[In the wake of neo-fascist coup attempts — and the ongoing
threat they pose in the U.S. and Brazil — it’s worth revisiting
historical analogies on how to challenge the fascist plague before it
metastasizes, endangering people the world over.]
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WHAT SPAIN TELLS US ABOUT FIGHTING FASCISM  
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Charles Idelson
January 14, 2023
Medium
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_ In the wake of neo-fascist coup attempts — and the ongoing threat
they pose in the U.S. and Brazil — it’s worth revisiting
historical analogies on how to challenge the fascist plague before it
metastasizes, endangering people the world over. _

Campesino resistance poster, Arturo Ballester (1892 - 1981)

 

In the wake of neo-fascist coup attempts — and the ongoing threat
they pose in the U.S. and Brazil — it’s worth revisiting
historical analogies on how to challenge the fascist plague before it
metastasizes, endangering people the world over.

The prime case study has long been Hitler and Nazism. While much of
the historical lens has focused on the punitive punishments the World
War I victors imposed on Germany, and then the appeasement policies by
led by Britain, there’s another compelling model.

In July, 1936, a far right Spanish officer corps, soon led by
Francisco Franco, launched a military coup against a democratically
elected progressive government in Spain. They were abetted from the
start by wealthy, large landowners in agricultural rural areas, and
the conservative hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

The backdrop in an almost feudal country with massive economic
disparities, was several decades of class conflict in Spain, from
dictatorial rule to the establishment of an elected Second Republic,
as well as militant worker uprisings, and violent clashes between the
right and left.

As Paul Preston has written, the young Republic was led by leftist and
moderate Republicans and Socialists, aligned with the organized
sectors of the working class, who had ambitious objectives to “use
state power to create a new Spain” that would require “destroying
the reactionary influence of the Church and the army, more equitable
industrial relations, breaking the feudal powers of
the _latifundio_ estate-owners and meeting the autonomy demands of
Basque and Catalan regionalists.”

JULY 1936 - JULY 1937 Ministry of State Propaganda Delegation of
Madrid. United in the Rear as in the Vanguard to win the War. One of
many posters produced during the war celebrating the fight to save
democracy in Spain. Credit: J.J. Parrilla

This was also the era of the rise of fascism, notably in Italy and
Germany, and the ascendancy of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, a
global conflict that would play out in Spain. After Republican leaders
regained electoral power in February, 1936, the coup plotters stepped
up their planning, buttressed by their command of a highly trained,
well-armed colonial African Army.

Within days of the July coup, its leaders, especially Franco, received
military and logistic aid from Hitler and Mussolini and rapidly seized
largely agricultural areas. But the coup was rebuffed in the largest
cities — Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia — mostly at the hands of
worker and left-led militias, aided by elements of the military who
remained loyal to the Republic.

Republican women, whose rights were expanded during the Second
Republic, played a major role during the Civil War, including in
combat. STF/AFP photo via Getty Images

The coup plotters expected to overrun the country within days. The
Civil War would last almost three years. Despite a massive military
imbalance, the defenders of democracy actually could have won except
for a calamitous decision by Britain, France and the U.S. to impose a
“non-intervention” blockade on both sides — a position heavily
influenced by Franco’s anti-communism rhetoric, substantial fascist
sympathies in British ruling circles, and the propaganda of the
Catholic Church, especially in the U.S., about anti-clerical actions
in Republican strongholds. British appeasement policies towards Hitler
and isolationist politics in the U.S. also were also significant
factors.

However, Hitler and Mussolini happily provided massive assistance to
Franco in the form of weapons, thousands of “volunteer” troops,
and hundreds of millions in loans. Additionally, Hitler and Goering
viewed Spain as a testing ground for their newly developed, advanced
weaponry. German pilots carried out the first major aerial bombing on
civilians in Spain, gaining experience for the death Goering’s
Luftwaffe would deliver a few years later across Europe.

Picasso’s famous painting of the Nazi bombing of Guernica. He
refused to allow it to be housed in Spain while Franco lived. It is
now in a place of honor in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid

Aftermath of a bombing raid in Madrid. Robert Capa photo

While the Roosevelts, especially Eleanor, had sympathy for the
Republic, they ignored a gaping loophole in their blockade, allowing
shipment of supposed non-military products, that included trucks from
GM, Ford, and Studebaker, Firestone tires, and especially oil supplied
by Texaco, Shell, Standard Oil and others, all solely provided to
Franco. Texaco CEO Torkild Rieber, a Hitler sympathizer who developed
close ties with Franco, gave Franco the equivalent of $325 million in
oil shipments on credit, Adam Hochschild notes.

Republican Spain was only able to buy arms from the Soviet Union, and
much of their weaponry was outdated. Stalin and the Soviet Union, did
provide military aid, advisers, and encouragement of the recruitment
of volunteers mostly organized by Communist parties in the
International Brigades.

Poster honoring the International Brigades. The International Brigades
Within the People's Army Help Defend Your Wealth and Your Land. Cantos
(Pere Catalá-Pic (1889-1971))

Ultimately 35,000 to 40,000 volunteers from 50 countries made their
way to Spain, most of them clandestinely as it was illegal in their
home countries. Most were workers, leftists, intellectuals and artists
with little military training, and were ill equipped, especially
compared to Franco’s army. They fought courageously, enduring
enormously high casualties.

Placard honoring the Abraham Lincoln Brigade’s service in the Battle
of Jarama in February, 1937 which blocked the Franco troops from
overrunning Madrid for two years. On the far left is a photo of Oliver
Law, a labor organizer and communist who was the first Black American
to lead an integrated military force in the history of the U.S. The
placard is one of the memorials off the main track that can be found
in the Jarama Valley east of Madrid. Author photo from a tour of the
battlefield in December.

