The Spanish Holocaust Read Free

evacuate right-wing prisoners, particularly army officers who had sworn to join the rebel forces as soon as they could. The implementation of that decision led to the notorious massacres of right-wingers at Paracuellos on the outskirts of Madrid.

    By the end of 1936, two differing concepts of the war had evolved. The Republic was on the defensive both against Franco and against enemies within. Such enemies included not just the burgeoning rebel fifth column, dedicated to spying, sabotage and spreading defeatism and despondency. Threats to the international image of the Republic and indeed to its war effort were also seen in the revolutionary ambitions of the anarchist movement, consisting of its trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, and its activist wing, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica. The anti-Stalinist Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista was equally determined to make a priority of revolution. Both thus became targets of the same security apparatus which had put a stop to the uncontrolled repression of the first months. On the rebel side, the rapid advance of the African columns was replaced by Franco’s deliberately ponderous war of annihilation through the Basque Country, Santander, Asturias, Aragon and Catalonia. His war effort was conceived ever more as an investment in terror which would facilitate the establishment of his dictatorship. The post-war machinery of trials, executions, prisons and concentration camps consolidated that investment.
    The intention was to ensure that establishment interests would never again be challenged as they had been from 1931 to 1936 by the democratic reforms of the Second Republic. When the clergy justified and the military implemented General Mola’s call for the elimination of ‘those who do not think as we do’, they were not engaged in an intellectual or ethical crusade. The defence of establishment interests was assumed to require the eradication of the ‘thinking’ of progressive liberal and left-wing elements. They had questioned the central tenets of the right which could be summed up in the slogan of the major Catholic party, the CEDA (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas – or Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-Wing Groups) – ‘Religion, Fatherland, Family, Order, Work, Property’, the untouchable elements of social and economic life in Spain before 1931. ‘Religion’ referred to the Catholic Church’s monopoly of education and religious practice. ‘Fatherland’ meant no challenge to Spanish centralism from the regional nationalisms. ‘Family’ denoted the subservient position of women and the prohibition of divorce. ‘Order’ meant no toleration of public protest. ‘Work’ referred to the duties of the labouring masses. ‘Property’ meant the privileges of the landowners whose position must remain unchallenged. Sometimes, the word ‘hierarchy’ was included in the list to emphasize that the existing social order was sacrosanct. To protect all of these tenets, in the areas occupied by the rebels, the immediate victimswere not just schoolteachers, Freemasons, liberal doctors and lawyers, intellectuals and trade union leaders – those who might have propagated ideas. The killing also extended to all those who might have been influenced by their ideas: the trade unionists, those who didn’t attend Mass, those suspected of voting in February 1936 for the left-wing electoral coalition, the Popular Front, and the women who had been given the vote and the right to divorce.
    What all this meant in terms of numbers of deaths is still impossible to say with finality, although the broad lines are clear. Accordingly, indicative figures are frequently given in the book, drawing on the massive research carried out all over Spain in recent years by large numbers of local historians. However, despite their remarkable achievements, it is still not possible to present definitive figures for the overall number of those