The Pete Quiñones Show - The Spanish Civil War w/ Thomas777 - Complete

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

4 Hours and 39 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.This is the complete audio of a short series Thomas777 did on the Spanish Civil War.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete'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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with vouchers from Trump Dunebag. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kosh Farage. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana show. How are you doing today, Thomas? And well, thanks, as always, for hosting me on this fine day. Yeah. It's Mother's Day, so good fortune and long life told the mom's out to.

Yeah, I wish mine was still around. Likewise. Yeah. All right, so this is long away. A lot of people have asked for this. I'm excited about this. Start talking about the Spanish Civil War. Just start going.

I'll interrupt if I have any questions. Let me start off with an easy one. When was the first time you started looking at the Spanish Civil War? I mean, for me, it was pretty early on because it's something that was mythologized very much. I remember when I was like a teenager and college age, you know, like in my late teens, early 20s, there was this great mythology spun around the communist side, which is euphemistically referred to as like the Republican side. I mean, it's like, who was arming and equipping and providing NKVD functionaries to slaughter people behind the lines. It was the Soviet Union doing that. Okay, they weren't fighting and create like 21st century Sweden.

Not that that would be any great shakes either. But, you know, then, oh, and, you know, there were some Russians there too. So that didn't make any sense. And the, you know, as I got into before, before consumer internet was a thing. You know, like I've said, you had to rely basically on the resources of your local library. And I was blessed in that regard because I live in Chicago land. or stuff like the Institute for Historical Review. And the IHR, they, they were always putting out stuff related to Condor Legion.

Okay. I mean, in part because there's a lot of like aviation buff old guys, like buying their stuff, I assume. But it's also guys like Mark Vabor or Weber, I guess he goes by. You know, and a lot of their kind of best contributors and editors, they were always coming back to the, the war in Spain, you know, the battle in Spain, how that, how that shaped, you know, conceptual horizons strategically and how it was really, you know, kind of the precursor to everything that followed. And it was, you know, like I said, I think it was Celine who said that, you know, Stalingrad was where left and right Higalians met the set of their differences.

That first time that happened was in Spain. Okay. even on the revisionist side, though, there's misconceptions. Like, I'm going to get into some of that today. David Irving is kind of, even though people view him as this kind of like arch revisionist, in a lot of ways, he's not. And, I mean, I think he's the historian of the third right. And he's just like a great individual. But he mischaracterizes the political situation there,

relative to the combatants. And I'll get into what I mean by that. I mean, it was basically, my interest in the Spanish War was concomitant with, you know, my interest in the Third Reich and the Second World War, because I came to realize that these things were inextricably connected, as well as, you know, it's like why there's a number, there's a lot of conflicts where people try to finesse the true nature of the combatants, you know, willing to ideological prejudices. It's like, I mean, that was in my own lifetime. I mean, that happened in, you know, Nicaragua and El Salvador. That's where like our dear friend Dan, who's an expert on that, you know, who's been taking the oral histories of, of nationalist veterans in El Salvador. You know, that's why I hosted him on the pot and I hope to again.

But, you know, so I pretty quickly realized that it was imperative to kind of deep dive into the Spanish War. But also, Spain, it's a little of a trend. tragic character to Spain. And Spain is really, I mean, despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact, I, you know, and I'm not saying that there's not a value-loaded statement that, you know, the Vatican is in Rome. Like Spain, Spain kind of lived out in the most kind of sanguinary ways, you know, like the Catholic historical experience, you know, whether it was, you know, the centuries long reconquista, against. Islam, which like other Europeans, unless you count, you know, people in the Balkans, like, weren't dealing with that. You know, like, and, you know, just the, the relationship of the clergy to the monarchy, but also, I mean, again, ironically, and we'll get into this too in a minute. The reason Machiavelli constantly invoked the example of Ferdinand and Isabella is because

Spain, despite the fact that they, despite the fact that they remained kind of futile in like their sensibilities, you know, even until the early 20th century, Spain was the first truly kind of Westphalia national state, like before Westphalia,

you know, where you had a truly absolute monarch and the borders of Spain were national borders. You know, it wasn't a confederation of palates, you know, where there was, you know, where there was some lame duck, you know, secular

prime minister or chancellor, you know, kind of like holding the illusion together. Like, it really was like an absolute monarchy of a national state, you know, and not as like a puppet of the Vatican or anything like that. So there's always like weird dichotomies.

