In this timeline, Franco and the Nationalists lose the Spanish Civil War on January 3 1937.
Republican Spain wins the Civil War
- Thread starter Skitty1558
- Start date
Maybe you need to give more imput as it's really really bare bone here. IMVHO the best option for this is simple keep Italy out of the war and not giving help to the Nationalist
France and the UK allow the legitimate government of the republic to buy weapons instead of their non intervention policy and insistence that no weapons could be delivered to either party. This worked heavily to favor the nationalists, because they were (quite openly) supported and suplied by Germany and Italy even though these countries had signed the non-intervention agreement (it were German planes that brought over Franco's colonial troops from Spanish Morocco to the mainland). In desperation the Republic had to turn to the USSR. Stalin gave help, but the cost for this was too high. The meddling of the communist radicalized the government and divided it so much, that there was even a civil war in the civil war.
If the government could have bought the weapons from other sources, they could have replaced the militias with more regular troops, without the dividing influence. This replacing is one of the necessities for winning the war in any TL.
My very first TL was along these lines (well, the war is won later but the POD is in 1937) and whilst I can't exactly disagree, this reply gives a broad-brush explanation of what happened IOTL.
France would be more amenable to providing the Spanish Republic with arms and opening the Pyrenees for such trade than the UK, so there'd need to be an explanation for the change in policy. It wasn't exactly a 50/50 decision for these governments, given the internal pressures that both Britain and France faced (the former had to deal with a large contingent of the Tory Party being pro-Nationalist and an even greater number simply unable to consider arming a Soviet ally; the latter faced political polarisation that nearly brought it to civil war and swift changes in government that couldn't guarantee permanent policies). The political changes necessary to get either government to withdraw from the policy of non-interventionism have to be considered. Certainly, those two governments suddenly providing supplies out of the blue wouldn't mean a quick victory in any case.
Then the timeframe given has to be considered: January 1937, a month in which Franco launched an offensive to take Madrid and the Battle of Málaga (a decisive Nationalist victory IOTL) was beginning. It's not even as if this is too late to save the republic (because it surely isn't), it's that a single month and year is given with nothing offered to provide background. For the civil war to be over by January 1937, you'd need a POD from around the time of the coup attempt and its immediate aftermath - kneecapping the military risings in some areas, allowing for the arming of the workers to defeat the nascent coup attempt, or perhaps a stalled airlift from Morocco would necessarily allow for a weakened Nationalist camp to be overtaken by early 1937. These would all be perfectly good ideas, but they haven't been mentioned and I'd quite like to know what POD the OP has in mind for this timeline.
One of my continuing irritations is that timelines and discussions around the Spanish Civil War tend to concentrate on foreign interventions rather than the Spanish causes and dynamics that caused and drove the war. Foreign interventions were important, I would argue that the only crucial one was the early decision by Germany and Italy to support Franco and to transport the Army of Africa across the straits of Gibraltar to enable it to have a significant presence in mainland Spain almost immediately, (the navy at least initially went largely to the Republic).
I think a Nationalist early loss is entirely credible especially if certain things don't happen such as
a) Quiepio de Llano fails in taking Seville so that there is a large city with a strong Socialist/trade union presence in the South.
b) Calvo Sotelo is not assassinated, it did a lot to unify the right and also he would have been a political opponent to Franco, similarly if Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera is not executed but released he would lessen unity within the Nationalists
c) Had the republican general who was sent to Zarragoza been a bit more on the ball and willing to engage the local working class then that rising might have been avoided.
d) Aranda's coup in Oviedo where he convinced the local miners he was on their side and encouraged them to go South (to their death's) and then defended the citadel in Oviedo until relived which tied up troops in the North.
e) The death of General Sanjurjo (who was not the most competent figure) also conveniently cleared the way for Franco.
If all of those things had happened (and its not too unlikely that they wouldn't have, the revolt might have petered out?
I think a Nationalist early loss is entirely credible especially if certain things don't happen such as
a) Quiepio de Llano fails in taking Seville so that there is a large city with a strong Socialist/trade union presence in the South.
b) Calvo Sotelo is not assassinated, it did a lot to unify the right and also he would have been a political opponent to Franco, similarly if Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera is not executed but released he would lessen unity within the Nationalists
c) Had the republican general who was sent to Zarragoza been a bit more on the ball and willing to engage the local working class then that rising might have been avoided.
d) Aranda's coup in Oviedo where he convinced the local miners he was on their side and encouraged them to go South (to their death's) and then defended the citadel in Oviedo until relived which tied up troops in the North.
e) The death of General Sanjurjo (who was not the most competent figure) also conveniently cleared the way for Franco.
