Spanish Holocaust (Paul Preston)

Hello friends,

Today I’m just finishing reading a book about the Spanish civil war that begun in 1936 between military rebels led by Franco, and the Republicans.

Although the quality of the book is plagued by too many details about the atrocities of both contenders, it's very interesting to see that not too long before there was a pitiless war in an European country leading to atrocities that would make DAESH pass for choirboys!

I invite you to read this book and you'll have an idea of the wide spectrum of atrocities that men can make during a war: killing, raping, torturing, deceiving...

And for sure, DAESH is way under the level of atrocities you'll encounter in this book!

Because the hatred between socialist and nationalists was so strong that all means were acceptable to subdue the enemy!

During the war, but also long after the war; do you need some rough examples:

- raping and killing of pregnant women, collective raping of red women

- torture of a plane pilot, then dismembering of his body sent back to the republican lines in a box parachuted on an airfield

- extraction of prisoners from prisons for summary executions

- creation of concentration camps where people where dying because of lack of hygiene and food.

- incitation to denunciation

Nazis have helped Franco to win that war, but following Himmler’s visit to Spain, and through the numerous exchanges between the security services of both countries, you know where the ideas of Einsatzgruppen, of Ethnic cleansing, of concentration camps come from.

And so I’m a little bit quizzical about this fact: why Franco didn’t help Hitler during the WWII, while they share the same views about communism?

Maybe the religious fact: Franco was a practicing catholic, Hitler an atheist??

Maybe the fact that Hitler didn’t want to cede to Franco’s will of annexing North Africa in order to assuage Vichy’s regime??

If Franco had authorized german troops to cross the country to go to North Africa, Operation Torch would have been a failure, and the face of the war could have been completely changed!