Sometimes it's got interested in like Spain, like on its own terms because like I, you know, I'm a student of political theory, you know, when I... Isn't there also the, in the history of Spain, after you have the uprisings to kick the moors out, Spain falls under much like Russia would later,

a few centuries of Jewish influence to the point where Spanish are being made slaves, or being made slaves of Jewish masters. Yeah, that was definitely, that was definitely a very real phenomenon and that didn't happen in Western Europe that happened like Poland was basically a huge

Jewish slave colony like Ukraine was in my opinion still is today and I mean not just something metaphorical terms and real terms particularly if you particularly you know if you count pornography

which is literally white slavery I mean that's not a euphemism that's accurate which is why that's what it used to be called but in Western Europe like corrupt as the french uh uh republic was you know as regards um you know being in bed with uh with um with jewish userers and other uh you know another another another another another powerful people who were you know operating

inimically to the inimical to the national interest um this kind of like out and out domination you know of peoples you know like like uh not just socially but physically. Yeah, I mean, Spain was ground zero for that kind of thing in a way that was alien to Western Europe. I emphasize Western Europe. But so, yeah, I mean, it was kind of like this, it was kind of like this collision of like the ancient and the very modern and, you know, still like that. But to your point, you know, about, you know, Spaniards and Jews, that's going to require like a dedicated deep dive because it's just like too big. for me to

and I don't want to just like shoot from the hip on it today because if I didn't I didn't like prepare any notes or anything or just like refresh my recollection. I know a lot about the topic but I got to be able to say dates and things in a linear order and like I can't do it on top of my head because I'm not a robot or savant.

But yeah I mean that's that's important and that's also you know I mean it's just an ongoing thing and like the term you know Maranos or Marano like I don't I don't, I don't know what the correct pronunciation is. You know, he's the one,

uh, the Ferdinand demanded that, you know, like all Jews convert and like except Catholicism, you know, as the national religion, you know, which again, it's, you know,

the, ironically or perhaps not, you know, Spain became the first truly like national state. But, but the point is, like, that wasn't just, uh,

that wasn't just Ferdinand trying to kind of score points with the clergy or something. like this was imperative in Spain in a way it was not other places. Or maybe imperative is not the word. This was a measure that had a context in Spain that it did in other places, even where there was, you know, bad blood across ethnocectarian lines of a way that was, in a way that was very pronounced. But I wanted to do two things today. I want to get just going to briefly into, you know, sociological.

features of Spain that relate to, you know, political development that became critical variables in the war of 1936-39. I also want to deal with some like misconceptions about fascism itself and about what the perspectives were of in Berlin and in Moscow and how Hitler viewed the situation strategically and how Stalin did. Because this is wildly taken out of, of context by virtually everybody including some people who are very studied revisionist and um should know better but it um you know what that said i'll uh let me let me just let me just let close out this window basically i'm going to start it's just going to seem like i'm jumping around a bit but i believe this is the best way to present it especially because you know i'm starting with

something that's familiar and also this is kind of the framing devices you if if if if they're that makes sense um when did uh basically hitler and the the inner uh kind of core of the third or like you know that being garing gerbils um you know uh himmler um they first kind of became uh they first kind of became aware of spain in strategic terms it was july 25th 1936 uh this seems like something out of a movie, but Hitler was actually attending an opera. I think at

Baruth or Beirut, I'm sure I'm I'm sure I'm brushing that pronunciation. But literally at the intermission of this opera, it Canaris approaches, I'm Admiral Canaris, who is a very

conspiratorial individual and a turncoat. I mean, it's been proven, you know, many times over. But he was, he was chief of the Abbey, you know, the foreign intelligence service. And Canaris was strange because in some ways he seemed to be acting, you know, at critical moments in the interest of the Third Reich. You know, other times he was, you know, working as just as actively to sabotage, its strategic ambition, arguably even its survival.

But that's a subject to itself. but um Canaris had actually introduced um um Hitler to Franco's people and uh Canaris

he approached Hitler during the intermission of this opera and he brought him an urgent telegram which was an appeal from uh to a Franco's emisseries um you know, asking the Third Reich for immediate assistance. Specifically, Franco needed to transport the Moroccan legions who were sympathetic,

you know, the nationalist cause from North Africa to the Spanish mainland, you know, to rapidly reinforce. And Hillary convened Gehring, Erhard Milch, Albert Kesselring, who I made the point, you know kessel ring was finally his final command was um you know uh the defense of uh italy and uh he was never um his forces were never defeated you know they the war ended so i mean the the vermak the and the luthfafa just just went home you know it um but uh kessler ring at that time was was the lute vava chief of staff um millch who was an absolutely brilliant guy in all kinds of ways. And in operational terms, he was second to none. But all of, and this will become relevant later,

all three of them said, yes, we've got to intervene now. Hitler authorized a full-scale Gufalfa intervention. All the men present said, we've got to be careful here. you know we've got to be very careful about you know the signals we send to the Soviet Union to the UK to France okay ultimately Garing deployed a bomber squadron under a von Richthofen who along with Fontoma who commanded the ground element and we'll get into that later were they were both you know top they were both top they were both top

commanders and they're somewhat overlooked and the people who like to rank the axes generals and what have you but um Hitler's view was that you know there was a need to test you know German combined arms you know number one you know and familiarized familiarize you know both air and ground element forces with these new technologies secondly there needed to be you know the younger generation wasn't battle tested, you know, and there was that too. Gearing's notion was, uh, gearing at that time was still in charge of, uh, ready for huge savings, we'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th,

