HISTORY 13 P Victimized€¦ · biography (1994) demolished much of the abundant mythology...
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HISTORY ++- 13 P aul Preston is a prolific scholar of Spain's Second Republic (1931-9). His huge and compelling Franco: A biography (1994) demolished much of the abundant mythology surrounding one of the longest-lasting dictatorships in history. His subsequent biography of King Juan Carlos (2004) balanced the unrelenting criticism that the author had directed at Franco with effu- sive praise for the King, who - it was argued - successfully steered Spain from dictator- ship to democracy. Like much of his earlier work, Preston's popular synthesis, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (1996), reflects the method of a political historian working "from above", whose main interest lies with great men and. women, and their fol- lowers. Preston continues in this vein in The Spanish Holocaust. This time he chronicles the terror initiated by both the Right and the Left which erupted immediately after the military rebellion against the Republic on July 17, 1936. The author provides more detail on the killings committed in both the leftist Republican and rightist Nationalist zones than any other historian. He deploys the fruit often years' research on the terror in an effort to give balanced coverage of the atrocities on both sides. Grisly portraits of the murderers of various ideological persuasions and their crimes constantly shock the reader. Preston rightly reminds us that the rebellious officers, whom Hitler and Mussolini quickly aided - were largely responsible for the erup- tion of this carnage. In its exposure of widespread and intense suffering, The Spanish Holocaust reflects a current in contemporary culture that is unhealtltily preoccupied with competitive vie- timhood. In presenting a putative Spanish Holocaust, Preston likens the deaths, execu- tions and murders of 50,000 rightists in the Republican zone, and 130,000 leftists in the Nationalist zone during the Spanish conflict to the almost 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The "politicide" of the Spanish Civil War overwhelmingly targeted adult males who had been political activists of both Left and Right. The genocide of the Second World War annihilated men, women and more than a million children who hap- pened to share a religious or ethnic heritage. A further problem with Preston's method is that he rates some victims as more equal than others. He stresses that Republican leaders were more likely to adopt humanitar- ian rbetoric and practices towards their enemies than their Nationalist counterparts, and argues that the repression in the Republi- can zone was merely a response to the mili- tary coup of July 1936. The Left's killings were "hot-blooded and reactive ... spontane- ous and defensive". In contrast, the Right under General Franco possessed "exterrnina- tory plans" and employed "systematic mass murder". An avalanche of recent literature has challenged these antiquated views, estab- lishing that repression in the Republican zone was not merely a "spontaneous and defen- sive" reaction by uncontrollable elements. Instead, the killings were part of a largely deliberate and calculated effort to eliminate "fascists" (very broadly defined), rightists - and also members of the clergy, who were perceived as fifth columnists and potential obstacles to a workers' or people's revolu- Victimized MICHAEL SEIDMAN Paul Preston THE SPANISH HOLOCAUST Inquisition and extermination in twentieth-century Spain 700pp. Harper Press. £30. 978000 255634 7 US: Norton. $35. 978 0 393 06476 6 tion. The murderers were closely connected to, and usually approved by, the parties of the Left - Socialists, Communists and anarchists. Pace Preston, forms of terror in the Repub- lican and Nationalist zones were similar in many respects. His simplistic assertion of a rightist "programme of extermination" over- looks the massive recycling of Republican prisoners of war into the Nationalist forces throughout the conflict: In fact, Nationalists may have integrated proportionately more POWs into their army than any other civil- war belligerents in twentieth-century Europe. The author's tendency to exculpate the Spanish Left leads to an overestimation of Soviet influence on the Paracuellos massa- cres outside Madrid in November 1936, when a coalition of Spanish leftists executed approximately 2,400 rightist prisoners. His emphasis on repression of CataIan-speakers distorts Catalan history. Despite charges of "cultural genocide", the' Nationalists toler- ated the speaking of Catalan in .their army, and had an elite unit of highly decorated Cata- lan Carlists. But Preston is less interested in exploring the complexities of dual loyalties in Catalonia and elsewhere than in discredit- ing the moral capital of the Nationalists. The Spanish Holocaust also paints a ten- dentious picture of the Second Republic. Pres- ton argues that the incendiary claims of its more hot-headed spokesmen were more rhe- torical than serious. The violence of both