If all of those things had happened (and its not too unlikely that they wouldn't have, the revolt might have petered out?
This, definitely.
It's chauvinistic and shows a lack of knowledge about the war when the go-to "MORE FOREIGN INTERVENTION" idea is wheeled out. Turning points in battles, in politics, in espionage, and in all manner of scheming behind the scenes and before the coup had even begun get swept away in favour of a clear narrative that promotes direct intervention and forgets that the Spanish Republic had the capacity to defeat the Nationalists without the handholding prescribed by so many.
I'm a big fan of Queipo de Llano remaining loyal to the republic, as he was in an abstract sense during the course of the war.
Good point about internal Spanish PoDs, @Colin.
I suppose one of the reasons that people look to foreign intervention is that, in OTL, one side had foreign support, and the other didn't, so it's a fairly obvious way of putting a thumb on the scales in the opposite direction.
The biggest such PoD I can see is having the RN in Gibraltar support the legitimate government, and prevent the Army of Africa crossing the Straits. But, as @Comisario points out, that requires a huge change in the political outlook of the RN, in Gib and the Admiralty. And Westminster, frankly.
Moving back to Spain, keeping Sanjurjo alive is a fantastic way of increasing division, especially as it's a fairly easy one to change. Preserving Primo de Rivera and Sotelo would be a bonus.
Preventing the fall of Seville would be another one. It maintains a strong republican presence in the South. Colonel Yague also needs a new base for his flying columns. If he has to get his forces all the way to Ferrol or somewhere similar, it delays the intervention, if they can get there at all.
I suppose one of the reasons that people look to foreign intervention is that, in OTL, one side had foreign support, and the other didn't, so it's a fairly obvious way of putting a thumb on the scales in the opposite direction.
The biggest such PoD I can see is having the RN in Gibraltar support the legitimate government, and prevent the Army of Africa crossing the Straits. But, as @Comisario points out, that requires a huge change in the political outlook of the RN, in Gib and the Admiralty. And Westminster, frankly.
Moving back to Spain, keeping Sanjurjo alive is a fantastic way of increasing division, especially as it's a fairly easy one to change. Preserving Primo de Rivera and Sotelo would be a bonus.
Preventing the fall of Seville would be another one. It maintains a strong republican presence in the South. Colonel Yague also needs a new base for his flying columns. If he has to get his forces all the way to Ferrol or somewhere similar, it delays the intervention, if they can get there at all.
If I may clarify something here, my POD is the fact that Republican Spain wins. I don't entirely care why, maybe the Nationalists weren't as organised, or Hitler and Mussolini didn't really care, but I wanna know what happens after too many major Nationalist strongholds surrender, and the armistice is signed on January 3, 1937.
I don't know that the Nazis would necessarily get involved in Spain, because Spain might not get involved in WW2. After all, I'm not sure how much a Republican Spain which has just come out of a civil war can really offer the Allies in this TL. There is also the fact that Spain, with the barrier of the Pyrenees and open plains with poor transportation is not exactly hospitable to Blitzkrieg. If Spain stays neutral, which I think is likely, I think it's a toss up whether Hitler decides its worth it.
The why is important, though. It effects what shape Republican Spain takes going forward, whether it is pursues a policy of conciliation where the Nationalists are heavily involved, or whether it becomes a country that comes heavily under the influence of the USSR. The Spanish Civil War was a particularly complex one too, so the PoD is even more important in this case.
Probably. But maybe not. They could have been influenced more by the Brits and French so could have become more democratic. After all, the soviets were less of a threat being all the way across Europe.
kernals12
Banned
Cuba is very far from Russia. Put it this way, George Orwell based Animal Farm on his experiences fighting for the Republicans in Spain.
I don't know, Stalin's policy at the time was to very deliberately discourage the overthrow of the Republican government, the emergence of another communist country on the other side of Europe was a prospect he wasn't too thrilled by.
Animal Farm is a satire about the Russian Revolution and the USSR, it has little to do with Spain. Orwell's hatred of the Soviet state did largely emanate from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, but as he pointed out in Homage to Catalonia the more that Soviet and PCE influence grew, the more authoritarian the bourgeois institutions became. The Soviets weren't exporting a revolution to Spain, they were doing their best to try and prevent one.
