The Spanish Civil War: 1931-1939 (6 parts)
My favorite war to examine. Take note of the international brigades and secret police.
Reminds me of the Syrian American antifa recruits.
Pay attention to the language. The Democratic Republicans who love liberty were the Communists.
Sound Familiar?
And the Anarchist Autonomous zones that collapsed…
Reminds me of… well you get the point…
Take notes and enjoy. Propaganda art linked below.
http://yargb.blogspot.com/2012/02/spanish-civil-war-posters.html
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
26 Comments
Comments are closed.
5
The Grenada producers of this, sure loved the Anarchists. It’s very evident that the creators of the series are left wingers.
One thing that was never mentioned was the killing of their own troops by the Republicans, using the NKVD.
When I was a kid, I knew a guy that was in the International Brigade, he told us that the Russian Communists killed more people in the unit, than were lost in action. They were apparently not good enough communists, rather like the cancel culture today.
The NKVD… cancelling bad comrades since… well since the beginning…
Who’s our Franco? Ms Mathis?
BTW, Some good Russian TV shows nowadays based around WW 2. Most show the hero struggling against the secret police as much as against the the Germans. A lot of it is free on Amazon Prime.
Every thing old becomes new again.
History repeats (or often rhymes)
Past is prologue
States talking secession (2nd try)
The sweeps of our coming history may be unavoidable. But at least we might exercise the choice of where to stand.
And prepare accordingly.
I remember as a high school student being taught that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were heroic freedom fighters. Never was I taught that they were actually backing totalitarian Soviet communism.
Yeah… I was taught in every school I ever went to, including the army, that Islam is the religion of beauty, peace, feminism, and justice. Meanwhile, in the same schools, I was taught that Christianity is made up nonsense. I went to Catholic school for 12 years and we never read the Bible once. Never. Not once..
something ive been looking for for a while is a decent book about the spanish civil war that’s not leftist whitewash. if anyone has a worthwhile reference it’d be most welcome.
There are writings by the leaders of France post WW1 that discuss whether or not they should support the revolution. This resulted in the various governments that existed within France of not lasting very long, or having very little power, and collapsing under their own weight. Technically, under the Communist International, they must support each other. The various leaders of France’s political parties were very leery of going into another European war because their men had been so depleted during WW1. These letters are mostly penned by leftists. But the core principles and reasons are there. It should help you understand some more history concerning the Spanish Civil War.
This link is mostly accurate and fairly unbiased.
https://spartacus-educational.com/SPfrance.htm
https://spartacus-educational.com/SPnoninter.htm
It should be understood that the leftists are all lying and were, in fact, allowing volunteers to travel to Spain unimpeded. They also provided comms, material support, advisors, training, and food.
I found this short book revealing when I read it a few years ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110521114154/http://mcguinnessonline.com/irishsailor/spanish_civil_war_intro.htm
“Mine Were of Trouble” is a good read. It’s the autobiography of a Brit who volunteered for the nationalists.
Haven’t had a chance to watch yet but found this relevant article of modern Spain. https://europerenaissance.com/2021/02/23/unrest-signals-civil-war-ii-in-spain/
Reading material about the Spanish Civil War in English is… challenging and takes a lot of work to learn about the details, because the editors are in charge, and we know what that means. There are very few broad surveys of the topic, and almost none of those still in print are fair and balanced. However, there are exceptions.
Full disclosure – I’m working on a novel that is set largely during the Spanish Civil War, so I’ve read everything I can find in English, and have been reading a ton of Spanish language material (both in the original and using machine translation, because my Spanish is limited and rusty) as there is so much that was never translated.
1. Hugh Thomas’ The Spanish Civil War is probably the most balanced and fair treatment on record, which means that it shakes out as being perceived as pro-Nationalist. Written initially in the 60s, there is a great deal of first person info and interview material.
https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Civil-War-Revised-Library/dp/0375755152/
2. One of the few English-language first person memoirs from the Spanish Civil War is back in print thanks to Mystery Grove Publishing – Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp. Kemp was a British volunteer first with the Carlist Requetes who later joined the Legion. He went on to serve in the British SOE during WWII (and wrote two more books on the subject – both very interesting). Kemp is a great writer, very humorous and shines a light on aspects of culture and personality in a tremendous way. My highest recommendation!
https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Were-Trouble-Nationalist-Account/dp/B08673MBF1
3. Warren Carroll’s The Last Crusade is a history of the first months of the Civil War and a bit leading up to it, wherein the Republicans (reds) either targeted the church or allowed the various militias to murder and pillage unpunished. There were ~16,000 murders of clergy and laypeople ALONE in this period, which was the #1 driver of normal people to the Nationalists, not abstract philosophies or political theory.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Crusade-Spain-1936/dp/0931888670/
Below are “also rans” that are mainstream and worth reading for context.
