The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1104: The Weaponry of the Spanish Civil War w/ Karl Dahl

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

107 MinutesPG-13Karl Dahl is an author specializing in the Spanish Civil War and historical "fiction."Karl joins Pete to talk about the small arms and platoon deployed weapons used by both sides of the Spanish Civil War.Faction: With the CrusadersKarl's SubstackKarl's MerchPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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support everyone's giving me and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Piquino show. Carl Dahl's back. We're going to keep talking about the Spanish Civil War. How you doing, Carl? Doing well, thanks, Pete. All right, so I thought we should follow up the last episode we did, which was much talked about how the right-wing factions came together.

But maybe a little less serious this time and, like, something that I really enjoyed talking about. So I reached out to you and said, hey, I know that you're obsessed with the guns of the Spanish Civil War. So why don't we talk about them? So, yeah, when you started going down the Spanish Civil War route, were you, had you already looked into the guns, or was this just stuff you picked up as you went along? I'd looked into it a fair bit.

I'm an old, and so in the 90s, there were Astra 400. hundreds all over the place. And, you know, Spanish firearms were very affordable well into the 90s. And then all the companies folded, all the, I should say, all the commercial manufacturers that were exporting to the U.S., which were generally high quality, although there was some, you know, cheap, you know, minimal quality required stuff as well. And so I was always interested in guns and small arms. And so I was well aware of that without having, you know, really gotten into the meat and potatoes of the war. And, and, you know, other stuff would percolate up. So a lot of it comes through in the work that I've done and that I've published. But I also enjoy writing little articles and

threads on the topic as well. So, yeah, I put my, you know, thinking cap on and said, let's focus as much as we can on small arms of the the spanish civil war and really talking about you know really focusing on the spanish like domestic weapons but also the fact that like how the militias got weapons and then the the post july 1936 arm packages of the left so the stuff that came from the soviet union and france and then their commercial commercial areas mostly focused focusing like almost entirely on individual weapons, but I did throw on some notes about some game changers. Cool. All right. You have something on the screen you want me to share or? Yeah. It's ready to go. Oh, there you go. Boom. Thank you, sir. So just reiterating Carl Dahl,

uh, substack to book by book. Um, middle one, uh, I had some people notice and say, hey, is that Owen Broadcast? And yes, Owen Broadcast did do the cover of my first novel faction. And then Bradley Burris is a very talented painter who did the portrait of the main character on the right-hand side, looking war-weary by the time he's with the Spanish Legion in faction with the Crusaders. So I'm going to kind of take this from a couple angles. First of all, this is an overview of the basic presentation. So the weaponry of the Spanish Civil War falls into a couple of buckets.

And those buckets are Spanish military or national law enforcement arms, militia acquisitions, and then post-July 1936 arms packages. And again, like I said, we'll focus on what came in via the Soviet Union in France. and which includes kind of like commercial transfers from arms dealers. I'm kind of light on text in this one, and I'm going to be referring to some notes off screen because if we tried to cover everything, it would be just exhausting.

So in the background is a beautiful Astra-900 broom handle copy. made to an extremely high standard of finish. So we'll be able to talk a little more about that weapon. There weren't tons in the war, but there were thousands of them utilized, but it wasn't like a primary issue weapon. We'll get into some of the details on that here shortly. So I'm going to start out with a very, very, very simple high-level overview of the Spanish

domestic arms industry, specifically excluding military arsenals here. We'll talk about the military issue weapons later and the government, also including law enforcement weapons as well. But we're really going to dive into the Basque Country arms manufacturers because they were a huge player in this war, and then the artisanal weapons. So again, this is fairly high level. There's a ton of information online on this stuff, but it's dispersed. I talk a lot about it in faction with the Crusaders as part of the narrative, the way that it flows nicely. But there's some good material.

I'll do a thread today with some links to interesting information. So the, sorry? I said cool. Okay, cool. So the Spanish arms industry is very interesting. This is a photograph from Bestigui Hermannos, which was a manufacturer and eyebar. And if you look closely, you'll see that these all look like broom handle Mousers. So the Spanish arms industry has been around for a very long time, especially,

up in the Basque country, centered in Ibar and Wernica for many centuries. They were largely export focused. Of course, there's a domestic industry, you know, arming people locally. The the carolists got a lot of their arms through like sneaky diversions of weapons coming out of these factories for a long time and right before the Spanish Civil War, but largely export focused. So it's really common for late 19th century, especially in the United States. There's some older stuff. Most of it went to Europe and over in like Asia and Central America. But in America and Canada and the UK, you will find a lot of Spanish cars.

copies of different weapons. And a lot of times they were made on contract for, say, the British government or the French government. There's also just straight commercial stuff. And so the idea is all this is kind of like a cottage industry model where a whole bunch of different suppliers and manufacturers all over Basque country, but mostly concentrated in these river valleys where they have a lot of power and steel was coming out of the mines, or it was being brought over from the northwest of Spain, like Asturias, over into Basque Country for manufacturing. And so huge industry for a really long time. I'll throw out some names, Yama and Star, Astra. Those are separate, one company named Star, one called Astra. I know, go figure. Astra means star in Spanish. But anyway, and lots of little family companies that would just be building weapons, copying weapons, doing some original design, some of it very innovative, and just putting them out there. And generally, their commercial stuff would be available for offer for less than, you know, the commonly manufactured stuff from like, say,

FN or you know American manufacturers or what have you so that was their niche they would also make whatever was popular and they would be able to turn it around really quickly we'll get into some examples of that ready for huge savings will mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle newbridge warehouse sale is back we're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear from home essentials to seasonal must haves when the doors open the deals go fast Come see for yourself The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale 28th to 30th of November

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Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Here shortly. But one of the really kind of big influences on the relevance of the Basque Country manufacturers in Spain as it came to arms was a deal that went down in 1950 between the French government and an Ibar arms company, Gabilondo I Uresti, which became Yama or Lama, to produce a 32 ACP pistol for trench warfare. So there's an image of it behind here, and you'll notice that proportionally, it looks more like something that you're starting to see now with modern weapons where you'll have a full-size grip and a slightly shorter muzzle for conceal carry purposes, or just ease of carry while giving a full grip, right? So a lot of times these 32 automatics will, you know, you'll have two fingers on it and your pinky will be kind of hanging off and you'll have a little pinky extension on a magazine or something like that.

that these guys, these brothers and friends who only employed a couple dozen people at the time made this design that the French government who were desperately needing handguns for World War I, because in trench warfare, the old model where you would have your armies and officers and maybe NCOs would have handguns. would have handguns, and it was mostly a symbol of rank and authority as well as to enforce discipline, right? The handgun was as much for using it on your own troops or like putting down horses and stuff as it was for actual combat. So they really needed everything that they could get their hands on for World War I. And so the French began ordering in mass numbers. So the first deal with Gabilando and Uresti was 10,000 pistols a month. And then it became 20,000. And then it became 50,000.

And so they kind of threw their hands up and came back with an amendment to this deal and said, as long as we are doing quality control, um, and, you know, our plan is to meet this is to farm out, uh, the manufacturer of these weapons to subcontractors.

Okay. So they started out, you know, with this acceptance with like five subcontractors. And then it eventually became dozens because what happened was these individual, uh, subcontractors would sub out like, you know, trigger action components, uh, you know, while they focused on the slide in the frame or they would have different people doing the barrels or they would do the barrels. or they would do the barrels and then do the rest. So it became dozens and dozens and dozens of variants of these weapons.