Recently I have had a series of posts in soc.history.what-if on whether a victorious Republic would be dominated by the Communists:
***
It is IMO an oversimplification to see a victory of the Republic--even
under Negrin--as synonymous with a a Soviet-style Communist Spain. There
were obvious similarities with the later "people's democracies" in eastern
Europe, but as Stanley Payne has noted in *The Spanish Civil War, The
Soviet Union, and Communism* also significant differences:
"Yet a detailed comparison quickly reveals that the wartime Spanish Third
Republic, while very different from the Second Republic that had existed
before the spring of 1936, was also not the precise sort of regime
established by the Soviets in Eastern Europe. The differences remained
fundamental: First of all, each of the Eastern satellites was thoroughly
occupied and controlled by the Red Army. While the Communists gained a
predominant position in the Spanish Ejército Popular, they did not totally
control it in every way as the Soviets totally controlled all armed force
in the Eastern countries. In the Eastern satellites--initially puppets
more than satellites--new national people’s armies were created, again
absolutely controlled by the Communists. The same may be said of the
police in the two cases.
"Second, in the Eastern regimes the Soviets quickly formed united
Socialist-Communist parties and front organizations, which soon totally
dominated all political activity. In Spain the PCE sought to unify the two
parties from 1935, but its inability to carry out this plan became one of
the greatest frustrations of Communist policy. In the Eastern countries,
the Communists normally permitted one initial election that was partially
free but also partially controlled. After that all elections were totally
controlled. The Spanish Popular Front certainly did not believe in
democratic elections, as demonstrated by the fraudulent by-elections it
held in Cuenca in May 1936, but after that it solved the problem by not
holding elections. Stalin’s proposal in the autumn of 1937 to hold
carefully controlled elections in the violent and authoritarian atmosphere
of Civil War Spain was clearly intended as a step toward the consolidation
of the new type of regime, but all the other parties rejected it.
Apparently even the PCE leaders did not favor the idea but merely
supported it out of Comintern discipline.
"Third, in the Eastern European regimes the state nationalized basic
industries and in most cases carried out broad land confiscation, usually
accompanied by state collectivization (though not always). Here the
similarity would seem to be greatest, and indeed the Red Army’s history of
World War II boasts that in Spain the Communists carried out a broad
program of nationalization.22 In fact, this was not precisely the case,
and in economic policy and structure there were considerable differences
between the Eastern regimes and the Spanish case. In the Eastern
satellites, sweeping economic changes were carried out by a monolithic,
all-powerful totalitarian state. In the Third Spanish Republic the state
at first almost disappeared, and after it began to be restored remained a
semipluralist state in which there was much conflict over economic policy.
The policy of state control and nationalization favored by the Communists
could never be carried out completely. Initially, collectivization of
agriculture meant the formation of autonomous collectives by revolutionary
movements independent of the state--very different from the centralized
statist policy favored by the Communists (though in one sense vaguely
analogous to the way independent peasant groups and villages in Russia in
1917 seized those portions of farmland that were owned by the middle and
upper classes). The Communist program of statist agrarian reform and
centralized process could never entirely reverse the libertarian
revolution in much of the Republican countryside. Similarly in Catalan
industry the state established a system of direct and autonomous
collectivization of larger factories, and the Communists were never able to
convert it into a program of complete nationalization...
"The revolutionary Spanish Republic of the Civil War was a unique kind of
regime that has no exact historical counterpart. In a contradictory
process, the wartime Spanish Republic combined autonomous libertarian
collectivization with a restored centralized state, increasing state
control, and a degree of nationalization. It involved an initial policy
of increasing local and regional autonomy (July to October 1936) with
progressive restriction of autonomy (from approximately December 1936 on).
Politically it remained a semipluralist regime, in that each of the four
main leftist sectors remained autonomous. Only the POUM could be
suppressed by the Communists, and even there certain legal limits had to
be observed. The Third Republic was not democratic--only the Second
Republic was democratic--but it did remain semipluralist and restore a
limited framework of law.