Left and Right is therefore not contextualized as a struggle between revolutionaries who attacked property rights, and counterrevolu- tionaries who defended them. This analytical framework can shed light not only on the Spanish Civil War, but also on earlier con- flicts - the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution and the Finnish Civil War. Instead of investigating revolutionary activi- ties from the bottom up, Preston concentrates on the words and actions of leaders. He por- trays a "reformist" Republic assaulted by rightists who regarded Spanish leftists as "foreign". In his account, property-owners had little to fear, but were "provoked" by "the rightist media". Yet revolutionaries regu- larly attacked private and church property after the elections of February 1936 that brought the leftist Popular Front to power. Nor were the lives of rightists and property owners safe. Paradoxically, and despite its Marxist principles, much leftist Spanish histo- riography has tended to play down violent manifestations of class struggle. A good example of the multiple weaknesses of Pres- ton's method is his treatment of the assassina- tion of the far-right politician, Jose Calvo Sotelo, the event that triggered the Civil War itself, according to many historians. Mem- July 23,1936: an armed woman leading a group marching through Madrid at the outbreak of the Civil War bers of the state police abducted Calvo Sotelo from his apartment in the ntiddle of the night and shot him, gangster-style, on the back seat of their vehicle. This cold-blooded killing helped to convince a wavering Francisco Franco to join the rebellion against the Repub- lic. According to Preston, "Republican and Socialist leaders were appalled [by the murder] and the authorities immediately began a thorough investigation". But the most recent major studies of the Popular Front have demonstrated the "astonishing inertia", as one historian puts it, of the Repub- lican President and Prime Minister in the face of calls to find the assassins. While Preston champions Republican efforts to limit executions and observe due process, he neglects a similar but less effec- tive process in the Nationalist zone. His claims about "Franco's slow war of armihila- tion" ignore the fact that the Generalissimo's special military tribunal, which was estab- lished at the end of 1936, examined more than 30,000 cases during the following two years and dismissed half of them. Preston's model cannot explain the steep decline of death sentences after 1941, or the liberation of over 150,000 prisoners between 1941 and 1~1 . If much of the information provided is par- tial, some is unreliable. I have not been able to find any proof of Preston's unsubstantiated statement that "papal declarations" described fascism as "the best weapon with which to defeat proletarian revolution and defend Christian civilization". Preston also claims that "a number of rightist prisoners were assassinated" in reprisal for the first National- ist air raid on Madrid on the night of August 7, 1936. Like other writers, Preston confuses the air raid drill of that night with the first actual raid, which did not take place until August 27-28; but no other historian has claimed that prisoners were shot in reprisal. TLS SEPTEMBER 7 2012 He provides no footnote for his singular asser- tion. Similarly, no one else has alleged that Madrid was bombed on August 21-22, let alone that the bomb caused "severe damage" near the Modelo prison. Again, no source is provided for tltis claim. The over-emphasis on repression as the key to the Nationalist war effort entails a misconstrual of Franco's rural policies, the success of which formed one of the major rea- sons for the Republican defeat. Preston's assertion that counter-revolutionaries employed "education through terror" to immediately expel or kill peasants who had expropriated land needs qualification. When new owners were producing effectively, Nationalist officials were reluctant to inter- vene to ~etum the iand to its original proprie- tors immediately. Rather than killing or expel- ling the radical peasants of Extremadura who had "illegally" occupied farms, agricultural authorities offered them incentives to pro- duce grain and meat. Likewise, Preston is incapable of explain- ing the failure of Republican rural policy that was based on unrealistic price controls and unsystematic confiscations, which discour- aged production for the market. Thus, he resorts to templates from the history of mili- tancy by praising the Prime Minister, Juan Negrin, for his strategy of resistance to the last starving Republican civilian and soldier, and by blaming Republican leaders - Indale- cio Prieto and Segismundo Casado - for a supposedly premature Republican defeat. Preston's politicized approach, which posits terror as an all-purpose explanation, cannot sufficiently account for increased productiv- ity in industries that fdl. into Nationalist hands. Although some of the initial advances were due to repression, the Nationalist capa- city for adequately feeding miners and steel workers