These were all in the days of hand-fitted weapons. And one of the problems with that is that a pistol might be perfectly reliable with its issue magazine, or at least the magazine that was made for it. But once it gets into the military system, you have all these different pieces. And one of the old issues with reliability of semi-automatic handguns, as well as semi-automatics in general, was the magazine, right? Like, the number one thing that you'll find with older guns is that the gun might be great, but, like, you have issues with magazines and, like, aftermarket magazines don't really work, or you have to hand-fit every magazine, you know, adjust the feedlips, all this stuff to get it to be, to be, completely reliable. So that's where some of the reputation issues came with these pistols. And then there were also some things like problems with the steel, you know, specifically around the metallurgy. They wouldn't be hardened properly. They were using cheap materials because they're just like, hey, these are all going overseas. And we get paid the same. So let's see what we can get away with. So anyway, they eventually, you know, through this system, over 750,000 of these were made specifically to this Ruby format and shipped to France.

Some of them went to Finland too, and I think the Russians got some as well. And at this point, Spain is flooded with not only 32 ACP handguns, 765 millimeter, but also people who can make these. So when the war ends, you know, this boom kind of comes to an end. And then all these manufacturers are like, what are we going to do? We have all these now highly skilled and, you know, makers and then, you know, these factories. So like, let's look at this picture again. That's a lot of guys.

They're making stuff to a very high standard. They have all this equipment for making stocks. and doing barrels and all the sub-components and all that. They need jobs. They need a market, right? The market will find a way. So, China. China is in its warlord era in the 1920s, right?

So I'm not going to do charts and graphs of the whole story behind this, but China is entering this. period of, you know, struggle where between the, their nationalists and all the kind of countryside, little warlords, and, and a lot of it is, it's not only regional, but it's kind of ethnic. If you really know anything about China, they'll have this big bucket where they call everyone Han, but when you drink, excuse me, when you speak different languages, when you're scattered all over this vast country, you come from different kind of ethnic stuff because of history.

And you have these supposed ethnic minorities, but it's like literally, you know, 30 million people. They're sub-nations, right? They're all kind of vying for autonomy. You know, there's that whole autonomy discussion again, Pete, as well as just kind of control over their areas. and, you know, really, their futures. So this is a huge market for the Spanish arms manufacturers as well as, you know, the rest of the world, right?

So in this picture, you'll see in the bottom left, you'll see these guys, they have these pouches that are for Mouser Broom handles for stripper clips or magazines. At this point, it's going to be stripper clips. You'll see almost all these guys have a Mouser broom handle in its wooden holster on their belt. And then down here, this is really interesting. You'll notice these light machine guns. These are Swiss light machine guns that were very, very advanced for the time. They make the B.A.R, you know, the American BAR light machine gun or automatic rifle, rather, look kind of simple and not, not superiors. robust. So the industry of the world is cranking out advanced weapons in this lull after World

War I where some European countries are starting to arm up and European countries are starting to think in terms of having like next generation weapons after World War I. And basically China and its insatiable appetite for advanced weapons are giving them a huge market, as well as, you know, an area to try all these out and see, see what works. You'll also notice here on the right hand side, this is actually from World War II, but you'll see all these Chinese fellows with broom handle Mousers, some of them are semi-auto, some of them are machine pistols. We don't really have a way of knowing, but looking at their gear in the pouches, those appear to be removable magazines of 20 rounds plus some other stuff they can top off their one or two magazines they have with stripper clips through the stripper clip guide and the bolt, you know, on top of the weapon.

They're guarding these Japanese fellows who have surrendered. And at this point, so that's decades of familiarity with the broom handle. pistols and machine pistols. Up here, you'll see an Astra with Chinese markings on it, on a machine pistol, a copy of the broom handle that was made in Spain. So the Spanish are sending, because here's the key thing to keep in mind. You're seeing a lot of advanced weapons down here. Japan is controlling access to the Chinese market. And so they're trying to keep on-paper military weapons away from the country, but there's a loophole. And this was also something that Germany exploited.

Germany was restricted due to the Versailles Treaty to certain sizes of weapons and types of weapons. which is where you get the Bolo Mouser, the broom handle with the slightly shortened grip and barrel, that was extremely popular with the Russians and communists in general, as well as in China, etc., because it was compliant with the Treaty of Versailles, but still a very capable weapon, and then not in, you know, 9mm because of caliber restrictions. It was 762 by 25 Mauser, or maybe it was 763, excuse me. And anyway, so the same thing is happening in China. The Japanese are not letting or restricting, you know, arms of specific types.

Automatic rifles, heavy machine guns. bolt action rifles, etc. to restrict them to only certain government organs. But handguns are okay. So there's tons of 32 caliber handguns flooding from the Spanish factories into China and also these broom handles. Astra and some other folks went out because China's consuming all these weapons. They went on a trade mission and saw that the broom handle Mousers were incredibly popular there because it was a light carbine, semi-automatic light carving pretty good out to like 150 yards or so. And they were just gobbling them up. So the copies began fast and furious and almost immediately. Within like a year, Astra had developed a copy and then other people in the

the ibar area were copying them. So 32 ACP out to 150 yards? 32 ACP as a handgun, 763, a mouser in the broom handle out to 150 yards. And they often had very confident site markings on these things, you know, going out to like 500 yards. So it's like you have a woodstock on a pistol with like a 7 inch barrel, but it's a pretty hot cartridge. 763 Mauser, right? It's like the Tokrev cartridge. Pretty good submachine gun cartridge out to, I'd say 150 to 200.

You can do it. It starts losing energy and stuff at that point. But short range, it's incredible. Great for street fighting and stuff. Cool. Keep going. Yeah. All right.

So, Somatines and syndicalistas. So the, the. the Basque arms manufacturers start doing their own thing and copying different designs and trying to, again, still trying to find markets because you have all these people that are really skilled and they're like, we have a domestic industry, although there's, you know, gun control or regulations for access in Spain. a lot of stuff going to China, but they're also trying to capture contracts in Spain and then, you know, in Europe, elsewhere, etc. And so all these 32 automatics become really popular with the syndicalistas, the kind of the communist and anarchist extremists who are assassinating people. in Spain. And that results under the 1920s dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera of some harsher restrictions on access. So all the way here on the right hand side, there's an advertisement for somatennis. And you might remember this. The somateng was essentially a citizen militia.

that was under the control or guidance of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the military dictatorship and the military government that allowed citizens who were, you know, vetted and like politically reliable, usually people who are, you know, established parts of their communities to own certain kinds of firearms. bolt action rifles, shotguns, and handguns. And so this is an ad for an Astra. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive.

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the Somaten militiamen in one of their own, you know, magazines or newspapers and talking about how, hey, in 1921, in 1922, in 1923, the, you know, the army, the Carboneri, the prison corps, the civil guard, and the Navy adopted this pistol or accepted it. right, as one of the weapons that you can own because a lot of times the officers would have an approved weapons that they would acquire privately as kind of a traditional European thing. So anyway, so they were advertising this specific 9mm largo pistol. We'll look at it a little more detail soon. commercially again to this kind of restricted population. I saw one in a gun show recently.

Yeah, they're great, actually. He had the old boxes. He had the old boxes to the ones that are stamped on the bottom. Yeah, that's really cool. There's a lot of these in the United States. And like I was saying before, a lot of them came in in the 80s and 90s. They were really cheap at the time.

