Paul Preston and Ian Kershaw discuss The Last Days of the Spanish Republic
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- To mark the 80th Anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, awarding-winning historians Paul Preston and Ian Kershaw discuss Paul's new book The Last days of the Spanish Republic.
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This is the story of an avoidable humanitarian tragedy that cost many thousands of lives and ruined tens of thousands more.
It has many protagonists but centres on three individuals. One, Dr Juan Negrín, the victim of what might be termed a conspiracy of fools, tried to prevent it. Two bore responsibility for what transpired. One of those, Julián Besteiro, was guilty of culpable naïvety. The other, Segismundo Casado behaved with a remarkable combination of cynicism, arrogance and selfishness.
On 5 March 1939, the eternally malcontent Colonel Casado launched a military coup against the government of Juan Negrín. Ironically, he ensured that the end of the Spanish Civil War was almost identical to its beginning. As Mola, Franco and the other conspirators of 1936 had done, Casado led a part of the Republican Army in revolt against the Republican government. He claimed, as they had done, and equally without foundation, that Negrín’s government was the puppet of the Communist Party and that a coup was imminent to establish a Communist dictatorship.
Casado’s ambition was to go down in history as the man who ended the Spanish Civil War. Instead he ensured the Republic ended in catastrophe and shame as Negrin’s attempts to achieve an honourable and negotiated peace with guarantees for the civilian population were thwarted and Franco and his forces wreaked havoc and revenge. Madrid collapsed into civil war and two thousand people died. Refugees fled reprisals in their thousands and those who couldn’t escape met a terrible fate.
Paul Preston, the leading historian of 20th century Spain, tells this shocking story for the first time in English. It is a harrowing tale of how the flawed decisions of politicians can lead to tragedy.
To order your copy, visit: www.harpercollins.co.uk/97800...
This is my third time watching this great conversation...
"There were a number of old duffers who were seriously miffed."
Democracy won eventually and Franco consigned to the dust bin of history
@PDF Chenko Your comment is total nonsense and you are a Franco supporter
A tip : watch movies on KaldroStream. Been using them for watching loads of movies lately.
@Conrad Xzavier yea, I have been using Kaldrostream for years myself :D
@Conrad Xzavier definitely, I've been watching on Kaldrostream for months myself =)
I’ve enjoyed Ian Kershaw’s work for decades,..Paul Preston’s for just as long, but with more zeal, really….after watching this marvelous chat ( yet, sadly, too short and scanty ), I’ve concluded that I’d have been on my very best behaviour if Mr Kershaw had been my thesis supervisor.
Hemingway: "Did you hear the tolling bell?".
The British: "No. For whom the bell tolls?".
Hemingway: "Never mind. In september 1940 you will understand".
"Negrin was the Winston Churchill of the war"
Manuel Azaña: "am I a joke to you?"
According to Negrin la batalla del Ebro was needed to lengthen the war expecting a war that was to be declared by the axis forces that was to start at any time,Negrin was a puppet of the Soviet Union who dethroned Largo Caballero who refuse to agree with the PCE and PSU all in cohort with Stalin, actually it wasn't Casado's coup d'etat but the Communist Bolsheviks that did it,also Negrin wasn't trying to save people but his own skin and his Bolsheviks like it happened. Later on, on September 17, 1939 Stalin invaded Poland taking over the Baltic states with the accord signed by the Nazis Molotov-Ribbentrop, so much for this Stalin lower than dirt "Antifascist".
Preston makes a good case against Franco until it gets to around @18:29 & especially at @23:13 when Kershaw begins (in a polite round about way) questioning him about what would happen if the Republicans had won. At that point, he’s clearly dodging the question & avoiding the reality that the Republicans wouldn’t have been more merciful if the roles had been reversed, & that Spain would then be a communist state & a puppet state of the Soviet Union & Stalin himself.
It was pretty apparent that Negrin (who Preston praises so much) had no control of the Republican government & that the PCE had become the dominant party of the republic by the latter days of the war.