"The Communists established a military and police predominance, and under
Negrín a certain political predominance as well, but there were limits to
this predominance, which was not the same sort of thing as a direct
dictatorship. Though there were certain limits to its sovereignty vis-à-
vis the Soviet/Comintern military and the NKVD, the Third Republic
remained a sovereign state and was not a mere satellite of the Soviet
Union, though such was undoubtedly Stalin’s long-term goal. The Soviet
dictator clearly did not seek at that time an overtly Communist regime in
Spain, partly for reasons of international politics. Even had Soviet
policy come to agree with those among the Spanish Communist leaders who
wished to take power directly, it is not at all clear that they could have
done so effectively. The strength of the Communists in the Republican
military was to some degree predicated on the fact that they subordinated
other factors to military discipline and to military victory over Franco.
Had it come to a final showdown at any time before March 1939 between
Communist and noncommunist sectors of the People’s Army, it is not clear
that all Communist units would necessarily have collaborated fully in
trying to impose a Communist dictatorship on the noncommunist left. Even
if they had, such an internecine struggle would at most have been no more
than a pyrrhic victory, for the noncommunist units were sufficiently large
that the cost of overcoming them would have fatally weakened the
Communists in efforts to pursue the Civil War further.
"There is a sense, of course, in which all the leftist groups sought some
form of people’s republic--that is, a purely leftist and hence
nondemocratic regime--rather than a liberal democracy. Each differed,
however, as to the kind of nondemocratic all-leftist regime it sought. The
left Republicans sought only limited deviations from a capitalist
democratic regime, the anarchists sought their distinct utopia, while the
PSOE was divided. Prietistas sought only a rather more socially advanced
version of the left Republican regime, while the caballeristas initially
claimed to want a Leninist system, as did, in more clearcut and extreme
fashion, the POUM. Yet none of these other Spanish leftist versions of an
all-left regime was the same as a Stalinist people’s democracy, though the
POUMist and caballerista versions--and also the later negrinista version--
came closest to it. Negrín certainly went farthest in accommodating the
new type of regime, and he did give evidence in the last months of the war
that he sought to move Spain toward such a model, with a one-party state
and nationalized industry. Yet even Negrín insisted that it be a sovereign
Spanish state--despite his seemingly endless concessions to the
Communists--and not a mere puppet of Moscow. Basically, the Spanish Third
or revolutionary Republic was a unique case, with no exact parallel among
twentieth-century revolutionary regimes..."
https://athens.indymedia.org/media/old/the_spanish_civil_war__the_soviet_union__and_communism.pdf
No doubt Stalin wanted in the long run to make the Spanish Republic what
the east European "people's democracies" would later become, but I am not
sure he would succeed. First of all, there was geography; Soviet troops
couldn't be transported in the kind of numbers they were to eastern
Europe. Second, in eastern Europe, reliable Communists led the regimes;
but even Negrin was not a Communist, and Hugh Thomas has concluded that
"it would be quite wrong to conclude that Negrin was a mere instrument of
Soviet policy."
https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet...0564.The-Spanish-Civil-War#page/n461/mode/2up
(Indeed, after World War II Negrin broke with the Communists and urged the
inclusion of Spain in the new Marshall Plan.) Third, as noted, the
Communists did not have total control of the Spanish Army; and even
many people in the army who did support them did so simply because the
Communists seemed to be the most disciplined force fighting the Francoists.
Such people would not necessarily support the Communists if they tried to
seize total power.
I regard this as somewhat academic because I don't think the Republic had
much of a chance of a total victory unless they crushed the military
rebellion quickly--in which case of course the Republic would be much less
dependent on the USSR and the Communist Party. Even Negrin didn't really
believe in a victory; he just hoped the Republic would hold out long
enough for a new world war to save it.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Yddm1wX65ak/1mPIKzdqCAAJ
***
In a follow-up post I noted a couple of things:
(1) The Casado coup seems to demonstrate that the Army was *not* totally
under Communist control in Spain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segismundo_Casado
In Stanley Payne's words, "the Spanish Civil War "ended the way it began,
with a political rebellion by a portion of the Republican army against the
Republican government on the grounds that it was handing Spain over to
communism--the final paradox of this most paradoxical of civil wars." *The
Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism,*
https://athens.indymedia.org/media/old/the_spanish_civil_war__the_soviet_union__and_communism.pdf
I have seen it argued that the coup was tolerated or even provoked by the
USSR and PCE--since the Republic was clearly doomed by that point, why not
let anti-Communists take over and make them take the blame instead of Negrin
and his Communist allies? But Payne rejects this:
"Over the years, an entire literature has developed--primarily in Spanish--
devoted to the thesis that the anticommunist revolt that brought the
Republic and the war to an end was in fact the result of a cleverly designed
Communist provocation, which was intended to shift the entire onus for
surrendering to the anticommunists, and thus to enable the Communists
(and the Soviet Union) to maintain untarnished the banner of antifascist
resistance. In fact, the last book to present this thesis was published in
1998 by a ninety-year-old former Communist propaganda official who had
become a vociferous anticommunist.35 As Soviet documentation now
available has made clear, however, there was in general no more to the end
of the Spanish war than normally meets the eye.