A lot of times the ammunition wasn't that common. 9mm largo, it's 9 by 23, but it's not like a 9 by 23 Winchester, which is pretty hot. It's like a 38 super, a rimless 38 super. It's not that pressure. It's like the old 38 ACP, lower pressure. And so people thought they were unreliable because they didn't have the correct cartridges for it. They would try to shoot 9 by 19 in it, which is a little too hot and it's short. You know, it wasn't calibrated for the right springs.

Spring tension. There was a 9 by 19 parabellum version made for the Germans and the Bulgarians during World War II. They sold a lot of those. That's the model 600. Perfectly reliable pistols. Straight blowback. Really, really heavy spring. And they have a really low.

bore axis, so they shoot really nicely. Again, if you have the right cartridges for it, you could get conversion barrels for a nine millimeter luger feeds out of the same magazines just fine, although the German ones had a spacer. I should say that the nine millimeter luger proper ones had a spacer in the magazine just for optimal feeding, but really nice pistols. Made to a very high standard. Kind of weird, ergonomically, but there's some really neat ergonomics as well. Like the grip angle's great. So the middle commercial reflects a under the Spanish Republic. It makes reference to the second decree of the 13th of July 1934, which restricted people from being able to buy pistols of any kind of any caliber under the Republic, because things were getting out of control. So it's a little more modern star pistol. It has a barrel length restriction.

It has to be a little longer. You see this in like Canada and Europe a lot. And the specific, it's the, The specific information about the arms restriction is that you have to have authority, you know, for self-defense weapons issued by a competent authority. So like a chauffeur for people in government can have a pistol, city, like municipal agents. This sounds like New York City. Exactly, exactly. guards and people transporting prisoners and stuff commercial guards so like or like guarding a store or a bank or industry so it's restricted to individuals who go through you know screening or these individuals are screened and then like a company can have a certain amount of pistols you know that only certain

people have access to. So there are still this kind of industry for these weapons in here, but it's like more restricted. But what's important is that while a lot of this is for overseas, use, the factories are still there. So that'll come into play. Yep. During the war. All right. And then the other category of the weapons in the small arms in the Spanish Civil War are artisanal weapons and artisanal means in Spanish and French use the same as the way we use it, which is boutique, small batch, locally source, handcrafted items made by highly skilled artisans with love. And so these are some, a great example of like a very sophisticated version of this is in this picture here. This is where you get grenades and stuff.

So when you read about the extremist attacks in the teens and the 20s and the 30s in Spain with grenades, they're making these themselves. And a lot of them are literally just like a tin can filled with explosives and maybe some nails in it with like a wick that you light. But some of them are very sophisticated. This is the fie bomb. We talked about this a little bit. Um, the last time we chit chatted, um, this is what Orwell talks about. So the CNTF AI militia and then the bottom right corner, uh, these fellows here, um, are the, some of the hardcore guys in the Derutie column. Um, they're just terrorists and, and assassins,

basically, uh, they're a, they're a strike force heavily armed with these grenades. And then small arms. When we were talking about the FAA cellular organization structure, do you remember me talking about the people who are responsible for sourcing equipment, including weapons? Well, they had whole groups of these cells that were just making these grenades. So they had a, it was first built. I have an article on my substack about it. It's really interesting. It was first designed. Well, they got the outline of the design from Ramon Franco.

Is it Ramon or Raoul? I think it's Ramon Franco, who was a pilot in an anti-monarchist, but not like an anarchist, but he felt like we need to move forward in the in the 20s when they were, when these anarchists, and other people were plotting. This one guy went undercover and claimed to be kind of like a, kind of a semi-conservative, like middle-of-the-road, anti-monarchist. And he was saying, you know, he goes to Ramon and he's like, hey, you're in aviation. You know, I know that you're an anti-monarchist.

So-and-so, you know, made the introduction for us to chat. Could you help us, like, using your knowledge about, like, aerial bombs and stuff to create a, they call it a hand bomb, Bolmas de Mano, aka a grenade, and based on, you know, what you know about aerial bombs. So he created an impact, fuse, detonated hand grenade. made. He kind of sketched the basics out. He let these guys inspect an aerial bomb and a design for an aerial bomb. And then this anarchist organizer, who was the publisher of this, Tierra and Libertad, you know, land and freedom, anarchist magazine to design this weapon. He got an Asturian, minor who was an explosives expert, who was a member of the F-A-I, C-N-T-F-A-I, like extremist group, to do the actual converting this kind of bomb, aerial bomb, into like, something that they could actually produce that would be useful. Now, you can see in this picture, it doesn't look huge, but it's, it's a lot of, it's, on the big side for like what a hand grenade would be now and it's blocky because it's it's a it's cylindrical and although it has these cast kind of um cells in it that wasn't originally intended necessarily because they thought that it would fragment um like a pineapple grenade design um that was actually to make it easy to grip um

We know from analysis and the reason you see the smooth-looking fragmentation grenades now, those perforations are on the inside, the way the explosive works, like it actually fragments better that way. They didn't know that at the time. And part of it was just to make it easier to grip because it's big. So anyway, this puppy weighed a kilo, and they were like, this will be a good compromise. And what they found was the problem with a big fat hand grenade like this is that, you know, a kilo is 2.2 pounds. And it's really hard to throw this, the kind of distances that you need to throw where you don't have fragments going through your head. It also has this spring loaded impact fuse that if you know anything about like springs and inertia and inertially activated.

items, the act of throwing it alone can cause enough inertia for the firing pin to hit the detonator. So this became known as La impartial because it was like impartial as far as who it would kill. It would maybe kill the thrower. It would maybe kill the people in his crew because he couldn't throw it far enough to be outside of the lethal range of the shrapnel. This is what we call a defensive style of grenade in military terminology, which means that you throw it from behind cover and take cover because the fragments are going to get you if you don't do that. Still hell on wheels in street fighting and for assassinations, like incredibly effective weapon. One thing I'll also point out, Pete, is that you'll see this band here that's wrapped around it. they would wrap a cloth streamer around it.

And the idea was that it was an extra form of safety to hold down the lever. And you'll see that this is like a pin, like a cotter pin like you have in like an American-style hand grenade. This would make sure that the safety lever didn't fly off accidentally because like a pin got worked loose or whatever. And so that was an extra safety measure. That came from their Lafitte hand grenade, which I'll show you later. But it would also have this streamer effect so that when you threw it, it would orient this firing pin in kind of inertial system so that when it hit the ground, it would land on the firing mechanism.

It didn't always work out that way, but it was a very effective weapon, especially at the beginning when they needed anything that they could get. And they made tens of thousands of these things, like even before the war kicked off. And then they were manufacturing them in factories that the anarchist like local council took over in Catalonia. And I think I told you this. They had 35,000 of them in trucks when the Derutie column went up from, from the Aragon front as well as Catalonia, up to Madrid, to defend the city against Franco's oncoming Army of Africa. So very, very interesting and effective weapon, although again,

not something that lasted. They phased it out in spring or summer-ish. 1937 with a more kind of traditional style of grenade that I actually didn't do much dive into. I'll just show the kind of military issue ones, but you get the idea. It's a crazy but pretty sophisticated shop made weapon that was very influential, especially at the beginning of the war, especially right at the uprising, because if you have you know, hundreds of hand grenades in your crew of, you know, 50 guys, you can do a lot in street fighting, even if you're not super well equipped otherwise. Imagine knowing how sensitive those are and being the guy that they're like, hey,

climbing the truck and drive that, you know, 200 miles up to Madrid. Yeah, there's design elements in the Lafitte that like take that into account that I'll cover in a second. But yeah, I think I mentioned this too. So this was first ready for huge savings. We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Like refined in Argentina. So a crew of anarchists in Argentina were building them and they were going back and forth between Argentina and Uruguay. And they were involved in local shenanigans. In Oregon's in Argentina, attempted uprisings there. So there was a bomb factory there, and the main manufacturer crippled himself. And of course, because a bomb went off, basically, or he was testing it and got hit by it.

