hitler than to the communists and this mindset accounts for their lackluster defense of France in 1940.”

That can be directly attributed to the murder of over 7,000 priests (including 12 bishops) and over 100 nuns in Spain during their civil war of 1936-1939; the Stalinists & Anarchists were ruthless, and Spain was saved from them by the intervention of Mussolini & Hitler.

[nathanbedford]

It is startling to consider the parallels between the French revolution and the Communist occupied areas of Spain during that war. It did not just extend to anticlericalism but to confiscation of property, terror, etc.

Small wonder the French were wary of a repeat of their own 18th-century terror and could regard fascism not the lesser of two evils but as an actual savior.

[BroJoeK]

kearnyirish2: "That can be directly attributed to the murder of over 7,000 priests (including 12 bishops) and over 100 nuns in Spain during their civil war of 1936-1939; the Stalinists & Anarchists were ruthless, and Spain was saved from them by the intervention of Mussolini & Hitler."

Those are extraordinarily interesting numbers, because they suggests a "holocaust" of clergy in Spain under the Communists ranked roughly equal to the next "holocaust" by Nazis of clergy during WWII.

Can you cite a source for those numbers?

Here are WWII numbers from just Poland:

"During the Nazi occupation, the Catholic Church in Poland experienced enormous clerical and material losses.
According to the latest research by W. Jacewicz and J. Woś, in the years 1939–1945, 2,801 members of the clergy lost their lives; they were either murdered during the occupation or killed in military manoeuvres.
Among them were 6 bishops, 1,926 diocesan priests and clerics, 375 priests and clerics from monastic orders, 205 brothers, and 289 sisters. 599 diocesan priests and clerics were killed in executions, as well as 281 members of the monastic clergy (priests, brothers and sisters).
Of the 1,345 members of the clergy murdered in death camps, 798 perished in Dachau, 167 in Auschwitz, 90 in Działdowo, 85 in Sachsenhausen, 71 in Gusen, 40 in Stutthof, and the rest in camps such as Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Majdanek, Bojanowo, and others."

Clearly Hitler's National Socialists and Stalin's International Socialists shared one conviction: a lust to murder Christian clergy.