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in the lap of disastously earns to UDET as well as Earhart Mills, you know, kind of in a more limited way. and some would, you know, be, you know, conferred upon Albert Speer, you know, his armage minister. At this point, Garing was king of, like, the four-year plans, okay. Gary coveted precious metals that Spain had, stuff like tungsten, stuff like copper, you know, that, that he reasoned, could be borrowed in direct exchange from military aid or, you know, acquired at fire sale prices, okay? It, uh, no, by fall, a general war was underway in Spain, okay? And at this point, um, Milch, Kesselring, Gering said, we've got to be very careful

about escalation unless we find ourselves in a general war with the Soviet Union. Okay. So this idea that the Soviet Union just, you know, oh, only to socialism in one country, you know, the Soviets weren't really involved in Spain. Stalin was in Spain 100%. He was in it to win it. On his side, he didn't want to yet provoke a war with the Third Reich. So you've got something of a Mexican standoff beneath kind of, you know, an intended subterfuge, okay?

What Stalin meant by socialism in one country, you've got to understand the way the Russian revolution developed, the way that, Lenin envisioned the Bolshevik cause, you know, as a vanguard movement. The basic problem within kind of communist political theology, or rather a kind of conceptual view of, you know, like the man doesn't make history, like history awaits, you know, history gives man kind of the clarion call, you know, and you can't force revolutionary conditions too early.

And, you know, this idea that, you know, one can just build, quote, build socialism in a backwards country like Russia, you know, and then, you know, Russia can catch up to the rest of the world. You know, and then, you know, when a general proletarian revolution starts, you know, sweeping the developed world, well, Russia will be right there. I mean, this is, this is not orthodox Marxism, okay? That's what Stalin was talking about. He wasn't saying, oh, I'm going to glad hand with fascism because. I don't want anyone to think I'm doing anything but looking inward. And, you know, I'm not really a communist and I don't really have designs on Europe. Like, that's this nonsense.

Also, at base, Spain was a political fight. Okay? Politics matters. When you're dealing with a revolutionary fervor that is sweeping not just a key territory, but literally the continent, later during the Cold War, arguably the planet, but we're not there yet. the Third Reich had to go fight in Spain because Spain is where the communist drew the line. Okay. That was that that was it 100%.

And vice versa, like Stalin, Moscow, the Soviet Union and its entire claim to the mantle of, you know, global leadership of the proletariat, that that would have totally evaporated, you know, if Stalin had not, you know, set the communists, whatever they need. needed to win, okay? But at the same time, abiding the need, you know, to keep up appearances, you know, it's even more important to keep up appearances as, you know, when, when, when, when, when you're undermining, you know, what you report to be your own commitment to peace and, and, and aversion to escalation. I mean, what a boss tweets, the appearance of the law is, is fundamental, like, especially when it's being broken. I mean, it's, this shouldn't come as a, this shouldn't seem like outlandish anybody, okay?

but that's, that's, you know, that's, there's, there's so much dishonesty around the issue. That's why I emphasize that. A lot of people point to Hitler made a statement, and I think you can find this in table talk, but I found citations in Irving, I found a citation in Irving's, the war path also. So in early November, in November, December, 1997, so about a year onward, Hitler had told Riventraps chief of staff or his secretary that, you know, like something to affect an outright victory of Franco, you know, we actually might live to regret that because the guy is such a bastard, you know, ha, ha, ha. But he also said, you know, our interest is first and foremost as preventing a communist victory, but also maintaining existing tensions in the Mediterranean. You know, if the UK was, you know, it's way in and out of the Mediterranean, you know,

but also like, you know, the Spanish, you know, essentially preventing, like, neutralizing the strategic benefit of the Strait of Gibraltar to the UK. that give Germany tremendous power. You know, not just in terms of the fact that, well, you know, the Royal Navy would then, you know, be at war in a T theater, but it would give Berlin, you know, bargaining power with respect to London. And at that point, obviously, you know, Hitler didn't view the U.K. as an enemy.

You know, so the fact that Hitler would lament the fact that Franco is a bastard, he's a terrible ally he's impossible to work with you know the fact that he would say in a perfect world you know there'd be a guy who was more malleable you know in Madrid or fighting to take Madrid but also you know in a perfect world um you know we'd be able to kind of keep keep keep the royal navy forever tied down you know by some kind of friendly regime on the iberian peninsula like that's not that doesn't that doesn't amount to some statement like some literal statement of you know, gee, we made a mistake to back Franco. I mean, it's, people have a real problem with literalist thinking these days.