He wasn't killed, but he had to sit there because, again, you can't take a guy during a military government. you know, dealing with an anarchist uprising who has like grenade injuries. You can't take him to the hospital. So this poor guy is just like, you know, scumbag, but still, you know, my Christian love is feeling compassion for all living things. This scumbag is lying there, like wrapped up, you know, explaining people to people who are less experienced how to make these things, these incredibly dangerous grenades with, with injuries. from it that's that's dedication you have to you have to you know tip your hat to that level of dedication oh my good yeah that's yeah that's um i immediately think to myself well he's an anarchist yes too bad he didn't get taken out yeah um yeah i that's my cat that's my catholic side saying die fucking commie scum yes of course um the the other the other famous self-own with uh lampartan

Rassial was this guy named Braulio, who was, again, when they went back to Barcelona, and they were manufacturing these in earnest. Because, again, you have to get out of South America when they're on to you. And, you know, all these weapons, I believe there was a failed uprising. A bunch of the weapons got captured. And then the factory got captured. found the original article in Spanish, of course. And so it got captured along with the main bomb maker who was all crippled and they're describing the scene, you know, these low-level people, but then the masterminds got out of

there and went back to Spain. So they're in Barcelona making these things. And one of the main manufacturers, one of the main makers of this, blew himself up during testing when they're out in the mountains northwest of Barcelona. if you've been to Barcelona, it's like coastline and then it immediately becomes mountainous. You know, low mountains, like high hills, but they're back in the forest there. And so they just buried him there. And yeah, this fellow brawlio.

So, yeah, it was very famous for killing the people making and using them. Good times. So who's the tall drink of water next to Franco? Oh, that's, oh my gosh, why is my brain not working? General, the crippled guy. General crippled guy. Are you? Is it Ariel?

Oriel? Yeah, I believe it's Oriole. I think it's Ariel. I think it's Ariel. Yeah. So he's in a movie about, like right when the uprising. happens and they um gosh i'll have to i had someone ask me about movies about the spanish civil war um and it was a very unsympathetic um portrayal because he was really just a military man who

was all about order like he co-founded the uh spanish legion with franco um they were best pals um and yeah very very interesting fellow but a key ring leader in the in the uh in the uprising. So we're going to look at... It wasn't Jose Milan-Austre, was it? It was Austria, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, Austria. Yeah.

Okay, no problem. Yeah. Thank you for that. So the superlative Spanish Mouser, 7mm Mouser is such a nice little sweet spot. And a lot of like heavier weapons are coming back to this kind of 6.5 millimeter to 7 millimeter sweet spot that was figured out like at the end of the 19th century with the first this is a first generation smokeless cartridge and it's a very very nice cartridge the rim size is the same as 30 a 6 and 308 it's you know dimensionally it fits right into that you know nice you know, nice middle range cartridge.

High velocity, modest recoil, flat trajectory. They started out with kind of the long, round bullet of like 170-ish grains. No metric, sorry euros. 139 grain spitzer bullet at 200 FPS, about 2,400 foot pounds of energy. plenty, plenty powerful flat shooting. This is the 1916 short model, which became their standard. Carbine like 23-inch barrel-ish, 22-23-inch, about six inches less tube out front than the original longer variants, which were still used very heavily in the war.

During the Boer War, the Boer Republic, employed similar Mousers, 1893s and 1895s and 7mm Mouser. They rocked the British so well that the British, in the late 1890s that the British military, like, re-evaluated their small arms theory and, you know, really amped up next generation iteration of the 303 to meet that kind of capability. because it was so flat shooting and so easy to hit and so easy to operate that they figured out like, we're behind the times, like, we need to get with it. The U.S. military also went toe to toe against the Spanish in Cuba and in the Philippines. And then later in the war in Mexico, 1914, so in the Mexican Civil War, the U.S. intervened a little bit. And if I recall, they called it the Spanish Hornet because it was high velocity and would just rock you.

They were using the 1873 Remington's in 4570 as well as like the 3040 crag. And after they went up against the Spanish with the crag, they were like, yeah, we got to do something different here, which is why we went to the 1903. Springfield, which if I recall correctly as a Mouser pattern action, or am I thinking of the end field, but I'm pretty confident. It's very Mouser action-esque in 30-0.6. So very, this was the main weapon. There were like 500,000 of them in Spain at the time of the war. You know, when they were first when mouser paul mouser developed um this rifle and he actually got a military spanish military um medal of merit and a medal award for um for developing this weapon because the spanish felt that it was such a like a next generation a piece of equipment for their military um yeah so they were

actually manufactured um in oviedo um um um up in Asturias for decades. And that was like the main arsenal that was producing these rifles, although during the war that was kind of redistributed as needed based on what was under control. The La Corunia, also far up in the northwest of Spain, the La Corrune, Arsenal became a weapons manufacturer as well because the nationalists controlled it. Funny story, funny story. So in Asturias, I was just talking about an Asturian miner that made this grenade design, right? So Asturius was the center of the militant anarchist miners who were sappers, and, you know, dynamiters, Dina Menteros.

And so they were really crucial shock troops for the anarchists in all of their attempted uprisings, et cetera, well, as well as resistance to the army uprising in 1936. So funny story, I'll write about it sometime soon, but funny story is that, the military governor in the area, again, under the Republic, but still a military governor because of the Oviedo factory and everything like that, swore up and down that he was loyal to the Republic. And, you know, so when the uprising happened, this, this colonel said to these Austrian miners, hey, guys, here's, you know, you can take some weapons, but I think you need to go to Madrid because the government.

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Needs to be protected if the city falls, like, you know, we lose to these horrible fascists. So like 4,000 Austerian miners, like most of the left militants in and around Oviedo left and headed southeast, they got blocked at the passes, like going into Castileans. Castile Leone and got stymied there. And then the colonel said, psych, we're with the, we're with the nationalist uprising. And so they were able to hold the city and keep the factory, even though most of the areas around them were captured by Republicans and anarchists. So good times. All right. So that looks like, yeah, I've seen, yeah, the, Those are the exact boxes that this guy had at a show. That's awesome because it was, that was the, that was the main way you could get this cartridge until like the, I know there was some commercial manufacturer, but it was, it was like, well into the 2000s, I think, before you could find anything other than this, you know, Spanish flag, you know, military arsenal produced.

ammunition, which is great ammunition. So Astra 400, 9mm, Largo, Astra is a Basque country arms manufacturer. They won this contract to make the pistol for the Army, for the Navy, for a bunch of government, law enforcement organizations, you know, carbunary equivalents, etc. Straight blowback, extremely heavy spring, long barrel, very low bore axis, a very nice shooting pistol, very accurate, because it, the barrel, it's not fixed like where it's pinned into the frame, like on like an FN, 1922, but it fits in with grooves into the receiver. And so you can pop it out and clean it really easily, but it's like fixed in place.

