Spanish Civil War - Irish connection./WWII

tdv123

We know Irish people took part in it on the Republican side in the International Brigades (probably IRA Volunteers or ex-ones) against the fascists (Nationalist) side who were supported Nazi Germany who supported them with military power.

Does that give anyone else a feeling of pride that we faced fascism 4 years before Britain didn't want to know about it. Believe me I don't usually like it when Britain gets involved in a lot wars but the one I'm glad they did get stuck into is WWII. That wasn't a war for glory that was a war to preserve mankind as we know it. And I'm very grateful the UK eventually took the stand against the vile sick Nazi regime.

Any thoughts?

Peregrinus

Well, if we can claim credit as a nation because individual Irish people fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, then we have to acknowledge that the British can claim similar credit, since individual British people fought on the Republican side as well.

Plus, individual Irish people also volunteered for the other side; in fact rather more Irish people volunteered for the Nationalists than for the Republicans. So if the actions of individual Irish people are to be imputed to the nation, then perhaps we have more cause to feel shame than to feel pride.

Fratton Fred

tdv123 wrote: »

We know Irish people took part in it on the Republican side in the International Brigades (probably IRA Volunteers or ex-ones) against the fascists (Nationalist) side who were supported Nazi Germany who supported them with military power.

Does that give anyone else a feeling of pride that we faced fascism 4 years before Britain didn't want to know about it. Believe me I don't usually like it when Britain gets involved in a lot wars but the one I'm glad they did get stuck into is WWII. That wasn't a war for glory that was a war to preserve mankind as we know it. And I'm very grateful the UK eventually took the stand against the vile sick Nazi regime.

Any thoughts?

You might want to Google "International Brigade".

Pinch Flat

A great uncle of mine died at the battle if Jarama. I've read about it but am immensely proud of his sacrifice - he was only 22. There's a plaque on Liberty Hall in Dublin commemorating them.

knucklehead6

My thoughts are you might want to brush up on Eoin O Duffy, and the Irish Brigade. And while you're at it, try to put yourself in the mindset of that time.

What's amusing to me is that most people are well aware that there were Irish men fighting for the republican side (which in the 1930's was actually seem as a communist/socialist faction) they were vastly out numbered by the Irish Brigade who fought on Franco's side (which had the support of the catholic church, which was one of the leading factors in so many men joining up with O'Duffy)

There were approx 120 on the republican side, approx 700 on the nationalist side.

Jawgap

Fratton Fred wrote: »

You might want to Google "International Brigade".

You might also Google 'Irish Brigade' - not everyone who went from here fought against Franco.

I may be wrong, but I think more fought for Franco than against him - he was perceived as more pro-church than the republicans.

Pinch Flat

tdv123 wrote: »

Does that give anyone else a feeling of pride that we faced fascism 4 years before Britain didn't want to know about it. Believe me I don't usually like it when Britain gets involved in a lot wars but the one I'm glad they did get stuck into is WWII. That wasn't a war for glory that was a war to preserve mankind as we know it. And I'm very grateful the UK eventually took the stand against the vile sick Nazi regime.

Any thoughts?

In terms of Britain not wanting to know about it, it may have been the case officially (they declared themselves neutral).

The irony of the Spanish Civil War on the republican side was that many of the Irish volunteers were ex-Ira who ended up fighting alongside the British officers they'd fought during the War of Independence in Ireland. In addition, a lot of the International Brigade were Catholic and Protestant, again from different ideologies who fought hand in hand against Franco.

padma

just google Fine Gael and the spanish civil war, tis why we hear the blueshirts label attributed to Fine Gael supporters

Fratton Fred

In response to Britain not wanting to know, my grandfather served on HMS Forester which was one of the ships that escorted the SS Habana to Southampton.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/immig_emig/england/southampton/article_1.shtml

tdv123

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, if we can claim credit as a nation because individual Irish people fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, then we have to acknowledge that the British can claim similar credit, since individual British people fought on the Republican side as well.

Plus, individual Irish people also volunteered for the other side; in fact rather more Irish people volunteered for the Nationalists than for the Republicans. So if the actions of individual Irish people are to be imputed to the nation, then perhaps we have more cause to feel shame than to feel pride.

