CannonFodder1971
Guest
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2005
- Messages
- 439
My point was that in many orthodox histories of the time they related the events generally along the lines of it being the prelude to WWII and that fascism could have been killed stone dead there and then had France and Britain rallied around the Republican government.
This sort of view was really fictitious as it failed to address the craven attitude of successive French governments (including socialist-led ones) to avoiding becoming drawn in to the war, and their prevention of any war aid reaching the democratic government of Spain in the name of neutrality. Similarly the British at the time supplied the fascists with everything from weather reports, to telephone intercepts right through to the disgrace at Gibraltar, where Franco was permitted to establish a signals centre to co-ordinate the transit of troops across the straits. (In the end the Italian airlift and the German pocket battleships Deutschland and Admiral Scheer rendered it unnecessary for the HMS Queen Elizabeth to intervene on behalf of the fascists but it was close to that on several occasions, particularly when some of the fascist-led warships experienced pro-government coups on board by the lower ranks).
The point is that Beevor exposes many of the myths of the post-war years and places the International Brigades in a proper context. (Its role was greatly overstated in later decades as a fig leaf and a guilt-reduction outlet for many governments).
However, his book came with a health warning by many readers, who felt that his views on the gullibility of the Republic (and its misplaced faith in the international community and miscalculations regarding the manoeuvring of the Communists) were perhaps overly-influenced by the contemporary politics of the early 1980s. He seems to place the Republicans of the 1930s into some sort of British Labour Party facing Militant Tendency infiltrations, the British Trades Union movement finding itself becoming a Trojan horse for various malcontents to launch attacks on government etc etc. He seems to spot a Communist dupe in the socialist leader Largo Caballero and then even more strangely in Juan Negrin. Basically there is that worry that some readers could come away from Beevor's book with the impression that the Popular Front was like one of those front organisations used for 'entryism' machinations in the 1980s.
Overall though, Beevor does a good job, and produces quite a few startling statistics on the level of fascist atrocities against the Spanish population as well as debunking many of the myths that the West used in later decades regarding the level of support given to save the Republic. It'd be recommended as a read but I think his Stalingrad or Berlin would still be the prize-winners if I had to rate his works.