But that, uh, that aside, it's, um, one of the things that arguably, when I say arguably, I don't mean, uh, I don't mean in my perspective, but, you know, again, people who view, um, the war in Spain is just kind of this, like, isolated occurrence where, you know, the communist support for a you know for the um for the republicans as they're called was was just some kind of token perfunctory gesture or that you know the third rike wasn't really committed to to it you know other than um you know for the very limited purpose of uh of of you know cutting the combat teeth of the vermouth there really was cross-border momentum developing behind parties of the right. No, there was not a fascist international, but that would have been self-defeating. And also,

that's not kind of the claimed legitimacy that these rightist movements had didn't entail, you know, some kind of bureaucratic party apparatus, you know, with an armed element, you know, that had some kind of like, you know, abstract theory of history that sort of rationalized, you know, its existence. I mean, its entire claim was, you know, something primordial, perennial, and based in, you know, the, the mysteries of cultural and racial origins, okay? To anyone who thinks that there was not, you know, a zeitgeist that was facilitating the war in Spain on both sides, the funeral of two men who died on the same day and whose funerals were.

held in kind. On January 13, 1937, to Romanian nationals, name of Vasile, or Vasile, Massil Marine, and Ion Mota. Ion Mota was Kodriano's number two in the Iron Guard. They'd traveled to Spain initially with an Iron Guard delegation to present a Toledo sword to one of the Franco's generals. They ended up joining, uh, the nationalist side and they were killed in action and uh this became a rallying cry across europe um it uh these guys were viewed as holy warriors um in a uh in a christian jihad uh against against Jewish aggression and all

considerations against atheism you know all these things it's their bodies were interred on their way to internment

were put on a mortuary train it left Spain it traveled through France and Belgium Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th Because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items

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iron guard contingent you know men from the action france say this funeral train literally did an entire tour of Europe and was greeted by throngs of onlookers giving it the Roman salute. Okay, so I can think of nothing comparable in the communist world before or after 1945. You know, I can think of people who the communist tried to glom on to like Bobby Sands, which was very misguided because Sands certainly wasn't one of them. People like from the popular Front of Liberation of Palestine, you know, years after the fact, they'd show up, you know, wearing Shai Gerva badges and stuff. Before I became like some idiot hipster thing in like the 2000s, it was, it's ironic because like the PFLP General Command and people like that would, you know, would employ his vicious. but there's nothing comparable.

You know, this really was like a holy war of the right against, you know, against what they perceived as jury, against communism, you know, against, against, against, you know, against godless capital. That was, you know, that was, that was supporting both of those elements, you know, and that's all these fools who, you know, from the UK and from the USA, like, you know, oh, I was, you know, people say like they were fighting, you know, for freedom against tyranny. It's like, no, you were fighting, you were fighting alongside the Soviet Union and you're fighting against the Soviet Union as most brutal zenith. You know, I mean, so you can't, it's not your alibi.

I think most of that's born of ignorance, but it's, you know, it's got to be said. And on the other side of it, I know we got into this quite a bit. we were doing our Second World War series. But as the dictates that Stalin was issuing to the general staff of the Red Army and the directives he was handing to the main, what was called the main administration for political propaganda in the Soviet Army, you know, we got into some of these things, but they, these all, you know, on the eve of war in May 9th, 41, they were incessantly referencing the Spanish war. And, you know, the, like a literal quote from, from Army Commissar first rank,

Zaporos, that's, I can't pronounce these like Georgian and Moldovan and Russian names, but his uh he quoted uh stalin as saying literally um the situation is developing due to the situation is developing we are compelled and duty bound to take the initiative in dealing the first blow beginning the war of attack with the objective of expanding the borders of socialism you know quote the leader made it unmistakably clear that war is inevitable in the future They must be prepared to the complete smashing of German fascism. I mean, this goes on and on and on. You know, like I said, we got into this in-depth before in our, you know, earlier series.

But it's, and I'm sure some people will say that, like, I rely too much at direct testimony in things. But if you're talking about intent and you're trying to, you're trying to piece together intent, particularly of, um, at scale. You know, you're talking about, you know, command authorities in a state that ended up at war, you know, months or years subsequent to the statement. You've got to take those things basically at face value, you know, because number one, like, who, what audience would they be speaking for? You know, these are the notes that were found later in some cases after the, you know, decades later in the opening of the Soviet archives. You know, and it's, you're talking, like Mirosemur said, you know, if you're a general preparing for war, particularly in a system like the Soviet Union, where, you know, there was a kind of totalitarian accountability where, and at that, at the level of these of these apparatchiks in generals, they were constantly under surveillance. And misspeaking could cost you your life.

you know like i there there's a basic honesty to that that you can rely on in kind of absolute terms you know i mean what they say might be clouded by ideology it might be misguided but the idea that what amounts to these uh eyes only statements from stalin you know to his political commissars within the within within within the within the um what amounts to the general staff of the red army that oh, they were just saying these things to give an appearance of preparateness and keep the Germans on their toes. Like, how would the Germans even know

of that? You know, like it's, I mean, I realize I'm preaching to the choir here, but that's important. And, you know, before before 9039, the last general deployment of Soviet forces was in