But the IRA considered themselves the sole government of Ireland at the time. They rejected the institutions created by partition. So in a way they seen themselves representing the Irish government.

Manach

I'm well aware of the volunteers who found on the Nationalist side. That is a matter of honour to defend the forces who sought to dismember that country - so that with be with pride.

Jolly Red Giant

knucklehead6 wrote: »

There were approx 120 on the republican side, approx 700 on the nationalist side.

Well more fascists may have gone out to Spain - but they did little fighting while there. Their first action was when they opened fire on a bunch of fascists from the Canary Islands killing 13 of them and causing the deaths of four of their own. They were yanked from the front line after refusing to fight in fighting around Titulcia and spent the rest of the time getting p*ssed on cheap Spanish wine. They also suffered the ignominy of having their wages and passports stolen by a fascist sidekick of O'Duffy, Gunning, who scarperred with the money. Gunning later ended up working as a propagandist for the Nazis in Berlin.

You could say their intervention was a success in that they succeeded in killing 17 fascists with their actions.

rasper

To my disappointnent , I believe more Irish volunteers fought for Franco and the .Church than for the Spanish workers

Peregrinus

tdv123 wrote: »

But the IRA considered themselves the sole government of Ireland at the time. They rejected the institutions created by partition. So in a way they seen themselves representing the Irish government.

The IRA may have "seen themselves" as representing the Irish government, but the truth is they didn't represent it; they had no mandate. Quite frankly, Franco had a better claim to represent the Spanish nation than the IRA had to represent the Irish nation.

In any event, it wasn't "the IRA" who went to fight in Spain. It was individuals, some of whom were or had been IRA members.

Jawgap

I find the Spanish Civil War quite impenetrable.

I don't think it can be reduced to one side being 'good' and the other 'bad.'

Sure, the International Brigades fought against Franco, but their lot was thrown in with the communists and Stalin - just as the Irish Brigade fought with Franco, the fascists and Hitler.

Civil wars tend to be vicious, nasty and brutal - the Spanish one proves that.

Jolly Red Giant

Jawgap wrote: »

Sure, the International Brigades fought against Franco, but their lot was thrown in with the communists and Stalin - just as the Irish Brigade fought with Franco, the fascists and Hitler.

It continues to astonish me the number of people that are intent on equating fasism and the Nazis with the communism of Stalin - and generally it is done either - 1. out of pure ignorance and lack of understand of politics or - 2. for propaganda purposes to denigrate the left by equating all socialists wth Stalinism (and Hayes was at it on VB the other night with his jibes about North Korea) and equating Stalinims with Nazism because they were both dictatorships.

Ipso

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

It continues to astonish me the number of people that are intent on equating fasism and the Nazis with the communism of Stalin - and generally it is done either - 1. out of pure ignorance and lack of understand of politics or - 2. for propaganda purposes to denigrate the left by equating all socialists wth Stalinism (and Hayes was at it on VB the other night with his jibes about North Korea) and equating Stalinims with Nazism because they were both dictatorships.

I get the not lumping socialists with Staliniats bit but are you saying Stalins regime wasn't as bad as the Nazis?

tdv123

Ipso wrote: »

I get the not lumping socialists with Staliniats bit but are you saying Stalins regime wasn't as bad as the Nazis?

Stalin was a evil bas**rd no doubt. But Nazism was much, much worse. As evil as was Stalin I don't think Stalin ever came close to a New World order. And if it wasn't for the Red Army smashing Nazism history might have been very different & we'd probably be speaking German. Stalin

There is no comparisn between Nazism & Communism.

Peregrinus

"Stalin: not quite so bad as Hitler." It's not exactly a ringing endorsement, though, is it?

Jawgap's point is valid; in the Spanish civil war, everyone who togged out against the fascists was also togging out with the Stalinists (and vice versa). So whether you want to praise them or denounce them, you can easily find a plausible basis for doing so.

My issue with the OP is not that, though; it's with the notion that individual Irish people fighting on one side or the other of this war somehow reflects on the nation as a whole. To be honest, I'm not seeing it. If there had been a great national movement of support and solidarity, with wide appeal and wide impact, that would be one thing. But comparatively small numbers of people, mostly from what were already the political margins in Ireland? No.

