Spanish Civil War Suggestions

[notque]

I thought the Russians did help the Republicans extensively, but tried to get as much out of it for themselves by selling their vehicles and weapons at extremely high prices.

Like all things, it's much more complicated than that.

Between 1934 and 1938 the government of the Soviet Union was anxious to gain the support of the Western states, and was therefore concerned to prove to them that it had ceased to be "revolutionary" and would no longer support revolutionary movements in other countries. Because of this, the U.S.S.R. only supported the Spanish Republican government's fight against fascism reluctantly and moderately. In order to reinforce the position of the Soviet Union the Spanish Communist Party allied itself with groups generally opposed to all forms of revolutionary change. It opposed expropriation of the landed estates and the factories by those who worked in them, and it was hostile to the popular militias.

The Soviet Union clearly directed the assistance it gave to the Spanish Republic toward the International Brigades and the loyal regular Spanish army. It made sure that arms, equipment, and other assistance were withheld from the militias and regions dominated by anarchists. At the same time, it sent secret police agents to Spain to kidnap, imprison and murder known opponents of Stalinism, especially, as Richards notes, ex-Communists who "knew too much.” The Soviet government also aimed to destroy the anarchist revolutionary movement in Spain which had proved such a formidable barrier to the Spanish Communist Party's attempts at political hegemony. These goals were far from secret, and were even published in various CP papers throughout the world. For example, on December 16, 1936, the Soviet party paper Pravda published an article which proclaimed, "As for Catalonia, the purging of the Trotskyists and the anarchosyndicalists has begun; it will be conducted with the same energy with which it was conducted in the U.S.S.R.” At the same time, the Spanish Communist Party supported the re-constitution of a regular police force, political police, and a regular army to replace the militias.


In short,

Russia helped the Republicans lose the war, by controlling their own brigade that was loyal to Stalin. They were supplied with state of the art weapons while the other units were denied such things.

They focused on controlling the international brigade, and forced others to join them and follow their orders, or be killed. Killing even those that wanted to leave after voluntarily joining (while the Anarchists let anyone leave freely at any time.)

Russia wasn't concerned about making money, they were concerned about controlling the Revolution and co-opting it.

They, along with the countless other countries who turned their back on the republic helped lose the war for the republic. Not win it.

Approximately 40,000 men from all over the world fought in the International Brigades. About one-third were killed, and many were permanently injured. Unfortunately, political repression of those who expressed criticism of Stalinism was a reality of daily life in the brigades. Jason Gurney, in Crusade in Spain [Faber & Faber, Ltd., London, 1974], who discusses the International Brigades from the point of view of the British volunteers, notes that André Marty, chief political commissar of the International Brigades, and a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, admitted to having ordered the execution of 500 men belonging to the brigades for little or no reason except their political views. Gurney discusses some of the many decisions which were made by the brigade leaders for political reasons, with little regard for the disasters these caused.

Cecil Eby, in Between the Bullet and the Lie: American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War [Holt Reinhart & Winston, New York, 1969], discusses the desertions from the International Brigades which occurred from their inception and throughout their entire existence. The brigades were far from well trained, and were often not well equipped. Nevertheless, they had an authoritarian military officer structure, including political commissars for each battalion, and, despite populist rhetoric, discipline was often enforced harshly. Many volunteers felt this to be both inappropriate and wrong treatment for people who had freely chosen to come to fight. The political commissars were also often resented by volunteers from the Western countries, such as the U.S., Britain and France, who didn't want indoctrination, but information and discussion. Desertions and poor morale were due primarily to volunteers' growing distrust of the brigades' political and military hierarchy and resentment of the arbitrary (and, some felt, incompetent) behavior of the officers.

 

[notque]

Ever since the Negrín ‘Government of Victory’ had been formed, it had been Stalinist practice to assassinate officers who would not follow in complete detail the Stalinist military policy. For an officer to let his men, for example, dynamite a town’s armament and other factories before making a forced retreat from it was to sign his own death warrant; a shot in the back from some Stalinist planted in his regiment. At the last National Council of the Socialist Party, the situation had grown too horrible even for Prieto, who presented a list of more than 200 Socialist officers who had been thus assassinated. The CNT had an even longer list of well-documented cases. But the facts heretofore had never leaked out of well-censored Spain.