"The military commander of the central zone was a noncommunist professional
officer, Segismundo Casado, who had participated in the early training and
development of the People's Army, later commanded two corps in the Army of
Andalusia, and had then been appointed by Negrín and Cordón commander
of the central zone in May 1938. The conspiracy theorists have claimed that
the very appointment of Casado was a clever Communist stratagem to set him
up for his ultimate role, but this interpretation is unconvincingly complex
and gives the Communists credit for clairvoyance. Though Casado early
criticized the unequal distribution of Soviet arms among sectors of the
People’s Army--a criticism that cost him his first command--he had also
afterward cooperated with the Soviet advisers and Communist commanders,
even though he was known not to be a Communist. It is therefore more
plausible that the People's Army simply was in desperate need of competent
professional commanders who were loyal Republicans, and there were not
nearly enough Communists in that category to go around..."
(2) The actual numbers of Soviet troops in eastern Europe were less
important than the Soviet *capability* of sending in a large number of
troops if necessary--obviously something much harder to do with Spain. It's
not just that the Armies, being entirely under Communist control (rather
than partly, as in Spain) were more reliable. It's that the actual and
potential presence of Soviet troops were a warning to any of them
(including Communists who may have secretly had "national Communist"
inclinations) that they had *better* stay reliable.
(3) In Vietnam, for example, the Communists had obtained total political
hegemony within the Viet Minh. All organizations showing any signs of
independence were suppressed. No doubt the Communists would in the long run
have *wanted* to do the same thing in Spain, but the fact remains that of
the four leading political groups other than the PCE--the PSOE, the
Anarchists, the Republican Left, and the POUM--it was only the last-named
(the smallest and most unpopular) that the Communists managed to suppress.
The PSOE was not by any means all Negrinist, and even Negrin could not be
totally relied on--Togliatti wrote that Negrin was torn between his desire
to cooperate with the Communists and to avoid total alienation from his
old Socialist colleagues. Togliatti "criticized Negrín for refusing to
seize the leadership of his own party and bring it to submission. To a
certain degree Negrín respected the autonomy of his old party, though not
the policies of its leaders, and a stronger role within the PSOE would have
been difficult for someone like him, who had joined the party relatively
recently and had no major personal constituency within it. Though a group
of negrinistas did develop in 1937-38 as a result of his government
leadership, he had no genuine base within the party..." (Payne, pp. 253-4)
Togliatti thought for example that Negrin was allowing too much freedom
of the press (from the Communist viewpoint) because he feared the censure
of his Socialist colleagues.
Again, this doesn't mean that Republican Spain couldn't have developed into
a Communist state, but as of 1936-9 it was not yet one and there is no
certainty it would become one.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Yddm1wX65ak/VsCgXiS1CAAJ
**
In a third post I added:
As I have written elsewhere, I am by no means sure that a victory for the
Republic, even under Negrin (and by the time he came to power a complete
Republican victory was unlikely, anyhow) would mean a Spain dominated by the
Communist Party. But let's assume it would be.
Surely the most immediate question is not its effects on NATO or the Cold War
but on World War II. If Hitler is going to war with the USSR, I don't think
he will tolerate a Stalinist Spain. So we have to ask about the effects of a
German invasion, the fate of Gibraltar, etc. In all probability, if a German-
occupied Spain will be liberated, it will be by the Western Allies, not by
the USSR--and I don't think the West will be eager to re-establish Communism
in Spain...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Yddm1wX65ak/IlsHUU3TCAAJ
***
It is IMO an oversimplification to see a victory of the Republic--even
under Negrin--as synonymous with a a Soviet-style Communist Spain. There
were obvious similarities with the later "people's democracies" in eastern
Europe, but as Stanley Payne has noted in *The Spanish Civil War, The
Soviet Union, and Communism* also significant differences:
"Yet a detailed comparison quickly reveals that the wartime Spanish Third
Republic, while very different from the Second Republic that had existed
before the spring of 1936, was also not the precise sort of regime
established by the Soviets in Eastern Europe. The differences remained
fundamental: First of all, each of the Eastern satellites was thoroughly
occupied and controlled by the Red Army. While the Communists gained a
predominant position in the Spanish Ejército Popular, they did not totally
control it in every way as the Soviets totally controlled all armed force
in the Eastern countries. In the Eastern satellites--initially puppets
more than satellites--new national people’s armies were created, again
absolutely controlled by the Communists. The same may be said of the
police in the two cases.