The other point, of course, is that people's motives for joining in the war were personal and complex. The fact that someone fought for the Republican side didn't necessarily mean that they were dedicated anti-nazis; just look at the career of Frank Ryan, for example.

Jawgap

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

It continues to astonish me the number of people that are intent on equating fasism and the Nazis with the communism of Stalin - and generally it is done either - 1. out of pure ignorance and lack of understand of politics or - 2. for propaganda purposes to denigrate the left by equating all socialists wth Stalinism (and Hayes was at it on VB the other night with his jibes about North Korea) and equating Stalinims with Nazism because they were both dictatorships.

I wasn't denigrating the left, socialists or communists.

Just pointing out there was - as there is in all civil wars - many shades of grey and few shades of black and white.

Jawgap

tdv123 wrote: »

Stalin was a evil bas**rd no doubt. But Nazism was much, much worse. As evil as was Stalin I don't think Stalin ever came close to a New World order. And if it wasn't for the Red Army smashing Nazism history might have been very different & we'd probably be speaking German. Stalin

There is no comparisn between Nazism & Communism.

The Commintern wasn't dissolved until 1943. It might have lacked a certain degree of vigour but it wasn't wholly benign.

knucklehead6

Jawgap's point about all the different shades of grey is actually very valid. We have to put ourselves in the mindset of the time as well, before we go making "Oh, you're an evil fascist" or "you're a dirty red commie" statements.

The men who fought on the nationalist side were duped into it by the cries of the catholic church after the persecution of clergy by the republican side, and remember how powerful the church was in this country at that time.

Jawgap

Just had a look at the diplomatic cables for the period.

A lot of the back-and-forth between Joe Walsh and Dev seems to have centred around when (not if) to recognise Franco's regime. The key question seems to have been when to do it - before Madrid falls or after Madrid falls - with one of the main concerns being to get in before the Brits!

Walshe to Dev, 4/2/39

Full de jure recognition has been given to Franco only by the following 12 States:
Holy See, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Albania, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Japan, Manchukuo, Czechoslovakia.

The question for us to decide is whether we shall give de jure recognition now or after the fall of Madrid. I fear that, if we wait for the fall of Madrid, we shall appear to be following the lead of France and Great Britain and their satellites, who no doubt will give de jure recognition in the near future for the purpose of winning Franco's favour and weaning him away from the Berlin-Rome axis. It might be better for us to get in before them and to recognise Franco immediately. In that way we shall be more likely to secure whatever special kudos or credit is to be got from advanced recognition.

The fall of Madrid may be a long way off. It is now clear that Franco's army has refrained from making a really serious artillery attack upon it. As in the case of Barcelona, he does not want to destroy the city or to turn the people against him. He may therefore be content to force surrender by exhaustion. If we say now that we shall give recognition as soon as Madrid falls, we shall put ourselves into the position of having to wait until that event occurs, and we may find ourselves last in the race.

We have informed the British that we intend recognising Franco after the fall of Madrid. No reaction on their part has yet become apparent.

Like I suggested - a complicated time.

tdv123

rasper wrote: »

To my disappointnent , I believe more Irish volunteers fought for Franco and the .Church than for the Spanish workers

Yes, that part disgusts me.

Are people really saying they wouldn't want the Allied powers to tackle this evil ideology of Nazism.

They should have tackled it sooner before it became more powerful. If the Allied powers fought Fascism in the Civil War they might not (nearly certainly wouldn't) have had to fight in world 2 the best of which cost a hundred million lives. Instead they appeased Hitler which just made him more power hungry.

And as a Republican I'm not usually happy when ever I see the UK going to war but I'm very grateful in the end Churchill (for the most part I despised) took a stand against Nazism who for a long time fought against it themselves. If it wasn't for Pearl Habor there's a good chance the US might not have entered & Britain would have had to stand alone ( so much for great friends were the UK blindly follows the US into nearly ever war these days, who only finished paying of their loan to the US for WWII in 2006).

And if they didn't take that stand there's a good chance the UK would have came under Nazi control, which probably meant we would have came under Nazi control as well. If that happened the US would have been faced against huge parts of occupied Asian Japan & Nazi Europe., I don't fancy their chances there. The axis powers were intent on world domination.