Even in the Stalinist-dominated International Brigades, with their fierce discipline, a feeling of revolt mounted, and mutinies broke out. The military observer mentioned above estimated that at least 50 per cent of these internationals were in either secret or open revolt against the Stalino-bourgeois policy of crushing the workers’ revolution and supporting Spanish capitalism. Nearly 500 of them who had mutinied in favour of a workers’ revolution were in a prison camp under his immediate jurisdiction at Castel del Fels, near Sitges. Hundreds of others were scattered in concentration camps and prisons elsewhere in Loyalist Spain: there were 250, for example, in the State Prison at Barcelona, with the POUMists.

 

[notque]

There's lots. Basically, any conception of Russian help has been grossly over exaggerated by any account of those there that I have ever seen.

 

[notque]

If you wanted to accurately portray the Scenario, when civil war breaks out, oil from the U.S. should go from spain, to Franco. That was a rather key element at the start.

It might be fun to write all of this into civ terms, how the thing played out entirely in Civ Terms.

 

[notque]

I still haven't even gotten to play it. Downloading the patch now.

 

[notque]

As fun as it is to just sit and beat on Franco, shouldn't the Nationalists have defenses? I just walked right into every city and took it over.

That's no fun.

 

[Dale]

Any units in the cities when they switch change too.

 

[notque]

In Beta 3 when I ran it last night, the Units did not switch after the split of spain. Each city was completely empty, although there were some spanish navel vessels.

I decided to not move any troops to not change the way the war would start if I didn't know, and every city ended up empty.

Going to play it again today.

 

[notque]

started a new game, and the cities just don't start with any infantry.

each city needs to start with at least one infantry so it can't be taken just by moving there.

 

[notque]

The cities for the Nationalists don't start with infantry. So that means I'd have to try and build infantry in enough time (don't think it's even possible) then, attack the infantry I built for them.

They should start with infantry.

Also, when the split occurs, I don't see the additional nation for contact or trade.

Considering the Coup leaders were weaker before the trading, it's pretty important they are able to look for support.

 

[notque]

"We didn't know the full role of the Communists until 1939 when this famous Russian general defected and wrote articles in the Saturday Evening Post. Therein he described in detail how Stalin was using his secret police to wage a war against the Anarchists. He described Stalin's war within the war. He also described how the Stalinists stole the gold reserve of the Spanish Republic. He layed out a detailed analysis and prediction of the Nazi-Soviet pact. "

 

[notque]

...removed for stupidity.

 

[notque]

October 1936 through May 1937 was the main Russia attempt at turning Republican Spain into a Communist off shoot killing the workers.

Communist-led armies swept through Aragon, destroying many collectives and dismantling their organizations and, generally, bringing the area under the control of the central government. Throughout the Republican-held territories, the government, now under Communist domination, acted in accordance with the plan announced in Pravda on December 17, 1936: "So far as Catalonia is concerned, the cleaning up of Trotzkyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements there has already begun, and it will be carried out there with the same energy as in the U.S.S.R."

 

[notque]

"What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of a dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and peasants."" - Rudolf Rocker

 

[notque]

A former minister describes the situation as follows:

"The fact that is concealed by the coalition of the Spanish Communist Party with the left Republicans and right wing Socialists is that there has been a successful social revolution in half of Spain. Successful, that is, in the collectivization of factories and farms which are operated under trade union control, and operated quite efficiently. During the three months that I was director of propaganda for the United States and England under Alvarez del Vayo, then Foreign Minister for the Valencia Government, I was instructed not to send out one word about this revolution in the economic system of loyalist Spain. Nor are any foreign correspondents in Valencia permitted to write freely of the revolution that has taken place."

 

[notque]

England assisted the Nationalists as well by closing off the strait at a couple key times where it was useful for the Nationalists.

