Talk:Spanish Civil War/Archive 7

Essays moved from article
The following near-essay was included within the Infobox as an HTML comment. Clearly, that is not a good place for it, so I have moved it here: - Jmabel | Talk 04:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

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PORTUGAL WAS NOT AN OFFICIAL PARTICIPANT, ONLY AN INOFFICIAL! Badajoz, a Spanish province on the border with Portugal, was controlled by the Republican Army during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. General Juan de Yagüe and 3,000 troops attacked Badajoz City, in August, 1936. Bitter street fighting took place when the Nationalist Army entered the city. Losses were heavy on both sides and when the Nationalists took control of Badajoz it was claimed they massacred around 1,800 people. He also encouraged his troops to rape supporters of the Popular Front government. As a result Yagüe became known as "The Butcher of Badajoz".

On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War the President Antonio Salazar of Portugal immediately supported the Nationalists in the struggle against the Popular Front government in Spain. Salazar feared that if the Republicans won the war his own authoritarian government would be under threat.

Salazar, concerned about the effect the events in Spain would have on his country, established a new militia that could serve as an auxiliary police. This new police force arrested dissidents and removed politically unreliable people from educational and governmental institutions. Salazar's police also arrested supporters of the Popular Front government living in Portugal. He also sealed off the Portuguese frontier to Republicans.

Although he came under considerable pressure from Britain and France, Salazar refused to allow international observers being stationed on the Portugal-Spain border. Officially he claimed that it would be a violation of Portugal sovereignty while in reality he did not want the world to know about the large amounts of military aid that was crossing into Spain.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WARspain.htm

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Similarly, this: - Jmabel | Talk 04:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

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No Communist propaganda allowed over here. No unsourced statements. While popular myth has it the Nationalists were more bloody, this is not an historical fact. On the contrary. The murdered civilians of Sevilla in the last days, as well as the mass executions of random Catholics in Barcelona, even of Basque clergy allied with the Republic, are facts. There is no room for ideology over here.

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Recent changes challenged
More uncited changes to this article. Recently added:


 * "20,000 soldiers (sent by Salazar) from Portugal." News to me, and if true, would be remarkable conduct for an ostensibly neutral power. Spartacus Schoolnet, who discuss Portugal's unbalanced neutrality at some length, say nothing of the sort. I plan to remove this unless a citation is provided within 48 hours.
 * "Although there were some Republicans that fled there were also some insurgents fighting on the outskirts of Republican surrender." I have no idea what this means. "Outskirts" is a geographical term. This makes no sense. I plan to remove this unless it is reworded coherently within 48 hours.

-- Jmabel | Talk 07:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It's been over a week, no response, reverting. - Jmabel | Talk 07:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

About the portuguese forces: Viriatos (spanish)--194.65.151.249 17:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)]


 * Volunteer aviators, observers: pretty much what came from a lot of other countries on one or both sides. No mention of 20,000 soldiers sent by Salazar; indeed, a statement that pretty much rules that out: "El gobierno del profesor Oliveira Salazar, aunque no ocultaba su simpatía por el bando sublevado, se encontraba con las manos atadas por la Sociedad de Naciones y la Comisión de No Intervención en la Guerra de España (C.N.I.G.E.) a la que se había adherido el 13 de Agosto." TRANSLATION: "The government of professor Oliveira Salazar, although they did not hide their sympathy for the insurgent band, found themselves with their hands tied by the Leage of Nations and the Commission of Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War, to which it had adhered 13 August." Possibly something deserves mention, but clearly I was correct to remove what was there. - Jmabel | Talk 23:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Destruction of art
This article has the following statement: "In the Spanish Civil War, communists destroyed most of their country's Catholic splendor." Is this correct? Badagnani 11:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It's only half true. Both prior and during the war revolutionary mobs destroyed or sacked wilfuly a great number of Church properties; which, btw, had suffered already as serious blows to its cultural treasures during the XIX century. But its impact varied a great lenght locally, and many movable treasures could be hidden away. F.i. in Seville from April to July 36 about 20-30% of the treasures of the Penitential Brotherhoods was destroyed, and much of the rest was saved at the eleventh hour. But only a handful of churches were burnt down. In Catalonia and parts of Levant, destruction was more widespread.
 * Although post-war propaganda blamed mainly the communists, probably they were the least involved. Prior to the war they were only a handful, and during the war they were kind of a "party of order". Anarchists and left anticlerical republicans (as much as they could influence mob) were most linked to this acts. Socialists also were heavily involved Wllacer 18:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Concur w/ Wllacer. - Jmabel | Talk 21:55, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Image in Infobox
I'm not sure if this has already benen mentioned, but I think that this article should have the iconic image of the republican soldier falling in battle. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.69.40.37 (talk • contribs).