Spain. And granted, like, they didn't have an infantry element there. They had the NKVD on the ground, but they had you know, but they were there in substantial numbers, number one. And also, I mean, Soviet weapons were all over the battle theater. You know, so when they're referencing, when Stalin is issuing edicts, you know, about, you know, the future war, which obviously he's talking about the Third Reich. You know, and when he's discussing, when he's discussing tactical matters or identifying what he views as like strong points and weak points, he's talking about the experience of Spain. okay i mean this that that can't be denied um now back to spain at long last the war in spain

happened in spain uh not accidentally you know and not uh it's not uh it's not a it's not a case of you know revolutionary conditions owing to owing to some kind of you know punctuated crisis or ongoing emergency on the ground you know just kind of made it right for for radicalization spain didn't develop normally okay um like we were talking before we went live you know uh for centuries uh spain was uh was was was occupied like large areas of territory were uh were occupied by Muslim elements. When that was finally defeated, the,

you know, I mean, basically, the, the, the intermittent war against against the Islamic moors really began, I mean, it was Viscoth borlords who began, you know, the reconquista in, like, the 700s. You know, and it, like, the, the territorial um the territorial control of the spaniers or the moors you know like varied depending uh on who

had the upper hand in battlefield terms as well as you know who was forced to make political concessions at any given moment but it can be viewed basically as you know a century's long process to liberate spain from you know from uh from heathen occupation and uh it was finally realized by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, which is a banner year, you know. It's, uh, Ferdinand and Isabella, like we talked about a moment ago, I believe before it went alive. The irony is that Ferdinand, the reason why he was praised so,

um, effusively by Machiavelli and the Prince is that Ferdinand was in many ways, like the first, uh, the first absolute, uh, monarch of a truly national state. Like Spain became a national state.

You know, despite its, even at that point, despite its backwardness, okay? Now, Ferdinand had a remarkable mandate, and so would have subsequent monarchs, had they been able to retain the coalition they get around him, but the,

that those successes, you know, were bought at a certain price. And if you're fighting a century's long holy war against Dar al-Islam, the only way you can facilitate that is by giving the army basically. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range. Mentor, Leon and Terramar.

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Unlimited access to the national coffers. And you've got to have to... to insinuate the church into political affairs that otherwise would not be appropriate or constructive. And both of those things happened. I'm not saying bad things about the Roman church at all. I'm saying this isn't reality. Okay. So the kind of prototype of state power in Spain was an absolute monarchy before it really happened anywhere else.

sustained by a warrior aristocracy that was beholden to a clergy that, you know, had incredible power. You know, the thing is, though, like, all this costs a tremendous amount of money, you know, and the solution during the Rekongista, particularly in the later phases, it's like you got to feed your army. like, okay, well, you know, we're going to seize common land, you know, and we're going to, you know, we're going to put animals out the pasture there, you know, if we need, like, wool or, you know, leather or anything else, you know, that's just what we're going to do, you know, so it was kind of the, it was kind of the 15th century equivalent of, like, eminent domain. You know, like being silly, it sounds like, but I'm not. And a lot of that land was not being used. That is true, too. Yeah, a lot of that land was not being used at all. No, and a lot of these guys were happy to, I mean, they wanted to purge heathens from Spain, you know, for a lot of them were happy to allow access to it or to give it literally the crown. But the point is, if you're, if you're using it, you know, for commodities to feed and outfit the army, or you're using it, you know, for this, like, for this marino wool that's coveted, you know, all through Europe so that you can raise money, you know,

that you can put gold in the coffers of the saxon weapons developers that you need you know to fight the moors like nobody's nobody's using that land you know to build up uh you know to build up the agrarian economy you know

and develop it and refine it and um god willing um you know create um create or generate on surplus for export you know like none of that is happening you know and it um as

as time went on it created kind of a warfare state paradigm you know not in like the corrupt sense like now what I mean is that you had this you had this warrior aristocracy

which was like interstitially kind of bound up with the clergy who both relied on each other you know like and not just for the sake of you know the optic of authority or something. You know, like, if you're going to, if you're going to wage a holy war, you better believe that, you know, the Roman church better, is going to war with you,

you know, like on your side. And, like, their function is important as, you know, the men who wield the blade. I mean, this should be obvious. But we're not used to thinking, we're not used to talking about Europeans fighting holy wars, like, in Europe. But, you know, if you're going to expect, if you're going to expect peasants, like, give up land and give up like um you know and give up the certain security they have you know from that kind of tendency and you're going to expect like freeholders you know to give up what they own

you know so that um you know these uh martial efforts necessaries as they may be can can continue you love with situation we're like no bliss obligay kind of becomes the order of the day okay in a way it's not in other societies, at least in Europe. Like, it becomes, it takes on an outsized importance is what I'm getting at, okay? Um,

and that's exactly what happened. And that endured, you know, perpetually, like, after, after the Europeans, like, won Spain back, you know, for, for Christiandom.

It's, uh, Bivor made the point, too. And Bivor's book is great. because it's larded with facts and he makes some great points he's got some conceptual prejudices and um but i rely on him a lot he made the point that in the middle ages from the middle ages um until the end of the uh until the end of the 18th century spain lost something like half its population you know um some of that was just kind of like you know the kind of uh uh you know changing patterns of fecundity and things.