The right wing on here hate communism so much they want to paint Nazism as some sort of tea-party. Well I suppose it's not to surprising as Nazism was a hard right ideology.

Peregrinus

Well, I would point out that both the US and the USSR avoided fighting the Nazis for as long as they could. Each of them only entered the war when the Nazis declared war on them. The USSR in particular had a pact with the Nazis in 1939 to carve up Poland.

Of the four principal allies, it was only Britain and France who pro-actively moved against the Nazis, and they were fighting the Nazis literally years before the US or the USSR came on board. And yet the IRA, a few of whose members fought for the Republic in Spain, attacked Britain at this time, seing its war with Nazi Germany as an opportunity for themselves.

So however antifascist [some] IRA members were, the IRA as a whole very much subordinated any antipathy it felt towards fascism to its objective of securing an all-Ireland republic. To be quite honest, if you're looking to defend the honour of the Irish nation in regard to the struggle against fascism, in practical terms Dev's stance of pro-Allied neutrality, whatever its moral ambiguities, probably did more to help the anti-fascist cause than all the efforts of the IRA and its individual members.

tdv123

Peregrinus wrote: »

The IRA may have "seen themselves" a representing the Irish government, but the truth is they didn't represent it; they had no mandate. Quite frankly, Franco had a better claim to represent the Spanish nation than the IRA had to represent the Irish nation.

In any event, it wasn't "the IRA" who went to fight in Spain. It was individuals, some of whom were or had been IRA members.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_republican_legitimatism

I think it makes a very good argument.

Jawgap

Putting the decision to fight for or against the Nationalist or Republicans in the context of the 1930s, I reckon a lot of guys who went to fight for Franco (the Irish Brigade) did so for religious reasons.

Franco, like Mussolini (and completely the opposite to Hitler), was very pro-church and pro-clerical - that I'd say played a huge part in a lot of guys' decisions to fight or support the Republican side.

Personally, I think it's a mistake to label one side fascist and the other communist just because they had forces or factions from countries more steeped in those ideologies.

Both 'sides' committed atrocities and if the Republicans came out of the conflict with the 'better' image it's probably more down to the fact that they lost and they had the better English authors (Hemingway, Orwell etc) covering their cause.

tdv123

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, I would point out that both the US and the USSR avoided fighting the Nazis for as long as they could. Each of them only entered the war when the Nazis declared war on them. The USSR in particular had a pact with the Nazis in 1939 to carve up Poland.

Of the four principal allies, it was only Britain and France who pro-actively moved against the Nazis, and they were fighting the Nazis literally years before the US or the USSR came on board. And yet the IRA, a few of whose members fought for the Republic in Spain, attacked Britain at this time, seing its war with Nazi Germany as an opportunity for themselves.

So however antifascist [some] IRA members were, the IRA as a whole very much subordinated any antipathy it felt towards fascism to its objective of securing an all-Ireland republic. To be quite honest, if you're looking to defend the honour of the Irish nation in regard to the struggle against fascism, in practical terms Dev's stance of pro-Allied neutrality, whatever its moral ambiguities, probably did more to help the anti-fascist cause than all the efforts of the IRA and its individual members.

Well that's only because the USSR was forced into signing a pact with the Nazi's because France,Poland & the UK were distrusting of Stalin who initial wanted to sign a pact with the Allied powers to stop the grow of Nazism.

Jawgap

tdv123 wrote: »

Well that's only because the USSR was forced into signing a pact with the Nazi's because France,Poland & the UK were distrusting of Stalin who initial wanted to sign a pact with the Allied powers to stop the grow of Nazism.

Stalin was bullied

Poor Uncle Joe......

tdv123

Jawgap wrote: »

Stalin was bullied

Poor Uncle Joe......

No, a war was breaking out, it makes a good sense to have a Allie.

Jawgap

tdv123 wrote: »

No, a war was breaking out, it makes a good sense to have a Allie.

Stalin's view was always predicated on paranoia - he always thought the West was out to double-cross him (not the USSR, but him personally) and so he always tried to get his double-cross in first.

That informed his decision-making before, during and after the War - especially when it came to deciding whether or not to sign the Non-aggression pact as well as during the Yalta and Teheran conferences.

His was not a rational mind.