 * I feel that that image has an American POV. The image humanizes a heroic 'Loyalist' soldier whereas the 'Rebel' soldier who shot him is just some unknown, unseen, vague and barbaric figure. That about sums up how the New York Times covered the war. I think that it would be better if the image was a montage like used in the American Civil War article and the World War II article. Gamecock 03:59, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Combatants section unnecessary
The "Combatants" section reads like a second, unnecessarily detailed introduction or even a second copy of the article, awkwardly placed at the top of the original. I recommende a better editor than myself come around and remove it, moving any necessary information to the body of the article. I would almost guess that this is an addition made by one person who didn't like the orientation of the rest of the article... -Dwinetsk 23:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Article Size
This article is very long and is well over the recommended article size. One way to reduce size would be to transfer info to articles about each year of the war and then link these articles back to the main article. This article should only be a general history of the war. The yearly articles can go into more detail. Djln --Djln 23:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Article does good job in detailing communist support
Unlike in a lot of bias reports. The loyalists got hugh amounts of arms and supplies for the Soviet Union. Many claims that this was a unfair fight cause the other guys have more help are bogus (which is usual when communist or socialist regimes or fighters lose engagements). I give the article credit in showing the specific amount of support these guys got. YankeeRoman(24.75.194.50 18:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC))

article long? popular culture works
Hi -- the article is fairly long. We could split off the "Spanish Civil War in popular culture" section to its own article; I suspect it could grow significantly given the chance. Thoughts? --lquilter 00:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Fine in principle, but if I gather correctly, this was done and the new article isn't even linked. What is its title? - Jmabel | Talk 21:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

bias (religious atrocities)
Much bias exists on the Spanish Civil War. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War is the neutral, definitive history of the subject written by a left wing historian who remained remarkably even handed on the subject. The anti-clerical violence quotes comes from Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, the most reliable, neutral authority on the subject. Please cite a more reliable or neutral source than Hugh Thomas.

Hugh Thomas is not left wing he was a Supporter of THatcher

As to the comment about no mention of religious atrocities on the Nationalist side, there was none.

If you want to start a comment about Nationalist atrocities, feel free.

````GenghisTheHun (03:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC))


 * One, I moved this comment by GenghisTheHun from the "to do" list, which is not the forum for discussion of issues; discussion goes here.
 * Two, the substance: GenghisTheHun added in several paragraphs about anti-clerical atrocities by the Republican side; another editor removed the material; GenghisTheHun put it back again, and I reverted it. We need to discuss.
 * The problem is not so much that the information is inaccurate or that the source is biased -- nobody has alleged that -- but that it is bias by undue weight. The material is a fairly large section dedicated to a particular fairly specific topic. There are two issues with this: One, the article is already quite large, and needs to be reduced -- it's basically twice as long as wikipedia's recommended maximum size of 32K. Two, by including the material in such a large section, it assumes equivalent importance with other topics covered at similar or lesser size. The uprising, 1937, 1938, 1939, social revolution, and so on.  There's scarcely enough there for other topics.  The material added in thus assumes, by its volume, undue weight. Clearly GenghisTheHun thinks this is important material, and nobody is denying that it is an important topic or should be part of the historical record or available to wikipedian readers. However, please look at the overall article and I think it is apparent that the material is too much given the scale and shape of other topics in the article.  One could fix this by scaling everything up, but see point #1 -- the article is too long.
 * This material is included here, briefly, in the short description of anti-clerical violence in the article. But only so much can (and should) go into an of necessity brief article reviewing an entire civil war.  I would suggest to GenghisTheHun that if you think this topic merits more attention, you either start a separate article or work on the relevant section of anti-clericalism, which needs more work. Please review WP:NPOV and strive to keep all articles balanced in tone. On any article that you work you should be considering not just adding material, but contextualizing it, making sure the article works as the article for that topic, and does not  misrepresent to a reader of the article, the relative size, scale, significance, etc., of specific sub-topics of the article.  We are working on writing encyclopedia articles, and so it's not just about including more information, but about making readable, encyclopedia-style articles. --lquilter 04:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

To respond to GenghisTheHun's comment "As to the comment about no mention of religious atrocities on the Nationalist side, there was none." In The Battle for Spain, Antony Beevor states that the nationalists killed 16 catholic Basque clergy and about 20 Protestant ministers.Ledhead1788 00:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Weight of Anti-Religous Activities of Republican Spain
The weight is that the anti-religious activities of the Republicans at the beginning of the war, doomed their chances of eventual victory. Why do you ask? The United States could never support them because of Catholic support of FDR. The Catholic Church weighed heavily in other parts of the world as well, and probably the most damaging blows to Republican respectibility in this respect were the pictures in Life Magazine of militiamen sitting on altars, wearing vestments and committing other acts of sacrilege to the Catholic Religion. Joseph P. Kennedy was very instrumental in persuading FDR to keep the USA out of the conflict. France was too vacillating, Mexico too poor and too far away, and Stalin too feckless to save the Republic.

I might add that I am rather perplexed by the bias shown on this site about this subject which indeed was crucial in the conflict. Why is that, a neutral observor might ask?

