The current war in Ukraine seems hauntingly similar to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). That conflict began as a fratricidal war but quickly turned into a contest between Fascism and Communism.
Both wars have Russia in common: in 1936 Joseph Stalin’s USSR infiltrated the new republican Spanish government, today, Vladimir Putin’s “imperial Russia” has infiltrated the border regions of newly democratic Ukraine. Stalin later went on to invade Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. Putin’s vision is much the same.
The Spanish Civil War still has the aura of a fight for democracy against fascism. Ernest Hemmingway’s reporting it that way and his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls has left that impression. The reality was that the so-called republican side was infested with anarchists and Communists out to destroy Catholic Spain and anything capitalist. Stalin’s agents pulled all the strings. They purged whatever liberal elements there were on the republican side, just as Lenin had hijacked the Russian Revolution in 1917. “…the Spanish Communist Party [PCE] played out its counterrevolutionary role, abetted by Soviet weapons, “Comintern” agents, NKVD [secret police] experts, and in no small part, individual members of the “International Brigades,” who provided the PCE with some of its best assassins. [Murray Bookchin, “The Spanish Civil War, 1936,” New Politics no 1, Summer 1986).]
Thousands of churches were destroyed and thirteen bishops and some 7000 clergy and religious Spaniards were assassinated. Communists even butchered their anarchist allies after battles with Franco – no one was safe.
Into this chaos came Fascist Italy, certainly with the blessing of Pope Benedict XI. Mussolini supplied ships and planes to ferry General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist troops from Spanish Morocco to Spain. A corps of Italian volunteers was soon organized – eventually reaching 60,000 men – led by Italian officers and supplied with tanks, planes, and artillery. In short, Italy was not going to allow Stalin a puppet state in the Mediterranean or western Europe.
History paints this Fascist intervention as a prelude to the Second World War. But this was not just a “fascist” intervention. It was also a Latin one and a Catholic one – Spain was a Latin sister. In Mussolini’s eyes this was also a personal fight. Communists almost took over Italy after the First World War and continually undermined his regime – they eventually assassinated him in 1945. This very same Stalin later evoked the American obsession with Communism after he created the Iron Curtain and subverted China and Korea. In fact, this was the second aggressor Mussolini faced down in the 1930s.
In July 1934, Mussolini had singlehandedly stopped Hitler from taking over Austria. As then, Italy’s old allies France and Britain stood idly by in Spain two years later. Their neutrality left a vacuum that was soon filled by Nazi Germany in search of an alliance with Italy.
Is Vladimir Putin much different than Stalin? An old Communist and KGB agent himself, Putin poisons political enemies, breaks treaties, terrorizes whole nations, abducts Ukrainian children, and promotes decimation of his reluctant soldiers in Ukraine.
Mussolini gave Franco 110% toward victory. Beside the land and air forces, Italian submarines torpedoed Soviet supply ships. The light of victory came in late 1938 when the Republican gold reserves to buy Soviet weapons ran out and Stalin began worrying about his own vulnerability to Nazi Germany. Complete victory came in the spring of 1939.
In Ukraine, Putin doesn’t see a 110% NATO resolve. And frankly, there is much about this war that puzzles us. Just as there were unspoken deals in World War II, like not using poison gas, Ukraine and Russia must have side deals about Moscow’s vulnerable bridge to Crimea and Kyiv’s vulnerable port city of Odessa less than 200 miles from the front. This is a war of attrition.
What NATO and Fascist Italy have in common is their losses in treasure and equipment will never be restored. But at least Italy carried the fight to victory. However Ukraine’s mutual slaughter ends, Putin has yet to meet his match in the West. – JLM
All one can say about both conflicts is the adage, that politics makes strange bedfellows. Also, a part of the International Brigades was the Garibaldi Battalion, made up of exiles from Mussolini’s Italy, fighting for the Republic. I have always contended, that the Fascists did not win in Spain, the Republic lost, through fratricidal in-fighting….what is often overlooked regarding WWII was the literally millions of people Stalin purged while the war was going on. Tragically that brings us up to modern Ukraine. During WWII it suffered under both German and Russian occupation, and its birth as a modern nation continues to be scarred by Russian interest. It does not seem to matter if it is a Russian Czar, Communist, or dictator, there is this vassal state reality that is a part of “mother Russia’s” foreign policy……
But what I don’t get is the support Russia is getting from Hungary…, a country that was under post-war occupation, and tried to rebel, during the Hungarian Revolution only to be brutally suppressed. The fear that Eastern Europe must be realizing is an additional tragedy, and an unbelievable event, both Finland and Sweden joining NATO….. a good thing I am not a betting person…i would have lost that bet even with odds big time!!!!
There is little doubt that the Spanish Republic would have the same fate as Alexander Kerensky’s republic in 1917 Russia – a Communist counterrevolution. The Communist International was formed just to subvert such instability. And the Garibaldi Battalion was not made up of Jeffersonian democrats. They were extremely effective during the Battle of Guadalajara in 1937 when Nationalists tried to seize Madrid. Using loudspeakers they bombarded the Italian volunteers with messages that demoralized them. The Italian general at the time was Pietro Mancini and he had to issue a warning to his troops essentially saying that Garibaldi was made up of the same Communists Italians had fought in the streets of Italy before 1922. Notwithstanding, bad weather and the demoralized troops made Guadalajara an Italian defeat.
As to present day Hungary, it has issues with the EU over immigration and the erosion of Western culture. It is no doubt taking advantage of situations.
We were on the wrong side of history in the Spanish Civil War. Stalin-backed Republicans killed clergy, civilians and anyone that got in the way. Italian General Bastico in September of 1937 revamped strategy, turning the tide in favor of the Nationalists dooming the Communist threat.
As for Austria in 1934, had Britan and France backed Italy to show a united front, when Mussolini sent troops to the Brenner Pass to confront Hitlers’ takeover of Austria, Hitler would have thought twice before invading other countries and the course of history could have been different. Hopefully we will not repeat history in Ukraine and show a united front against Putin.