yr12_scw_Historiography

On every topic in the historical world there will always be difference in arguments and meaning. The Spanish civil war is by no means any exception to this. This article is based on the opinions of the author Antony Beevor from his resent book “The battle for Spain”, and the reactions and counter arguments of the by which these opinions have been met in the review of the book written by the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto. Ha has written a review on Beevor’s book, pulling out what he believes are Beevors key points, and putting in his own points of view.

Beevor seems to say that the Spanish civil war was an international event, caused by the two ideological fronts, communism and fascism. Fernández-Armesto dissagreas with this, saying that “the war was unideological because most Spaniards were ideologically uncommitted”. Newer research has shown that Stalin sold weapons to both sides in the civil war, and Goering was implicated in clandestine and exploitative arms deals with Republicans, so there does not seem to have been many ideological barriers.

Fernández-Armesto says: Antony Beevor’s point of view:
 * Argues against the view that Africa, “began at the Pyrenees”, and says that “Spain has a typical Western European past”.
 * Spain was one of the first countries in the world to have a genuinely democratic franchise but you would never learn that from most general studies of the subject.
 * global ideological conflict
 * Technically, the Spanish war anticipated the Second World War.
 * Politically, it seemed to reflect global divisions, as rival forms of authoritarianism clawed at each other on the streets and in the field, like the crude monsters of the horror films popular at the time.
 * Spain became, in the eyes of beholders, a laboratory of struggle between Fascism and Communism, totalitarianism and democracy.
 * Direct quote from Felipe Fernández-Armesto  à “My uncle Ramón was a Republican through and through, but fought on the same side as Franco because, he said, he “could not bear to rape a nun, burn a church or kill a priest”.” – repub not repub
 * Meanwhile, if the Nationalists were not genuinely national, not all Republicans fought on the side called “Republican”. - German and Italian “volunteers” and Moroccan recruits
 * Ultimately, of course, the war was unideological because most Spaniards were ideologically uncommitted.
 * Almost all the supposed peculiarities of Spanish history turn out, in the light of recent research, not to have been unusual at all. -- Yet the Civil War, to have had little or nothing to do with broader movements in Europe and the world, or with other divisions and conflicts of its day.  looks increasingly like a uniquely Spanish event, rooted in quarrels peculiar to Spain
 * Beevor - “ The Spanish Civil War is, however, best remembered in entirely human terms: the clash of beliefs, the ferocity, the generosity and selfishness, the hypocrisy of diplomats and ministers, the betrayal of ideals and political manoeuvres and, above all, bravery and self-sacrifice of those who fought on both sides. But history, which is never tidy, must always end with questions. Conclusions are much too convenient.”
 * Wars can be made to illustrate universal themes. (international) – Stalin sold weapons to both sides, Goering was implicated in clandestine and exploitative arms deals with Republicans – (purely Spanish)
 * the Republican command was incompetent -
 * Russian “advisers” did not know how to work their own tanks
 * The Republic’s propaganda wing was a disastrous failure
 * So it was not so much that Franco won the war as that the Republic lost it.
 * The difference between the sides was inexorable logic of the international situation which left the Republic effectively friendless, and ultimately starved of supplies
 * the Left started the war with shaky democratic credentials and rapidly forfeited even those
 * A Republican victory after a long war would have turned Spain into a Stalinist satellite.
 * A quick Republican victory would have provoked another civil war: not against the Right but between the warring sects and cults among which the Left was divided
 * Antony Beevor wisely deflects reflection away from the contexts both of Spanish exceptionalism and global Götterdämmerung, to draw human lessons.