Spain Betrayed, The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War

Posted on by

This is the second in a series of three reviews about the Spanish Civil War. The author of the first book sympathized with the Republican (mostly Communist) side that lost to Franco’s Nationalists. This book emphasizes the betrayals of the Republicans by the Soviet Union. The book was edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, and was “…prepared with the cooperation of the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) and the Russian Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.” There was significant research for the book, and translated Russian, French, and Italian documents are presented in full. The Abbreviations and Acronyms is an indication of the complexity of the political affiliations of the various parties involved in the war. There are a dozen listings for Anarchists, Communist, and Socialist organizations.

The Nationalists were initially led by generals Mola and Sanjurjo, but their failure to gain immediate success gave an opening to General Francisco Franco. He sent emissaries to Hitler and Mussolini to ask for help, the Republicans turned to Stalin, and the internationalization of the conflict assured that the war would be longer, more costly, and more brutal. President Franklin Roosevelt’s covert policy of providing military equipment to the Republicans in violation of the Neutrality Act and against the will of Congress allowed the Soviets to supply the Spanish Republican forces with American aircraft.

Stalin’s paranoia about Trotsky influenced the outcome of the war. Stalin believed anyone accepting Trotsky’s beliefs was an enemy, and a large number of the Communists fighting with the Republicans belonged to Trotsky’s “Worker’s Party of Marxist Unity” (POUM in Spanish initials). The fact that Trotsky eventually repudiated his support for the POUM didn’t stop the Stalinist Communists from imprisoning or executing members of that group. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) devoted at least as much energy to murdering people they decided were POUM members as they did to fighting the Nationalists. The Anarchists also fell out of favor, and thousands of them were killed. The impact of Stalin’s paranoia didn’t end with the POUM and the Anarchists. Early in the war he had sent 700 military advisors to serve the dual role of taking over command of the Republican army and providing intelligence to the Soviets while being paid by Spain. Few of those advisors had survived Stalin’s purges by the end of the war in 1939. The only consolation for Soviet military personnel sent to Spain might have been that it wouldn’t have been safe for them in Russia either. The Soviet high command lost 90 percent of its leaders and 70 percent of the total officer corps to Stalin’s purges. There was a quote in Pravda that “…cleaning up Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist elements (in Spain) will be carried out with the same energy as in the USSR.” Continue reading →

Persecution of Mideast Religious Minorities

Posted on by

I closed the blog posted on May 11th about the Mideast unrest with a comment that those who support a dictator will suffer when the dictator loses. That may be true, but recent news events show that others are taking advantage of the turmoil to attack people practicing a religion they won’t tolerate. I can’t begin to catalog all of the different ethnic and religious factions that have suffered for centuries because of religious intolerance by others, but the Coptic Christians in Egypt are facing organized attacks from Salafi, ultraconservative Muslims, and Muslim Brotherhood extremists since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. One recent incident involved 12 Coptics killed, over 200 wounded, and a church set on fire. Crowds of Muslims were marching and shouting Islamic chants and Osama bin Laden’s name. There is concern that the attacks are intensifying, that moderate Muslims may be increasingly involved, and there are warnings that the overall situation may degrade into a civil war.

Christianity was the dominant religion in Egypt in the fourth to sixth centuries. The language was Coptic, which was based on the Greek alphabet with an additional six to seven characters. The Muslims conquered Egypt in 639 AD, but the population remained mostly Christian. There were gradual conversions to Islam over the next several centuries until Egypt became a mostly Muslin country by the end of the 12th century. It is estimated that 5-10 percent of Egyptians are currently Christians, and the extremists seem to be unwilling to rest until that percentage reaches zero.

It is difficult to sort through and gain much of an understanding about what is happening in the Mideast, or where things are going from here. The Muslim Brotherhood was illegal but tolerated under Mubarak in Egypt, but is now legal and is gaining support. The protests and government crackdown in Bahrain has inflamed tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. The Wall Street Journal reported that the kingdom has blamed Iran for much of the unrest and invited troops from Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia.  The Libyan civil war remains in the news, although it certainly doesn’t seem certain what will happen in that country should Moammar Gadhafi be ousted. Yemen has a well-organized branch of al Qaeda. President Saleh has supported counter-terrorism forces, and the Obama administration has supported negotiations guided by Saudi Arabia. The protest movements in Syria and Iran seem to have been quieted by violent suppression and mass arrests.  It remains difficult for me to cheer on the protestors, although Tunisia does have a chance to become a democracy. The transitional government is preparing for elections in July to install and assembly to draft a constitution and election laws. I remain skeptical that either democratic governments or freedom of religion will be the outcome in other countries. Let’s hope I write a posting someday celebrating that I was wrong.

