Left Unity is our motto, but when unity is put into practice it can be extremely messy. The Left in the civil war was made up of many revolutionary and popular organisations, which cooperated to an extent but were divided by their divergent goals and tactics.
What are your answers for finding ways for multiple left factions to act with unity in times of crisis?
the best time to stop Franco and the other fascists was before the war started, it was so fucking clear what was going to happen. maybe having a bunch of conspiratorial fascist generals in charge of your armed forces, is actually a really bad idea. they had already seen with Primo De Rivera that the fear of the left would cause the reactionaries to act, they had so much time between 1931 and 1936 to get their shit in gear for reactionary counter revolution to the Republic, and blew it too fast on the 1934 revolution. CEDA was clearly a huge threat that showed the reactionaries had an organised front already, and had been forced out of government they had legally won, not that this was a bad thing but you should just expect their obvious reaction though when you remove the parliamentary angle for them to get into power. purge them all in one swift move rather than just Calvo Sotelo.
if the war goes ahead though, an actual government of national unity made of the elements of the socialist republican left, anarchists, and Marxists to promote cohesion and a more unified front against fascism. providing an alternative to the reactionary church, when you demand people fight their faith you're gonna lose a lot of political allies, a large effort to push a left wing catholicism would never have hurt. purge disloyal republican generals immediately, and ask the soviet union to help you build a new command structure, though I know the anarchists would not have liked that and it would likely have caused tension and disunity.
I think one of the major issues for left unity breaking down is trust, building organs of a dictatorship of the proletariat that truly includes multiples competing factions shows they buy into actual unity than several disunited factions with friction between them. that's not easy to bring about and requires a lot of compromise.
on the military end of things, I mean obvious linking up the republican northern pocket with the rest of the republic and not allowing the fascists to link up is just pretty obvious. defending Aragon was absolutely vital, digging in there and providing the troops there with supplies to fight in the cold could have slowed down the nationalist advance. and the ultimate take is ofc simply just have your men not lose the fight and win
Take care of the fascists before trying to start a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie and the church. Actually maintain the popular front.
to be completely fair the dyed-in-wool fash falange were tightly controlled and their leaders were effectively arrested & executed
Yeah, Franco was like 9th choice to head the government. He was just the field commander at the start.
Armchair General: The Ebro offensive was an utter waste of the cream of the People's Army, using that force differently or even digging them in could've bought enough time for the French and English to come to the rescue
Armchair Politician 1: Arrest the fucking generals in the weeks before the revolt. Franco legit thought he was gonna get arrested but the day never came. Intelligence was available to the government that the army was planning shenanigans. This is kinda cheating cause it could abort the conflict.
Armchair Politician 2: Abandon the Republican Left and make a wartime government with the Socialists, Communists, and CNT. The Comintern was super against this because it was thought the impression that the Republic was a normal parliamentary democracy would encourage international support that never really materialized. If the Anglos can't be trusted, best make the resources in-country as mobilized as possible.
the English and the French were never going to come to the rescue. avoiding a European war was the key foreign policy aim of Britain and France at this time, who still remembered ww1. they were like y'all deal with your shit down there and we're gonna stay the fuck out of it
rescue would only come with the general outbreak of war later in 1939. French military strategists were worried about a southern front and drew up a plan for intervention. 5 months is all it'd have to keep on for.
intervention outside a general war was of course completely moot, which is why the Comintern strat of putting on the appearance of parliamentary democracy was a bad call
France barely had enough to hold their eastern front against Germany, who then steamrolled through after the phony war. even IF Britain and France sweep in in 39 and defeat Franco before Italy or Germany could send significant forces over, you think Hitler would just leave a socialist Spain there by itself? no ofc not.
the French would steamroll the nationalists. the Civil War was a parade of military incompetence.
and hey, im trying to win the civil war, if spain subsequently gets occupied by the Nazis that outside the margin of this question lmao (it'd be very peninsular war tho, and really hamper the Nazis tbh)
right but like, once the war starts France doesn't want to over stretch itself. by sending material and supply to Spain you are weakening the German front, which is far more pressing. Franco isn't gonna invade southern France, Hitler is going to invade eastern France, Hitler has a much larger army, and so on. furthermore, once ww2 does start France and Britain have clearly far more pressing things to deal with, why would they start another war with Spain? they didn't invade Spain IRL because it's a waste of resources and men, even though many thought Franco would join the Axis, why in this time would they? there's no logical consistency there, it just weakens France with a new 3 front war and gives Germany an ally that actually wanted to rebuild after the civil war and stayed out of the Axis even when Germany was at its peak IRL. I think it's pure wishful hope the allies would swoop in and fight Franco, this is the same allies that worked with Franco after the war because of anti communism
France was willing to commit in Norway, and Spain is their direct neighbor. Even the British would be uneasy because of Gibraltar.
