La Sangre de
Espana (The Blood of Spain)
Adam Hochschild’s beautifully written,
if somewhat biased book, tells the story of the Spanish Civil War though the
eyes of several of its participants mostly on the Republican side. It is clear where his biases lie, but then
again, it is hard to cuddle up to Franco and his henchman. It is not what he
leaves in, but rather what he leaves out. Although he discusses the role of the
Soviet NKVD in Spain he doesn’t give full treatment to its perfidious role. As
I have written elsewhere many of the participants in the civil war were pawns
in a larger geopolitical struggle.
That said there is no question about the
heroism of the Republicans he portrays. His heroes are Robert and Marion
Merriman, American communists who go to Spain to fight against the growing
fascist menace. In the lingo of the day, they were premature anti-fascists. Merriman
is the model for Hemingway’s hero Robert Jordan in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
Merriman would ultimately lead the Lincoln Brigade and die in a fire fight
towards the end of the war. Unlike, “Hotel Florida” which deals with the
comings and goings of the journalists covering the war, Hochschild focuses in
on the war fighters and the daily tribulations they suffered from.
The villain of the piece is Texaco chief
Torkild Rieber who turns his company into an oil depot for Franco. It was
Texaco aviation fuel that powered the German bombers over Guernica. And it was
Texaco personnel throughout Europe who alerted Franco of incoming supply ships
to Republican Spain.
A failing of the book for all of the
leading personalities he discusses, he leaves out Steve Nelson, an American
Communist who was the political commissar of the Lincoln Brigade. To see the
world through his eyes and the purges that were undertaken both in Spain and
later in Moscow would have offered a much greater insight into the day-today
role of the Russian security services in the war.
Hochschild ends his book by discussing a
counterfactual where the Republicans win the war. Would European history be
fundamentally different, Hochschild generally thinks not and he doesn’t believe
that Spain would have become a Soviet satellite given its inability to occupy
the country. However, Cuba proves that the Soviets could have a satellite
without military occupation.
My own counterfactual is what would have
happened if Franco won quickly in late 1936 or early 1937. Had that happened
there probably would have been no story, Hitler would not have been able to
test his weapons in combat, there might have been less fear of aerial bombardment in London and maybe a million
Spanish lives would have been saved. Or alternatively it would have been
another signpost that fascism was on the march and the Western democracies had
better get out of the way.
All told Adam Hochschild has written a
terrific book that takes you back to an era when politics meant something.
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