When the Republic, in faint hope of persuading the Western nations to
help, sent the last Brigade fighters home, they were honored with a
march in Barcelona in October, 1938, cheered by 300,000 Spaniards.
Legendary Communist leader Dolores Ibarruri, “La Passionara,”
praised them: “You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend.
You are the heroic example of democracy’s solidarity and
universality.” Her words now are imprinted on a monument to the
Brigades at the University of Madrid.

Dr. Almudena Cros of the _Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas
Internacionales (AABI)_ — (Association of the Friends of the
International Brigades) in front of the only monument in Madrid to the
International Brigades, supported by the work of the AABI. Dr. Cros
holds the flag of the Brigades with the red symbol of the Popular
Front. Photo by author during an AABI tour in Madrid in December.

The war was horrifically bloody. Franco’s army conducted massacres
— deliberate policy to inflict terrorism on the population — on
every plot of land it occupied of anyone suspected of not supporting
its military takeover. The murder death toll was at least 100,000 with
executions continuing for years after the war. Unsanctioned killings,
in smaller numbers, also occurred in Republican held areas.

At the war’s end in April, 1939, many surviving Republic fighters
who escaped to southern France faced a further calamity following the
fall of France, often ending up in Nazi concentration camps or handed
back to Franco for execution. Survivors of the camps who ultimately
returned home were hardly viewed as heroes.

Inconspicuous honorific stones, found in the ground in front of the
homes of Republican fighters, like this one in Madrid, who ended up in
Nazi concentration camps but lived to return to Spain. Called
Stolpersteines, there are some 120 in Spain, along with similar
commemorations to victims of Nazi persecution across Europe. Author
photo

Brigade veterans were hardly welcomed even in the countries that were
at war with Hitler. In the U.S. Lincoln Brigade veterans were branded
“pre-mature anti-fascists,” hounded by the FBI, employers, and
landlords. Even those who volunteered to fight in World War II were
viewed with suspicion and mostly shunted to remote military bases.

Franco maintained his repressive dictatorship until 1975, intent on
destroying any vestige of liberalism, women’s rights that were won
under the Republic, outlawing leftist opposition parties and trade
unions, and restoring the Church’s domination of cultural life and
education.

Even after Franco’s death, a future Socialist Party government,
“fully aware of the sensibilities of a military caste brought up in
the anti-democratic hatreds of Francoism,” Preston writes,
contributed to a _pacto del olvido_, or pact to forget, “a
collective agreement of the great majority of the Spanish people to
renounce any settling of accounts.” A notably different attitude
than seen in Argentina, for example, which after its infamous 10 year
dictatorship was overturned in 1983, held a civil trial of the coup
leaders, with several receiving life sentences.

Though there has been some ebbing in Spain — notably in 2019 a
Socialist government had Franco’s remains removed from an
ostentatious mausoleum he had constructed — there are still few
signs or public memorials to those who fought for democracy. Those
that can be found, such as the monument to the International Brigades
on the campus of the University of Madrid, site of a major battle
early in the war in with Brigade volunteers helped stem a Franco
advance, is frequently targeted by right wing vandalism.

The push in Spain, a concession to the right, to hide the reality of
its history should be a warning in the U.S. — especially as we’ve
seen far right states like Florida now engaging in censorship of the
real history of this country, banning of books, and harassment and
intimidation of educators.

Bullet holes still visible on the walls of a medical faculty building
on the University of Madrid campus. Author photo

Speaking in London
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gathering honoring the British Brigade volunteers, Dr. Almudena Cros
of the _Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales
(AABI)_ — (Association of the Friends of the International
Brigades), warned of an effort to have the University monument
removed. “This is where it should be. This is where many of the
generous Brigadeers gave their all to defend us against fascism. We
want to inspire the youth of today. This is the example of what your
generation gave to our people. They can try to uproot the monument.
They will not uproot the memories and the brave example that they gave
us is with us.”

Monument to international solidarity high on the Jarama battlefield.
Author photo

If the U.S., Britain and France had aided the Republic would it have
stymied Hitler and prevented World War II? Probably not given
Hitler’s obsessive, expansionist dreams. But Spain was a critical
training ground for Hitler who was able to enter the wider war months
later with an experienced modern military, in a way the Allies did
not.

Further, a victory in Spain would have deprived Germany’s military
as Hochschild notes, “a source of strategic raw materials for
weapons production… important submarine bases, and… troops”
Spain provided for Hitler’s war effort.

Finally, it would have saved Spain from much of the monstrosity of
slaughter during the war and the brutality of 36 years of Franco’s
dictatorship. And it’s an essential reminder of why international
solidarity in resistance to fascism matters.

_My family was privileged to be hosted on a visit to the Jarama
battlefield, a __phenomenal museum nearby_
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Morata de Tajuna and war sites in Madrid by the Across Madrid tours.
Highly recommended, you can find them __here_
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_Spanish Civil War tours are also available in Barcelona, __here_
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_Recommended readings:_

_A Short History of the Spanish Civil War. By Julian Casanova._

_Frontline Madrid. Battlefield Tours of the Spanish Civil War. By
David Mathieson._

_The Spanish Civil War. A Very Short Introduction. By Helen Graham._

_Spain in Our Hearts. By Adam Hochschild._

_Forgotten Places. Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War. By Nick
Lloyd._

_The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, Revolution and Revenge. By Paul
Preston._

_CHARLES IDELSON is senior communications adviser, National Nurses
United_

_MEDIUM. A living network of curious minds. Anyone can write on
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* Fascism
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* Spain
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* Spanish Civil War
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* International Brigades
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* class struggle
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