Just finished reading.

Good article.

Other excerpt:

The noxious and erroneous influence of Homage to Catalonia had an effect on me. It was also one of the first books I read. The parts that are eye-witness reporting are excellent, but it does not offer in any way a reliable analysis of the wider politics of the war. In a later letter, Orwell even admits that in the book he gave a more sympathetic account of the pro-Trotskyist POUM’s [Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista] position — i.e., that [Joseph] Stalin was responsible for the defeat of the Republic — than he actually believed himself. He justified this by saying he felt they had not received a fair hearing in the press.

From the article:

Most commentators have placed considerable weight on the logistical assistance given to Franco by Hitler and Mussolini. However, the bald statement that Franco’s military rebels enjoyed a massive advantage thanks to the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy fails to take into account the considerable advantage provided by the barely disguised sympathy of the Conservative government of Great Britain. . . . The democratic powers of Western Europe ignored any considerations of self-interest, let alone of solidarity when they effectively supported the cause of the Spanish military rebels behind the farcical façade of non-intervention

Excerpt:

Yes, there was an extraordinary contradiction here between the rhetoric of how “great” Britain was — Britannia rules the waves — with the cowardly abdication of the role of the Royal Navy. Not that there was complete unanimity in the Conservative parliamentary party or the cabinet. MPs demanded reprisals [the following year] when you had British merchant shipping being bombed in Barcelona by German and Italian aircraft flying under Spanish rebel colors.

Yet Neville Chamberlain’s response was to say that that would not be appropriate. Instead, he wanted the government to send Franco a message insisting that “if he must bomb the Spanish government’s ports, he must use discretion.” To this day, I am flabbergasted by this. He was basically conniving in the starvation of Barcelona, as he had done the previous year with the population of Bilbao. But I have to say that the level of debate in the House of Commons around the blockade of Bilbao — the interventions from Labour and Clement Attlee — were quite extraordinary. They skewered the Tories and exposed their hypocrisy.

Everyone should definitely give this a read-through sometime.

Nice to hear that Preston is going to drop another book on this subject.

There’s a source that is often repeated that the British passed intelligence on to Franco and Germany about troop movements (naval, I think? Might be unspecified, can trace back the quoted info if anyone cares) and even Chomsky gives mention of this however everyone cites each other’s sources and in a fit of madness, I went hunting down the original source “DGFP [date, place of origin, to some German charge de affaires]” - thanks historians! Y’all really made it easy to find it 🙄

The meta info was accurate - the telegram had the correct date, the correct origin in the German embassy in Spain, to and from the correct individuals however the contents of the telegram did not describe what people cite it as saying.

Unfortunately the book referenced is a massive tranche of telegrams that were retrieved after WWII I believe. We’re talking a big ol’ book that has very little indexing. It’s one of a series of volumes of the Documents of German Foreign Policy (i.e. DGFP). It’s not just a matter of reading a chapter because maybe they got the page number wrong, it’s like needing to trawl through masses of telegrams and puzzling out the names and shorthand terms or knowing what the metonyms are referring to (e.g. “Alcora likely moving on the 3rd regiment soon. Such-and-such has been notified. Resupply to the region may be affected.”) Which is, y’know, great if you know who held Alcora at which particular month or who the “3rd regiment” is referring to but if you don’t then it’s like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

So unfortunately it’s something that would probably require a really committed, less ADHD and more autistic version of myself to figure out if the claim is accurate or not.

But maybe Preston will reference this accurately in this new book?

What else is there…

Oh, there was a point where a Italian diplomat admitted to the French government officials (I think the president?) openly that there was Italian troops in Spain. I think it was a battalion? Basically goading him and saying “We’re violating the pact and you aren’t gonna do shit about it.” Nothing was done about it. Great work, guys!

So this is the face of the so-called French socialist government under Leon Blum. If you wanna talk about the “betrayal” of the revolution and you aren’t talking about the betrayal perpetrated by Blum and “socialists” (i.e. social democrats) or the betrayal perpetrated by Segismundo Casado who couped the Negrin government (based on anti-communist fear mongering)only to turn around and seek a peace accord with Franco, thus signalling the vulnerability of the Spanish Republic loud and clear and bringing about a swift and final defeat of the Republican forces, then you can fuck off because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I need to write a piece about how Morocco was central to the Spanish Civil War, both as prelude and as being critical to Franco’s war effort and also to the failure of the Spanish Republic in its internationalism, and the understandable but ultimately self-defeating politicy that was advised by the USSR to not go in on Moroccan independence because basically it threatened the French colonial holdings and risked upsetting the French government and thus may have isolated the Republic from potential “allies” and “support” from especially France but also Britain. Although with allies like that, who needs enemies?

The USSR didn’t want the Spanish Civil War to boil over into a regional war in Europe as they were woefully underprepared at this point for what was to come. The USSR imo was still hopeful that France and Britain might play ball and take more action against the fascists.

I would argue that Stalin learned just how perfidious Perfidious Albion and France truly were based on his experience with the Spanish Civil War and this set policy in the lead up to WWII including the dreaded M-R Pact.

There’s a lot to be read in the work of Michael Jabara Carley and one of his more recent books on this topic finally hit the pirated book scene, which is nice because it was like $100 just to buy the damn ebook. (Stalin’s Gambit, from memory?)

Anyway Preston is a lib who has his own ideological lens. He’s much more grounded than Hugh Thomas, who is garbage but still useful for sifting through to find nuggets of information, but he’s still a lib. Dude wasn’t too far off of being knighted by the British government though and he still accepted the CBE award in the Order of the British Empire so y’know, he’s not left-ish enough to reject this dubious honour nor is he leftist enough to accept it only to attend the ceremony to spit in the face of the royal who goes to hand him his medal (or at least to put his hands in his pockets around the British royal family in solidarity with the Irish) so yeah he’s okay - I respect his work as a historian but I don’t hold him in high regard for his politics.

Edit:
Also Gibraltar. The Brits were (obviously) conducting their operations from Gibraltar. Them monkeys on that damn island should have been eradicated so Spain could have gotten it back prior to the Spanish Civil War kicking off. The USSR wasn’t allowed to impose a naval blockade because of the Brits and territorial waters. So resupply of troops from Morocco to Franco was steady thanks to British inaction on that regard. But really it was more like holding the door open while looking the other way and whistling conspicuously rather than true inaction - it was active complicity under the guise of “inaction”. Tiocfaidh ár lá, you fucks.

A good addition to this book would be:

The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II by Jonathan Haslam

You can find the book here and here (original publisher, which I recommend).

The book is about how Britain, United States, and France were trying to isolate the Soviet Union and the communist bloc and pit Germany and Italy against the Soviet Union.

reading rn