````GenghisTheHun


 * The weight is that the anti-religious activities of the Republicans at the beginning of the war, doomed their chances of eventual victory. No, actually, that's not the weight; that's the significance, and you didn't put it in the article.  The "weight", as we use it on wikipedia, means how much and what kind of verbiage is spent on one issue relative to others.  You actually didn't include any of the analysis you've added here in the section; you simply listed atrocities, statistics, some colorful detail (named after sports teams), and some unreferenced opinion & POV language ("aimed at manners and morals" ... "fury"); all of it was unnecessary detail, elaborating on anti-clerical violence acknowledged in several other places in the article.  Creating an entire section for this material encourages similarly detailed discussions of non-clerical-related atrocities, and atrocities on both sides, and justifications for the atrocities, and so on.  And then that encourages more discussion about other events of equivalent historical importance in the article: military strategy, battles, economics, and so on, to keep things balanced so that the article is not disproportionately about atrocities. That's weight, and that's why the section you added is WP:NPOV.


 * Now, the analysis you give here is actually more useful than any of the detail that you had previously added. If you wanted to distill your above paragraph into something briefer that would go into foreign involvement, that could be a useful addition to the article, properly cited.


 * Please quit assuming bias when people have laid out for you here & on your talk page detailed explanations about why the material is too much for this article, and given you suggestions about starting new articles, how to edit it, and so on. You might read or re-read "assume good faith" as well as "no personal attacks". --lquilter 17:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

SECTION REMOVED, WITHOUT NOTICE, AND WITHOUT DISCUSSION
I responded because the section was removed, without notice, without discussion and ostensibly becasue of BIAS. Bias is as bias does, don't you see?

````GenghisTheHun

sections: foreign involvement / number of foreigners fighting
Both these sections are quite long, and could probably be cut to about 50% or less of current size; I suggest a spin-off into a separate article for more detailed discussion. --lquilter 17:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

... whoa; where did these sections go? They've just been deleted ...? They really should have been summarized, with a link to the new article, or were they just deleted? --lquilter 03:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I moved them to a new page but then the page disappeared.

I am going to try to move them again to a page called "Foreign Involvement in the Spanish Civil War."

````GenghisTheHun

Linked in Spanish Civil War and Foreign Involvement
I linked in Spanish Civil War and Foreign Involvement that was removed to a new page.

````GenghisTheHun


 * This article contains a lot of bloat on the subject and much of it could be moved to the child page you created.Fluffy999 10:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Confusing wording about Basque nationalists
The section "Prelude" says "The Basque nationalists were not officially part of the Front, but were sympathetic to it." It is completely unclear whether this "Front" is the Popular Front or the National Front. Kevin Nelson 08:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Popular Front. - Jmabel | Talk 21:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)