Talk:Spanish Civil War/Archive 8

suggestion
Substitute Herbert Mathews, New York Times, for Ernest Hemingway under "Journalists." Hemingway is already listed in the column under the Republican side.

GenghisTheHun 19:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by GenghisTheHun (talk • contribs) 19:13, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

Casualties are inflated
The figure of 500,000 to 1,000,000 is vastly inflated. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (2001) points out on page xviii of the preface that 500,000 is the maximum. Thomas states there that since his first edition in 1961, the estimates of casualties have dropped and dropped. Thomas stated that for the first time in a historical work, and that was his 1961 edition, the estimate of one million dead was challenged as inflated. Thomas states on the same page that now it would be perfectly admissible to argue that Spain actually lost fewer people dead in acts of violence than any other major European nation in the 20th Century.

Thomas fleshes out his estimates on pp. 899-901 of his book. I would suggest that the casualties in the war box be changed to 500,000. Thomas does point out that 300,000 permanently emigrated because of the war, but they are not casualties.

Many Thanks,

GenghisTheHun 19:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

Langston Hughes
Where is the authority for the inclusion of Langston Hughes under the jounalists and spies section?

GenghisTheHun 22:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)GenghistheHun


 * Are you questioning whether he was a war correspondent? He was, in 1937-38: "Hughes also decided to go to Spain.  From the Baltimore Afro-American and the Cleveland Call and Post and Globe he worked out an agreement to act as a foreign correspondent" (Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes Vol 1, page 339).  He wrote several poems from Spain, as well as essays published in the above periodicals, as well as The Crisis, The Volunteer for Liberty, etc. His autobiography I Wonder as I Wander (1956) also talks extensively about his time in Spain. faithx5 19:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Langston Hughes
Thanks, I am satisfied.

GenghisTheHun 22:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

casualties at 500.000
I posted this change sometime ago and I heard nothing. I made the change and footnoted it for verification.

GenghisTheHun 17:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * FYI: Lord Thomas' numbers are quite outdated now. (Keep in sight his work was first published in 1961 IIRC), and the first "scientific" counting of the victims was Gen. Ramón Salas Larrazabal's work "Perdidas de la Guerra Civil" published in 1977, which has been subject of numerous revisions and critiques, but remains seminal. Have a look at [] for a relatively up to date (but obviously biased) account of the casualties of war. It's a pity the author forgot to reference to the global numbers, but for what I know from the site, can be used as a reasonably starting point. In short the site counts some 150.000 direct war casualties, some 160.000 deaths by political represion (extended some years after the war) and some 190.000 post-war deaths atributable to the war. That sums  also up to 500.000, but if you don't include the last entry it goes down to some 310.000 (+-50.000 due to the contencious nature of some represion studies and the wider time frame they allow)--Wllacer 11:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Navy battles
Everyone forget to put this stuff in? Surely the convoys and loss of life on 2 major battle cruisers counts for a sentence or 2? I left some detail over in Legion Kondor, only a couple of sentences though. Fluffy999 13:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Kriegsmarine now covers the attack on the Deutschland (31 dead and 110 wounded, 71 seriously) which lead to shelling of Almeria. Not covered are Italian and Falange naval actions.


 * Error: "On 7 March German Condor Legion equipped with Heinkel He 51 biplanes arrived in Spain" appearing in this article and repeated in Spanish Civil War, 1937 Fluffy999 10:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to move large foreign involvement section to the daughter page
I propose to move the vast bulk of the foreign involvement section of this article to the daughter page, "Spanish Civil War and Foreign Involvement." This would shorten the main article considerably and allow better editing, coordination and discussion of the foreign involvement.

I shall leave this posting up for five days and if I have no objection, I shall move it to the page "Spanish Civil War and Foreign Involvement," and leave behind a small general descripton with a reference.

GenghisTheHun 15:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

GenghisTheHun 15:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * Great idea, it could conceivably be split into two articles. Involvement of governments and forces acting with their approval, and actions taken by individuals against the wishes of their government. This would allow the military aid given and denied by various governments to be detailed in a clear way. Fluffy999 17:19, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Pacifism in Spain
This part of the article is drawing attention of vandals, and it leads us to the question. Why is this in the Spanish Civil War section? I have never seen much, if any, authority for it in the Civil War. I propose moving it to its own separate article, and I shall do so after five days. Please comment.

GenghisTheHun 15:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * Moving it to a separate article is just senseless. In addition, the article should be called "Pacifism in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War", or something like that, because this especific section talks about the Pacifism in Spain in the interwar period, and not about the Pacifism in Spain in a wide meaning. Therefore:


 * 1) If you want to move it to a separate article, get an apropiate name for this new article, and do not call it "Pacifism in Spain" when it talks about something much more especific.
 * 2) Link it with the Spanish Civil War article through a section with a { { main | [...] } } label. Otherwise, the article remains disconnected and unreferenced from its mother article.
 * 3) If you want to create an article about it, create something with content. Don't just copy paste the three or four poor lines of information that are currently in the section of the Spanish Civil War article, and place them in a separate one, because it is senseless: on the contrary, leave these three or four lines of information in this article, so they can be used as reference to link with the new article, and in the new article, give more information about the issue.
 * 4) Moving three or four lines of information that constitute a section to an independent article pointless, because there is not enough stuff like to create a new article with three or four lines, and in addition, by doing this, you leave the Spanish Civil War article totally disconnected from the new one you created. Every article that extends a subject related to a superior article, must be referenced from this superior article. Otherwise, the two articles remain disconnected and it's just poinltess because someone reading the Spanish Civil War article will never be able to accede to the new small stub you have created.


