Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Religious Persecution in the Spanish Civil War


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was delete. --Core desat  06:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Religious Persecution in the Spanish Civil War

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POV Fork based on one-sided rendition of events that are overripe with propaganda from multiple biased sources. Cberlet 02:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Edit summary at article creation seem to confirm that this is a FOV fork: "Shifted article to new page that continuously was removed from the main article on the Spanish Civil War". There is a relevant discussion at Talk:Spanish Civil War. Article appears to be based almost exclusively from a single controversial source (Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961)) and legitimate POV concerns exist about the article. Seems this topic is dealt with adequately and neutrally at Spanish Civil War. WjBscribe 03:10, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete POV crap. Bigman17 04:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete: Page that was created because a user was upset that their personal views were deleted elsewhere.  Seicer  (talk) (contribs) 06:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, even though there was a severe persecution of Catholics in the republican zone and of non-Catholics in the nationalist zone, dealing with it in a non NPOV manner is hardly encyclopedic. I could agree with a multi sourced neutral article about the subject but not with this Alf Photoman  15:32, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete as a blatant POV fork. -- Chairman S. Talk  Contribs  21:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep--The article was not deleted but shifted by me to the new article at the suggestion of an editor. The footnotes and authorities are impeccable.  Hugh Thomas is THE authority in the English Language as his 1961 work has now gone through the 1965, 1977. 1986 and 2001 editions.

The article deals with the persecution on both sides of the conflict, and it happens that the most flagrant was on the losing side of the conflict.

The article is still under construction and so I am wondering if the deletionists haven't jumped the gun here. Out of fairness and scholarship, shouldn't the article be finished?

Finally, truth is the truth. This presecution is probably the major reason why the Republic lost the war. The atrocities were so broadcast around the civilized world, and caused such an abhorrent reaction, that ONE country, Mexico, rallied to the Republic at the time of the rising.

I realized that the article may offend the political sensibilities of many, but often the truth hurts.

Here is the removal notice that was done without notice to me or by posting.

(cur) (last) 17:10, 11 February 2007 Onofre Bouvila (Talk | contribs) (I removed the section "Anti Relgious Atrocities in Republican Spain". It was approached in a very biased way, mentioning random examples, and this subject is already treated in the article.)

That was why I expanded the article and created its own area.

GenghisTheHun 21:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * Amendment to Keep--Criticism of Lord Thomas

Hugh Purcell, The Spanish Civil War speaking of Hugh Thomas's work, p. 122 "This is generally considered the fairest and most comprehensive history of the Spanish Civil War, in English."

GenghisTheHun 21:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghistTheHun


 * More Amendment to Keep--Criticism of Lord Thomas

I feel that the deletionist attack Thomas for being biased against the Republic. If that is so, why was his work banned in Franco Spain until Franco died?

I would also cite Sheelagh Elwood in the Historical Association Studies book, The Spanish Civil War. On p. 122 we find this comment about Thomas's book, "[Names author and work]is packed with detailed information, but its density and lenght may be a daunting project fir relative newcomers to the subject." The author continues about the Spanish edition. Thomas' book, published in 1961, has gone through revisions in 1965, 1977, 1986, and 2001. Lord Thomas is now probably in his eighties and perhaps we have seen the last of his revisions. That is a terrible loss to the historical community especially now with the work being done in the Soviet Archives. His expert eye on the Spanish material found there would be beneficial to all concerned.

To delete this article based on the assertion that Hugh Thomas is biased is akin to book burning, internet style. It is quite obvious that those who attack Lord Thomas, have not read the book.

GenghisTheHun 22:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun

I inadvertely removed this Keep Comment from another editor

I inadvertly removed this keep comment. I copied it and inserted here. My apologies.

