Monday, July 14, 2008

Readers Take Sides on the Spanish War

Reader Andrew Pavelyev writes about Bookshelf 95

Not that I enjoy defending fascist dictators, but I think Beevor is wrong on several important points (a disclaimer: this is based solely on your review, since I have not seen the book).
 
First of all, Gibraltar is no small thing. In fact I don't see how the British Empire could have possibly stayed in the war without it (instead of the stupid London bombing campaign Hitler should have just sent his troops marching to Gibraltar - with or without Franco's permission and without too much deference for a fellow fascist dictator). And Spain shielded not only Gibraltar, but also Portugal. By 1943 Salazar felt so safe from land invasion that he granted the Brits airbases in the Azores and that helped a lot to turn the tide in the Battle for the Atlantic).
 
I think Hitler's abduction by aliens is a much more plausible historical path avoiding WWII than a military coup. I simply don't buy the version of history in which German generals (probably the original creators of this version) were closeted anti-Nazis, constantly on the verge of overthrowing Hitler. Prussia/Germany does not have any tradition of military coups. Unlike, say, the Bolivian generals, the German generals just don't have the know-how (as they amply demonstrated in July 1944). Coups really go against the grain of Prussian military culture. Only after a long series of Hitler's blunders made the situation really desperate, did the generals spring into action. And even then it was too little, too late. I don't exclude that a truly dramatic single event like massive Anglo-French invasion after reoccupation of Rhineland would have led to Hitler's downfall (because such an event would have made him hugely unpopular with the population, not just the generals). But the stakes were just way too low in Spain. Hitler simply was not that much invested in Franco's victory - unlike Mussolini who sent a lot of ground troops, Hitler just sent some Luftwaffe units (perhaps he was in fact worried about a potential loss of face in case of bigger - and unsuccessful - involvement). So probably the worst he had to fear from his generals in case of failure was a polite request for a slight reallocation of resources between Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht on the ground that the recent war in Spain had demonstrated that airpower was overrated.
 
I think the outcome was very fortunate for the Allies. Any leftist government would have been eventually attacked by Hitler (with Gibraltar falling shortly thereafter), after perhaps first providing a lot of assistance to him under Stalin's pressure after Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and a different Nationalist leader might have been friendlier with Hitler.
 
I can't believe that scrupulous repayment of debts to Hitler and Mussolini is held against Franco - or anybody for that matter. Can anyone name a country which owed a lot to Hitler and Mussolini, had a border with either, yet refused to pay back?!
 
The Blue Division is hardly proof of Franco's enthusiasm for the Axis. Besides the fact that he agreed only to use it exclusively against the Soviets and recalled it after two years, fighting godless Communists was a relatively popular cause in Europe back then. In fact a lot more Allied citizens than Spaniards fought on the Eastern Front (as volunteers in special SS units). After NKVD running amok in half of Spain for three years, one can imagine there were a lot of Spanish men with some serious scores to settle. So at least they had a better excuse than, say, the good Dutchmen from the SS division Nederland. I think sending that division was a very smart move for Franco: he managed to keep Hitler off his back without actually giving him substantial help AND he got thousands of hotheads thirsty for Communist blood out of the country while he was busy starting the efforts at national reconciliation and commuting sentences of domestic Communists (you can't help admiring the sheer cynicism :-)
 
Comparison with countries behind the Iron Curtain strongly suggests that the author has never been there. I remember well how the magnitude of the difference between Franco's Spain and the USSR first dawned on me. 20 years ago I studied Spanish on my own and read the play "Historia de una escalera" by Antonio Buero Vallejo. I was quite impressed by his biography. In 1939 he was sentenced to death, and in 1949 that play premiered in a Madrid theater. Not only had he been a free man for several years by then, but he was given quite a megaphone! That would have been absolutely unthinkable under Stalin.
 
In Spain, once the civil war was over, it was over. Franco effectively applied "no double jeopardy" principle and a short statute of limitations. Punishment for being on the "wrong" side was either meted out shortly after the war (and yes, quite often it was not pretty) or not at all. For any particular individual punishment was not going to become harsher in the future (I am not, of course, talking about continuing anti-government activities) - in fact it was rather likely to be reduced. Not so in the Soviet Union (or Red China). If someone (who fought with the Whites or belonged to the "wrong" social class before the revolution) was let go (either immediately or after imprisonment) after the Russian civil war, he was by no means safe from future reprisals. A lot of people were later executed or arrested in the Great Terror (and other terror waves) for their actions or even mere associations two decades earlier. There were even quite a few people who first spent some considerable time (for alleged counter-revolutionary activities) in the fledgling GULAG in the early 1920's, were released, arrested again in 1937 and sentenced to 10 years, released in 1947 (whereby they quietly tried to rebuild what was left of their lives - they were middle-aged, toothless and quite sick by then) and then arrested yet again in 1949. This is a whole different level of viciousness. And it is ridiculous to place Franco anywhere near this category of tyrants.
 
Franco also made some efforts at national reconciliation. A year after victory he started building a huge monument in the Valley of the Fallen and claimed that it commemorated the dead on both sides. One can quibble about the actual representation at the monument - although there are in fact Republican graves there as well. But none of the numerous revolution-related monuments in the Soviet Union ever acknowledged victims on the other side. And no Soviet dictator ever (not even after 70 years!) even pretended to acknowledge the most basic humanity of the other side. Those who failed to support the Communist revolution simply became non-persons.
 
Finally, anyone who absolutely could not stand Franco's Spain was free to leave. In the Soviet Union merely thinking about leaving (aka "conspiracy to commit high treason") was a worse crime than serial murder.

Two comments in reply:

1) I should make clear that Beevor compared Franco's Spain not to the Soviet Union itself but to the Soviet-dominated East bloc countries. And the point of his comparison was as much economic under-performanc as it was human rights abuse. That said, it is also true that Franco's Spain was able to self-correct in a way that was not possible behind the Iron Curtain. As it became clear after 1960 that autarchic economics did not work, Franco did authorize an economic opening - an opening that laid the groundwork for Spain's sustained economic growth under democracy. And of course democracy did come, and peacefully, thanks to his posthumous restoration of the monarchy under Juan Carlos II. Whether he intended that outcome or not, I am not competent to say.

2) It should be noted that the monument to the Spanish war dead was built by former Republican prisoners working as slave laborers. That rather detracts from its "malice toward none" aspects! 

07/14 07:19 AM