You fatally understand the concept of national sovereignty and how it works. In order to run a puppet government you need to station massive numbers of troops within a country. I'm not denying the Stalinist and On-off Soviet desire for World Revolution (World government), however a brief look at the falling out of pretty much every communist country the moment they won their wars should tell you that actually controlling Spain after the civil war would have been impossible. Further more the collapse of the Independence within the Republican Spanish military is as much the short nearsightedness of the west as any other feature. The whole point of the CIA sending advisers to pretty much every war is to ensure the survival of a pro-democratic faction (or at least one that claims to be.)
dale osborne there were soviet agents stationed in the Republican side of Spain during the civil war not to mention the 2,000+ personnel sent to help fight. They even ran a secret police operation complete with secret prisons for not only Nationalist agents, but for the Trotskyist POUM communists & other enemies within the Republican side.
@@clementkong8133 2000 Soldiers are no where near enough to control a country. The North Vietnamese had American advisers during their war with Japan then Chinese advisers during their wars with France and the USA then Soviet advisers in their war with China . Recently US congress authorized the sales of US weapon systems to Vietnam under Obama and this has continued under Trump. Don't confuse similar ideology with common interest or for that matter loyalty.
@@TalonAshlar They don't need to control the country with soldiers. All they need is key people in high places willing to do their bidding, which the PCE was willing to do. It's not confusing similar ideology if they outright said that they are ultimately answerable not to Negrin, but to Stalin himself.
@@clementkong8133 There are no examples of Soviet puppet states that the Red Army was not present in to actually impose. While 2000 Soviet personnel served in Spain in various capacities during the civil war, there were never more than 800 at any one time and by 1939 Stalin had largely lost interest. Other communist countries, e.g. china, north korea, vietnam, cuba, angola, were not controlled by Moscow, so why would Spain be? You can't force countries to do what you want without military power to back it up. Even soviet puppets like hungary and czechslobakia tried to make independent policy decisions, the only way to stop this was with large scale Soviet invasions (1956, 1968).
Most importantly though, what was the topic of the book they were discussing? A successful anti-communist coup carried out by army officers and republican dissidents, such as Casado and Besterio. The Republican army and political sphere were never fully under the PCE/Soviet thumb as is self-evident from the Casado coup! Even officers who were supposedly in league with the communists like Miaja simply switched sides. The thousands of ordinary soldiers were also clearly not convinced communists either, or else they would have supported the PCE in the mini-civil war, which the vast majority did not.
Given that there is no historical precedent for such a scenario, I fail to see how the Stalin could have imposed his will on Republican Spain without huge armed force. The Republican army was not, as proven by the coup, a communist-controlled force, nor is a Soviet invasion of the Spanish Republic even vaguely conceivable in the late 1930s. Therefore, had the Republicans won, Spain could not have become a Soviet puppet. I think you might have been reading too much Anthony Beevor.
26:04 Even though the Polish People's Republic had numerous flaws (usually typical for the stalinist brand of socialism) it was still better than the francoist regime.
Surprising comparison. I Guess you lived in Spain during the last decades of the Franco regime. I did. And I do not get at all the impression that living on the east side of the Iron Courtain, was any better during those days.
Herbert R. Southworth, Hugh Thomas, Gabriel Jackson:
they could tell the story without censure. Paul Preston
is their heir. No Spanish historian gets to Preston's level.
Didn't know that the UK supported Franco in the early days..
