Mar 12, 2021
On this week’s episode of the Resistance Library Podcast Dave and
Sam discuss what is considered by historians to be the prelude to
World War II, the Spanish Civil War.
As we talk about the lead-up to the Spanish Civil War, the
situation will begin very much
unlike
modern-day America, however, it will become more like the
contemporary domestic situation as time goes on.
The main difference, of course, is that Spain was a monarchy for
almost all of its existence until 1931. A republic was briefly
declared during the years 1873 and 1874, but it didn’t have much
staying power and ultimately was not a transformative government in
Spain. Following the First World War, the corrupt central
government of Spain became increasingly unpopular and a military
dictatorship, that of Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd
Marquess of Estella, 22nd Count of Sobremonte, arose. This fell in
1930, along with the abdication of the deeply unpopular King
Alfonso XIII.
This led to the creation of the Second Spanish Republic and a new
constitution in 1931. It was a radically leftist constitution in a
largely conservative and Catholic country. Women’s suffrage, civil
marriage, compulsory universal education, the nationalization of
Catholic Church properties, the prohibition of Catholic religious
orders from teaching in schools
(and
the Jesuit order entirely), as well as a provision allowing for the
nationalization of any property that was for the
“public
good” were all components of the new Spanish constitution. In many
ways it resembled the constitution of Weimar Germany, in that it
was an attempt by the left to radically remake a country through
constitutional means.
The first election saw leftist elements firmly in the saddle, but
the second, in 1933, was a major victory for forces of the right.
However, because the conservative party had won a plurality in the
parliament, and not a majority, the left-wing president of Spain
invited the centrist party to form a government. Meanwhile the
socialist government alleged electoral fraud, which caused them to
become further radicalized. On the ground, a radical working-class
movement became hostile toward the ostensibly left-wing government
after the movement was suppressed violently by the
military.
Monarchist forces, with the explicit backing of Benito Mussolini
and the implicit backing of King Alfonso XIII, as well as
ideologically fascist forces led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera,
began military drills, preparing for war. The streets of Spain
became battlegrounds, with 330 assassinations, 213 failed
assassination attempts and 160 religious buildings destroyed, with
arson being the primary means of their destruction. The Spanish
Socialist Workers’ Party, formerly a fairly standard European
social democratic party, began to cleave between forces who favored
moderation and those who sought a more explicitly Bolshevik
party.
You can read the full article “The
Prelude to World War II: The Spanish Civil War and Today's
America” at Ammo.com.
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