Talk:Spanish Civil War/Archive 4

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Juan March Ordinas

Cut for the moment, but something like it should be restored if everything it claims can be backed up: "It is well known that Juan march ordinas, an active british agent was fully involved in the organization and funding of the rebellion." Besides the lack of capitalization and the egregious "It is well known that…": certainly March was involved in funding the rebellion. I'd want to see a citation for the claim that he was involved in organizing it, and would certainly want to see a citation for the claim that he was "an active British agent" (not to mention clarification on the vary ambiguous word "agent"). - Jmabel | Talk 03:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well. Just have a look to the interesting book by Pere Ferrer Guasp "Joan March, la cara oculta del poder". Edicions Cort. Palma-Illes Balears. You will find a letter from the American Military Attache to Brigadier General Raymond E. Lee stating that March was the man instrumental in financing Franco's campaign and that a group of the top Spanish generals was approached by March to create a hostile attitude toward Spain's entry into the WWII. If you read this book and the one by Diaz Nosty perhaps you'll get a clearer picture and find the claims convenient. Up to you to restore the citation. EGB 01:15, 16 February 2006 (Z)

In Seattle, I'm unlikely to be able to "just have a look" at the book. We probably don't have a single decent Spanish-language bookstore within 800 miles, so unless the University library here has the book, I'm in no position to discover what that book does or does not say. But as I remarked, "certainly March was involved in funding the rebellion." My question is about the claim that he was involved in organizing the rebellion and that he was an active British agent. Your response doesn't assert either of the two claims I challenged: does your source bear them out? And, in particular, if he was at some point a British agent, was he one in 1936, at the time of the rebellion? Also, what's the date of the book, the date of the letter, and the page number of the citation, so this can be cited if relevant? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

You will find the book in many on-line stores, like this one

Commies couldn't beat a bunch of Fascists?

What a bunch of losers! (Romanyankee78 16:44, 9 March 2006 (UTC))

En el frente de Jarama

No tenemos aviones,

Ni tanques, ni canones.

-- "Quince Brigada"

Jmabel | Talk 05:55, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

and that means....? Romanyankee76(68.227.211.175 02:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC))

[1]

SReynhout 21:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Too bad. Doesn't matter sympathetic pinko's. Stalin gave them those other things anyway. Definitly tanks. And they still lost!! The Commie side had just as many troops. (Romanyankee78 20:58, 20 March 2006 (UTC))

What is your purpose here? The "favorite" does not always win.--the Dannycas 00:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

What kind of question is that? What is your purpose here? Yeah, the favorite doesn't always win. And that commies are just as bad if not worse than nazis. (Romanyankee78 19:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC))

All bull*. Its pretty clear that Stalin´s tanks didnt go to the real popular militia. It wasnt in Stalins interest to have a communist society in Spain. First because it would be near France, Stalin´s new ally. Second because a new (real) commie state would be a threat to Stalin hegemony in the communist movement, ideology, and so on. Besides, Franco had direct support from Hitler and Mussolini armies.

No, thats all bull*. Stalins tanks DID go there. Especially at the Ebro. And he DID want a commie state in Spain. What kind of comment is that? He Didn't? Its common sense that he did!! Thats the reason why orville was so disillusioned with the popular front! As well as others. The russians had agents there to direct the course of the war among other things. they were also imprisoning dissidents in there own ranks, especially anachists! Anyone that beleives the commies were not effective or had no role here is an idiot RomanYankee(24.75.194.50 21:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC))

march/may 2006 discussion

• why is a propaganda speech by benito mussolini cited as the source for numbers on people killed in the uprisings preceding the spanish civil war? can we really consider a speech that characterizes the U.S. as a puppet of Jewish financiers as a reliable source for numbers of people killed in Spain? —This unsigned comment was added by 199.212.53.54 (talk • contribs) 27 March 2006.

[EDIT] The above comment must be taken into deeper consideration. A speech is a speech, and as no other data gives a statistic, that will suffice. Also, that comment may be slightly Americanized. The man said what he said, but there was a lot of truth to some of his speeches, despite the pro-terror talk. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.37.237.151 (talk • contribs) 11 December 2006.

• The assertion that "the spanish government's gold reserves were transferred to Britain" is at best misleading, at worst just plain wrong. Certainly it is known that most of the Republican government's gold reserves were transferred to the USSR. I have not ever heard any mention of gold being transferred to Britain (does anyone have a reference?) but certainly I know that the substantial proportion went to the USSR. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.151.229.84 (talk • contribs) May 3, 2006.