Until yesterday I knew little about the Spanish Civil War, there's an excellent Granada TV six part documentary on the subject.A real eye-opener..I know a bit more, but that's all. Paul Preston is an acknowledged expert on this civil war. But I believe I am correct that he does take sides. His sympathies are strongly with the Republican side, there's nothing wrong with this or being anti-fascist, but at the same time if he's going to claim to be some dispassionate observer or commentator, this apparently may not be true. Others can just as reasonably be anti-communist. It's worth checking on some reviews of Preston's writings. Perhaps too Preston is right not to answer "what if" questions; that becomes the realm of mere speculation, not amenable to research or confirmation. Franco only died in 1975, which isn't that long ago, and nearly half the present Spanish population would have lived under his fascist regime. The politics and the emotions of the civil war legacy and Franco are still there, lying fallow or repressed within the moral, political and emotional framework of many Spanish citizens. There is still the risk of the politicisation of the horrors of the civil war and the terrors of the reprisals by those anxious to advance their own agendas. A civil war is like a huge abscess in a seriously diseased body politic. The end of the war lances the abscess but the underlying disease remains for several generations. For instance, I think this is one of the concerns about the present socialist government's efforts to to remove the body of Franco from the Valle de los Caídos or the exploration of mass graves - an apparently honourable attempt to bring some light onto to some very dark happenings - but that this is being politicised. On the other hand, may be there are still rather too many closet fascists in Spain. But perhaps other with more knowledge will be able to correct me. .
Good points well made John. I have myself done a huge amount of reading on the SCW and have taught it to 17/18 year olds in school. You are right that Preston is sympathetic to the Republic, and in particular to the PCE (Spanish Communist Party). It's worth noting though that the PCE were not looking to launch a revolution in Spain as one would expect. They were following Stalin's line of building anti-fascist fronts in an attempt to woe Britain and France and to bring the Soviet Union in from the cold.
What I will say about Franco and the regime that he built was guilty of colossal crimes against humanity. Hundreds of thousands executed, imprisoned or put to work amongst other things. For example, thousands of children being taken from their 'Republican, therefore socialist" mothers and given to more loyal nationalist families. The Franco regime committed heinous crimes that must be acknowledged and condemned by all! It may be the case that some do politicise it for their own agenda, but I do believe that Franco should not be celebrated, mass graves should be exhumed and crimes should be, again, acknowledged and condemned!
its hard not to pick sides .....because being an ANTI-COMMUNIST i would naturally go for the nationlist side....but not everything is black n white! , my atheist ideals would put me on the side of the republicans ! ...supporting THE CHURCH or COMMUNIST IDEALS reviles me in equal measure
@laughinggravy2 that's why he was wholeheartedly supported by Hitler and Mussolini, well known catholic-monarchists themselves.
It is impossible to be equidistant about the spanish civil war. It would be like being equidistant with WWII, as many historians see the civil war as part of WWII.
@@ferabra8939 Hitler wasn't a Monarchist, that is why he refused to restore the monarchy. He broke with Catholicism in his youth, though he never embraced the neo-Paganism propagated by Himmler. Mussolini was an Atheist republican but from 1920 onwards desired reconciliation with the Church and monarchy for practical reasons, at least at first.
Well, this is quite 'funny'... Prof. Preston feels astonished at the vicious attacks you can find in Spain around the Civil War and Franco's regime, either in the academic world or in the general media, which is certainly true, but what really galls me is that he posits those attacks mostly on the part of the right-wingers, which is simply false. Period.
Prof. Preston, and many others like him, tends to say, or at the very least imply, that those terrible right-wingers are proselitising in Franco's favour. Well, I am Spanish, I was just 7 years old when Franco died, so I did not really live what Francoism meant. Nevertheless, my parents certainly did live the war and the regime, and I have tried to read sufficiently in depth about the II Republic, the civil war, and Franco's regime. Among the books I've read, by the way, Preston's biography of Franco is one of them, which I remember enjoying very much, though now I look at it from a clearly different perspective. I wouldn't say there are no nostalgics of the regime in Spain, much in the same sense as you can still find Hitler or Stalin fans all over the place: you know, stupidity is universal. But to call right-wingers in Spain crypto (or overt) supporters of Franco's is simply idiotic; or ill-intended, make your choice.
I have talked about this issue extensively with a number of people, I've listened to debates, and I have also tried to read about it, as I said before, and sorry, but I have not been able to find any fervent supporter of Franco yet: not one. Not a little bit. So, sorry Prof. Preston, but those who criticise your books, or your vision of the II Republic are not nostalgics, and are not all the time raising their hands with the Roman salute.