 * All in all, these things constitute a major edit, and we should get a consensus here before removing entire sections. Onofre Bouvila 15:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Who Started It?
The opening of this article is a fairly bland statement about how the War ended. But the first real mention of how it started is a bit further down and reads:

The war started with military uprisings throughout Spain and its colonies. Republican sympathizers, soldiers and civilians, formally acting independently of the state, massacred... [yada yada yada]

Which makes it sound a bit like it was Republicans doing the uprising, and the qualifier "formally" makes it sound like maybe they really had the state's blessing. In general, it seems to me like the article leans too far towards being "even handed" and "unbiased" and so ends up making the Republican side look worse than most of the authoritative histories - including Thomas's. And this lack of a strong statement about the opening salvo of the war seems part of that.

Hopefully, one of these days I can get around to printing this article out and doing a detailed revision of the things in it that really bug me. As it stands I would have to describe it is flawed and misleading, and down-right inaccurate in places. And the pacifism stuff doesn't deserve its own heading, which gives a misleading - and down-right inaccurate - weight, much as I might favor pacifism in general.

Zerodeconduite 13:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Bulk of Foreign Intervention moved to separate article
The bulk of the foreign intervention was moved to a separate article and given headings. It will need rewriting.

GenghisTheHun 14:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

GenghisTheHun 22:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * I added reds for the unit titles. Adding detail on these to the main will probably bump up its rating.


 * ==See Also==


 * Corpo Truppe Volontarie - Italian expeditionary force
 * Regio Esercito - Italian Army
 * Regia Aeronautica & Aviazione Legionaria (Aviation Legion) - Italian Air forces
 * La Regia Marina & Sottomarini Legionari (Submariners Legion) - Italian Naval forces
 * Legion Kondor - German Air forces
 * Fuerza Aérea Nacionales (Arma de Aviación) - Nationalist Air forces
 * Aviación de El Tercio - Spanish Foreign Legion Air forces
 * Fuerza Aérea de la República Española (FARE) - Second Republic and Soviet Air forces
 * Operation Ursula
 * Operation Rügen
 * Fluffy999 21:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Now includes more articles pending. Fluffy999 11:09, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Rearranged the article
I tried to rearrange the article and add headings to bring some order to the article. It needs serious re-writing and citation of sources.

GenghisTheHun 15:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

GenghisTheHun 22:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

Pacificsm in Spain
What is this section all about? I don't think it should be in the war, but moved to its own article. I shall do that in a few days and I solicit comment.

GenghisTheHun 22:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

Rearranged article
I rearranged the article and hope we can clean it up over the next few weeks. I think it can be a good article, but we must get citations for some the statements.

GenghisTheHun 22:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

Pacificism in Spain
As I stated previously, I intended to move this section to its own article. I see no comment so I moved it.

GenghisTheHun 12:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

Evacuation of Children
This happened, but it is not important overall in a general article on the war. I think it should be removed. Any comments?

GenghisTheHun 12:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

There could be a wee mention of it in foreign aid. The humanitarian aid offered by people outside Spain was a lot greater than in most accounts. For example, there was a relatively huge ammount of aid provided by the people of Dundee (unfortunetly most of the evidence is in the form of contemporary trade union minute books, or from The Courier archives), included in that was the housing of 25 evecuated Basque children in Montrose. A list of other colonies in Britain can be found here. Euand 00:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Major recent changes
I have not recently been active in this article. I see that there have been major recent changes, and, judging by the edit summaries and discussion above, they have basically been by one person, who gave reasonable notice, didn't get much response, and moved forward on the basis that silence is consent. Not necessarily a bad principle, but not a basis for a strong consensus. I doubt I will have much chance to look at this article closely in the near future, but I strongly urge that several people take a good look at the changes over roughly the last four weeks, and either assure that there is a general consensus that these changes are all beneficial, or discuss which may not be. - Jmabel | Talk 07:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Made some grammar and clarity related changes, mostly to Atrocities section. New here, so I just barged in like a bull in a china shop. I don't think I changed any references or meaning, just tried to hone the langauge a bitVerdeleone 17:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Tamiment Library
I just wanted to mention that the archives of the Lincoln Brigade are at the Tamiment Library in NYC (Online guide). Someone living in NYC might find these to be very useful research materials. - Jmabel | Talk 17:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya - Republican Left of Catalonia): The Catalan faction of Azaña's Republicans Despite they have both the same name (one in catalan, spanish the other),this is false, ERC is not the catalan faction of Izquierda Republicana. ERC was an independent party and didn't have any official belonging to IR nor "spanish referent or faction". --81.184.111.47 19:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Conditions of Fascist Support
The assertion in the first of the footnotes that fascist aid to the nationalists was free and unconditional is mistaken. I don't have time to re-phrase it or look back for other instances of this innacurate claim in this or other articles but if anyone else wants to do it, I've pasted a few relevant quotes for you.

At an early stage HISMA began demanding partial repayment of the debt in internationally acceptable foreign exchange. - Robert Whealey, How Franco Financed His War Reconsidered, in, Martin Blinkhorn, Spain in Conflict 1931-39: Democracy and its Enemies, (London, 1986), p.245

In the first winter of the Civil War alone, Germany imported a third of a million tons of iron ore from Nationalist Spain - Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War, (Hampshire, 1994), p.98

Franco was eventually forced to grant HISMA-ROWAK favourable mining concessions - George Esenwein & Adrian Shubert, Spain At War: The Spanish Civil War in Context, (London, 1995), p.200

Muslims
There is a mention of the "expulsion of Muslims" that seems some kind of vandalism. Please check the content previous to its introduction. --Error 00:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Martyrs
Link somewhere to Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. --Error 00:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)