Franco will move.

[Thorgalaeg]

I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says fourteen deaths according to official statistics, which you'll have to forgive me for not entirely trusting. But anyway, I find the fact that they evidently dug up some of his victims and moved them to keep him company disgusting. I guess because using up convicts to build the monument at least has an element of utilitarianism to it, while actually going to the trouble of exhuming remains and moving them there is extremely weird death cult behavior

Yes! There is something pagan about having Franco buried in the middle of this huge monument surrounded by the countless victims of his own war, like a modern pharaoh.

Undoubtedly Spanish "fascism" (if it can be called fascism, I would call it national-ultracatholicism) had a strong cult to death. For instance "Long live death!" Is the motto the the Spanish legion, which was founded by this guy, a top fascist hero, who was shot so many times he looked like the living image of death:

 

[Lexicus]

Oh thanks to me being stupid enough to click on the Youtube video in the OP I'm now getting "recommended" videos from that channel, one of which claims that the Nazis treated their POWs better than the Soviets did so that's just great, neo-nazism ftw

 

[Josu]

Ehem, that is a myth. There is no evidence of anyone executed in the Valley of the Fallen. Workers were mostly voluntary, most free professionals and also a number of convicts, both political and common, working there voluntary to reduce time in jail (one day working at the valley was equivalent to six days in prison). They even received a small salary and the family was allowed to live there while sons were educated in the monastery (in the most strict Catholicism). In fact only privileged prisoners were allowed to work there. There are registers of only fourteen people dying while building the monument.

The almost 40,000 corpses buried there were brought from +400 civil war mass graves from all around Spain, including people who fought in both sides of the civil war. In fact the bones in the mega mass grave in the crypt are all mixed around. In any case they were executed somewhere else and years later the remains were brought and buried under the giant cross.

There are 14 desde people registered by a doctor member of the regime and Francisco Franco Foundation. It is not a joke. Come on.
They even say that nobody took records for years.
But yes, lets trust Francisco Franco Foundation, it is like asking Stalin about the holodomor

There are testimonials of survivors and relatives of people that were taken there and are not on records.
You can choose who you trust

 

[Thorgalaeg]

There are 14 desde people registered by Francisco Franco Foundation. It is not a joke. Come on.
They even say that nobody took records for years.
But yes, lets trust Francisco Franco Foundation

It is not Franco foundation only but oficial registers with names and surnames. You can believe they or not, but when somebody is killed, there are always family, testimonies, documents, something, much more if they were thousands. There is nothing here but the myth.

The workers were under the "law of redemption through work" which basically gave the prisoners two choices: forced labor for some years or spend the rest of life at jail. It was about using them and avoid jail overpopulation.

Here you have an article with the differents versions of the history. They are divergent about how well the prisoners were treated if they were forced or voluntary or about how many there were, but not mass killings or sumary executions in any case.

https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/Valle-Caidos-Fernandez-Diaz-Congreso_0_814368721.html

 

[abradley]

Oh thanks to me being stupid enough to click on the Youtube video in the OP I'm now getting "recommended" videos from that channel, one of which claims that the Nazis treated their POWs better than the Soviets did so that's just great, neo-nazism ftw

Can you be more specific like a url and time?
Here are TIK's two videos on POWs, one on German POWs and the other for the Soviet POWs. Both videos say the POWs were treated frightfully. In this video the plight of the Soviet POWs is covered

and in this the German pows are covered

Addon
TIK sez the figures for much of WW2 were trash, but he makes a guesstimate and
German pow death 15%
Soviet pow deaths 50%
So the Germans were the Baddies.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Can you be more specific like a url and time?
Here are TIK's two videos on POWs, one on German POWs and the other for the Soviet POWs. Both videos say the POWs were treated frightfully. In this video the plight of the Soviet POWs is covered

and in this the German pows are covered

Addon
TIK sez the figures for much of WW2 were trash, but he makes a guesstimate and
German pow death 15%
Soviet pow deaths 50%
So the Germans were the Baddies.

A quick look at Wikipedia returns these numbers:

Soviet POWs held by Germans 57.5%
German POWs held by Yugoslavs 41.2%
German POWs held by Soviets 35.8%
American POWs held by Japanese 33.0%
American POWs held by Germans 1.19%
German POWs held by Eastern Europeans 32.9%
British POWs held by Japanese 24.8%
German POWs held by Czechoslovaks 5.0%
British POWs held by Germans 3.5%
German POWs held by French 2.58%
German POWs held by Americans 0.15%
German POWs held by British 0.03%

 

[Zardnaar]

A quick look at Wikipedia returns these numbers:

Soviet POWs held by Germans 57.5%
German POWs held by Yugoslavs 41.2%
German POWs held by Soviets 35.8%
American POWs held by Japanese 33.0%
American POWs held by Germans 1.19%
German POWs held by Eastern Europeans 32.9%
British POWs held by Japanese 24.8%
German POWs held by Czechoslovaks 5.0%
British POWs held by Germans 3.5%
German POWs held by French 2.58%
German POWs held by Americans 0.15%
German POWs held by British 0.03%

These numbers are essentially correct. The Soviet numbers fall to around 25% if you exclude the Stalingrad numbers which are around 90% dead.

The Stalingrad Axis soldiers were starving pre capture with the firsts deaths iirc in December pre surrender.

One problem being though not all soldiers made it to PoW status on the Eastern front.