- *Keep - all material seems properly sourced, and if some editors have POV concerns that is not the reason to delete the article but to expand it. -- Vision Thing -- 21:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

GenghisTheHun 22:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * Maybe the testimony of an International Brigader in support of Thomas might affact some the attacking deletionists

I refer the deletionists to Don Lawson, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Americans Fighting Fascism in the Spanish Civil War, (1989) where he states about Lord Thomas, p. 146. "Every writer, including this one, who has written anything on the Spanish Civil War, is indebted to historian Hugh Thomas. His The Spanish Civil War, [publisher omitted} was first published in 1961 and was throughly revised and updated in 1977.  It is unquestionably the definitive book on the war and so far as I have been able to determine, misses no important wartime fact or detail, large or small.  But I would hesitate to recommend the Thomas book to a young reader, except an extremely advanced one, because it is so highly detailed."

I recognize that a person who is not familiar with the subject would find Thomas a large undertaking.

GenghisTheHun 22:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * I would refer the deletionists to Gerald Howson.

A new and exciting work that I am just finishing reading is Gerald Howson, Arms for Spain, The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War (1998). On page 249, Howson notes Hugh Thomas' work as "great." Howson's work, by the way, is quite revolutionary. He has used the recent access to Polish and Soviet archives in his book and reviewed actual inventories and lists of the ships that carried arms to the Republic and also was able to get copies of some of the actual arms purchases. I will need to update my "Foreign Intervention" article with the new information.

GenghisTheHun 23:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * Perhaps the deletionists would be interested to see what Herbert Mathews states about Hugh Thomas.

As all the learned experts on the history of the Spanish Civil War know, Herbert Mathews of the New York Times covered the war from the Republican side during the entire period of 1936-1939. An interesting anecdote, that Mathews does not cite in his book, is that Mathews and Ernest Hemingway went in with the troops when the Republic captured Teruel in 1937-38. This intrepid pair actually were at the fall of the governor's headquarters where the troops fought each other from different levels of the building firing at each other through holes in the floor.

In any event, Mathews in his work, Half of Spain Died, A Reappraisal of the Spanish Civil War (1973), states on page 104, "The judgment of the British scholar, Hugh Thomas, whose work is as authoratative and objective as any history of the war can be...." Mathews, an eyewitness to the war, cites Thomas twenty-four times in the index to the book and praises it in other passages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by GenghisTheHun (talk • contribs) 23:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

GenghisTheHun 23:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * Would Cecil Eby's testimony about Hugh Thomas have an bearing on the deletionists?

Cecil Eby has written at least two books on the war. I have them both, but I only purchased the second book last week and I haven't had time to read it. In his work on the International Brigade, Between the Bullet and the Lie, American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, Eby states on p. 323 "The best general study of the Spanish Civil War is Hugh Thomas' The Spanish Civil War.... His second book that I have not yet had a chance to read, is The Siege of the Alcazar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by GenghisTheHun (talk • contribs) 23:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

GenghisTheHun 00:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * I have other works if you are interested that cite or praise Hugh Thomas.

I have an extensive library on the Spanish Civil War and started to review it when I started working on the various articles and edits that I have done on this site. If anyone wants more citations, I shall provide them.

I have no illusions that I am going to convince anyone. I am quite familiar with academic politics and I have discovered in my short time on Wikipedia, about 4-5 weeks, that the politics of this site are quite similar. There is a huge "Old Boy" network and lots of point of view politics here. There appears to be a large happy group that sends valentines to each other and pin medals on each other's user page. Hilarious.

I had hoped for better but at my age, I should have known better. Some editor posts a delete and immediately we have about half a dozen deletes from people who obviously have never read much about the Spanish Civil War. I doubt few of them ever cracked the cover of Hugh Thomas' work or Professor Jackson or Gerald Brennan or anyone else.

I liken this to a modern bonfire of knowledge that Savonarola or Dr. Goebbels would have throughly approved. You can do this virtual burning of knowledge, but I would be hopeful that truth and knowledge would somehow carry through.

GenghisTheHun 00:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun
 * This does not necessarily mean it is the best source for specialized aspects. All the references mentioned come from a very few pages of the book, so they must have been simply listed, rather than discussed. There should be a very large number of specialized academic and general interest articles on the subject, and I think it would be reasonable to insist that individual incidents be sourced and to more than this single textbook.