Unless, of course, you want to call Prof. Stanley G. Payne, for example, a Franco supporter, which would really be quite something, given that Prof. Payne has researched on the ascent of communism and fascism in Europe and more specifically in Spain for well over half a century, and he is anything but a sympathiser of Franco's who, nonetheless, does not share at all Prof. Preston's angelical vision of the II Republic.
No, the problem, what people like Prof. Preston seem not to understand, or rather prefer to ignore, is that, for example, those who do not share his idyllic vision of the II Republic also lost their dearest and nearest during the repression (yes, REPRESSION) on the part of the revolutionaries during the war for such hideous crimes as attending mass or, simply, being well dressed: there is more than anecdotal evidence about this and, no, it wasn't 'uncontrolled' groups that did this, given that one of the centres of detention and torture was the Ministry of Public Works, or Ministerio de Fomento at the time, in present-day Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. It was the systematic attempt at erradicating the enemy.
Prof. Preston or any other may refer to Franco's repression, which of course existed and was ruthless, especially during the first half of the 1940s, but, sorry, there was no holocaust here in Spain. And I'm sick and tired of seeing the word holocaust used to describe any form of repression. Prof. Preston should know better, and in fact he knows better than that. Holocaust implies the systematic annihilation of a given group, be it racial, ethnic, political... And republicans were not annihilated. Just a couple of examples: during the first years immediatelty after the war, some 100,000 death sentences were dictated, out of which 1/3 were actually executed. That gives us more than 30,000 executions, which is a horrifying figure, no question about that. But, what happened with the other 2/3? Their sentences were commuted to 20 or 30 year sentences in prison, of which practically none were actually completed after a series of amnesties. Am I saying that spending, say, 10 or 15 years in prison for your political ideas is a picnic? Of course not, but that's not a holocaust, either.
Another example is that many (and I mean many, thousands literally) trade unionists during the II Republic eventually entered the so called Sindicato Vertical, a regime-controlled trade union, in Franco's time, and everybody knew where they had been. Quite a curious way to annihilate your enemies...
And another blatant lie is that the grandchildren of those who lost the war just want to find the bodies of their loved ones and bury them decently. If that was their only purpose, nobody, and I mean nobody, would oppose that. The problem is that they do not want that kind of reparation. For them, the only victims deserving remembrance are theirs, not those of the victors: you know, the only good fascists are dead, and these days 'fascist' is just anybody who is not leftist. And I know what I am talking about because I used to leftist, very much so, but not any more, which turns me into a 'traitor.'
The grandchildren of the defeated want to dismantle the current democratic system because, for them, it is fatally tainted with fascism, given that it is the result of an agreement between the heirs of Franco's regime and those who had lost the war, what in Spanish we call the Transition. For those grandchildren the only possible solution is a III Republic, that is to say they want to defeat Franco in retrospect, as if time could move backwards. Well, sorry, it can't.
The irony in all this is that the parents and grandparents of those who know claim to defend memory decided, quite judiciously, to leave the dead in peace, both those of the victors and of the defeated, in the name of reconciliation. But the grandchildren do not want reconciliation.
They want war, if not with weapons, with politics. Because, make no mistake, those who claim to be in favour of the II Republic are in fact in favour of the last portion of it, the one ruled from February 1936 onwards by the Popular Front, an amalgamation of revolutionary parties, blessed by Stalin. This is not an opinion, this is just a historical fact.
You can believe me, because I've been one of them, those who call themselves 'republicans' in Spain at present are all revolutionaries, to the last man... and woman, of course.
Doesn't Prof. Preston know this? Of course he does know about it, but in his mind the II Republic is a kind of celestial system fatally aborted by fascism, so his sympathies go in favour of the losers simply because they happen to share his political leanings. Which is fine by me, but then you are not a dispassionate spectator of history, you are a supporter.
