
Two English authors 'engineered start of Spanish civil war', claims new book - lermontov
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/27/two-english-authors-engineered-start-of-spanish-civil-war-claims-new-book
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pipio21
This is extremely inaccurate and misleading.

First there was lots of international actors in the Spanish civil war and
England was probably the least important of all those.

Of course UK media like the guardian will grossly exaggerate the England
importance over it.

Countries like the Soviet Union had much more importance as they were the main
supporters of 1934 "Asturias' revolution" that tried to make Spain a
proletarian dictatorship and URSS satellite. Stalin will influence the war
removing Largo Caballero and putting his lackey Negrin as leader of the
republicans.

Germany also had great influence as they considered essential not letting his
enemy URSS get more power in Spain.

England and France mainly remained neutral. There were socialist, anarchist
and Communist on those countries that supported republicans as well as
entities that supported Nationalists.

This article try to mislead people talking about Franco as he was the leader
of the revolt in Spain, but he was not. He was a very good general but totally
lacking charisma over the masses and there were several people over him at the
start of the revolt.

Most of those people died over the war or just were too old to leader and
Franco was elected as leader four months after starting the war.

~~~
arximboldi

      Countries like the Soviet Union had much more importance 
      as they were the main supporters of 1934 "Asturias' 
      revolution" that tried to make Spain a proletarian 
      dictatorship and URSS satellite. Stalin will influence the 
      war removing Largo Caballero and putting his lackey Negrin 
      as leader of the republicans.
    
      Germany also had great influence as they considered 
      essential not letting his enemy URSS get more power in 
      Spain.
    

This is so not true.

In fact, the "Asturias Revolution" of 1934 was organized by anarquists (CNT)
and social democrats (UGT) and anti-stalinist communist groups like the (BOC).

The pro-russian Communist Party in Spain had little support among Spanish
workers, and it only gained power after the country was long into war and the
URSS became the only international supporter of the Spanish goverment.

Germany supported the rebellion since early on because of their affiliation
with the fascists ideas of the uprising in the 1936 coup-de-etat.

Your views reflect the historical revisionism of the Spanish right wing to
paint Franco as someone that saved Spain from the soviets. However, the
uprising was motivated by the loss of power from the Church, big land-owners
and capitalists during the republic.

~~~
narag
So you agree that Germany (and the URSS, only later) had much more influence
than UK in the war, which is clearly the point of the comment you're answering
to.

About revisionism... there was blood in both sides' hands. To mention just the
most obvious fact: the spark that ignited the war was the assasination of the
opposition's leader. That happened in downtown Madrid with total impunity. Do
you really believe that can happen in a normal situation? That's terribly one-
sided.

~~~
arximboldi
> So you agree that Germany (and the URSS, only later) had much more influence
> than UK in the war, which is clearly the point of the comment you're
> answering to.

I agree. The UK still had significant indirect influence in that Churchill
convinced France an other European powers to not support the Republic. That
support might have diminished the URSS influence, or maybe just started WWII
earlier, or prevented it... all that is political fiction of course, the truth
is that Germany and (later) the URSS were the only significant international
powers _in action_.

> About revisionism... there was blood in both sides' hands. To mention just
> the most obvious fact: the spark that ignited the war was the assasination
> of the opposition's leader. That happened in downtown Madrid with total
> impunity. Do you really believe that can happen in a normal situation?
> That's terribly one-sided.

I agree that the situation was not specially peaceful before the war (I did
not imply that in my parent comment). Still, documentation says that the coup
was planned _before_ the leader of the opposition was killed. But as another
comment says, there are many forces into play and it is hard to quantify the
impact of particular events... It is also hard to discuss the war without
entering into moral positions (i.e. what justifies what.).

I don't need to go further into analyzing this... I am happy that we agreed on
the influence of Germany and URSS.

Btw, last year I read "Homage to Catalonia" by Orwell, in which he talks about
his experience during the war. Of course it is a very one-sided account (he
fought for the republic) but nontheless interesting from a literary and
anecdotal point of view, and it might appeal the english-speaking crowd here.

------
JorgeGT
Beware that the title is highly misleading. They apparently helped to arrange
the flight of Franco from Las Palmas to Morocco to start the war, but this
step was just the culmination of a long conspiracy to overthrow the Republican
government, which Franco himself only joined towards the end, when the coup
was certain.

It would have happened anyway, these guys just helped providing that
particular flight. If not for them, the conspirators would had chartered
someone else's plane or boat.

~~~
kafkaesq
Like many major events in history (including most wars and revolutions), it's
probably best interpreted as the product of both large-scale and systematic
factors _as well as_ happenstance and small-scale interventions -- like the
timing (and relative speediness, compared to a boat) of this particular
chartered flight.

To refer to an even larger-scale example: clearly the Russian Empire was in
the throes of an extended period of turmoil and conflict in the last years of
the House of Romanov, which by that point was unlikely to stay in power for
very long in any case... but at the same time things might very well not have
turned out _quite_ the way they did had not the German government approved
that famous train ride from Zürich to Petrograd for Lenin and his entourage in
February of 1917 (as nifty way, so they thought, of seeding just the right
amount of chaos to induce in the Empire to soften its resolve to continue the
fight against the Central Powers).

~~~
JorgeGT
I agree, it is reductionist to claim that WWI happened just because Gavrilo
Princip, or that the Kaiser "engineered" the birth of the Soviet Union with
the sealed train. In this case the coup was too advanced to be aborted (top
generals were already too implicated) so it would have happened one way or
another. That the war itself and the dictatorship afterwards could have
changed if Franco had to resort to other transport is indeed quite possible,
but we will never know.

------
mbroncano
It's not only misleading but rather inaccurate, as Franco wasn't even likely
to succeed Sanjurjo [1], the lead in the conspirancy.

Classical narcissistic delusion, more proper of the daily mail than the
guardian. Brits are traditionally prone to it, poor souls.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Sanjurjo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Sanjurjo)

~~~
NetStrikeForce
In all fairness, all press geared towards internal consumption does that - at
least in every western country I've lived in.

~~~
mbroncano
Absolutely, that's why I quantified it as 'prone'. Paraphrasing an all time
favorite Briton of mine, we might be all equal, it's just that some of us are
more equal than others.