So very, very accurate pistol with a nice recoil operation. It's kind of weird because it's this long, heavy spring thing. Really interesting ergonomics. It has this kind of like raised here on the grooves for the cocking grooves. It kind of swells out so that it fits your finger for like a pinch grip. It's really, really neat pistol. Down here on the right hand side, there's a comparison shot. This is 9mm Largo. So it's 23 millimeters long. It uses it's basically the

equivalent of a 9 by 19 millimeter in pressure. Maybe it's slightly lower pressure because it's an older cartridge. It has this crazy crazy like long groove. Some things I've read about it is that some of this is based on a theory of cartridge layout to work with a blowback pistol. And again, lower pressure than like 9 by 19, which requires a locked breach, although they were able to adapt this pistol just fine to use 9 by 19. Over on the right-hand side is we have more modern cartridges. I believe the one right here is 9 by 23, Winchester, which is very high pressure and very modern. And I believe that this is a 38 super rimless, which is basically the 38 super, but with a recessed rim.

So these are very hot, way hotter than 9 by 23 Largo, which is an early 20th century, you know, standard pressure kind of pistol. So very cool pistol, very basic. And it was the primary handgun, just because, again, they made so many of them for government use. They were also available commercially, so plenty were privately owned commercially, et cetera. And it was the main, it was the standard military issue handgun. The Republic made copies of them in Valencia and Barcelona. Was it Valencia? Yeah, Valencia in Barcelona.

I think Valencia. Again, at these old arsenals, they were able to, government arsenals, they were able to reproduce them using the factories there. So I'm keeping this like platoon slash company level in terms of the weaponry. So these are very interesting and strange looking to us, but this is a tonalete hand grenade. It was a Spanish army issue hand grenade. They had a little wire loop for sliding it into your belt or mount it on a on a belt or hanging it on a bandelier or something like that it was a cast iron very small like very throwable hand grenade they had a rubber cap over the top and you would pop the the

rubber cap off and there was a little recessed area in this kind of whole top end here because there is essentially like a wall here it was black powder. So it was a very old basic design that had a Rosen in it, I think, to make it a little more weatherproof and less shockproof. So it was essentially a casting. It was liquid and then they would pour it in and it would harden while still maintaining its explosiveness. So like a low order explosive because it's black powder based. But it actually

worked very well. It was a defensive grenade, but it had a small blast radius because it was black powder. And so it was actually very popular for that reason. They made this like and through the Civil War. And there were, so there were copies of it. And it was lit with a wick. So it was a wire. So if you, if you've ever seen like on a on a zippo lighter, there's like wire structure. Yeah, take it. I've taken them apart and put it back. Yeah, exactly. I'd take it apart and put it back together numerous times. So, so that it can, it can kind of hold and, and be a little more robust. And then there was a piece of a, like a little shard of like Flint or something like that to be used as a striker. So Flint and steel, right? So you, you would strike it on the body of the grenade itself to light it. And it was actually very popular because it was very safe. And it was reliable, like it would light in rain and stuff like that if you didn't like soak it in puddles and stuff like that. And it was not super dangerous for the user.

Now, it's slow. Like obviously that became very obsolete. But this design was copied extensively throughout the whole country in all these little small, again, artisanal shops or like naval arsenals were a big. builder of this kind of weaponry all throughout the country, they would retool to copy these weapons. And this one is actually a variant that was made in Madrid. Again, during the siege of Madrid, it became, you know, they started making these in their particular style. So you saw these with militias and you saw it with the Republic and with the nationalists. This here is a really weird looking grenade called a Lafitte.

It was originally a French design, but it was a Spanish issue offensive grenade, meaning that it has a cast, not a cast, but like a sheet metal body, so that it doesn't fragment that much. Of course, when it explodes, the mech and all the pieces will go flying. But the idea is an offensive. defensive grenade is you can throw it and a salt into it. So like the German potato masher is an offensive grenade. They made them later where you could put a sleeve, like a fragmenting sleeve over it. But the idea was that this one also has a really weird fire control mechanism and it had a streamer to orient because it was also an impact fuse. But it was more like inertial. So there's this. percussion system in here and then the detonator and the safety like it had to be jostled with enough pressure with the safety mechanism removed that the the spring would be able to hit the detonator and then

it was filled with like a liquid a liquid or sludgy plastic explosive so a high a high explosive so again offensive grenade used for you know you can throw it and it'll have like a three to four meter blast radius so you can charge into it. Like it's great for trench warfare and urban fighting, but kind of odd. It also had that streamer effect. And again, the streamer would retain this weird sheet metal. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually completely tax-free and even better.

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partially wrapped with the streamer so that you threw it before the whole thing fell off um so you couldn't cook it like a um percussion style grenade with a spoon like the american style, you couldn't cook it off because there's no timer. You just threw it. So, and then over here is a 50 millimeter trench mortar called the Valero that was manufactured by Esperanza Ithea. So Esperanza and company up in Basque Country in a smaller town, but they've been making these based on like World War I, like little like platoon level mortars and stuff. This is the precursor to like grenade launchers and stuff. So this was something that you saw like the Japanese knee mortar is really well known.

It's basically most of the time you see it with just the body and he put it down on the ground. And you don't fire it off your knee. You kneel and you you lay it down and then aim it. But this one was done. You would lay this, one of the heaviest parts was the base. You'd put it into the ground and then aim with it lying down on your stomach while someone else loaded it and stuff like that. So very, very interesting and typical of the interwar period. That kind of weapon stuck around into World War II, but then it very rapidly went away with kind of miniaturization.

Like you could move up to a 60 millimeter mortar or have a grenade line. launchers and rifle grenades and stuff. All right. Speaking of rifle grenades, I don't have anything in this here, but by 1938, there was some use of rifle grenades by the nationalists using German rifles in 8mm using rifle grenades because the Germans had used those in World War I, and then they kind of redid them for World War II. two. And so some of the testing of the of these weapons was done in Spain. So it is not me making

stuff up when I have people using those in in my book. Again, at the very end of the war. All right. So again, keeping this mostly small arms, but I'm about to diverge from that in a second just because it's interesting. But Spanish medium and light machine guns. The Spanish had military liked the Hotchkiss so French design and they used these stripper clips to feed from so not belt fired they they went towards belt fed weapons later but in the war they really modernized you'll see this slash 38 They really modernized as the war went on because they had to ramp up the manufacturer because they didn't have that many machine guns.

They had the medium Hotchkiss over here, the 1914, that had proved itself in the RIF war. They used the 1922, which they adopted and made themselves under license beginning in 1925. that one also used these stripper clips. So here's the thing to keep in mind. You know, World War I to World War II, there were still a lot of these kind of old style of weapons that phased out because we found things that worked better. Militaries tend to be really conservative.

And so if you think about it, particularly like a good example is the the Spanish Rift War. So they're running around in North Africa in horrible conditions. And the supply lines are really long. And these stripper clips are easy to keep clean and dry. And, you know, you don't have cloth getting wet and rotting. And you don't have these super complex links that get all clogged up and everything like that. like logistically, like you can carry these stripper clips in bags and boxes and everything like that.