Murder of Calvo Sotelo

The article mentions the murder two times: the first time, it says that on April 7 1936, President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is deposed by the new Parliament, which names Prime Minister Manuel Azaña as the new President. Then it says that Calvo Sotelo protests, Dolores Ibarrui vows he will lose his life for speaking out against the new government and the following day he is murdered: on April 8, it seems, because the article doesn't clearly states how much time passed. The second time the article says that there are months on disorders, and Calvo Sotelo is killed by a left-wing group after the murder of José Castillo by a right-wing group. You should reword the article, because as it was it seems to contradict itself. Also, you can't simply state that the murder was ordered by the government without clearly indicating a source that supports this claim. GhePeU 23:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Assault Guards were under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Interior. Will remove contradictions. Ksenon 18:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

This isn't a proof that the government ordered the killing. According to encarta[2] "on July 12 three Falangists murdered Lieutenant José Castillo, a pro-republican officer in the Assault Guards, a government paramilitary group. Later that night, in the early hours of July 13th, Assault Guards in uniform went to the home of José Calvo Sotelo, an anti-republican leader of an Alfonsine monarchist group. They murdered him in a police truck and dumped his body at a nearby cemetery." I didn't found any sources that confirms that the killing was ordered by the government, and according to some other web pages, one third of the assault guards later joined the Nationalists. GhePeU 18:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

You reverted to an unacceptable version that 1) is confusing, as I explained before and 2) implies that the killing was explicitly ordered by the government. GhePeU 21:46, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

What really mattered, in a country on the brink of Civil War, was not the factual truth, but the then vehement suspicion of governamental induction , support or, at least, inactivity.

The main source for the events of that night (the "Causa General"), although hardly explicitly cited is resumed in [3] (you can leave the evident statements of intention, which includes the blame on the government, and stick to the factual). Calvo Sotelo's killing is suspicious by all means.

Most notably is that the principal actors were persons of the environment of Indalecio Prieto, a socialist party leader. The factual killer was the head of his bodyguards. Prieto acknowledged to have hid Cpt. Condés after the killing. The robbing of the summary didn't help either to clarify things. To add another strange twist, the bodyguard of Margarita Nelken (also a socialist deputy, and suspected NKVD operative) was also there.

See also

[The killing of the Tte. Castillo|http://www.guerracivil1936.galeon.com/diario09.htm]

[Background of Cpt. Cortes|http://www.guardiacivil.org/revista/result.jsp?id=29]

[Background of Calvo Sotelo|http://www.generalisimofranco.com/Calvo_sotelo/000.htm]

--Wllacer 10:20, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, great sources. The involvement of the NKVD would also be beneficial in supplementing the article. Ksenon 19:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Reworded. The text was confusing, because it reported the killing once in relation to the election of the new president in April and a second time in relation to events occurred in July. GhePeU 21:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

To GhePeU: Nice new text. Terse but probably the best description objectively possible. To Ksenon: To be honest a NKVD connection in Calvo's murder, has been AFAIK never raised in the mainstream literature, but as I read the sources and i stumbled upon Nelken's name, I could not avoid noticing it. Margarita Nelken and Julio Alvarez del Vayo (two top socialist politicians then) where widely suspected, in the mexican exile in the 40's of beeing high standing soviet agents (for a reference, pls. locate in the web the FBI's FOIA web site dedicated to Trosky's murder), and IIRC a few snippets of the Venona traffic. --Wllacer 19:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Citations messed up?

copied from Talk:Spanish Civil War/to do:

why is a propaganda speech by benito mussolini cited as the source for numbers on people killed in the uprisings preceding the spanish civil war? can we really consider a speech that characterizes the U.S. as a puppet of Jewish financiers as a reliable source for numbers of people killed in Spain? —This unsigned comment was added by 199.212.53.54 (talk • contribs) 27 March 2006.

The footnoting mechanism seems to be messed up: superscript 3 seems to lead to footnote 2, and there is no footnote 3. I'm guessing that footnotes 1 and 2 are meant to go the same place. If no one can say definitively in the next few days, I'll fix it on this presumption. - Jmabel | Talk 16:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Balance

I think this is a really excellent article, but if someone with good editing skills could go through and try to make sure that claims are balanced on both sides, I think it would be even stronger. An example: anti-clerical violence. It is documented that it occured, and the article does a good job of showing that, but we could use the context of that violence, which is that many common people perceived the Church as a tool used by their so-called oppressors to maintain a status quo which did not serve their interests, and there is at least some validity to that view. My point is absolutely NOT that we should "take sides" but rather that there WERE two (or more) sides to every aspect of this conflict. -A

...or think of it in the context of Soviet Russia. Communism meant atheism. There was no room for religion, with especially brutal killings taking place. It's hard to portray nuns as oppresors of the old system, somehow justifying their mass massacres. The church's traditional dominance is already mentioned in the article. Ksenon 18:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

The only need to mention aggreesion against the church in this article would be to display it´s simplistic propaganda use. The numbers and stories are inflated, simple-minded propaganda by the facists, that was created to demonize the Republic as an atheist commie state. --81.71.33.141 19:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Associated with...?

