The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas

I mentioned Orwell’s famous book on the Spanish Civil War, which I had never read until recently, a few weeks ago. It’s a great book, but it’s not a history book. If you are only going to read one book about the Spanish Civil War, you should probably read this book by Hugh Thomas, the great British historian. (He also wrote a history of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards that I strongly recommend.) It’s more than 1000 pages long, but given the complexity of this war, that’s hardly superfluous. Here is a passage where he describes a famous episode which took place at the beginning of the war, during the Siege of the Alcázar by the republicans in Toledo, before Franco relieved the fortress a few weeks later:

The most celebrated incident of this period in the Spanish war occurred at Toleda. From Madrid, the minister of education, the minister of war, and General Riquelme had been furiously telephoning the 58-year-old infantry colonel, Moscardó, commander of the nationalist garrison still holding out in the Alcázar, in an attempt to persuade him to surrender. Finally, on 23 July, Cándido Cabello, a republican barrister in Toledo, telephoned Moscardó to say that if Moscardó did not surrender the Alcázar within ten minutes, he would shoot Luis Moscardó, the Colonel’s 24-year-old son, whom he had captured that morning. “So that you can see that’s true, he will speak to you,” added Cabello. “What is happening, my boy?” asked the colonel. “Nothing,” answered the son, “they say they will shoot me if the Alcázar does not surrender.” “If it be true,” replied Moscardó, “commend your soul to God, shout Viva España, and die like a hero. Good-bye my son, a last kiss.” “Good-bye father,” answered Luis, “a very big kiss.” Cabello came back on the telephone, and Moscardó announced that the period of grace was unnecessary. “The Alcázar will never surrender,” he remarked, replacing the receiver. Luis Moscardó was not, however, short there and then, but was executed with other prisoners in front of the Transitó synagogue on 23 August, in reprisal for an air raid. This heroic tale became a legend in nationalist Spain. Subsequently, the accusation has been made that the telephone had been already cut by 23 July, and that no one recorded the telephone conversation at the time. Some exchange of this sort, nevertheless, assuredly occurred.

It’s the kind of things you only read in Plutarch, but many episodes of that sort took place during the war, alongside the many atrocities that both sides committed. Despite the fact that he was a communist, Jean Ferrat wrote a beautiful song that captures the tragedy of this war, about a woman whose two sons fought on opposite sides during the war and ended up killing each other. Instead of picking a side, as most people still do when that talk about the war, he focuses on the cruelty of the war. If you understand French, you should listen to it.

There are lots of myths about the war that are still alive, but Thomas does a very good job at distinguishing between what is supported by the evidence and what is just propaganda. It’s really interesting to see how, although the republicans lost the war on the field, they definitely won the war of propaganda after the conflict was over. Thomas is very fair and his book is extremely balanced. Another thing which makes his book great is that, instead of jumping right into the war, he spends a lot of time explaining what led to it. The breakdown of civility in Spain between 1931 and 1936 is ominously reminiscent of what has been taking place in the West recently. People would benefit from reading this book even if they are not particularly interested in the Spanish Civil War, for it would remind them that, when political disagreement is no longer seen as legitimate and one’s political opponents are constantly pathologized, it usually doesn’t end well. Leftists in particular should think more about this, because I think that, just as was the case during that period in Spain, they share a disproportionate share of the responsibility for this breakdown today. Moreover, although the Spanish left vastly underestimated the ability and willingness of the right to reply in kind before the war, it was at least not obvious that the left would lose in 1936, whereas it’s totally obvious that it would lose if there was a civil war today. One important difference which makes it less likely that it will result in the same outcome is that the norm that political violence is illegitimate still has a much wider acceptance today, but I wonder how much longer this can remain the case, if the polarization along ideological lines that we have been seeing in recent years continues. At the same time, when there no longer is a large enough set of shared principles, it’s not clear what can be done to prevent a tragic outcome.