But part was because Spain literally had to downsize because it couldn't sustain the population that it once had. You know, and you've got an empire that's rapidly growing, but its ability to feed its people is deteriorating. I mean, at its height, the Spanish Empire literally owned half the planet.

Like, people forget that. I mean, I mean, even Spangler, Spangler in like Prussianism and socialism is all about, mid 1500, 16,000, 1700 Spain.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. 100%. So again, it was it was highly unusual. I mean, I don't know if despite what people say, there's not some, there's not some template for how empires develop. You know, I mean, I realize

it's mostly just like basic ass people, saying, like, oh, history repeats itself. I mean, even people who are more sophisticated than that, don't seem to realize there's not, there's not some like template or something's kind of like natural, you know, developmental cycle.

Other than, other than, I mean, everything, everything dies at some point or comes to an end. That's not what I mean. I mean, I mean,

the concrete particulars, you know, of how an empire requires its fortunes, you know, maintains its egemony and then ultimately, you know, loses its ability to, um,

to compete with its, either compete with its enemies or to sustain its own existence at scale. But this kind of warrior, holy warrior ethos developed in Spain. But it was, it, it, it came to exist among, like, a real kind of perennial destabilization. You know, it's, um, Isabella, like, one of her, one of her final kind of acts of state, late in life. Desisneros, who was this kind of legendary, I mean, you probably know

this, because I mean, you're a Catholic guy. I'm like a Latin dude. I didn't know anything about Cisneros until, like, very recently. But he was he was like this kind of, he was like this pious friar. You know, he's kind of the guy who's credited to sort of structuring the Inquisition as it came to,

as it came to exist. And that's another thing that's gross, he misunderstood by people kind of on both sides of the political spectrum. We'll get into that too. But the, the, on the one hand, you had, you had this kind of tendency towards a revolt that was burgeoning in Spain,

especially in some of these territories that, you know, had long been, you know, like discrete principalities, you know, with, with kind of unique cultural habits and, and political cultures. So the ground, the proverbial soil was kind of, was kind of eager for for a rebellion against central authority

anyway but at that time too like the papacy in Rome was was viewed as highly corrupt which it was and so a lot of these like friars who actually were like you know radically pious they found themselves at odds with the

papacy who in turn you know called upon you know the the Castilian monarchy in Spain they kind of restore the status quo, but the monarchy had to tread lightly because a lot of these priests were kind of like more, like literally more Catholic than the Pope, you know, and the Castilian monarch's entire kind of their entire mandate to that kind of extraordinary, extraordinarily deep authority basically owed their ability to, you know, maintain like the confidence and the absolute endorsement of, like, of a Catholic charity. You know, so it was centralism against

regionalism. It was, you know, that weakened the structure that Ferdinian created. It was the odd dynamics at play between the papacy and, you know, the Cardinals in Spain itself and elsewhere.

It was, there was a rising there was a rising against Charles the 5th, who was Isabella's grandson um that was uh that was uh you know provoked by like what was viewed as like his is his abuse of public monies and things you know which is just like typical sort of uh discontent you know with uh

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Liddle, more to value. The fortunes of the country, like material and otherwise, But it took on an outsized and often, like, literally theological meaning, like, owing to, you know, some of the, some of the sociological tendencies at play. A lot of the country had been assimilated into the, into Castilian rule through, like, marriage, you know, so you had a Spanish Haspher line, you know, that, like, found itself at odds with, with, with a lot of the peasantry, you know, owing to, you know, only to complicated reasons of bloodline and things that like wouldn't mean anything to an american but had deep uh deep significance to uh to uh you know to the the people in that time and place um i'm sure even today it was people like where that has meaning to them i'm not saying that derisively but and there was times when you had an officer court who uh was sympathetic to you know these kinds of like nascent uh middle class uh middle class uprisings, you know, in like 1813 and 1848, you know, ultimately the pendulum swung the other way,

you know, and which is where it kind of remained into the 20th century. And if you'll notice a parallel between this kind of situation in Spain and the kind of situation you had in Chile, you know, with Penrachet and the officers, contrary, like civil society, like, you'd be right. Like, there's something, there's something to how, uh, you know, um, Latin America, like, mirrors Spain and the way that, you know, the UK, like mirrors United States, um, in terms of political sociology and zeitgeist and other things. I find that fascinating, but it, um, the, uh, the, like all these things, um, like,

Spain was basically, it was everything that the communists claimed about, you know, capitalist, like what they viewed as like, you know, late capitalist failure, was found in Spain, you know, and in their mind, or in their propaganda, but I mean, I think they also believed it. You know, they said that, like, you know, the only reason why the Roman church retains, power in Spain is because like the last the final recourse of the capitalist is to draw upon, you know, reactionary

tendencies, you know, within within the body politic, you know, who are vulnerable to such appeals, you know, only of this, only to the punctuation of their lives. You know, so it was like, it was, I mean, I think, you know, I'm always saying, like, war arrives, like

the seasons, and there was matters of zeitgeist that, you know, made Spain kind of the battle space as it happened. But there was also in more kind of abstract terms, like abstract intellectual terms, it was like Spain was, there was going to be, there was going to be a

bullshit like uprising in Spain. You know, and and the, the Soviet Union was going to be insinuated into that process as much as it could be without provoking a general war with, you know, the Third Reich or something. by proxy. Ironically, though, and again, into the 20th century, Spain remained economically backwards.