And these are crew served weapons. They would have a session of six men, right? That's like your fire team level. But it's also, and like half of them to make a, you know, they make a full squad, a squadra. Air Grid, Operator, Air Grid, Operator, Electricity Grid. is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

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It's simple to buy, easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.I.E. today. of 12 men, but you would have six men supporting each of these weapons. Later in the war, the light machine guns, they reduced the number of guys supporting it a little bit. And part of that was in 1938 when they started building this weapon at La Corunia, they went towards the top magazine Fed style. Only the Spanish and the British acquired the Hotchkiss and license. for elements of the design of the Hotchkiss with the top magazine feed. The British used it for their trials where they ultimately adopted the Bren gun, which is a CZ, right? So it's a

it's a check design, but they really liked this style and the the Spanish nationalists move towards this top magazine fed version eventually. All right. So those were reusable. You know, link systems are an issue because you, you know, the links are everywhere. This way, it's really easy to keep things like logistically simple. They last longer, et cetera. So very conservative thinking. But it also kept the rate of fire down, which meant the barrels lasted longer. You know, you kept your ammunition around more, etc. So anyway, just just, just, just. a basic philosophy. This was the beginning of the end for these kinds of designs, that this was one of the last usages of them anywhere. All right. And my only departure from small arms here is around armor. So the Spanish army had a handful of these Renault light tanks, which were from 1917 or 1918, I think was the design. They liked them.

It took like two men to operate them, plus, you know, your support team, you have the driver and the gunner. And it, they had variants with a light gun, like a 37 millimeter, and then another one with, you know, the same light machine gun we were just looking at. The idea was, is that it would be fairly fast to get around, but be protected from small. arms fire. It was completely obsolete by the time the war started. But it did, the reason I bring it up is because we're going to look at some stuff that they got, that the Republic got from the Soviets. That's just super next generation. So anyway, wrapping it up there, they only had a handful of these things. They were imported. They had factories that were making some types of armored cars. and stuff like that and tanks and repairing these, but there weren't that many. It was pretty new.

So when you hear people talk about how Spain was the testing ground for a lot of the weapons used in World War II, it's kind of true. But in a lot of ways, it was just because Spain didn't have much of this sort of thing. So when the Italians and Germans and Soviets brought them in, they would use them. But to be candid, the, the nationalists captured and used a huge amount of the Soviet weapons as well, just because they never had many of these renails and they didn't last long in the war. All right. So I mentioned, so that was the army. And now I'm going to talk about like the Guardia Seville and then like, one of their subgroups, which is the Querpo de Seguridad and Assaulto, which is the assault guards. The assault guards were a specialist crew that were selected because they were very hardcore pro-republic zealots that were very loyal to the government. When the war kicked off, the Guardia Seville as a whole split almost 50-50 between the

nationalists and the Republicans. A lot of it depended on where you're at or to come down to individual officers, but also like as things split up, they tended to stick with whoever the local authorities were. So, but again, the assault guards were arch libtards. So they all very long time ago, they started acquiring 4440, Winchester 1873's and 76s. that were copied up in Basque Country. And then they had this very popular copy of the 1892 that was adopted in 1915 for the Guardia Seville and some like forestry officers and stuff. And they were very popular in civilian use. Over a million of them were made by the time the war started. A lot of those were shipped to like Central and South America.

but there were a lot of them in the war. So you'll see, especially at the beginning of the war, you'll see a lot of pictures of militiamen with this rifle or carbine. They also used, you know, the Hotchkiss 1914 and 1920. Again, this is military-style police. They have heavy weapons. They also used the Mouser rifles. they had approved the Astra 400, but they also adopted the Model A, which is very 1911 style and layout and look and feel in 9mm Largo.

So they didn't, they authorized usage and purchase of the 400, but they issued the Model A in large numbers. And then in 1934, the assault guards needed a new weapon. They had trials for machine pistols because they wanted to take advantage of this big industry up in the north, where they were making copies of the Mouser broom handle with automatic fire and removable magazines. And so they had 9mm. They adopted the Astrom Model F and 9mm. in 1934. The arms factories up in the north were captured by the Basque authorities who were aligned with the Republic.

And Astra alone contributed several thousand machine pistols and semi-automatic broom handles to the war. lot of them were in 763 and so they ran into logistics issues the the nationalists as they captured them they were trying to stay on top of and stay resupplied through um commercial arms dealers bringing ammunition in and stuff like that and they had some of that but the um the nationalists actually used a whole bunch of them in 763 uh because they would just order from they would get the ammo from the Germans. So, right? It makes sense. All right. So that covers the official government. Most of those weapons that you saw were the core weapons used during the war. Militia acquisitions were different. This is a picture of Carlist militia in late,

like December 1936, kind of in that, um, Arragon front, um, up in the mountains there. Uh, you'll see some interesting weapons. They have, they have Spanish Mousers, but then this is a, um, Solithorn light machine gun. And they acquired a couple hundred of these, um, before the war started specifically financed by their own, um, acquisition group, uh, and,

brought in in Europe, or from Europe, I should say. So they had some decent weapons. And this was kind of the model for all the different militias. So the key focus like pre-war jump off, they would typically have commercially available weapons. And that would mean either they purchase it legally. It came from, seizure of weapons that were purchased legally from individual owners or raiding depots or gun shops, you know, warehouses, or another thing that they would do is they would be redirected from export. So again, the commercial manufacturer was mostly focused for the export market. And there were a lot of shenanigans where they would like do the old switcheroo with shipping manifests. again with a wink and a nod from people who were sympathetic to this and or you know they would

these big industrial concern guys would arrange a order through an arms dealer in like belgium of mouser broom handle copies and then at the same time they would order a shipment from ibar of like hardware to Navar or something like that. This is a specific example that happened. They switched around the shipping manifests and then shipped all the Mouser Broom handles to Navarre and all the hardware went to their.

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Complicit arms dealer in Belgium. Clandestine purchased overseas and smuggled in. Up at the very top is an Arasaka rifle that was captured by the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War. And a bunch of them got dumped onto the commercial market by the Soviet Union, selling them after the Civil War kind of settled out because they were kind of useless to them.

They didn't always keep everything that they acquired for redistribution of their own, but they tended to use these obsolete weapons to arm, um, arm different groups that they wanted to support. But, um, a lot of that stuff was smuggled in, um, in various ways. Uh, again, through various trickery or just brought over the borders. Okay. So I'm not going to, I was thinking about this and this could have gotten too broad. Uh, we would have been looking at like, you know, German and Italian small arms. and tanks and everything like that until our eyes bled.

Oh, yeah, there's tons. There's too much. Yeah. So I decided to focus on what the Republic was getting. The shorthand of it is the Soviet Union supplied a large force of modern vehicles and advisors, along with small arms. And the small arms were a mixed bag. We're going to look at that in a little more detail.

Those began to arrive. Have you ever looked into the list of names of the advisors? Yes. Have you ever gone to their Wikipedia? Yes. Did I ever look at their early life? Yeah. How like almost every single one of them.

Yes. And also isn't it interesting how when most of them got back home, they were no longer Soviets or alive? Yes. Yes. It's very strange. It's it I think it's it I should do a deep dive on the subject. Um, because it's, I think it's very important to understand that like Stalin was, I'm, I'm not going to do the whole, um, gosh, what's the, what's the term the nickname that people have? Uh, Nasbol. I'm not going to do the whole nationalist, national socialist Bolshevik thing. Like, it's retarded. But. It is really interesting how these kind of internationalist shock troops very much were sent out to agitate elsewhere and not be around the Soviet Union as much as possible, right?

I think that's the briefest way to describe it. Yeah, and one thing that I didn't realize until I had, uh, Joel out of pole on was that he, Stalin really wasn't extremely, he really didn't care about that one certain group too much. Yeah. He cared more about, um,

the groups that were, um, like diaspora groups. Yeah. Like polls or Germans who were, who were, who could collude with their home countries. Yes.