 

[Lexicus]

TIK sez the figures for much of WW2 were trash, but he makes a guesstimate and
German pow death 15%
Soviet pow deaths 50%
So the Germans were the Baddies.

This is literally one step away from Holocaust denial.

 

[Zardnaar]

This is literally one step away from Holocaust denial.

Numbers are trending downwards over the decades as more research is done. It's nothing to startling total dead 65 million newer figures are 55.

Except Soviet casulties number went up.

It was 20 million or a range 20-30 million seems to be 27-29 million.

The low figure is 8 million soldiers and 13 million civilians.

 

[abradley]

This is literally one step away from Holocaust denial.

How so?

 

[Zardnaar]

How so?

Same motive of whitewashing the crimes of the Nazi regime.

 

[abradley]

Same motive of whitewashing the crimes of the Nazi regime.

How is the post whitewashing the crimes of the NAZI regime?

 

[Zardnaar]

How is the post whitewashing the crimes of the NAZI regime?

I was referring to holocaust denial and claim ing being a Soviet prisoner was worse than a German one.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was referring to holocaust denial and claim ing being a Soviet prisoner was worse than a German one.

I don't see these two things as related. The holocaust and associated camps weren't connected to POWs, so there's not a direct connection. The same people who were committing genocide could have been treating POWs very well, or very poorly; there's no link to guessing which.

It's also possible, in fact likely, that prisoners of the soviets were treated very badly. Not out of any malice on the part of the soviets, but as an outcome of the circumstances of the war. USians are always willing to blather about how humanely their prisoners are treated, but when the majority of the citizens can look around and not really see any evidence that there is even a war going on and the economy of the nation is fundamentally strengthened by war profiteering anything less would be really hard to understand. But when your army has been pushed back hundreds of miles by an invader, major cities are besieged if not occupied outright, the economy is in a shambles, and famine is stalking the land prisoners certainly aren't going to be faring well.

 

[Lexicus]

The holocaust and associated camps weren't connected to POWs, so there's not a direct connection.

The connection is that the desire to exterminate subhumans motivated both the Holocaust and the German policy of deliberately starving their Soviet POWs to death.

USians are always willing to blather about how humanely their prisoners are treated, but when the majority of the citizens can look around and not really see any evidence that there is even a war going on and the economy of the nation is fundamentally strengthened by war profiteering anything less would be really hard to understand. But when your army has been pushed back hundreds of miles by an invader, major cities are besieged if not occupied outright, the economy is in a shambles, and famine is stalking the land prisoners certainly aren't going to be faring well.

While this is true it shouldn't be allowed to diminish the fact that the Soviets did deliberately exterminate plenty of German POWs through labor. But it should be noted that this fate was no different than Soviet citizens unlucky enough to be sucked into the gulag during the war years.

 

[abradley]

I was referring to holocaust denial and claiming being a Soviet prisoner was worse than a German one.

Being a Soviet pow WAS worse then being a German pow.
In the two videos TIK explains how during the beginning of the war the Germans were already short off food, when they captured the vast pockets of Russian troops the Germans didn't have food to feed them. Look at 'The fate of Soviet Prisoners' from the beginning to 25:00.

The first Germans pows got the same treatment, but there weren't that many so later when the Soviet High Command finally got control of lower level units fewer Germans had been killed. Then the Soviets needed manpower to man factories and build railroads, so they marched the German pows to the work sites and used them. When Stalingrad fell the German defenders had been on starvation rations so many if not most died in transit.

Hitler decided to use the Russian pows in their factories, but by then they were near useless from starvation.

So the fact that death rates for Soviet is low and the Nazis is high isn't because one side was goodie-goodie and the other not. It was because one side was pompous asses and the other used them as a resources.

 

[Zardnaar]

Being a Soviet pow WAS worse then being a German pow.
In the two videos TIK explains how during the beginning of the war the Germans were already short off food, when they captured the vast pockets of Russian troops the Germans didn't have food to feed them. Look at 'The fate of Soviet Prisoners' from the beginning to 25:00.

The first Germans pows got the same treatment, but there weren't that many so later when the Soviet High Command finally got control of lower level units fewer Germans had been killed. Then the Soviets needed manpower to man factories and build railroads, so they marched the German pows to the work sites and used them. When Stalingrad fell the German defenders had been on starvation rations so many if not most died in transit.

Hitler decided to use the Russian pows in their factories, but by then they were near useless from starvation.

So the fact that death rates for Soviet is low and the Nazis is high isn't because one side was goodie-goodie and the other not. It was because one side was pompous asses and the other used them as a resources.

The Germans could have fed them just didn't want to.

Germany didn't cut it's rations until 1942. They had a comparatively high standard of living in 1941. They were quite happy to strip the Ukraine to improve rations in Germany.

They made a very deliberate decision to starve them to death.

Best case scenario for a Russian PoW was shipped back to Germany and ending up doing farm work for a nice family. Post war they got sent to gulag.

Some Soviet PoWs survived because they were located near Americans who would smuggle them food.

Americans in USSR interview with Soviet veteren.

 

[Lexicus]

In the two videos TIK explains how during the beginning of the war the Germans were already short off food, when they captured the vast pockets of Russian troops the Germans didn't have food to feed them.

Yeah, and this is a despicable Nazi lie. The Germans had plenty of food to feed those prisoners, they deliberately chose not to in order to exterminate them.

 

[Kyriakos]

Franco on the move?
So much for the objective being "no pasaran"

 

[Arwon]

So did they dump him in the ocean