There was a basic hostility to commercial activity. Like, it's, like, the code of Hidalgo or whatever, it really did have a certain, it really did despise, you know, money. You know, like, it went beyond, you know, consent for usury and things. there was something not just unbecoming a nobleman or any or any man who's you know an upright christian a good race and breeding you know taking any interest in in money not derived you know from a from an estate or something and it wasn't they they couldn't transition that into productive capital you know like say prussia did you know so they're not uh despite what But, you know, despite what liberals claim, like, their Marxist counterparts, you know, it's not, capitalism isn't like this fundamentally, like, or axiomatically, like, liberalizing tendency. You know, like, Prussia was arguably the most reactionary state that existed in the modern era,

and they were remarkably capitalist. I mean, they were, they were abiding, you know, the, they were abiding the, they were abiding the, the economic dictums of people, like Frederick List, you know, obviously, you know, they had the correct paradigm of, you know, commercial interest being subjugated to the national interest at all times. This idea that, like, well, you know, if you have, you know, if you have like a basically kind of like, you know, martial cast or if you have, you know, a basically reactionary, conservative elite, you know, that they, it's literally impossible for them to, you know, transition a

medieval economy into a modern value added economy with you know where where revenues are reinvested in a productive capital like this bullshit because like that's that like that's literally a story of Germany and especially Prussia.

Okay but it it there was a certain rigidity to things in Spain that that just did not or could not happen and it was exacerbated. You know, like I said, the, the, the quote, era of reform, you know, like the mid-18th century, I guess, until, like, the Napoleonic, the final Napoleonic defeat in 1813. There was, you know, you had a, you had a nascent middle class or at least a wealthier, you know, kind of a freehold class, you know, who were attracted to the ideas of, of, of, of, of, you know, of, you know, of.

of these enlightenment propagandists, at least superficially, that put pressure on Charles the third to issue reforms, which in turn reduced the church's influence over the army, where a lot of officers were being bought off by these reforms. And incidentally, a lot of those officers had taken to Freemasonry. And that, in large part, is where you get the idea or the claim that, like, you know, masonry is this revolution from the middle kind of degenerate tendency that like hates Catholicism. I'm not saying that that's correct or not. I'm just saying that's where it comes from.

Okay. So I don't, I don't have people sending me hate email or something. But that in turn caused, you know, like people who were, you know, sympathetic to the ancient regime or who were committed to the kind of caste

structure and um you know the uh the kind of paradigm of uh you know an officer corps that works hand and glove with the army both of whom are you know beholden to a an absolute monarch who uh in turn abides you know their traditional privileges and benefits like socially materially um so this is like this is literally like a perfect storm of like this functional tendencies, you know, it's, um, and that's why when things jumped off in Spain, you know, finally in, uh, in 1930s, I mean, there was such, there was such hostility and that's all, you just, I mean, reciprocally, but it was also the, um, it's easy to understand why even guys who weren't, you know, die hard national socialists or like Iron Guard, um, um, um, part

It's easy to see why people looked at it. Like, look, the communists are like, they're making an example here. You know, the Spanish body, everything they hate. They want to annihilate Spain. And the Spanish as a people as a culture form. They want to annihilate the church and its capacity to exist in the modern world. And they were right. Okay.

I mean, that's why it became so critically symbolic. I would seem like I was jumping around a lot. and there's a lot of like, I hope it doesn't like useless backstory and lore, but I, if that's the way it came off, I'm sorry. I think you'll thank me as we get into this because I refer to things that I'm, okay. No, we need that backstory because most people don't know the history of Spain. Yeah, they, they, I assume they just think it is just another feudal country,

a country that went through feudalism just like everyone else and they don't realize the battles that actually, battles that you would see coming in the future actually happen there. No, 100%. And also, like, as we go on, there's just like too much to like fully cover here. Like you mentioned when we talked the day, like, I'll get into why the carliss were like fighting on the national side or the patriotic side. I'll get into other stuff, you know, like why like the Spanish armada's defeat, you know,

like tanked everything. But we're going to wait until we're like in that context. And primarily, though, I want to focus on, you know, the third Reich at war on Spain and, like, you know, how the military situation develops. So I promise we'll dive into that very next episode. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th 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-habs, when the doors open, the deal's going.

Go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Teramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and a little. Discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves.

Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Arland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. All right. Do some plugs in London.

Yeah, for sure, man. You can find me on Twitter for the time being at Real Capital R-E-A-L. underscore number seven hw m as 7777 if i got substack that's our primary home now um real thomas 7777 that substack i think a good progress towards the channel um i promise things are getting done even if it doesn't seem like it i've been trying to work my ass so i'm putting out content so i've been trying to give people a lot of content i'm not being a murder like oh i'm so great but uh keep that in mind if it It seems like I'm being a idol, or a nerd rather. But I've gotten more confidence, like, in shooting video.

