AH Challenge: Anarchists win the Spanish Civil War

Yeah, I know that if that looked to be happening, then Italy and German would probably intervene directly. But what would be needed for such intervention to be necessary?
 

TheCrow__

Banned
As I said before get the Anarchists and the Communists to truly side with each other. It would be great.:D
 
Yeah, I know that if that looked to be happening, then Italy and German would probably intervene directly. But what would be needed for such intervention to be necessary?

In the Civil War at least, Stalin not deciding to purge the Catalonian leftists would greatly help matters for the anti-Fascist forces. Prior to that action, Barcelona and the communes around the city were actually the most economically successful areas in the entire country. If the Soviets allow the factions there to continue in their Popular Front then the possibility of a Republican victory (or at very least, an independent People's Republic of Catalonia) would be very possible indeed.
 
Wow, this is a tough one...

After reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia I can't even imagine the Anarchists organizing a pissing contest in a brewery let alone winning a war.

This one is going to take some time to figure out.
 
Wow, this is a tough one...

After reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia I can't even imagine the Anarchists organizing a pissing contest in a brewery let alone winning a war.

This one is going to take some time to figure out.

Orwell, while writing an exceptional memoir, wrote a very pessimistic account based on his own negative experiences in the Civil War (not without reason of course, I'd be rather jaded too if I'd had by face shot and been imprisoned by my erstwhile allies). The Anarchist communes in the area were the only areas to see sustained improvements in living standards during the conflict, had Comintern not shot half their leadership, the Republicans would have fought Franco far closer than they did in OTL.
 
The Anarchist communes in the area were the only areas to see sustained improvements in living standards during the conflict, had Comintern not shot half their leadership, the Republicans would have fought Franco far closer than they did in OTL.

Would you happen to have any book recommendations for the war?
 
Unfortunately Franco was a vastly superior planner, especially after Stalin started meddling in the Loyalist internal affairs so the win would have to come early. That said, if some daring Spanish officer guessed that moving forces from Spanish North Africa would be essential to the Nationalist plan and thrown what fighters could be mustered to stop this...


I don't see what Germany could do to intervene directly early on, when the German military was frantically rebuilding during this period.


Italy would, in theory, be better off without all the equipment lavished on the Nationalist cause but would Germany have suffered without the examples and field experience of the war?
 
The EdA split, but 2/3 of them went over to the Nationalists. In any case, they would be cannon fodder for the escorting 109s.
 
I've read a few of Durrutti's memoires that were in No Gods, No Masters. He was quite an interesting individual.

Thanks, but I rather not read anything recommended by a Truther.

I'm sure Lord Roem can suggest books written by reputable historians and not the Tinfoil Toupee Brigade.
 
Anarchists winning the Spanish Civil War

I have such a soft spot for the Anarchists that I want them to succeed.
However, IOTL they pissed off the right by looting churches and abusing the clergy and pissed off the Socialist government by staying autonomous, maintaining separate militia and so forth. The Republic's fate was sealed by a mixture of infighting between the Popular Front and the Anarchists and the Western arms embargo. Once they took Soviet aid, they were anathema to Western support.
A possible POD to allow Anarchist survival would be more unequivocal support by Leon Blum and the French government in 1936. (IOTL they sent very tepid support to the Republic not to antagonize the right in France) sending a lot of French volunteers to fight, as well as giving the French military a clinic of how to deal with blitzkrieg so they wouldn't get caught quite as flat-footed as they were IOTL. If they learned any useful lessons, as the Soviets did, it would have given a whole different flavor to the Phoney War.
As an American Francophobe, that's distasteful, but the only semi-viable option I can think of to prevent the intramural bloodletting between the Socialists and Anarchists to please the Soviets. The Americans were NOT going to back a Communist government. However, they might not have been so vehemently against a democratic government with French backing.

OTOH, the domestic fallout from accepting French help (shades of Bourbon occupation, part II, I can see the Falange propaganda posters now--) might have put the Caballero-Azana governments in an even bigger bind than IOTL. If the Anarchists couldn't organize a pissing contest in a brewery, the Spanish Socialists couldn't sell ice in Hell at home or abroad.

My 2c on the subject anyway.
 
One option is for fragmentation happen earlier and to the Nationalists as well. The Anarchists had control of the Spanish Gold Reserves, if they don't collaborate with the Republicans then they have about six weeks to buy arms and ammo with that gold before the Nonintervention Pact comes into effect, and they'll actually see the stuff the gold buys instead of all of it going to the Communists.

Also, there was infighting among the Nationalists before Franco took over. If the other two generals don't die so conveniently and the Nationalists split into three or more factions, that would give the rest breathing room.



As to anything like genuine cooperation between the Communists and the Anarchists, that's ASB. Anarchists and Marxists have hated each other since the First International, and the Russian Revolution ensured the enmity thereof.
 

TheCrow__

Banned
Thanks, but I rather not read anything recommended by a Truther.

I'm sure Lord Roem can suggest books written by reputable historians and not the Tinfoil Toupee Brigade.

OMFG. Wtf. Dude I only said that I believe the government is not telling us everything that went on. I said I am skeptical. And just because I was does not mean I have don't know good material to read on a completely different subject matter.
 
Thanks, but I rather not read anything recommended by a Truther.

I'm sure Lord Roem can suggest books written by reputable historians and not the Tinfoil Toupee Brigade.

Looking into it, it seems like a reputable book. Although Crow does seem somewhat disconnected from reality.
 

Cook

Banned
Looking into it, it seems like a reputable book. Although Crow does seem somewhat disconnected from reality.

I never got to ask him why he thought the Communists and Anarchists winning would be desirable let alone feasible.

I love "Somewhat disconnected from reality" :)
 
Would you happen to have any book recommendations for the war?

Anthony Beevor's book is a resonable introduction to the period. However, he doesn't speak Spanish so elements of it are somewhat lacking. I can highly recommend anything by Paul Preston. He is on of the leading experts on the civil war and a thoroughly nice chap to boot (he's an academic at my uni).
 
The book Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution by Jose Peirats is a comprehensive history of the Spanish Civil War and the role played in it by the anarchists. Peirats was an anarchist.

There were anarchist ministers in the Council of National Defence headed by Colonel Casado, formed in Madrid on 4 March 1939. Its policy was the negotiation of an honourable peace, without reprisals, with the nationalists.

If the anarchists had won the Spanish Civil War they might over subsequent decades have morphed into a libertarian left party.
 
Thanks, but I rather not read anything recommended by a Truther.

I'm sure Lord Roem can suggest books written by reputable historians and not the Tinfoil Toupee Brigade.
No Gods, No Masters is just an anthology of anarchist writings. As a political theory major, if I were to recommend one book for a person to read to get a good grasp of the history and political ideology of anarchism, I'd probably recommend it.

Anyway, if you're looking for something in depth on the Spanish Anarchists, I'd say Murray Bookchin's The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 is definitely a good first choice. It's written from a sympathetic but critical left-wing perspective.
As to anything like genuine cooperation between the Communists and the Anarchists, that's ASB. Anarchists and Marxists have hated each other since the First International, and the Russian Revolution ensured the enmity thereof.
Not so much as you might think. The real irrevocable split occured because of what happened in the Spanish Civil War. While both groups had plenty of disagreements, they cooperated far more often than not. Communists all around the world venerate the Haymarket Martyrs, who were all anarchists. And Communist organizations the world over organized massive demonstrations against the execution of Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists living in New York.

It's not outside the realm of possibility for the two groups to have genuine cooperation. But, for it to happen, the Spanish Communists would have to break free from Stalin's yoke.
 
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