England's ambassador had stated on a few occasions England's support for Franco, reasoning that England's business interests would best be served by Franco.

This was muted later by the fear that Franco would actually be a threat.

According to German sources, England was at that time supplying Franco with munitions through Gibraltar and, at the same time, providing information to Germany about Russian arms deliveries to the Republic.

 

[notque]

The British policy of mild support for Franco was to be successful in preserving British interests in Spain, as the Germans soon discovered. A German Foreign Ministry note of October 1937 to the embassy in Nationalist Spain included the following observation: "That England cannot permanently be kept from the Spanish market as in the past is a fact with which we have to reckon. England's old relations with the Spanish mines and the Generalissimo's desire, based on political and economic considerations, to come to an understanding with England place certain limits on our chances of reserving Spanish raw materials to ourselves permanently."

 

[notque]

In August, the American government urged the Martin Aircraft Company not to honor an agreement made prior to the insurrection to supply aircraft to the Republic, and it also pressured the Mexican government not to reship to Spain war materials purchased in the United States. An American arms exporter, Robert Cuse, insisted on his legal right to ship airplanes and aircraft engines to the Republic in December 1936, and the State Department was forced to grant authorization. Cuse was denounced by Roosevelt as unpatriotic, though Roosevelt was forced to admit that the request was quite legal. Roosevelt contrasted the attitude of other businessmen to that of Cuse as follows:

"Well, these companies went along with the request of the Government. There is the 90 percent of business that is honest, I mean ethically honest. There is the 90 percent we are always pointing at with pride. And then one man does what amounts to a perfectly legal but thoroughly unpatriotic act. He represents the 10 percent of business that does not live up to the best standards. Excuse the homily, but I feel quite deeply about it."

 

[VeteranLurker]

The actual history is interesting, especially if (like me) one doesn't know much about it. But how does that translate into anything useful for the mod? I've been playing Open Mode lately, but recall the notifications of the Spanish Civil War in Random/Historical as being of little consequence to the game at hand -- no matter which nation I played (unless I played as Spain, which I have not), what could I do during the RTW SCW to help MY cause? Could I gift units/money/something and gain... open borders? an ally against my enemies? or something which would destabilize MY enemies somehow? As I said much earlier, this would be great for a What-If type scenario.

This reminds me about propaganda: these units are currently not very useful in the mod, other than to spread your propaganda to a captured city so you can gain happiness/science/whatever (though perhaps this has been removed from the most-recent version, making them even less useful?). In Open Mode I get notices often from random countries asking me to convert to whichever faction they follow. So what? That would make them happy, and would make my current pseudo-allies unhappy. Well, I can stay as I am and my pseudo-allies are somewhat happy (though likely still plotting against me) and the requestor is somewhat angrier -- this doesn't seem to do much for me in game terms as there is still about the same amount of countries who are happy/angry with me. They are angrier that I invade someone, no matter which political flag I am waving, though why Brazil (democratic?) should care if I (China, democratic with a dash of communism) invade Siam (fascist?) seems a bit out of whack. Perhaps the faction effects should be beefed up (EVERYONE has open borders with EVERYONE in Open Mode -- does that make sense? wouldn't some faction maybe not want to trade with their 'worst enemies'?). Or perhaps make them a victory condition -- if your faction controls XX% of the world, you win (obviously there is historical precedent for this, as WWII was the start of the Cold War). Hey, I might convert if they offered to give me some tanks.

 

[notque]

In game terms, with historical terms, since everyone was against Republican spain for one reason or another (and to varying degrees), you should be able to as any country decide to help them. This would make all other countries dislike you by 1 degree point, but would give you a friendly country that had a lot of gold, and the need to spend it.

Republican Spain would have won provided anyone helped them. They were better trained, better organized, and had a cause worth fighting for against the coup. All they needed was mutually beneficial support.

Republican Spain was filthy rich in gold, and couldn't find anyone to sell them things. If any other country had decided to help out, they would have profited handsomely, and that should be reflected.

Further, people from all over the world flocked to spain to fight Fascism, so being on the "right" side of the cause should have some additional benefits.