36; The Red and white terror of the Spanish Civil War; Europe between the wars, 1919-1930

I went to the big to do the discussion of the sale of the Spanish Civil War and also its international repercussions and associations. But before beginning the main thread of things I'd like to put a few minutes discussing what was one of the more characteristic features of the civil war as it is of I think was of all revolutionary counter revolutionary civil wars in Europe during the first half the 20th century. The terror red and white was practiced on both sides which got an enormous amount of publicity during the war and afterwards and for good reason because a good many people were killed in the political executions that were carried out. I'm lost on both sides. So much so that it was thought by both parties during the Civil War that more people were being shot in executions behind the front than were actually killed in the fighting during the military engagements themselves. This proved to be an exaggeration but both sides were thoroughly convinced of it especially as far as their enemies were concerned. The Nationalists had got the figure up to a million people slaughtered in the Republican zone by the end of the Civil War and the Republican propagandists were really not very

far behind that they were sure that something close to a million people had been slaughtered in the nationalist zone behind the lines during the course of the Civil War. They were both exaggerations of where in the range of about 2000 percent as far as one can make out. But this was not the sort of thing that happened nearly in Spain. Executions were carried out on mastering the Russian Civil War during the Finnish civil war which is very nasty little affair. In 1918 in Finland and on a lesser scale during the Hungarian civil war which actually was not much of a civil war in Hungary during 1919. The Red Tour was the most intensive during the first phase of the Civil War. It went on primarily for the first six months that is from about July to December 1937 mainly in the cities but in also some of the rural areas in the Republican zone was carried out by the various organized left revolutionary groups was directed against what were conceived all class enemies and all political enemies. Most of the people killed were not upper class people. They

didn't have that many upper class people to kill. Probably most areas of the order most of the majority of those shot were simply other members of the lower and lower middle classes who were considered to be of the wrong political coloration. The Red Terror was to a large extent an exclusively broader can under control by the end of 1936. And of course it came to an end with the end of the Civil War it was somewhat regularize during 1937 in 1938 the white terror by the Nationalist was probably not quite as intensive during the first months as the Nationals were too busy with military affairs but they were able to keep it up longer. And it in a sense it continued after the war was ended there were quite a series of political executions purges of the captured lest those held to have political and criminal responsibilities. In 1940 41 and 42. Therefore while it may well have been the during the Civil War the Red Terror executed more people than did the white. But overall the nationalists probably shot more people because they won the war and they were in a position to finish the job.

If the left had won the war they probably would have exacted the higher toll because then they would have been positioned to finish the job on their side. The notion however that more people were shot in the terrors and the executions during the Civil War than were killed in the war is an exaggeration. Most There's no evidence that more than about a hundred thousand people were shocked and pretty well divided between both sides during the war itself. Whereas something like 200000 people were killed in the military fighting so only half as many actually perished by the terrors as were killed during the military combat. Nor was this overall mortality rate something like 300000 deaths by violence during the Civil War particularly high for a revolutionary kind of revolutionary 20th century European civil war. This was just slightly over 1 percent of the total population of Spain which was around 25 million. In 1936 and was in proportionate demographic terms almost exactly equal to the death toll in the Finnish civil war in 1979 80.

The difference being that actually more people died in the Civil War as a result of purging policy proportionately than were killed in battle or than were killed in battle proportionately in the Spanish war either one. There were what happened in this bloody civil war in terms of mortalities and executions was not really very novel. It was not due to the supposed ferocity of the Spanish temper or of the characteristics of Spanish culture. The Finns are supposed to be remarkably UN ferocious people who have a very high level of progressive and civilized Scandinavian culture. They prove themselves perfectly capable in proportionate terms of doing exactly the same sort of thing in 1918 and 1919. The big difference I think between the tours was that the terror in the Republican zone was to some extent dysfunctional. The revolutionary groups who were so interested in carrying out their revolution on the economic

plane on the one hand and in purging their quote class enemies unquote on the other that they let it get in the way of what should have been presumably their main business which was fighting the Civil War. The white chair or the nationalist repression of the Franco zone was more functional was more effective it was more rationally planned and carried out and was used to reinforce political unity and control and the military effort as well in a more efficient way. That went on in the Republican zone until rather later in the game. So I think the main qualitative difference there was not so much in the number of people killed during the civil war as in the functional usages of the terror. This had to do of course with the extreme disunity and internal fragmentation of the popular front of the various left revolutionary groups in Spain who were not able to unite around any kind of common policy in effect until it was too late. I outlined toward the close last time a series of different positions about the question of

revolution and war by the various groups in the Republican zone and the extreme all out revolutionary position of the anarchists which meant concentrating on the revolution and virtually ignoring the war at first. The independent Leninist position of the boom which meant concentrating on the revolution but through means of central political organisation and fighting the war at the same time that was possible. A position somewhat distinct more centralized more controlled more political more statist. If you like that of the anarchists the position of the moderate essentially lower middle class Republicans who are not revolutionaries who wanted to put the entire revolution business back in the box and forget about it and simply restore organized government and an organized legal system and concentrate on fighting the war. Problem was that they didn't have most people supporting them in the Republican zone and the intermediate essentially more ingenious position I think of the Communist Party as indicated by the Third