was essential to raising output. Though a specialist on Spain, Preston has little familiarity with the vast and sophisti- cated literature about 'mass murder and geno- cide. When he deals· with Jews - a marginal topic in The Spanish Holocaust, despite its title - he does so with little comparative vision. The Spanish counter-revolutionaries did not wage a racial war against Jews, but concentrated on combating revolutionaries who threatened their lives, property and faith. The author fails to acknowledge that the Spanish Right largely adhered to a reli- gious-based anti-Judaism - a significant evil in itself, of course, but not the same thing as the racially based hate-mongering of the Nazis. The few Jews whom the Nationalists executed were, as a rule, killed as leftists, not as Jews. Preston is thus unable to explain why some were given the chance to convert to save their lives, and others left unmo- lested. After nearly forty years of Franco's repres- sive dictatorship, it was necessary and healthy that his victims - many of whom were guilty only of the "crime'tof leftist sym- pathies - receive proper recognition. Yet Paul Preston serves more as defence advo- cate for the victims than their historian. In his story, they are largely passive and innocent, neither revolutionary nor suhversive. What- ever its flaws, venerable Marxist materialism with its promotion of the heroic class strug- gle revealed much more about the Spanish Civil War than Preston's fashionable focus on the martyrs of yet another "Holocaust".
Transcript of HISTORY 13 P Victimized€¦ · biography (1994) demolished much of the abundant mythology...
HISTORY
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13
Paul Preston is a prolific scholar ofSpain's Second Republic (1931-9).His huge and compelling Franco: A
biography (1994) demolished much of theabundant mythology surrounding one of thelongest-lasting dictatorships in history. Hissubsequent biography of King Juan Carlos(2004) balanced the unrelenting criticism thatthe author had directed at Franco with effu-sive praise for the King, who - it was argued- successfully steered Spain from dictator-ship to democracy. Like much of his earlierwork, Preston's popular synthesis, A ConciseHistory of the Spanish Civil War (1996),reflects the method of a political historianworking "from above", whose main interestlies with great men and. women, and their fol-lowers.Preston continues in this vein in The
Spanish Holocaust. This time he chroniclesthe terror initiated by both the Right andthe Left which erupted immediately after themilitary rebellion against the Republic onJuly 17, 1936. The author provides moredetail on the killings committed in both theleftist Republican and rightist Nationalistzones than any other historian. He deploysthe fruit often years' research on the terror inan effort to give balanced coverage of theatrocities on both sides. Grisly portraits of themurderers of various ideological persuasionsand their crimes constantly shock the reader.Preston rightly reminds us that the rebelliousofficers, whom Hitler and Mussolini quicklyaided - were largely responsible for the erup-tion of this carnage.In its exposure of widespread and intense
suffering, The Spanish Holocaust reflects acurrent in contemporary culture that isunhealtltily preoccupied with competitive vie-timhood. In presenting a putative SpanishHolocaust, Preston likens the deaths, execu-tions and murders of 50,000 rightists in theRepublican zone, and 130,000 leftists in theNationalist zone during the Spanish conflictto the almost 6 million Jews exterminated bythe Nazis and their collaborators during theSecond World War. The "politicide" of theSpanish Civil War overwhelmingly targetedadult males who had been political activistsof both Left and Right. The genocide of theSecond World War annihilated men, womenand more than a million children who hap-pened to share a religious or ethnic heritage.A further problem with Preston's method
is that he rates some victims as more equalthan others. He stresses that Republicanleaders were more likely to adopt humanitar-ian rbetoric and practices towards theirenemies than their Nationalist counterparts,and argues that the repression in the Republi-can zone was merely a response to the mili-tary coup of July 1936. The Left's killingswere "hot-blooded and reactive ... spontane-ous and defensive". In contrast, the Rightunder General Franco possessed "exterrnina-tory plans" and employed "systematic massmurder". An avalanche of recent literaturehas challenged these antiquated views, estab-lishing that repression in the Republican zonewas not merely a "spontaneous and defen-sive" reaction by uncontrollable elements.Instead, the killings were part of a largelydeliberate and calculated effort to eliminate"fascists" (very broadly defined), rightists -and also members of the clergy, who wereperceived as fifth columnists and potentialobstacles to a workers' or people's revolu-
VictimizedMICHAEL SEIDMAN
Paul Preston
THE SPANISH HOLOCAUSTInquisition and extermination
in twentieth-century Spain700pp. Harper Press. £30.