"Second, in the Eastern regimes the Soviets quickly formed united
Socialist-Communist parties and front organizations, which soon totally
dominated all political activity. In Spain the PCE sought to unify the two
parties from 1935, but its inability to carry out this plan became one of
the greatest frustrations of Communist policy. In the Eastern countries,
the Communists normally permitted one initial election that was partially
free but also partially controlled. After that all elections were totally
controlled. The Spanish Popular Front certainly did not believe in
democratic elections, as demonstrated by the fraudulent by-elections it
held in Cuenca in May 1936, but after that it solved the problem by not
holding elections. Stalin’s proposal in the autumn of 1937 to hold
carefully controlled elections in the violent and authoritarian atmosphere
of Civil War Spain was clearly intended as a step toward the consolidation
of the new type of regime, but all the other parties rejected it.
Apparently even the PCE leaders did not favor the idea but merely
supported it out of Comintern discipline.
"Third, in the Eastern European regimes the state nationalized basic
industries and in most cases carried out broad land confiscation, usually
accompanied by state collectivization (though not always). Here the
similarity would seem to be greatest, and indeed the Red Army’s history of
World War II boasts that in Spain the Communists carried out a broad
program of nationalization.22 In fact, this was not precisely the case,
and in economic policy and structure there were considerable differences
between the Eastern regimes and the Spanish case. In the Eastern
satellites, sweeping economic changes were carried out by a monolithic,
all-powerful totalitarian state. In the Third Spanish Republic the state
at first almost disappeared, and after it began to be restored remained a
semipluralist state in which there was much conflict over economic policy.
The policy of state control and nationalization favored by the Communists
could never be carried out completely. Initially, collectivization of
agriculture meant the formation of autonomous collectives by revolutionary
movements independent of the state--very different from the centralized
statist policy favored by the Communists (though in one sense vaguely
analogous to the way independent peasant groups and villages in Russia in
1917 seized those portions of farmland that were owned by the middle and
upper classes). The Communist program of statist agrarian reform and
centralized process could never entirely reverse the libertarian
revolution in much of the Republican countryside. Similarly in Catalan
industry the state established a system of direct and autonomous
collectivization of larger factories, and the Communists were never able to
convert it into a program of complete nationalization...
"The revolutionary Spanish Republic of the Civil War was a unique kind of
regime that has no exact historical counterpart. In a contradictory
process, the wartime Spanish Republic combined autonomous libertarian
collectivization with a restored centralized state, increasing state
control, and a degree of nationalization. It involved an initial policy
of increasing local and regional autonomy (July to October 1936) with
progressive restriction of autonomy (from approximately December 1936 on).
Politically it remained a semipluralist regime, in that each of the four
main leftist sectors remained autonomous. Only the POUM could be
suppressed by the Communists, and even there certain legal limits had to
be observed. The Third Republic was not democratic--only the Second
Republic was democratic--but it did remain semipluralist and restore a
limited framework of law.
"The Communists established a military and police predominance, and under
Negrín a certain political predominance as well, but there were limits to
this predominance, which was not the same sort of thing as a direct
dictatorship. Though there were certain limits to its sovereignty vis-à-
vis the Soviet/Comintern military and the NKVD, the Third Republic
remained a sovereign state and was not a mere satellite of the Soviet
Union, though such was undoubtedly Stalin’s long-term goal. The Soviet
dictator clearly did not seek at that time an overtly Communist regime in
Spain, partly for reasons of international politics. Even had Soviet
policy come to agree with those among the Spanish Communist leaders who
wished to take power directly, it is not at all clear that they could have
done so effectively. The strength of the Communists in the Republican
military was to some degree predicated on the fact that they subordinated
other factors to military discipline and to military victory over Franco.
Had it come to a final showdown at any time before March 1939 between
Communist and noncommunist sectors of the People’s Army, it is not clear
that all Communist units would necessarily have collaborated fully in
trying to impose a Communist dictatorship on the noncommunist left. Even
if they had, such an internecine struggle would at most have been no more
than a pyrrhic victory, for the noncommunist units were sufficiently large
that the cost of overcoming them would have fatally weakened the
Communists in efforts to pursue the Civil War further.
