Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain

If you want to know all about the Spanish civil war, read Anthony Beevor's book (586 pages), if you want to understand what it was like and be able to feel it, read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (220 pages), first published in 1938 when the war was still going on.

Ever since 'Stalingrad' Beevor's successive historical bestsellers have been praised by critics for their strong narrative. I disagree: I think the narrative side of The Battle for Spain is its weakest feature. The book is cluttered, events are presented in a fragmented, difficult to follow way. There are unnecessary repetitions in some cases, and in others there are omissions which make it difficult to make sense of the sequence of events and their relation to one another. One has to have a degree of prior historical knowledge to navigate through The Battle for Spain - and enjoy it.

Still, as with Stalingrad, Berlin and especially A Writer at War, Beevor brings back to the forefront of contemporary intellectual life the events that had shaped the modern world - and the ideas, prejudices, social phobias and stereotypes which still live on.

Of particular interest is the description of the workings of the non-intervention committee, a European grouping through which Britain and France conducted their policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini in an effort to avoid a second European war. Stalin's Soviet Union supported the republican government also in an effort to avoid direct confrontation with Germany - but also to extend the communist reach into Western Europe.

Mikhail Bakunin

While today's neo-conservatives routinely cite the failure of pre-WWII appeasement policy as justification for American-led interventionist foreign policy - in defense of democracy, it is worth remembering that it was the fear of democratic freedoms in Spain and in their own countries that had been driving British and French governments appeasement policy.

And the second very important element - politically, economically and ideologically - in Beevor's account is his extensive, though sadly somewhat scattered, depiction of anarcho-syndicalist contribution to the war effort and to the reforms in the economy. Badly armed anarchist militias, later transformed into divisions of the regular Popular Army, turned out to be the most efficient. Industries and farms 'collectivised' by anarchists were flourishing. And ideologically anarchists proved to be the most principled, consistent - and flexible force on the republican side of the conflict until they were first side-lined and then pushed out of administration. It is poignant that even today 'anarchist' is used as a derogatory term, and the few attempts to look into their Spanish legacy are restricted to academic world while staying largely unnoticed and unused in a Western society in desperate search for a 'third way' in the face rising religious militancy. A way which may well be provided by anarcho-syndicalism, with a huge legacy in theory and practice going all the way back to Michel Bakunin (pictured above) whose anarchist faction was famously ousted from Marx's First Internationale.

George Orwell Homage to Catalonia

The Catholic Church has no authority to speak on moral issues

Anthony Beevor, The Battle for Spain

I was reading Anthony Beevor's mighty account of the Spanish Civil war 1936-1939 just as Pope Benedict was preaching to Americans about the value of human life and protecting children.

I respect the right of men and women to hold religious beliefs. But I reject the Church's pretension to moral authority when it clearly has none. It is not just such bygone curiosities as the Inquisition or the persecution of Jews, or the blessing of fascists during WWII, or today's responsibility for continued spread of AIDS epidemic in Africa.

The evidence is also in sheer numbers.

We often think of Spain as a Catholic country. Beevor quotes figures that show that it is far from true. The following passage refers to 1931 when the young Spanish Republic debated the first draft of the constitution.

'The Church faced an acute problem. For the first time it found itself dealing with an administration which rejected the traditional idea that the Church was synonymous with Spain. The fact that religious attendance in Spain was the lowest of any Christian country did not stop Cardinal Segura from declaring that in Spain one was 'either a Catholic, or nothing at all'. Less than 20 percent of Spain's total population went to mass. In most areas south of the Guadarrama mountains the figure was under 5 per cent. Such statistics did nothing to lessen the Church hierarchy's view, both in Spain and in Rome, that the Republic was determined to persecute it.'

And, here, a description of public atmosphere in Spain at the time:

'The fanatical mysticism of the Church provoked much of the anti-clericalism in Spain, especially the 'miracles', which in the 1930s often involved a 'red' supposedly committing a sacrilegious act and dropping dead on the spot. The novelist Ramon Sender attributed the left's vandalism against churches, such as the desecration of mummies, to the Church's obsession with the kissing of saints' bones and limbs. Anything, however ridiculous, was believed by the beatas, the black-clothed women who obeyed their priests' every word like the devotees of a cult leader. In Spain there were more psychological disorders arising from religious delusions than all other kinds. This atmosphere influenced even unbelievers in a strange way. Workers formed gruesome ideas of torture in convents, and many natural catastrophes were attributed to the Jesuits in the same way as the Church blamed Freemasons, Jews and communists.'

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
La guerre d'Espagne