Through a Dark Valley: The Spanish Civil War
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The Alcazar of Toledo could not have stood against a modern army. Its thick granite walls would just be shrapnel from bombs or artillery, and srve as coffins for the soldiers within. It wasn’t even a fortress anymore; just a military academy to teach Spain’s soldiers. Nor was its commander, Colonel José Moscardó, a hero. He was an old man with a gray beard and a love of football and his family. But he was what Spain had, and so for weeks he had held the Alcazar against the revolutionaries. They had slaughtered good men and women outside the fortress, so that the rotting remains of flesh still covered the streets.
Moscardó was no hero. Yet he had rallied at thousand man to the red and gold standard of the true Spain. Franco was coming, he knew. Franco was coming and would save them. If only he just held out, this nightmare would end. He looked out over the city, as if he could see Franco coming across the plains.
Just then, a soldier knocked on the door of his office. The boy who walked in was a thiny and wiry lad who had never seemed that suited to soldiering. Moscardó had heard his father had made him join the army, but the boy never complained about his situation. With the onsent of the revoluion, he had never protested once, even as he ate mule stew and smoked the leaves of elm trees in a fortress under siege. Like so many of the men with Moscardó ,he had remained true to a Spain that did not deserve him. He deserved a medal, but Moscardó couldn’t even clothe the boy. He was forced to wear the panoply of a Napoleonic hussar, filched from the Academy’s Museum. Moscardó forced himself to smile, and said amiably, “Quiet today, isn’t it?”
The boy nodded, but kept his gaze focused on the floor. “Colonel,” he said, “it’s your son. He’s on the phone.”
Moscardó lunged past the boy and picked up the phone in his office’s antechamber. Cradling the telephone in his hand, he whispered his son’s name. “Father,” came the reply. His son’s voice was quavering, and his words oddly mushy. “They caught me.”
Moscardó gripped the phone tightly. “Tell them if they don’t release you I will kill fifty hostages.”
There the sound like a crack on the other end of the phone, and then his son’s voice came back on, mixed with sobbing. “They say if you don’t surrender they will kill me.”
Moscardó was silent, thinking of his son. He was a good boy, always kind to his horse and the servants. He was meant for so much. How easy would it be to agree, to see his son again. The bastards would probably even keep their word; they didn’t want to be known for killing soldiers that surrendered.
But Colonel Jose Moscardó had a duty to Spain, and to the men under his command. “Give your soul to God, my son, and die with Viva España! on your lips.” He thought back to the days when he had cradled his son in his arms, and to when he had taught him to ride. So long ago, and yet so recent. He remembered the way he had said goodbye to his son when he was a child. He would never say it again, now. “Kiss kiss.”
He heard his son’s voice become calm, and his breath even. “Goodbye, Father.”
The square was silent for the next few minutes, while Moscardó looked out of the window. His throat clenched as he saw his son walk into the street, and for a moment he hoped the bastards were going to release him.
It was a foolish hope, of course. He saw his son salute his executioners, but never heard the words that escaped his lips. Just two sounds, as a revolutionary raised his gun.
Kiss kiss.
There was a full moon that night, and the lamps of a Madrid film studio bathed the battered fortress in a vivid, theatrical effulgence. Against the dark immensity of the sky, it was easy to spot the soldiers on the roof, including one who, bizarrely, was dressed liked a veteran of the Peninsular Campaign.
And it was even easier to see fifty hostages plummet into the river below.
The outbreak of the Civil War was not, in hindsight, surprising. The Popular Front’s victory caused the military to begin plotting, as it had repeatedly in the past. Yet unlike in past years, the coup was neither crushed nor successful. Instead, Spain found itself divided in two for a war that lasted several years. The question that historians have wondered is why neither side was able to achieve victory early on, and why Spain had to suffer for years before the becoming a democracy.
one must remember the violent nature of Spanish politics in 1936. Churches were burned, newspaper offices gutted, and politicians of the right and left were gunned down in the street. Rumors of plots had swirled for months, yet the government was still caught flatfooted. With the military’s loyalty questionable, it was unable to take firm action against the rebels, at least at first. Thus the government was forced to turn to the trade unions and far left parties for support, most of whose members thought the revolt would collapse before the weight of history. The military, for its part, was faced with vigorous opposition, and so spent the first few months of the civil war consolidating its position.
And so the cities of Spain became killing grounds for the right and left. In the first few nights of the coup, Barcelona’s churches burned with a golden hue, each tiny pinnacle and turret bright against the sky. To hide from the revolutionaries, the city’s middle-class donned shabby clothes and stayed at home, while criminals released from jail served a agents of revolutionary justice. In Southern Spain, Franco’s Moorish soldiers burned and pillaged their way across the countryside, reenacting the Moorish conquest. The Popular Front had dreamed of uniting the nation to avert a civil war, but now faced with one, its leaders, plump men in business suits, had no idea what to do.
While the politicians dithered, Spain's people acted. The Ritz in Barcelona was renamed Hotel Gastronomic No. 1, while illiterate carpenters made ballads about working class solidarity. The Republic’s militias armed themselves with whatever they had at hand, and so villagers dusted off ancient breastplates and arquebuses, and took them into battle against the military’s machine guns and artillery. It was a heroic effort which unfortunately happened to be disastrous.
The militiamen were apt to leave their post whenever they pleased, whether to pick grapes at home or to enjoy the revolution’s aphrodisiac nature. It should come as no surprise, then, that vast swathes of Spain were taken by the Nationalists in the opening months of the war.
Yet the tide soon turned, and Blum’s efforts to arm the Republic against the Nationalists soon had an effect. The Republic’s air force was puny, consisting of obsolete French aircraft and whatever Stalin was willing to send, but it was capable of annihilating the Nationalist bombers that attacked Madrid throughout 1936, and the Republic’s air superiority played a key role in defeating the Nationalist assault on Asturias. [1] Control over Northwestern Spain was ultimately vital to the Republic’s victory, for it contained much of spain's coal and iron. Without it, the Nationalists could not hope to prosecute the war.
Yet while the Republic was able to defend its territory and ultimately advance against the Nationalists, no one knew what would follow if the Republicans won.
“The war is lost, absolutely lost, and, if by a miracle it were won, we Republicans would have to embark on the first boat that left Spain – if they allowed us to.”-Manuel Azaña
Although Manuel Azaña’s remained president for several more years, he lost most of his true power as it became apparent he could not handle the situation. Spain’s noiminal leader roamed the halls of the National Palace like a ghost, and the situation cried for new leadership. Unfortunately for Spain, the new leadership came in the form Largo Caballero, whose well-filled black suit and solid build portrayed his origins as a brick layer and trade union leader. Caballero kept up the appearances of a democratic government, and in October he assembled the Cortes for the first time since the fighting began. Spain, its supporters claimed, fought for democracy, and not for socialism. If anybody noticed that the Cortes was surprisingly empty, as many politicians had been executed, well, nobody questioned it. They had no desire to suffer the same fate as other enemies of the Republic, after all.
Meanwhile, the Republic struggled against itself. In Barcelona, the Communist parties moved against the Trotskyites and Anarchists. From there, they soon moved against Catalan separatists, and the Republic developed a secret police force modeled on the NKVD.
The first phase of the Spanish Civil War ended in October of 1938, as Seville fell to the Republican Army. The second phase, unfortunately, began soon after.
[1] Germany has bombers, but needs hard currency. Republican Spain has hard currency, and needs bombers.
Guess what happens next?
); and his Germany, while light-years better than the historical Nazi regime, is still very nationalistic and flawed by modern or even post-war standards.