"There is a sense, of course, in which all the leftist groups sought some
form of people’s republic--that is, a purely leftist and hence
nondemocratic regime--rather than a liberal democracy. Each differed,
however, as to the kind of nondemocratic all-leftist regime it sought. The
left Republicans sought only limited deviations from a capitalist
democratic regime, the anarchists sought their distinct utopia, while the
PSOE was divided. Prietistas sought only a rather more socially advanced
version of the left Republican regime, while the caballeristas initially
claimed to want a Leninist system, as did, in more clearcut and extreme
fashion, the POUM. Yet none of these other Spanish leftist versions of an
all-left regime was the same as a Stalinist people’s democracy, though the
POUMist and caballerista versions--and also the later negrinista version--
came closest to it. Negrín certainly went farthest in accommodating the
new type of regime, and he did give evidence in the last months of the war
that he sought to move Spain toward such a model, with a one-party state
and nationalized industry. Yet even Negrín insisted that it be a sovereign
Spanish state--despite his seemingly endless concessions to the
Communists--and not a mere puppet of Moscow. Basically, the Spanish Third
or revolutionary Republic was a unique case, with no exact parallel among
twentieth-century revolutionary regimes..."
https://athens.indymedia.org/media/old/the_spanish_civil_war__the_soviet_union__and_communism.pdf
No doubt Stalin wanted in the long run to make the Spanish Republic what
the east European "people's democracies" would later become, but I am not
sure he would succeed. First of all, there was geography; Soviet troops
couldn't be transported in the kind of numbers they were to eastern
Europe. Second, in eastern Europe, reliable Communists led the regimes;
but even Negrin was not a Communist, and Hugh Thomas has concluded that
"it would be quite wrong to conclude that Negrin was a mere instrument of
Soviet policy."
https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet...0564.The-Spanish-Civil-War#page/n461/mode/2up
(Indeed, after World War II Negrin broke with the Communists and urged the
inclusion of Spain in the new Marshall Plan.) Third, as noted, the
Communists did not have total control of the Spanish Army; and even
many people in the army who did support them did so simply because the
Communists seemed to be the most disciplined force fighting the Francoists.
Such people would not necessarily support the Communists if they tried to
seize total power.
I regard this as somewhat academic because I don't think the Republic had
much of a chance of a total victory unless they crushed the military
rebellion quickly--in which case of course the Republic would be much less
dependent on the USSR and the Communist Party. Even Negrin didn't really
believe in a victory; he just hoped the Republic would hold out long
enough for a new world war to save it.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Yddm1wX65ak/1mPIKzdqCAAJ
***
In a follow-up post I noted a couple of things:
(1) The Casado coup seems to demonstrate that the Army was *not* totally
under Communist control in Spain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segismundo_Casado
In Stanley Payne's words, "the Spanish Civil War "ended the way it began,
with a political rebellion by a portion of the Republican army against the
Republican government on the grounds that it was handing Spain over to
communism--the final paradox of this most paradoxical of civil wars." *The
Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism,*
https://athens.indymedia.org/media/old/the_spanish_civil_war__the_soviet_union__and_communism.pdf
I have seen it argued that the coup was tolerated or even provoked by the
USSR and PCE--since the Republic was clearly doomed by that point, why not
let anti-Communists take over and make them take the blame instead of Negrin
and his Communist allies? But Payne rejects this:
"Over the years, an entire literature has developed--primarily in Spanish--
devoted to the thesis that the anticommunist revolt that brought the
Republic and the war to an end was in fact the result of a cleverly designed
Communist provocation, which was intended to shift the entire onus for
surrendering to the anticommunists, and thus to enable the Communists
(and the Soviet Union) to maintain untarnished the banner of antifascist
resistance. In fact, the last book to present this thesis was published in
1998 by a ninety-year-old former Communist propaganda official who had
become a vociferous anticommunist.35 As Soviet documentation now
available has made clear, however, there was in general no more to the end
of the Spanish war than normally meets the eye.