I added Langston Hughes as associated with the Republican side, but I am a little unclear as to what qualifies someone as associated with it. I'm sure you could make an endless list of people "associated" with one side, so what are the limiting criteria? He was a relatively important figure and did declare his support for the Republican side, although I'm not sure how much, if any, direct involvement he had. Anyway, that sounds good enough for me, but if anyone disagrees that's what that nifty "edit" button is for. Nouseforaname312 07:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I removed it because Ezra Pound wasn't listed as being identified with the Loyalist side, even though he did support them. So I guess this only considers people who actually faught for, rather than simply supported, the sides. Nouseforaname312 00:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

why do people sympatize with the communists?

both sides were bad and extreme. It seems to me that people are choosing extremes regarding this conflict and its the left-wing obviously. What a disgrace!! Thats why its good they lost. One less commie regime to worry about. And now look. its a democracy.

Romanyankee(24.75.194.50 13:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC))

This page is intended for discussion relevant to the writing of the article, not as a place to vent.

That said, I'll try to answer your question as if it wasn't merely rhetorical, except to point out that the same logic would say it would have been good if the Nazis had won on the Eastern Front.

For starters, many who sympathized with the republic did not specifically sympathize with the communists. This was an insurgency against an elected government: supporting an elective democracy did not necessarily mean supporting every party in the government. Certainly, even within Spain, the anarchists and communists (both on the Republican side) had no great love for one another.

Next, remember that this was about three years after Hitler's rise to power. In retrospect, those who thought that the most important thing to do for Europe was to stop the rising tide of fascism and Nazism were (in my view at least) simply correct.

Also, most people on the left had (incorrectly, as it happens) disbelieved reports of the Holodomor, writing them off as propaganda, and (at least as the war started) most of Stalin's other crimes were still in the future. It's an ugly oversight, but it didn't stop the U.S. and the Western Allies from allying with the Soviets against the Nazis a few years later.

Finally, don't forget this was the middle of the Great Depression. To many, capitalism looked doomed. If one believed that the only remaining choice was between the Nazis and the Communists… well, I'd pick the Communists in an eyeblink. - Jmabel | Talk 17:36, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes another reason to support what I'll loosely call the 'left' was the repression long associated with with right in general and the church& nobility in particular. Thus the atrocities connected with churches had a background in church-supported repression going on for centuries. DMorpheus 23:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a couple of assorted links I just recently read, and which might be of interest in this context [4] gives a glimse about the political spirit in Spain already in 1934, and [5] (may need registration), an online copy of Daniel Kovalsky's book "Stalin and the Spanish Civil War". The book in itself is highly interesting read, but related in this thread, look at part III, which deals extensively with soviet propaganda activity before the war.

Joe, by 1936, also very few were aware of the incredibly horror which Nazism harbinged. One of most enlighted contemporaneous study about Nazism (Trosky's) IIRC barely touched its malign nature. It's worth of note that most in the Spanish far right at the time (f.i. the group around the highly influential periodical Accion Española, and the carlists) were highly suspicious about Nazi ideology.

Dmorpheus: This is not the place, but your statement of "church ... represion" barely resist a minimal critical examination. The furibund (and more than once bloody) anticlericalism of most of the spanish "left" for most of the XIX and XX century, needs an explanation which must go beyond the simple "volterian" (your note) or the "masonic influence" thesis --Wllacer 08:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

What? Like the Left was not repressive. In fact that is why fasism existed. The Left being repressive caused a counter idelogy to occur. And one didn't have to join either the commies or the nazis during the depression. That sounds like bleeding heart sympatehy for the commies. yankeeroman(68.227.211.175 23:47, 25 April 2006 (UTC))

Look, The Carlists or Falangists did not win the battles, they mostly took care of rear-area dirty-work. The foreign armies and weaponry won the battles for Franco. Your question on “why do people sympathize with communists” is based on the misconception that the Republic was a commie state, but the fact is that they were only one of many factions within its ranks. Resisting a foreign invasion has nothing to do with “bleeding heart sympathy for the commies”.--81.71.33.141 13:02, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

No, the Franco armies did the job and won the battles. The italians fought one battle alone (and lost—miserably. Albrecht) it was the franco armies that won the war. The condor legion was the only support the nazis gave. Republican Spain was in the control of the communists as time wore on. RomanYankee(24.75.194.50 13:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC))