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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3954 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 26, 2023

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Was listening recently to Orwell's biography, and while they discussed Orwell's service at the time of the Spanish Civil War, I realized that most books I've read about the subject were from people either directly or indirectly supporting the Communist side (Orwell, of course, served on the red side and was wounded pretty gravely there). While I am not saying what they wrote were lies, their sympathies inevitably colored how they approach the matter. So I wonder - can anybody recommend some good works about the period which aren't written by leftists? I am not looking for right-side propaganda, but for an honest effort, just not from the left side, because I already seen those and now want to see something different if possible. Can be fictional or documentary, but I don't want a dry historic "this happened, then that happened, then that happened" but something more narratory, engaging and explanatory even if it's a documentary.

The Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical, Economic, and Philosophical Analysis of Spanish Anarchism by Bryan Caplan

In "Looking Back on the Spanish War," George Orwell writes, "I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." The same remark applies with equal force to much of the recent debate about the behavior of the Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. Seeing that it was very difficult to unravel the truth behind the conflicting accounts and citations, I decided to look at the evidence for myself. The following essay is the product of my investigations. Quotations may sometimes seem overlong, because I avoided cutting them whenever possible to eliminate any suspicion of creative editing.

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it may be interesting. It focuses on anarchism.

So this article has some recommendations: https://theworthyhouse.com/2019/04/16/on-francisco-franco/

You want to look at biographies of Franco to understand where he was coming from instead of just a book about the war.

Franco: A Personal and Political Biography, published in 2014, by Stanley Payne

Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator, by Enrique Moradiellos, 2018

Antony Beevor’s book on the Spanish Civil War is excellent and comes from a relatively neutral perspective

Maybe Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War by Peter Kemp? I haven't read it, but it seems to be more of a personal narrative about Kemp, foreigner who joins the Nationalist Army and becomes an officer, than it is a tome of history. It's been a big thing on dissident right twitter for a while, to the point that the edition I linked is a reprint by "Mystery Grove Publishing", a "far right publishing house". "Everyone on right-wing twitter loves it" is, if anything, negative evidence about the quality, but it seems to have good reviews from other normal people who wanted to see the other perspective.

Peter Kemp is like the mirror George Orwell. Both left interesting accounts which are valuable as primary sources, and they both get recommended incessantly by extremely online right-wingers and leftists respectively when books on the Spanish Civil War are requested. But if you're trying to actually understand the socio-political background/context of the SCW reading Orwell or Kemp will probably leave you less informed than you started, because both were Englishmen who knew next to nothing about the country or the war they had just volunteered to fight in and had a tendency to just uncritically believe propaganda from one or the other side.

It’s been a while since I read either one. I just remember a part where Kemp repeats the Franco line about Guernica having been burnt by the republicans on retreat.

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