none of this would be ideological. the Wallies had very little commitment to that. But imperialists' notions of national security are always quite aggressive, and they'd have very good reasons to engage in Spain on those pretenses
the combined allied force sent to Norway was 6000 men, that is virtually nothing. the British were uneasy about Gibraltar, because everybody thought Franco would join the Axis, and then he didn't because Spain was fucked after the war, that didn't bring about a British invasion in IRL 39 so why would it in an alternate 39. modern national security proxy war aggression is very different to being in a major war against another first rate power that's already swallowed Poland whole in weeks. there is literally no strategic reason to invade the entirety of Spain, bringing all those men and resources into the war they were not involved in, because they might invade Gibraltar, which again was already a threat IRL that was taken into consideration. if you're in a bar fight you don't punch some guy sitting on his own in the corner in case he joins the fight maybe
alternate 39
with italians and possibly germans engaged in the conflict. frankly the french wouldnt care sans axis support for franco, but they were so they did. they couldnt ignore a much more concerning enemy on the border than in our timeline
i'll cede that the french might be persuaded not to intervene if all italian and german units were withdrawn, franco insists neutrality, but that would open a crazy can of worms with the effective edge of the nationalist army suddenly dissappearing.
I think at that point, after the fall of France, Franco is just gonna let the Germans back in though ain't he even if Franco stays out of the axis like he did IRL, Hitler still hates communists regardless of if Franco joins the axis or not. I really don't think in the wider geo political sphere a socialist Spain could survive the way the Soviet Union could in its struggle against imperialism unless the war is avoided entirely and the soviet union and socialist spain are able to spend years building up a military ready to resist imperialism and fascism
it is, it really is. what we should take from it is a clear lesson that left unity requires unity, trust, and an actual united front. being the most pure anarchist/marxist leninist means nothing when the fascists put a bullet in your head lined up against a wall. even if the SCW was doomed all along, its mythology is a very strong pillar to modern socialist revolutionaries
French and English to come to the rescue
France didn't even allow transit for Soviet aid with few exceptions and Britain did everything it can to sabotage the Republic.
the situation should change if the conflict went into late 1939. franco was able to evacuate the germans and italians before the invasion of poland.
if they're still in Spain at that time cause of a longer war that's intolerable for the french and the SCW is gonna be grandfathered into WW2
The Republic could have held until September if it was able to avoid Casado's coup. After it began, the Republic was doomed regardless of its outcome.
What you said, but also let Durruti take Zaragoza. Franco doesn't have the power to stop it and capturing it basically ensures that Catalonia is safe from conquest.
Stalin should exile his untrustworthy generals to Spain rather than purge them. Tukhachevsky would have been a great boon to the Republican forces.
holy shit Red emigre purge-ists leading armored coloumns in Spain? :stalin-feels-good:
would have been a great boon to the Republican forces.
I wouldn't trust a Field Marshall that had the highest access to strategic and national level military plans of not just his home country but of allied countries as well when he would drunkenly brag about selling said info to the nazis. I mean maybe with an commissar squad to make sure he doesn't try to defect maybe
But I would have preferred dispatching Konstantin Rokossovsky instead of having him jailed. With a mechanized division or two too.
Yeah, I think the consensus is Heydrich got inside the NKVD decision circle and Yezhov and Stalin were already inclined to think the worst.
Anything supposedly said in the confessions of anyone is not applicable to a case, considering torture was involved
I would simply trust my elected officials to open a dialogue with Franco's forces and negotiate a mutually beneficial position :not-hillary:
Anzaña/Negrín should’ve purged the military the instant they were sworn in
they tried to have the best of both worlds... keep some conservative-republican general staff, in case the radicals get too uppity, but they did replace most the important guys with moderately loyal dudes. Franco and the initial rebels were retired/exiled/semiexiled(franco)
franco absolutely shoudda been jailed. but sanjurjo and a couple other characters were inaccessible due to retirement or exile
Also, extremely important to begin organizing new regular army in July, because waiting until October allowed fascists to secure their position, taking Extremadura, Talavera, linking with isolated garrisons in Toledo, Oviedo, Granada and Córdoba.
The most important thing would be getting France to open border for transit of Soviet military aid. Even three-month opening in the spring of 1938 allowed Republicans to rebuild their forces in Catalonia after Aragón disaster, and constant stream of heavy armaments through the safe route would let Republicans to achieve superiority over the fascists.