International from Moscow to follow a kind of compromise policy which was to maintain the revolution but only to a limited degree to channel it and control it so that it would not get in the way of the war effort and to restore central government and state organization. Above all for purposes of military efficiency and military discipline to concentrate on fighting the war. Now the other kids particularly said the company's policy was strictly counter-revolutionary compass policy was quote a restoration of the bourgeoisie. As this might not seem to really make much sense but that is the way rhetoric normally went normally and particularly in Spanish terms didn't bear much reality to the actual empirical terms of what was going on in the political context. So the anarchist said and so did the people to some extent of the company's policy was strictly counter revolutionary restoration of the middle class of the bourgeoisie and so on and so forth they could never go for that. The Communists in Durham replied that what they were working for was a new kind of republic not a restoration

of the old a democratic Middle Class parliamentary republic but they had a republic up a block a People's Republic a republic of the new type which would not be a counter-revolutionary middle class bourgeois merely democratic parliamentary republic because the social political and economic foundations of a bourgeois Republic had already been eroded by what had happened in 1936. Both before and after the beginning of the Civil War. The high bourgeoisie the major capital interests had already been destroyed all rightist political parties had been destroyed. This was only now a leftist Republic. Everything at center or right of center had been eliminated. These political organizations were not functioning as Republicans own and therefore this kind of organized governmental republic would be a people's republic a pluralistic leftist Republic which would channel the revolution and go on to fight the Civil War. The colonists began to get their way by the spring of 1937 when finally the logical cover get Oprah list excel by revolutionary Popular Front government came to an end and was

replaced by a government under another socialist leader who was distinctly pro-communist. Name one the goody who remain prime minister from March 1937 down to the end of the Civil War. The dramatic event would signal the beginning of the beginning government of the downfall of a lot of folk of your own and his confused style of hybrid revolutionary socialism was the beginning of a takeover and restoration of government power by government authorities in Barcelona. The key center of the anarchists in the boom which occasioned a brief three day civil war within the Civil War in Barcelona. The setting up of barricades by the anarchists and the people against the restoration of any kind of Republican government even a left kind of Republican government which was finally brought to an end by appeals to unity and a dismantling of the barricades. The and forced resignation of the logical Covergirl cabinet and its replacement by a new cabinet which represented all the leftist parties but now largely followed

the Communist policy of channeling the revolution and rebuilding government power and organized military authority. This became essentially the program of the wartime Republican government from a 1937 all the way down to the defeat the final defeat at the end of March in 1939. Some commentators have said that really came too late because by that point the Republicans own have lost so much ground and the Franco army had been built up to such a point that it was very difficult to defeat. And the program could no longer be implemented. If that effectively to such a degree is to win the civil war that may or may not have been the case. The policy of General Franco on the opposite side was considerably more simple it was first of all to achieve complete political unity. Under the leadership of the general himself who you remember had become not merely head of the military movement and the

counter revolutionary forces but chief of state of a new national state as ratified by his military colleagues on October 1 1936 and having achieved complete political unity. Therefore to be able to concentrate the major efforts of new state on the organization of a regular kind of organized and disciplined army which would place military organization and efficiency above all else and therefore be in a superior position to do what those engaged in civil wars presumably are supposed primarily to do wage the war militarily and win it militarily which is what Franco then proceeded to do. On the other hand Franco could not merely ignore and avoid politics although that was probably his primary desire. Not really interested in politics as such. However he had given thought to this problem already before the civil war had begun. He had lived through the whole period of the people that he had a dictatorship of the 1920s and

one of his primary political concerns as the head of the new authoritarian nationalist state in Spain in the rebel zone was to avoid what he called the primo era war. That is the attempt to construct a merely personal or merely military kind of temporary regime that did not have any political organization did not have any doctrine did not have any organizational roots and so had no framework. Or theory for its own solidity and continuity. He was building what he called a new state the new state ultimately had to have some kind of political form and doctrine. So to a certain degree he achieved that in April 1937. So just at the same time that the big green government is being formed in the Republican zone by establishing a single party a part of the the nickel based around the funky The Spanish fascist party but not just on the basis of Jism and the doctrines of Spanish fascism rather by taking over the

Phalangist Party and fusing it with all of the other essentially right wing political elements in the Franco zone who are supporting the nationalist war effort and making of the financing a new state Unity Party and a heterogeneous composite party of monarchists rightists whatever. Given a new name the s t the traditionalist or a monarchist. It's about a phalanx which would adopt to the Phalangist program that essentially generically fascist program but not as the final idiology of the new system simply as a point of departure as a set of working principles which would be developed and expanded and incorporated in a more complete and heterogeneous and also a more catholic and culturally traditionalist form in this way. Franco achieved a political organization and a political idiology although one still in process of elaboration and development not a very sixth one. To give some political consistency and organization and solidity to his regime.

Therefore his state was not merely a kind of Latin American style military