978000 255634 7US: Norton. $35. 978 0 393 06476 6
tion. The murderers were closely connectedto, and usually approved by, the parties of theLeft - Socialists, Communists and anarchists.Pace Preston, forms of terror in the Repub-lican and Nationalist zones were similar inmany respects. His simplistic assertion of arightist "programme of extermination" over-looks the massive recycling of Republicanprisoners of war into the Nationalist forcesthroughout the conflict: In fact, Nationalistsmay have integrated proportionately morePOWs into their army than any other civil-war belligerents in twentieth-century Europe.The author's tendency to exculpate the
Spanish Left leads to an overestimation ofSoviet influence on the Paracuellos massa-cres outside Madrid in November 1936,when a coalition of Spanish leftists executedapproximately 2,400 rightist prisoners. Hisemphasis on repression of CataIan-speakersdistorts Catalan history. Despite charges of"cultural genocide", the' Nationalists toler-ated the speaking of Catalan in .their army,and had an elite unit of highly decorated Cata-lan Carlists. But Preston is less interested inexploring the complexities of dual loyaltiesin Catalonia and elsewhere than in discredit-ing the moral capital of the Nationalists.
The Spanish Holocaust also paints a ten-dentious picture of the Second Republic. Pres-ton argues that the incendiary claims of itsmore hot-headed spokesmen were more rhe-torical than serious. The violence of bothLeft and Right is therefore not contextualizedas a struggle between revolutionaries whoattacked property rights, and counterrevolu-tionaries who defended them. This analyticalframework can shed light not only on theSpanish Civil War, but also on earlier con-flicts - the Paris Commune, the RussianRevolution and the Finnish Civil War.Instead of investigating revolutionary activi-ties from the bottom up, Preston concentrateson the words and actions of leaders. He por-trays a "reformist" Republic assaulted byrightists who regarded Spanish leftists as"foreign". In his account, property-ownershad little to fear, but were "provoked" by"the rightist media". Yet revolutionaries regu-larly attacked private and church propertyafter the elections of February 1936 thatbrought the leftist Popular Front to power.Nor were the lives of rightists and property
owners safe. Paradoxically, and despite itsMarxist principles, much leftist Spanish histo-riography has tended to play down violentmanifestations of class struggle. A goodexample of the multiple weaknesses of Pres-ton's method is his treatment of the assassina-tion of the far-right politician, Jose CalvoSotelo, the event that triggered the Civil Waritself, according to many historians. Mem-
July 23,1936: an armed woman leadinga group marching through Madrid at the
outbreak of the Civil War
bers of the state police abducted Calvo Sotelofrom his apartment in the ntiddle of the nightand shot him, gangster-style, on the back seatof their vehicle. This cold-blooded killinghelped to convince a wavering FranciscoFranco to join the rebellion against the Repub-lic. According to Preston, "Republican andSocialist leaders were appalled [by themurder] and the authorities immediatelybegan a thorough investigation". But themost recent major studies of the PopularFront have demonstrated the "astonishinginertia", as one historian puts it, of the Repub-lican President and Prime Minister in the faceof calls to find the assassins.While Preston champions Republican
efforts to limit executions and observe dueprocess, he neglects a similar but less effec-tive process in the Nationalist zone. Hisclaims about "Franco's slow war of armihila-tion" ignore the fact that the Generalissimo'sspecial military tribunal, which was estab-lished at the end of 1936, examined morethan 30,000 cases during the following twoyears and dismissed half of them. Preston'smodel cannot explain the steep decline ofdeath sentences after 1941, or the liberationof over 150,000 prisoners between 1941 and1~1 .If much of the information provided is par-
tial, some is unreliable. I have not been ableto find any proof of Preston's unsubstantiatedstatement that "papal declarations" describedfascism as "the best weapon with which todefeat proletarian revolution and defendChristian civilization". Preston also claimsthat "a number of rightist prisoners wereassassinated" in reprisal for the first National-ist air raid on Madrid on the night of August7, 1936. Like other writers, Preston confusesthe air raid drill of that night with the firstactual raid, which did not take place untilAugust 27-28; but no other historian hasclaimed that prisoners were shot in reprisal.