As other internauts have correctly pointed out, Prof. Preston dodges all the time the question of what would have happened in Spain if the republicans had won the war. And he does so because he knows the answer only too well: the repression on the republican side during the war is a clear indication of what the final result would have been, and in case that wasn't enough, well, just take a look at Eastern Europe after WWII or at any of the countries in which a communist revolution has seized power. If Prof. Preston or any other prefers to imagine that things would have been any better here in Spain had Franco been defeated, then you just don't know what you are talking about, or even worse, you would have been a participant of the party.
Primero--> checa de fomento--> calle fomento n* 9, no ministerio (actualmente se sabe bastante aproximadamente quién hizo qué... Y el matar centralizada mente y en cantidades industriales eran el PCE de Carrillo y Stalin, el resto... No era tan centralizado como sí lo era en el bando nacionalista, que mató más, y centralizadamente). Segundo--> Stalin dominaba el PCE, y por tanto dominó la guerra, de un lado, como los nazis la dominaron del otro, con la aviación. Si alguien fue masacrado x Stalin, fueron trotskistas y anarquistas. Tercero--> Franco fue fascista hasta el 45. Y luego vario' en función de su "personal" régimen. Pero sí, fascistas, Requetés, señoritos e iglesia hicieron la guerra, mantuvieron y mantienen privilegios NO tan normales en otros países (puede usted mirar a Chile, si quiere verse en un espejo, o Taiwán) (Skorzenny o Ante Pavelic, murieron en España, hasta donde yo sé...). Cuarto--> yo pensaba como usted, hasta que veo que sí, que las víctimas del lado nacional fueron reparadas en su momento. Lo cual no quita que sea electoralista la medida, excepto que sí se debe dar un entierro y no una fosa común tb a los del otro bando que así lo deseen. Quinto--> transición--> amnistía--> para todos?? Claro, como "se perdona" a Carrillo (culpable) ya cuela el truco para perdonar a todos los culpables... Y quizás la receta sería que los inocentes triunfasen, y no los culpables. No Carrillo y similares, pero tampoco una buena parte de pro-hombres del franquismo, manifestamente culpables tb. Esos fueron represaliados? En los años 40?? Lo dudo.
I wish I could like your comment more than once.
It's fascinating the level of dissonance, projection, and gaslighting the usual facha sycophant has to employ in order to justify the murderous regime of their grandpas.
By the way, the definition of "holocaust" is "destruction or slaughter on a mass scale," which perfectly applies to the authors intent and purpose for his usage of the term.
Fachas can try all you want with alternative fantasies in which the republicans win and were somehow worse than you francoists, it's such a desperate projective (sic) attempt to shift blame onto the victims. But the reality is that your side won and were the ones with the far larger number of deaths under your belts.
Paul Preston is a well known Masonic lefty anti Spanish writer. How he is even allowed to enter Spain to write its fake news books is beyond my understanding
@@meilong2338 Well, unfortunately, that's the way things are over here. However, the problem is not Prof. Preston or any other like him: he's just a historian, you may like him or not, and if you don't, you just don't read him, as simple as that. The real problem, in my estimation, lies elsewhere, and it is the question that in Spain, for reasons that would take me quite a while to explain and this is not the space for that, too many people tend look outside our national borders for confirmation of their likings and phobias, which is quite singular.
I mean, in France, Great Britain, Germany, the US... in general, any normal country you can think of, the historial analysis of any of those countries corresponds by and large to local historians, with all their different schools and biases and all that, which of course is the reasonable thing to do, and if foreign historians share this or that interpretation of, say, French or British history, well, fine, be my guest, and if they don't, so be it, what can you do... That is to say, you just don't care very much either way.
Alas, not in Spain, or at least not when it comes to certain sensitive issues, and the II Republic and Franco's regime is definitely a sensitive issue because it is in fact the only source of validation that many on the left still brandish. Which is quite embarrasing many times, by the way, in the sense that if the forebears of present-day brave fighters against fascism had actually been indefatigable opposers of the regime, fine, all due respect for them, of course, but... but... but... the reality is a bit more problematic: once you begin to investigate the family history of many of those courageous antifa, and I'm not talking about entering any secret vault somewhere, it's simply a matter of remembering your neighbour or your classmates, you find that many of those forebears were not precisely passive bystanders, but active supporters of the regime, with comfortable and well-oiled positions in the Fracoist administration and echelons of power.