 * Weak delete This is especially true because of the overall tone of the article, which is both sensationalist and politically biased. To anyone with even the most general awareness about the period, or about war atrocity stories in general, it is obvious that some are real, some are not, and many depend in the end upon a single report. This is why the WP guidelines require multiple sources, not one text no matter how high its reputation. Both sides in this war were noted for their expert efforts at propaganda, and this article is a  retelling of it.  I don't want to say the subject is not N, but I do think that the articles is plainly on the face an attempt at a POV fork. I think it so contaminated with POV that it should be started over. The article is so radically short of normal WP standards that this seems the wisest course.DGG 03:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. - Francis Tyers · 12:32, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep if its a POV problem, fix it, there are clearly a number of good sources on what happened to the clergy during the Spanish Civil War, and it would seem that the information is too much for the main article, and warrants its own article. POV concerns are not a reason to delete an article. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 16:31, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete (or move?) - by the looks of it, this article should be called "The Spanish Civil War according to Hugh Thomas". Some of the material could be moved to some sort of article about Hugh Thomas' scholarship perhaps. Smmurphy(Talk) 22:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Per GenghisTheHun's comments above, it would almost seem to...  Seicer  (talk) (contribs) 14:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe this should just be called "The Spanish Civil War according to 4 pages of Hugh Thomas' scholarship". In any case, the tone of my comment was not constructive.  I think that this article could be workable, but it doesn't seem balanced as is.  Without balance, I can see why people want it deleted. Smmurphy(Talk) 18:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Riotboy81 21:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I have to say the most recent changes have in my opinion created even more problems. The section "Consequences of the Persecution to the Republic" is so badly written, ambiguous and confused that it is effectively unitelligible. The overall impression of the article as being one-sided and still based on a few pages from one single work remains and has even been reinforced.Maybe it is an issue to be taken up with the editor who originally suggested creating a separate article, but I am not sure that this subject merits an article of its own. Even if it does, I am not sure this current article could even be used as a basis for a satisfactory article. Its shortcomings and problems are so numerous that the ammount of work would probably be greater than just starting from scratch.

Oh yeah, Hugh Thomas and the tale of the atrocities is good enough for Enclyclopaedia Britannica
I have a 1967 Set of Enclyclopaedia Britannica and looked up this controversy. No article in that work exists on the Spanish Civil War, but in the general article, Spain, history, volume 20, page 1108, we find this quotation:

"On both sides the war was marked, especially in the early stages, by a ruthlessness that astounded the world. Churches were burned and desecrated and public religious observances forbidden throughout Republican Spain; ten bishops, and many thousands of priests, religious and devout members of the laity were murdered in cold blood, for no political activity or crime."

Also in the bibliography, p. 1116, as authority for the 19th and 20th Centuries, yep, there is "H. S. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War New York (1961)." Another of my sources, Professor Jackson is also noted in the citation.

Let's examine the question of criticism of "weasel words," so beloved by certain editors of this august web site. The good gray Britannica staff and editors approved these words in that short quotation: "ruthlessness," "astounded," "desecrated," "murdered," "cold blood," and perhaps we could argue about a couple more.

This language is so good that I plan to include it in the article if I can get it by the politburo.

GenghisTheHun 14:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

In current Britannica's article on Spanish Civil War Hugh Thomas and his The Spanish Civil War are still listed in Additional Reading. -- Vision Thing -- 20:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Startling Revelation
I forgot to respond to the criticism that the article relies heavily on Hugh Thomas. I hate to make this startling revelation to that obviously erudite comment, but the bulk of the literature on the Spanish Civil War is in SPANISH. General histories in English are harder to find.

In any event, after Franco died, and the ban against Thomas' book was lifted in Spain, it was translated into Spanish, and is now a Spanish standard on the conflict.

GenghisTheHun 14:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun


 * ==Somebody else was editing when I hit the save button and his comment was lost. I copy and insert below==

n current Britannica's article on Spanish Civil War Hugh Thomas and his The Spanish Civil War are still listed in Additional Reading. -- Vision Thing -- 20:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

GenghisTheHun 20:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)GenghisTheHun
 * keep clearly notable--Sefringle 04:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.