On Your High Horse

Posted on by

Charles Earle Funk’s book, “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” attributes the expression to royalty or other dignitaries being mounted on the heavy charger horses used in battle or tournaments. The term was first recorded in the fourteenth century, and referred to a person selecting a large horse for a pageant as evidence of their high rank. The expression remains, and means someone is pretentiously and arrogantly demonstrating superiority.

The Spanish Civil War, An Illustrated Chronicle, 1936-39

Posted on by

I intend to do reviews of three books (of the estimated 15,000) on this subject, and this book by Paul Preston leans heavily to Republican (mostly Communist) side and against the Franco Nationalists (Fascists). (Note that I did not find the book on Amazon, but there it is available at Abe Books.) The author writes, “…there is little sympathy here for the Spanish right, but I hope there is some understanding.” The book is liberally sprinkled with words such as “bourgeoisie,” the French word defined by Marxists as the social class which exploits workers and “proletariat,” the workers. The second review will be about the Soviet manipulation of those opposing Franco that, in my opinion, resulted in emptying the Spanish treasury and victory by Franco’s forces. The final review will be about George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia.” Orwell fought as a soldier in the trenches of the Trotsky Communist army, and the book gives an excellent insight into the miserable life of the soldiers and the complicated agglomeration of factions involved in the war.

One common thread in the books and articles I’ve read, regardless of point of view, is that Spain was used as a training ground for World War II. The armies of Germany and Italy on the Nationalist side and the Soviets on the Republican side used the conflict to test their equipment and train their military people under conditions of war. The German Condor Legion firebombed the almost completely military-free Basque town of Guernica to test their planes and train their pilots in dive-bombing during the 3-4 hour bombardment that destroyed the town. Ironically, the allies later used the same firebombing techniques to destroy the German city of Dresden, which also was a not a military center.

There were several years of political strife that led to the war. The book has a couple of chapters about the unrest in the country. The economy had decayed into a desperate depression, and the workers and peasants had little to lose. A strike by miners brought action by the military, and the conflict spread quickly. The allegiances within the two sides were complex. Simplistically, the Republican side consisted of several Communist, Socialist, and Anarchist organizations. The Nationalist side controlled most of the Spanish military and represented the Falangists (fascists), middle class, landowners, and Catholic Church. It was a brutal war, and thousands of people were tortured and executed by both sides. The Nationalists killed people suspected of supporting the Republicans. The Republicans destroyed Catholic Churches and executed priests, factory owners, landlords, and public officials. Continue reading →

What Happens When a Dictatorship Ends?

Posted on by

The events in the Mideast and the television images of thousands of people demonstrating and demanding changes are bringing back memories of my teenage years and watching the evening news as Castro overthrew Batista in Cuba. Batista was a corrupt and oppressive dictator, and Castro was considered to be a liberator. There were celebrations in the streets of Havana when Batista fled, and I recall that the American news media declared it to be a victory for freedom. It wasn’t long before “Che” Guevara (the darling of young people who wear T shirts proclaiming their admiration) was holding televised show trials in an outdoor sports stadium and ordering the execution of hundreds of former government officials and sympathizers.

Another example was when the Shah of Iran was forced from power by the Ayatollah Khomeini after President Carter appealed to the Shah not to destroy the plane carrying the Ayatollah and his supporters. Carter assured the Shah that the United States would not stand by and let him fall, but the opposite happened. The new leadership began arresting, imprisoning, torturing, and executing people who had supported the Shah, repeating the actions by the Shah’s secret police. Carter gave the Shah asylum in the United States to seek medical treatment, the Iranians took over the U.S. embassy, held the people from the embassy hostage, watched Carter lose reelection, and have become a threat to the region and the world.