Those are the ones he went and executed. It wasn't until Israel started to exist that there was a certain focus because, what is it? Now this is the Diaspora group. Yep. That can be a threat to the Soviet Union. Yeah, because he could control or direct their energy. Again, just like you said, send them in the international brigades or as quote-unquote advisors out into the world to do their thing. Again, they're their own kind of group, but as long as

they're doing the work that he wants them to do, they're like not a threat, right? And, but at the same time, the whole cleanup that took place is very interesting and it seems very nuanced. Like, could these people these people kind of have an espri decor and it's it's its own thing and then they come back and they could be a separate faction and i don't want a separate faction going on in in my country so it's interesting or there could be you know the thing of well you lost yes that's true that's true i mean and i'm not saying that what you were talking about was uh i'm saying all of it you know Why not both? Yes, yes.

Why not? Yeah. Why not both? Porque no los dos. So it's really interesting because so when in July 1936, when the military uprising happens and it takes a little, you know, it has its fits and starts. The Soviet Union already had international, like international, lined up and organizing and they had all these weapons ready to go and they were arriving almost

instantly and so you know for for there to be a reaction and for something to spin up from nothing like it really shows and goes to emphasize the fact that they the the the Soviet international had plans and had connections with all these different, you know, people in government and all these other countries. And they, they expected this to happen at any point because they had, um, ships loaded with weapons and ammunition and vehicles and fuel headed straight to Spain, like right away. Um, they were, they were landing. The turnaround time for this, like you never would have for you to believe that this, they just react to this is hilarious. And you see this all the time in the in the lefty write-ups on the subject.

It's so obvious that they were ready to go. Now, in fairness, to get the international volunteers spun up logistically, that took a while, but they were arriving at the same time. So, you know, there were a lot of people that didn't volunteer until like a couple weeks after the, the uprising happened and the civil war began and they already had systems to plug into to get to Spain. How coincidental? And a lot of that came through France. Paris was the headquarters for the Soviet international that was managing the international brigades officially, like most of the brigades were going through France. So France was Franz Danton played its participation.

Their big thing was administering armed shipments and people and aircraft and fuel. They were providing a lot of their Air Force's aircraft and fuel and bombs and ammunition and stuff like that. But their most important role was just facilitating the flow through. They would open it up and close it off and there's all this stuff in, you know, Lib tard and, you know, even Bevor talks a lot about like the party line of like, oh, France, you should have helped the Republic more. But they were getting a huge amount of pressure. There was this whole non-intervention pact element and stuff like that.

France was breaking the rules, you know, that everyone had agreed on. Soviets were, the Germans and Italians were, right? like the Americans and British were allowing, you know, trucks and tires and fuel to go to the nationalists. So it's everyone lying and pretending that they're following the rules. Just like happened so often in the 20th century. So let's talk very briefly. Soviet armor, huge game changer happens and like a lot of firsts happen in 1936 in Spain,

or at least supposed firsts. So the up at the top is a BA3-6. It's a Soviet armored car that has a turret, the same turret as the T-26 tank, turret and gun, I should say, and the same turret as the BT5 down below, which is a light tank. So if everyone,

if everyone remembers correctly, so under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany couldn't develop certain kinds of vehicles and military weapons or build them. And so you may or may not know that they were doing a lot of development work in the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union was also under certain types of sanctions and restrictions at the same time. So the funny mustache man and even people before funny mustache man in their military were doing the secret work in a quote-unquote tractor factory in the Soviet Union. So a lot of the development of these weapons was... Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input

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when with options card, you can have both. With options card, your team. team gets the best of both worlds. They can spend with Ireland's favorite retailers or choose a spend anywhere card. It's simple to buy and easy to manage. There are no hidden fees. It's easy to use and totally flexible. They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding. Visit optionscard.i today. Kind of collaborative between those countries, but they ended up going in in some pretty different directions. The armored car up at the top was based on, I believe it was a Ford, a Ford design that was being manufactured. They provided it as

aid and then it was turned into an armored car. Anyway, the Soviets built a lot of these things. And so between the two, it's like the tank. is the most flexible in terms of the terrain it can go over the armored car is best on roads but it can go a lot faster lighter armor while still having a fair bit of firepower so these in the battle like right before they got to madrid so north of north of you know the battle of the alcazar they start the army of africa starts running into these tanks and armored cars, the kind of the southern periphery of the plane that Madrid sits on in the very middle of the country. And so you get the first, supposedly the first Molotov cocktail deployment by nationalists, you know,

fire bottle style. I'm skeptical that that was the first time, but the name Molotov cocktail came out because General Molotov said, hey, we need to have this be like kind of a standard plan for urban warfare and anti-tank stuff. The general idea was that the, if you throw burning fuel on top of the kind of the air intakes for the engines for these tanks, you can slow them down or disable them. So lots of crazy tank battles. They don't have good anti-armor weapons. they eventually get the Germans and the Soviets make them available. And it's literally just these like tank guns, 37 and 40, 45 millimeter, I think, on the German one. And then the Germans, of course, go full retard with like exotic optics.

And the Soviets just use basic iron sites that are fine for the ranges that are involved. So the general decision that the Nationalists came to was that in general, the Soviet ones were better because they were simpler, and they were just as good. So important thing to think about, I think. So anyway, that was the only departure that I really wanted to have with small arms. The other thing that the Republic gets is castoffs from the Red Army. So the Red Army, if we go back to World War I, Again, I'm not going to put on the Putin hat, but if we go back to World War I, there were a couple things that were going on as the as the Russians, the Imperial Russian army was gearing up.

Again, massive army. They were going all over the place to acquire as much as they could get in terms of firearms for their army and any equipment as was as could be had. This is an interesting picture because we have here a modern Czech or Polish egg style fragmentation grenade that this guy's throwing. And he's using a French, like really crappy, obsolete single shot, 8mm rifle from the previous century. And I think that's a Polish helmet. So the Red Army had this thing where as they went through all this World War I weaponry, some of it was stuff they had captured. Some of it was stuff that they captured in the 20s, right, in the late teens in the 20s as they were running around Eastern Europe. others were these old weapons that the imperial Russian army acquired to gear up, just to have anything.

The left-hand side here is one of my favorites, and one of my characters uses this rifle. So this is a Winchester, 1895. The Imperial Russian Army went to America, like went up into Connecticut during the war, and said, we need 762 by 54 rifles. Like Westinghouse and Remington were building the Mosin Nagant for them to their standard. A whole bunch of those got surplus because they were rejected by the Russian imperial inspectors because, like, the wood wasn't pretty enough and stuff like that. It's totally bizarre. But they got several hundred thousand of these 1895 lever actions in 760 by 54.

They're fed by a stripper clip. Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.e.4 slash Northwest. Employers, rewarding your staff?