4. Anthony Beevor’s The Battle For Spain is the most current broad survey history, and is eminently readable, but comes from a fundamentally shitlib perspective. Beevor’s Stalingrad book was excellent and balanced, so I was, frankly, surprised by how apologetic and forgiving he is of the leftist atrocities – or just throws out some numbers and waves away the details – and doesn’t handle many of the controversies (Guernica) with the level of skepticism deserved. From what I gather, Beevor doesn’t read or speak Spanish, and was completely dependent upon his contacts in Spain. Spain has been in the throes of a serious anti-Franco, anti-traditionalist move since Franco’s death – at least in the mainstream media and academia, of course, as we’d expect – and that shows in the book to the extreme. The bibliography is enormous, though most of the referenced material is Spanish language, and I’ve had great luck leveraging that. The TL:DR is that it’s worth picking up if you want to see an honest shitlib grapple with the fact that the left always lied and murdered, and the Nationalists were never nearly as bad as they have been portrayed. Should be available via your library.
5. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is the only narrative tale that English readers are broadly aware of, and it’s worth reading, if only to get a feel for how loathsome the “moderate” socialist Orwell is, apologizing for the mass murder of clergy, monks and nuns, laypeople, and attempted elimination of Christianity from Spain. I spit on him. Don’t buy it – read the PDF/ebook, as it’s short.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458449
Viva Cristo Rey!
I’m reading MINE WERE OF TROUBLE currently.
Loads of personal details that makes you feel more like your following him every step.
Fantastic book! I am not exaggerating in that, despite having paid a lot of attention to the war, the characters of real people from real groups came alive for me at an emotional, personal level after reading it
Good to see uze gize.
Translations are so tricky.Who financed it? Who published it? Who translated it? Why book A and not book B?
The old me thought it was because “weil book A would make money and book B wouldn‘t make as much,“ and now I can’t help but think that there are other reasons as well.
Lol and all this before we even get into the technicalities of translation…
Here’s an article from a non-leftist perspective. The author also has a book on the Spanish Civil War that’s available on Amazon.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/01/the-road-to-revolution
Funny how everything we’ve been taught has already been whitewashed by the Bolshevik censors, then presented in a whole new format by Hollywood as good old wholesome patriotic history. Just look at history from 1900 til today, and try and dig up the truth, it’s been disappeared by our mind controllers. They don’t want you knowing they’re the mass murderers.
Jeff Cooper wrote a short article on the siege of the Alcazar in Toledo, a remarkable tale. Worth a read.
With regard to all who seek the Light,
Historian
Anything against the fellow traveler subhuman communist vermin is good.
Communists are subhuman vermin unworthy of the gift of life…take them out with axe, gun, knife.
This TV documentary series was released by Granada Television in January 1983, five years into Margaret Thatcher’s transformation of Britain from a socialist disaster to a working conservative culture. The British socialists were angry that Thatcher’s reforms were successful, especially after the 1970s miasma in the U.K., so the leftist producers would trash in their own created narrative any Right-wing government that defeated progressive/Communist murderers.
The series does have a great wealth of interviews, photographs, and motion picture archives.
We don’t have any current military leaders who could take the role of Gen’l. Franco. Retired GENL Mattis is a Chinese sellout. Perhaps there are one-stars or colonels who might be able to wear that reactionary title with pride.
Intrigued, I did some Google searching and came across this 2016 interview with one of the documentary producers. The series was broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 at the very beginning of its broadcast history in the 1980s. They leaned from the start towards glorifying the Reds, and it shows throughout.
https://www.granadaland.org/steve-morrisons-memories-of-making-of-the-spanish-civil-war-documentary-series/
“…yet these Republican optimists and their socialist allies thought that orderly reforms would soon transform the nation.”
That is the challenge with history – we tend to think in present terms without understanding the contemporary meanings of the time… Likewise, other lessons which are so very clear – polarization, demonization, and the fickle nature of public opinion… these things have a predictable recurrence and yet *still* manage to completely surprise those who cherry-pick (at best) their own interpretations of history.
What we are seeing today… there are very few direct historical comparisons. Society has changed, technology has changed, and the mechanisms for governance have changed. The one overlooked constant, however, is what happens when the desperation on either side is fully realized. Then… quite often, “the rules go out the window.”
4.5