"The military commander of the central zone was a noncommunist professional
officer, Segismundo Casado, who had participated in the early training and
development of the People's Army, later commanded two corps in the Army of
Andalusia, and had then been appointed by Negrín and Cordón commander
of the central zone in May 1938. The conspiracy theorists have claimed that
the very appointment of Casado was a clever Communist stratagem to set him
up for his ultimate role, but this interpretation is unconvincingly complex
and gives the Communists credit for clairvoyance. Though Casado early
criticized the unequal distribution of Soviet arms among sectors of the
People’s Army--a criticism that cost him his first command--he had also
afterward cooperated with the Soviet advisers and Communist commanders,
even though he was known not to be a Communist. It is therefore more
plausible that the People's Army simply was in desperate need of competent
professional commanders who were loyal Republicans, and there were not
nearly enough Communists in that category to go around..."
(2) The actual numbers of Soviet troops in eastern Europe were less
important than the Soviet *capability* of sending in a large number of
troops if necessary--obviously something much harder to do with Spain. It's
not just that the Armies, being entirely under Communist control (rather
than partly, as in Spain) were more reliable. It's that the actual and
potential presence of Soviet troops were a warning to any of them
(including Communists who may have secretly had "national Communist"
inclinations) that they had *better* stay reliable.
(3) In Vietnam, for example, the Communists had obtained total political
hegemony within the Viet Minh. All organizations showing any signs of
independence were suppressed. No doubt the Communists would in the long run
have *wanted* to do the same thing in Spain, but the fact remains that of
the four leading political groups other than the PCE--the PSOE, the
Anarchists, the Republican Left, and the POUM--it was only the last-named
(the smallest and most unpopular) that the Communists managed to suppress.
The PSOE was not by any means all Negrinist, and even Negrin could not be
totally relied on--Togliatti wrote that Negrin was torn between his desire
to cooperate with the Communists and to avoid total alienation from his
old Socialist colleagues. Togliatti "criticized Negrín for refusing to
seize the leadership of his own party and bring it to submission. To a
certain degree Negrín respected the autonomy of his old party, though not
the policies of its leaders, and a stronger role within the PSOE would have
been difficult for someone like him, who had joined the party relatively
recently and had no major personal constituency within it. Though a group
of negrinistas did develop in 1937-38 as a result of his government
leadership, he had no genuine base within the party..." (Payne, pp. 253-4)
Togliatti thought for example that Negrin was allowing too much freedom
of the press (from the Communist viewpoint) because he feared the censure
of his Socialist colleagues.
Again, this doesn't mean that Republican Spain couldn't have developed into
a Communist state, but as of 1936-9 it was not yet one and there is no
certainty it would become one.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Yddm1wX65ak/VsCgXiS1CAAJ
**
In a third post I added:
As I have written elsewhere, I am by no means sure that a victory for the
Republic, even under Negrin (and by the time he came to power a complete
Republican victory was unlikely, anyhow) would mean a Spain dominated by the
Communist Party. But let's assume it would be.
Surely the most immediate question is not its effects on NATO or the Cold War
but on World War II. If Hitler is going to war with the USSR, I don't think
he will tolerate a Stalinist Spain. So we have to ask about the effects of a
German invasion, the fate of Gibraltar, etc. In all probability, if a German-
occupied Spain will be liberated, it will be by the Western Allies, not by
the USSR--and I don't think the West will be eager to re-establish Communism
in Spain...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Yddm1wX65ak/IlsHUU3TCAAJ
Yabbut until Hitler invades the USSR, he has to treat Spain as a friendly neutral. Can the Axis run over Spain at the same time as Barbarossa?
If he ignores Spain, that leaves a threat in the rear; if he attacks, the prep in France would blow the surprise. I.e. Spain will expect the attack, breaching Stalin's willful ignorance. There would be complications with Spain's offshore possessions: the Balearic Islands, Spanish Morocco, the Canaries, Rio de Oro, all of which Britain could grab (i.e. reinforce before the Axis could get there).
I don't think so, at least not in a Soviet style communism. If the government has won by January 1937, it means that it has been strong enough to beat the coup or the rebels failed strepitously. Either way, outside influence has been minimal, which means the communist are a marginal group (due to a heavy radicalized Spanish Socialist Workers Party, true) and more importantly, anarchosyndicalists haven't been beaten down by their supposed allies and are in fact in control of Catalonia, at least half of Aragon and probably huge swaths of Andalucía and Extremadura. The victorious government will have to stop the anarchists, who have begun their revolution (they had, in fact, as soon as february 16) and will not yield, and that can be a thorn in the Popular Front that sets the coalition apart (see the events or massacre of Casas Viejas '33), initiating yet another civil conflict in Spain.