TLS SEPTEMBER 7 2012
He provides no footnote for his singular asser-tion. Similarly, no one else has alleged thatMadrid was bombed on August 21-22, letalone that the bomb caused "severe damage"near the Modelo prison. Again, no source isprovided for tltis claim.The over-emphasis on repression as the
key to the Nationalist war effort entails amisconstrual of Franco's rural policies, thesuccess of which formed one of the major rea-sons for the Republican defeat. Preston'sassertion that counter-revolutionariesemployed "education through terror" toimmediately expel or kill peasants who hadexpropriated land needs qualification. Whennew owners were producing effectively,Nationalist officials were reluctant to inter-vene to ~etum the iand to its original proprie-tors immediately. Rather than killing or expel-ling the radical peasants of Extremadura whohad "illegally" occupied farms, agriculturalauthorities offered them incentives to pro-duce grain and meat.Likewise, Preston is incapable of explain-
ing the failure of Republican rural policy thatwas based on unrealistic price controls andunsystematic confiscations, which discour-aged production for the market. Thus, heresorts to templates from the history of mili-tancy by praising the Prime Minister, JuanNegrin, for his strategy of resistance to thelast starving Republican civilian and soldier,and by blaming Republican leaders - Indale-cio Prieto and Segismundo Casado - for asupposedly premature Republican defeat.Preston's politicized approach, which positsterror as an all-purpose explanation, cannotsufficiently account for increased productiv-ity in industries that fdl. into Nationalisthands. Although some of the initial advanceswere due to repression, the Nationalist capa-city for adequately feeding miners and steelworkers was essential to raising output.Though a specialist on Spain, Preston has
little familiarity with the vast and sophisti-cated literature about 'mass murder and geno-cide. When he deals· with Jews - a marginaltopic in The Spanish Holocaust, despite itstitle - he does so with little comparativevision. The Spanish counter-revolutionariesdid not wage a racial war against Jews, butconcentrated on combating revolutionarieswho threatened their lives, property andfaith. The author fails to acknowledge thatthe Spanish Right largely adhered to a reli-gious-based anti-Judaism - a significant evilin itself, of course, but not the same thing asthe racially based hate-mongering of theNazis. The few Jews whom the Nationalistsexecuted were, as a rule, killed as leftists, notas Jews. Preston is thus unable to explainwhy some were given the chance to convertto save their lives, and others left unmo-lested.After nearly forty years of Franco's repres-
sive dictatorship, it was necessary andhealthy that his victims - many of whomwere guilty only of the "crime'tof leftist sym-pathies - receive proper recognition. YetPaul Preston serves more as defence advo-cate for the victims than their historian. In hisstory, they are largely passive and innocent,neither revolutionary nor suhversive. What-ever its flaws, venerable Marxist materialismwith its promotion of the heroic class strug-gle revealed much more about the SpanishCivil War than Preston's fashionable focuson the martyrs of yet another "Holocaust".