I should also mention an example where the end of a dictatorship resulted in a more democratic government, and the remarkable example of what happened in Spain when Francisco Franco died is the first (and maybe only example) to come to mind. Franco’s Fascists won the Spanish Civil War against the Stalinist Communists and an agglomeration of allies, perhaps because the Stalinists spent as much time fighting their allies as Franco’s forces. The war and the aftermath was brutal and bloody, and Franco was an oppressive ruler.  He designated Prince Juan Carlos to become monarch after his death, and Carlos began a transition to a parliamentary monarchy within a couple of days of Franco’s death. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia preside over a democratic government that has the support of most Spaniards. Of course the country is currently in financial crises, but that seems to be a common problem.

That brings us back to the Mideast. The Egyptian dictator Hosoni Mubarak has been forced out and President Obama has hailed that outcome, which brings to mind a similar reaction from John F. Kennedy when Castro expelled Batista.  The unrest in Egypt had begun when the price of food and fuel inflated, and poor Egyptians could barely afford to survive before that inflation.  The protests ended the needed income from tourism (perhaps temporarily).  Prices of food and fuel haven’t been reduced, and the economy was disrupted by the protests. The military is now in control, as it has always been. I wish the best for the Egyptian people and others who are risking their lives to protest in favor of freedom. However, if the brief history of other examples of the end of dictatorships here is an indication, there is a one chance in three that the outcome will be favorable. The lesson most obvious from history is that those who support a dictator will suffer if the dictator loses.

Japanese Nuclear Reactor Disaster

Posted on by

I did an Internet search to learn the status of the containment structures of the damaged reactors, and the most recent posting I could find was April 6. Most of the articles were posted in March. I’m guessing major news media outlets are losing interest because a “China Syndrome” meltdown (although the exit point from Japan would be somewhere in or near Uruguay) hasn’t occurred. So what is the impact of the disaster if the containment structures hold? There is no doubt the disaster will further add to the fear of nuclear power generation. Japan is hydrocarbon deficient, and had been generating a third of their power needs with nuclear plants. They have stepped up their importation of liquid natural gas via tankers to fill the immediate needs, but that will undoubtedly add expense to an economy that doesn’t need additional expenses.

Do I continue to advocate that nuclear power generation should be a part of our future? You bet I do, and I write that despite Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. My favorite source of information about energy generation is Dr. Petr Beckman, who published the book “The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear” in 1976. The primary point of the book, which is still very valid today, is that there is no safe way to make energy. “Energy is the capacity for doing work, and as long as man is fallible, there is always the possibility that it will do the wrong kind of work; to ask for safe energy, therefore, is much the same as asking for incombustible fuel.” Nuclear energy is “…far safer than any other form of energy.”

I’m baffled at how casually we accept risks from activities that don’t have the word “nuclear” in their title, even when we have no control over these risks. Anyone who advocates that no risk is acceptable should cut themselves off the power grid. About 1000 people die per year in the U.S. from electrocution. If you overlook the risk of electrocution, what about the risk from mining and burning coal to generate power? There have been 819 deaths in the United States and 52,785 in China from coal mining since 1990. That doesn’t consider the risks to people from the emissions and wastes generated from burning coal. As Dr. Beckman said, there is no method of making energy that is completely “safe.” He advocated that producing plentiful energy is required to preserve economic freedom and prosperity. China, India, Korea, and Russia are not delaying construction of new nuclear reactors, but the United States and some European countries are responding to the Japanese crises by rethinking plans for nuclear facilities. France generates 75% of its energy with nuclear power, and I haven’t found that they intend to shut down their plants.

One consequence of the reactor crises is an increase in “atomic tourism.” Attendance was up by 12 percent on a recent weekend at the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas and by 20 percent at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque. A spokesman there was quoted as saying, “Folks definitely want information about nuclear reactors and nuclear radiation.” People pay $250 a person to tour Chernobyl and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat in the Ukraine. I didn’t find any indications that visits are up at the Nagasaki and Hiroshima museums. However nuclear engineer Joseph Gonyeau said that visits to his excellent and extensive web site was up by 119 percent in March. There are updates on that site about the Japanese disaster from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan’s Nuclear and industrial Safety Agency, and the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The bottom line is that we should do everything possible to learn from this disaster to improve safety. We should not cripple our economic prosperity in decades to come by being the only country that decides not to use nuclear energy to produce electricity.