Monday, June 1, 2020

Guest Review of Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War

One of our correspondents writes in with a review of Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War re-published by Mystery Grove Publishing Co.

Peter Kemp was a high-quality Englishman and an officer in the Spanish Foreign Legion during much of the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in two different battles. The last wound was so severe that he was not expected to live. General Franco met with Kemp just before Kemp returned to England.

Leading up to the SCW, the Spanish Left were extremely provocative, grossly over-confident, and inept. The Right were very restrained. When war came, they were highly motivated and very skilled. There was never a time when the Left seemed to be winning, once war started.

The Left finally triggered the Right to attack them when they kidnapped Jose Calvo Sotelo from his home and murdered him. Look to see if any Spanish Civil War source is honest about the provocative effect of kidnapping and murdering Calvo Sotelo.

The Left ("Republicans") recruited foreigners as soldiers. US leftists went to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.) Kemp says the Nationalists shot any of these foreigners that they captured, because they felt they lengthened the war by a couple years.

One of the major observers of the time, Julián Zugazagoitia, a minister of the Popular Front, told one of his visitors, "This attack is war."

I'm watching for the trigger here.

5/5
We posted a review in Q4 2019 of The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge which was written by communist sympathizer Paul Preston.

In the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans were armed by the Soviets and the Nationalists were armed by Italy and Germany.

Since Russia and China must be tired of U.S. meddling in their spheres of influence (e.g. Ukraine and Taiwain), they will almost certainly have the idea of arming the factions in the upcoming U.S. civil war.

However, my guess would be that they will not so much care which side wins as to make sure that the fighting is as prolonged and destructive as possible, which would mean that each will arm both - or all - sides to the conflict.


2 comments:

Anon1 said...

Gangs of joggers try and do rampages in the 'burbs?

Suburbanites feel they are safe from the fruits and nuts in the urban cores. If that sense of safety is questioned at a time police have decided to tacitly stand-down, driving while black could spiral into some Sarajevo stuff fast.

Anon1 said...

The operative questions are: What can be learned from prior revolutions? Which one is most applicable and when do we know we have safely diverged from it?

I like my history like my science, it needs to be predictive and falsifiable!