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OptionsCard.I.E. Today. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee, a visit filled with festivity. Experience a story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse. Enjoy seven floors of interactive exhibitions and finish your visit with Brett-taking views of Dublin City from the home of Guinness. Great memories and the Gravity Burr. My goodness is Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts. Be Drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.com. Through the top, beautiful, long, cool rifles. Very nice. But the Soviet Army was focused on standardization and modernizing. They didn't want to use old worn out rifles. So what happened was kind of people on the outskirts of the Soviet Union, we're getting these rifles. So they were using them in uprisings in Finland and in the Balkans and the Baltics especially. And they sent like 34,000 of them to Spain. And there's a whole bunch that the Spanish government released in like the 60s and 70s, I want to say, onto the U.S.

through inter-arms. So some of the best, we have intelligence documents and photographs that are available online that I'll put a link to that the nationalists did during and especially after the war where they were accounting for like everywhere all these weapons came from because that what they wanted to do is figure out where these weapons were coming from, who was supplying them, because they were appealing to like the British and Americans and plus these non-intervention groups. you know, these governmental organizations that are multinational organizations to monitor this stuff because they wanted to cut down on the amount of weapons that were coming in. So anyway, so they were documenting where all this stuff was coming from. So we know that this came from the Soviets. We know these LaBelle rifles and stuff were coming from the Soviets from, again, these old World War I stockpiles. they also had arms dealers who were sending Polish BARs to the Republic in 1936, Enfield rifles that had been captured by the Germans that had ended up in weird spots with arms dealers somehow, like the Germans and maybe unloaded them or put them in warehouses and they weren't

found until later, like Ross rifles from Canada from World War II, or excuse me, World War I that somehow ended up in Belgium or in France. They had Lebel rifles. They had Bergman light machine guns coming in in 792. They had 8mm manlature, like all this Austro-Hungarian stuff was floating around. And so they were shipping it there. like all kinds of crazy calibers. And then so the Berthier, 8mm, libels, all this crap that no one wants. And they're getting ammunition with it,

but that's like all the ammunition that's available. So, you know, Pete, when, you know, there isn't much like World War I and World War II stuff that still shows up on the market commercially. But when it comes in, like, it usually comes in with like all the ammunition they have in that caliber and then it stops like you never see it again so you have to order it from you know these european small manufacturers for like 30 dollars a box for 20 rounds and stuff like that that was what logistically was taking place with all these old random weapons except 762 by 54 mosenagant uh and Maxim machine guns, like this old worn out stuff. It was obsolescent, but still good quality stuff. The Red Army had moved on. They were focusing on building new stuff and going in different

directions. So the old stuff was going to Spain. These pictures are from the Battle of the Ebro or around the time of the Battle of the Ebro. And at this point, all those old weapons had in all their ammunition, like all the weird French stuff, all the weird French stuff, all the weird Austrian stuff. Like most of that stuff had been used up by the time of this battle or it was being held in reserves. They were really logistically like the 762 by 54 Soviet stuff was the big focus in that war or that part of the war. Additionally, with that commercial acquisition and aid. So this is a Czech, a Czech mouser in 8 millimeter. There was a bunch of that too.

And then our friend, the FN 1922, 32 automatic, the international brigades and a lot of the Republican forces that you'll see in this Battle of Ebro, they have 8mm for the main guys on the offensive. They have 8mm Mousers, and 8mm BARs and 8 millimeter Bren guns, you know, the Czech ones. The, you know, all this kind of like random stuff where they have the logistics for it, they kind of dial it in to where they're by unit. The units are using the same weapons and they're as standardized as much as they can,

but they have to use what they have. And you'll see tons and tons and tons of the officers, whether they're international units or they're the, the Republic's officers with FN 1922 pistols because of huge acquisitions of those that were all down there hanging out in, like, Catalonia, ready to go. So, again, another weird thing that happened is like Mexico. which had a socialist government at the time, sent a whole bunch of Mosin Nagantz. They had acquired, they had bought a bunch of those, the American-made Mosin-Nagans and used it themselves, like during their civil war. And, you know, in the 20s, and then they shipped a ton of them over. They sent a whole bunch of 7-millimeter Mauser rifles because they were kind of going in a different direction. There were sanitized Polish mauser, so the poles were selling them just for money and sanitizing them by like milling out the markings and the crests that show that they were Polish.

And then again, like I said, those Czech commercial weapons and stuff like that. So it's this crazy time. There's all this World War I surplus. There's all this other even pre-World War I surplus. us, all the stuff captured in World War I flows through different arms dealers. And a lot of it is the Russians are doing, the Soviets are doing an awful lot of that. Like the real bulk, huge orders of stuff were coming from the Soviets. But there was some interesting, like pretty high-end new stuff coming from Poland and the Czech Republic as well. So that brings us to, you know, like let's cement this in time. We're done with my gun autism. And you've seen me share this map before. But here I have a slightly different talk track. So as you'll remember, the military uprising. So the nationalist uprising is most successful in the conservative parts of Spain and as well as,

like military certain military strongholds. It was often squashed in street fighting by leftist militias. So like Barcelona, Santander, Toledo, and Madrid, control of the arsenals and factories, absolutely critical. So if you have control of those domestic sources of those weapons, that makes the difference between being able to field people for actual fighting, as well as continued production. So that logistical nightmare, the nationalists did a much better job of securing the arsenals and the factories. And so the Republic was left on the back foot where they ended up, you know, like I showed, they had like small and local manufacturer stuff. But like Barcelona, like two million cartridges being produced was this big deal. Like two million cartridges is

nothing in a in a real war. That was like the, the, best they could do. So they were super dependent on imports. And again, so that's why I emphasized the Republic's imported weapons. So again, the left militias were largely equipped by what they brought, what they could bring to the fight, all those random like small weapons or stuff that was smuggled over, handguns, grenades they made, unless they could capture arsenals or persuade the Republic to release weapons. Like in Madrid, There's this whole drama of the back and forth for like months before the, at least a month before, um, Azanya releases, um, the arsenal, uh, to the leftist militias. And then they're able to actually

fight at that point. Um, so yeah, that wraps up what I had prepared. Hail Franco. Hail victory. Yeah, it's, I think the most, the car lists having been so organized before the war even kicked off really stands out. And then the Republicans having everything ready to go. You know, it's almost like the, it's almost like the Carless, the Carless knew before and were better equipped for what was coming. than any of the other groups on the right 100%. Yeah, even the military in a lot of places, like the military's weaponry, it was so dispersed and the car list just came loaded for bear with,

do you remember me talking about their military advisor Don Pepe, who was running around and equipping them? He had been, he was basically a spec ops guy who was running around Europe, for during the 20s and in the 30s, even under the Republic, learning about state of the art, military organization, structured, employment, and then advanced weaponry. So he was advising and helping direct that, which is why the carlists had the latest stuff. They had old stuff too. Like they have in a lot of cases like Arasakas and stuff. But they also had tons of light machine guns to start off, you know, relative to everyone else.

So, yeah, they were ready to go. And again, going back to that map, which I will go back to here, that's how they secured this huge swath. They split the key Republican zones because this is where so many of the weapons were manufactured. You'll see Akarunia. And then Oviedo is an exception. It's in blue because it's nationalist. Yeah. So very, very important thing to think about.

Again, as we look at the theoretical like nothing ever happens type people, like you have to have plans and you have to think at what's been done in the past and what's worked in the past and think about logistics. It's not just fun with autism, although I love that stuff. I would also say again, I highly recommend that people check out my article on the commercial, or military and artisanal hand grenades of the Spanish Civil War on my substack. It goes into detail about the CNTFAI. production and that whole history there there's almost nothing in english on that subject until like very recently i've seen some translations of spanish stuff go into like wikis like little tiny blurbs but um that's another thing to think about when you're thinking of lawfully legal uh fun theoretical

educational activities well awesome karl um of course i'm going to to include the links, but remind everybody else where they can find. You've already mentioned the substack, give them the address and everything. Yes, Carl Dahl, K-A-L-D-A-H-L dot substack.com. I'm also on Twitter, but just look for Carl Dahl, and you'll be able to find me that way. I have one of those unfortunate names because Twitter is evil. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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