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This is extremely inaccurate and misleading.
First there was lots of international actors in the Spanish civil war and England was probably the least important of all those.
Of course UK media like the guardian will grossly exaggerate the England importance over it.
Countries like the Soviet Union had much more importance as they were the main supporters of 1934 "Asturias' revolution" that tried to make Spain a proletarian dictatorship and URSS satellite. Stalin will influence the war removing Largo Caballero and putting his lackey Negrin as leader of the republicans.
Germany also had great influence as they considered essential not letting his enemy URSS get more power in Spain.
England and France mainly remained neutral. There were socialist, anarchist and Communist on those countries that supported republicans as well as entities that supported Nationalists.
This article try to mislead people talking about Franco as he was the leader of the revolt in Spain, but he was not. He was a very good general but totally lacking charisma over the masses and there were several people over him at the start of the revolt.
Most of those people died over the war or just were too old to leader and Franco was elected as leader four months after starting the war.
Countries like the Soviet Union had much more importance
as they were the main supporters of 1934 "Asturias'
revolution" that tried to make Spain a proletarian
dictatorship and URSS satellite. Stalin will influence the
war removing Largo Caballero and putting his lackey Negrin
as leader of the republicans.
Germany also had great influence as they considered
essential not letting his enemy URSS get more power in
Spain.
In fact, the "Asturias Revolution" of 1934 was organized by anarquists (CNT) and social democrats (UGT) and anti-stalinist communist groups like the (BOC).
The pro-russian Communist Party in Spain had little support among Spanish workers, and it only gained power after the country was long into war and the URSS became the only international supporter of the Spanish goverment.
Germany supported the rebellion since early on because of their affiliation with the fascists ideas of the uprising in the 1936 coup-de-etat.
Your views reflect the historical revisionism of the Spanish right wing to paint Franco as someone that saved Spain from the soviets. However, the uprising was motivated by the loss of power from the Church, big land-owners and capitalists during the republic.
So you agree that Germany (and the URSS, only later) had much more influence than UK in the war, which is clearly the point of the comment you're answering to.
About revisionism... there was blood in both sides' hands. To mention just the most obvious fact: the spark that ignited the war was the assasination of the opposition's leader. That happened in downtown Madrid with total impunity. Do you really believe that can happen in a normal situation? That's terribly one-sided.
> So you agree that Germany (and the URSS, only later) had much more influence than UK in the war, which is clearly the point of the comment you're answering to.
I agree. The UK still had significant indirect influence in that Churchill convinced France an other European powers to not support the Republic. That support might have diminished the URSS influence, or maybe just started WWII earlier, or prevented it... all that is political fiction of course, the truth is that Germany and (later) the URSS were the only significant international powers in action.
> About revisionism... there was blood in both sides' hands. To mention just the most obvious fact: the spark that ignited the war was the assasination of the opposition's leader. That happened in downtown Madrid with total impunity. Do you really believe that can happen in a normal situation? That's terribly one-sided.
I agree that the situation was not specially peaceful before the war (I did not imply that in my parent comment). Still, documentation says that the coup was planned before the leader of the opposition was killed. But as another comment says, there are many forces into play and it is hard to quantify the impact of particular events... It is also hard to discuss the war without entering into moral positions (i.e. what justifies what.).
I don't need to go further into analyzing this... I am happy that we agreed on the influence of Germany and URSS.
Btw, last year I read "Homage to Catalonia" by Orwell, in which he talks about his experience during the war. Of course it is a very one-sided account (he fought for the republic) but nontheless interesting from a literary and anecdotal point of view, and it might appeal the english-speaking crowd here.
This does not seem to bear on the claim being reported here, which is that Douglas Jerrold, Hugh Pollard and Louis Bolin chartered a light aircraft, flew to the Canary Islands where they picked up Franco and transported him to Morocco.
Either that happened, or it didn't, but your comment doesn't seem to shed any light one way or another?
The article claims much more than what you say. Did they bring Franco to mainland, helping the nacional side? OK. Did they "engineered start of Spanish civil war"? That's a terrible hyperbole.
The article put that in quotes, just as you did.
Somewhat related, there was an NPR interview recently and it had proper Colombians as well as some an American sympathetic to Colombian "campesinoes" who spent some time there.
The Colombians were pretty positive about the surrender by the FARC. They spoke about FARC and its tactics which affected many thousands of Colombians. The US sympathizer would "correct" actual Colombians about their understanding and always implicate the US in a negative way. Some people just need to have an anti-something slant to things, no matter what.
Beware that the title is highly misleading. They apparently helped to arrange the flight of Franco from Las Palmas to Morocco to start the war, but this step was just the culmination of a long conspiracy to overthrow the Republican government, which Franco himself only joined towards the end, when the coup was certain.
It would have happened anyway, these guys just helped providing that particular flight. If not for them, the conspirators would had chartered someone else's plane or boat.
Like many major events in history (including most wars and revolutions), it's probably best interpreted as the product of both large-scale and systematic factors as well as happenstance and small-scale interventions -- like the timing (and relative speediness, compared to a boat) of this particular chartered flight.
To refer to an even larger-scale example: clearly the Russian Empire was in the throes of an extended period of turmoil and conflict in the last years of the House of Romanov, which by that point was unlikely to stay in power for very long in any case... but at the same time things might very well not have turned out quite the way they did had not the German government approved that famous train ride from Zürich to Petrograd for Lenin and his entourage in February of 1917 (as nifty way, so they thought, of seeding just the right amount of chaos to induce in the Empire to soften its resolve to continue the fight against the Central Powers).
I agree, it is reductionist to claim that WWI happened just because Gavrilo Princip, or that the Kaiser "engineered" the birth of the Soviet Union with the sealed train. In this case the coup was too advanced to be aborted (top generals were already too implicated) so it would have happened one way or another. That the war itself and the dictatorship afterwards could have changed if Franco had to resort to other transport is indeed quite possible, but we will never know.
A bit like saying that WWI started because of a sandwich, I guess. Archduke Ferdinand's assassin mistimed the original location, and stopped for lunch. As he was eating, Ferdinand passed by. If not for that sandwich "WWI would not have happened" (but of course it would have - something else would have sparked it, or the Archduke would have been assassinated later on)
Exactly. Franco hesitated a lot, as he did not want to join if odds of success were slim. Furthermore, his role was not key till 2 other generals died on different plane crashes.
It's not only misleading but rather inaccurate, as Franco wasn't even likely to succeed Sanjurjo [1], the lead in the conspirancy.
Classical narcissistic delusion, more proper of the daily mail than the guardian. Brits are traditionally prone to it, poor souls.
In all fairness, all press geared towards internal consumption does that - at least in every western country I've lived in.
Absolutely, that's why I quantified it as 'prone'. Paraphrasing an all time favorite Briton of mine, we might be all equal, it's just that some of us are more equal than others.