5 thoughts

  1. Why do you think that leftists share a disproportionate share of the breakdown today?

    I guess that answering that question involves first defining what you mean by “leftists”: Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky or those in-between?

    Second, are you specifically referring to the U.S. or to the world in general?

    1. Why do you think that leftists share a disproportionate share of the breakdown today?

      When is the last time you’ve heard right-wing activists had tried to prevent a left-wing politician from giving a rally or had attacked his supporters in the street? The media are biased, so they focused on violence by Trump supporters during the campaign, but the reality is that 1) they were only reacting to constant harassment (I’m not saying that makes it okay, only that this kind of stuff would happen among pretty much any group if they were constantly harassed by opponents in the same way), 2) it wasn’t that common (which is why propaganda videos denouncing violence by Trump supporters were always using the same incidents, something his opponents apparently don’t notice) and 3) far more violence has been directed at Trump supporters than the other way around (but Trump’s opponents weren’t very shocked by that).

      I guess that answering that question involves first defining what you mean by “leftists”: Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky or those in-between?

      I think it’s mostly people on the fringe, but mainstream leftists are guilty because they hesitate to speak out against this (which many, though not all, do), out of a fear that they will be tarred as right-wing or something. It was also people on the fringe who murdered José Calvo Sotelo, but they were tolerated by the mainstream leftists.

  2. It would be pointless to go through world history and count the number of decent societies which broke down due to violence from the left and those which broke down due to violence from the right.

    I’m fairly out of touch with the U.S left and especially the U.S. campus left, which is extraordinarily intolerant in my experience. I’m on the left, have been on the left for 55 years now, have been arrested several times in street demonstrations, worked underground during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, once lost a job because I stood up for a woman’s right to choose, but I’ve been bitterly attacked as a “reactionary old sod” in one academic feminist blog and then placed on permanent “comments to be moderated” status, etc. I don’t know what went wrong with the U.S. academic left: they seem very out of touch with the lived life of “normal” people, for example, the Native-Americans whom you mention in another post. Maybe like Don Quijote, they read too many books, although Quijote wasn’t so intolerant or close-minded. Definitely, they read the wrong books.

    1. To be clear, I wasn’t arguing that historically the left had been responsible for the breaking down of society more often than the right, which strikes me as the kind of things nobody could ever show. I was making the more limited claim that, in the US right now and in Spain between 1931 and 1936, the left was more to blame. Moreover, it doesn’t mean that in either case the right has no responsibility, only that it has less.

      Indeed, the evolution of the American left is really preoccupying, and the causes of that evolution are probably complicated. I’m pretty confident, however, that it’s not because they read too many books. It’s probably in part because they read the wrong books. Well, it’s okay to read the wrong books, but you should read the others too and I fear most “social justice warriors” don’t read very much…

      1. In most societies the right defends interests: in Chile the right clearly represents the interests of the economic and social elite. I realize that there’s a religious right in many countries and a xenophobic right, but in most societies those who make the decisions on the right defend their economic and social interests. That has its negative and positive sides. Those who defend interests tend to be a bit cynical: they may talk “high ideals”, but they’re more interested in their bank accounts. People who are interested in defending their banks accounts can be brutal in defending their class interests, but they are rarely fanatics.
        You can “deal” with them (as Trump’s book, the Art of the Deal, makes clear): they may scream that higher taxes is the end of a “free society”, but as long as they have good lawyers and accountants, they’ll find a way to get around those taxes. No harm done.

        On the left we defend ideals, lofty ideals. People who defend lofty ideals can be very ethically scrupulous beautiful people, but they can easily become fanatics, intolerant, holier than thou, pharisees, etc. In order to avoid fanaticism, the left needs constant self-criticism, but the feeling that one has the Right and the Good on one’s side tends to inoculate one against self-criticism.

        As usual, the solution seems Socratic: know thyself and question your own received wisdom.

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