In fact, the opposition against Franco was rather small; very active in the case of the Communist Party, the only opposition against the regime worth its salt, and mostly symbolical in all the other cases. If someone tells you stories about massive demonstrations against Franco year in, year out, and strikes all around the place, then the reality will disappoint you. And not because everybody in Spain were happy with the regime, far from it, but, first, because people were exhausted after almost three years of war that devastated the country, second, Franco's repression was quite effective, truth be told, and, simply and more important, most human beings are not heroes: people just want to make a living as peacefully as possible. And I wouldn't blame them for that.
The problem these days is that many on the left want to invent for themselves an antifa past they just don't have, among other things, because many of them were not even born when Franco died. But precisely because they have no antifa past people like Prof. Preston always come in handy.
Two Pinocchios
Paul Preston definitely. I don't know about Kershaw.
@@SwfanredLotr So you're a supporter of the Fascist Franco..?
@wilfredo5244 A fascist speaks
This man omitted all the horrors that took place during the Republic and all the killings and the chekas and the Soviet planes that were actually better than the nazis' ... TOO many omissions by design.
For Preston it was only the doing of "uncontrolled groups" when in reality these actions and the formation of Antifascist Comitees and the revolutioanry process on Catalonia were the eventual consequences of José Giral's government arming the revolutionary groups (socialists, anarchists, communist, etc), which were already mobilized on the streets of the main cities ready to confront the military rebels.
Paul Preston disproportionately bias the truth, he have a very keen affect to marxist side, there are serveral things he doesnt say, and things who said which should be say more in context
Defending massacres in context are not that different to the communists defending their own in their contexts. So, little spanish guy, you accept that your apostle Franco was as murderous as the ones in the republic.
I can't stand those that defend their political sides as if it was the only truth. And that goes for the annoying communist to the radical fascist. What happened to liberalism?
He's not a Marxist. Read his books for goodness sake. The Republic was not perfect but it was elected and legitimate.
@@welshtoro3256 A book have recently came out showing the Electoral Fraud of 1936 elections they found many villages where the population was 600 people with 2000 votes and things like that. Also they were marxist-socialist they wanted Socialism which mean poverty and mass killing as happened in Russia, how can one not to react to that
@@LuisDiuk The poverty and mass killing happened in Spain Luis. Furthermore, it's not usual political behaviour to justify and commit mass murder upon those with a difference of opinion.
@@welshtoro3256 Are you serious, I am spanish my family was threaten directly by marxist-socialist, all around the world they killed millions... they started it, they started to discriminate those who had different ideas, they created 17 civil wars in 17 countries the spanish civil war was just of of it, it shameful that you defend such an evil ideology and murderous movement
Paul Preston is a great historian who writes with one purpose: to tell the truth by doing objective and honest historical research.
Hahaha! Just the opposite. He is a one sided historian with strong left bias who write books with those bias
Preston speaks and writes well but he is a doofus. He writes conveniently through his own ideological bias and thinks he knows our history better than us.
This man really ought to concentrate in his own country. He has done more damage than good to us the spanish. That weight he carries physically is a product of the good live he lived there talking lies and getting drunk.
Us the spanish quite like him and respect him, you should focus on the weight you carry honey
Found the Francoist
Lantern Light, another Franco supporter and liar.
What's really offensive of Lantern Light's comment is the anti intellectual/academic world view. The narrowness of vision that people should only be interested in their own country is pathetic. Paul Preston speaks Spanish and has been involved with the country academically and socially for decades.
Paul Preston is a well known anti Spanish anti Franco troll with strong left wing bias
Historians are "eggheads" who have 2O/20 hindsight.
He’s so biased it’s laughable.