It just comes out to editing it and making it, you know, content-worthy. And I basically got to decide on a format for, you know, like my kind of, like, for Thomas TV, which I think is going to be something like a video blog, but like I, or a video pod. But like I want to have like guests like sitting there with me. And like some people like down for that. Some people are like horrified of that prospect. But I think it'll be pretty lit, man. But my point is like I'm working on all of these things.

And I really, really appreciate everybody who gives me a platform, especially not just Pete, who's my dear friend, but like other people who just reach out. So thank you very much. Thomas, I appreciate it. So until episode two. Yes, sir. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cignon-S show.

We are here for part two on the Spanish Civil War with Thomas 777. How are you done, Thomas? I'm very well. Thank you. I want to talk about some today. This is going to be a recurring theme conceptually throughout the series. There's a military dimension to the Spanish war that's important and was impactful in just positive ways. There's a political aspect and kind of very.

concrete terms, especially relating to the Neutrality Act, that had really kind of bound of the ability of the new dealers to act how they wanted in global terms, frankly. Then we got into that and our Second World War series somewhat, and we're a turn to that too in a dedicated capacity when it seems appropriate. But I'm sure that there's going to be some people who say that this always in my own conceptual prejudices and my kind of Hegelian orientation and my tendency towards German is historicism. But the animating catalyst for the Spanish war was zeitgeist. We got into that in the first episode. I made the point that despite a lot of historians make a point of the conspicuous

absence of a fascist international, you know, contra a communist international. some of that's a Cold War hangover when you'd have you'd have progress you know self-adadad by progressive historians you know it's having to present the issue as well see that you know this this was just you know these are just capitalist states and crisis and they they were they were just scrambling to sort of confabulate some iteration of what appeared to be you know a revolutionary tendency in its own right you know to sort of rob the moment of the left. You know, that doesn't stand up to any real scrutiny anyway, but the fact that there was this

kind of outpouring of support for the nationalist cause, you know, which really was the Catholic cause, you know, we'll get into that a little bit here today, I mean. You know, like I said, I make a lot, I guess, of prime. symbolic events, you know, I mean, prime symbols dominate in human psychology, you know, especially at scale, you know, sociologically, you know, that's why iconic events, you know, defying civic memory. But also, you know, that's why political symbols are so important, you know, particularly when there's mobilization catalysts, you know, like they're in the inner warriors. But, you know, we talked about the, we thought about the funeral, the funerals of

the common funeral of Ayan Moza and Vassil Marin, you know, and how, you know, delegates from pretty much every European state that had any kind of active right wing movement or anti-communist movement, you know, they turned out to literally salute, you know, the, the, the, the funerary train, you know, when, um, they were greeted, uh, everywhere they went. by these cadres. And that's not something that could just be, you know, cobbled together for photo opportunities, and it was very authentic.

And just the fact that there were Romanians on the ground in the first place, you know, and then they were being greeted and saluted by, you know, a shoot Stoffelman, you know, and you had Italian priests, you know, like, like blessing them and things. And then there was even, like, secular, like French fascist. It's like action franca say types, like saluting them, you know, who had obviously like no, no truck with reactionary Catholicism as it was perceived, you know, on its own terms. But that's most important in America, too, because really some historians, including Anthony Beaver, who I think he's overall a very good historian, particularly, I mean, he's not a revisionist, really at all. as far as court historians go,

I think he's probably the best, you know, on the subject of the Second World War and the Interwar years. But he, you know, he, he's got a tendency to kind of hit the mark, but not really understand the sort of depth of significance of some of these prime symbolic events. and he hits the mark what he talks about the Spanish War being

a precursor to the Second World War. I mean, he perceives even a guy like him who rejects the kind of historicism of a guy like Knowlty and, you know, as well as, you know, the contrary historic

storicism of people like Hasblum, but he does identify, you know, like a common nucleus of proximate causation there. but it um it was deeper than just you know a kind of a kind of opening act of hostilities relating to you know extant you know geostrategic ambitions and and and um intentions you know it really it really was apoccal and ideological and a matter of zyko it's as to why as to why why what animated germany to intervene in spain why the soviet staked it the way they did you know why um

You know, I progressives in America and in the UK, you know, who identify themselves as, you know, on the side of the quote, democracy movement, which is incredibly misguided and deliberately, it was a deliberate lie. We're going to get into that. So that's a question at Barr is kind of like, why Spain? Well, when we think of like, speaking of civic myths, okay, and we think of, we think of the kind of prime symbols the left likes to trot out as like the horrors of, you know, that which came before. four. One of the big ones is the Inquisition or the Crusades. They can't really, they can't really expand upon what they mean by that, you know, like what inquisition, because there was three. There was the Portuguese Inquisition, there was the Italian, and there was the Spanish. The Spanish Inquisition was the most politically significant.

I'd say it was initiated by Isabella in 1478. You know, when we talked about Ferdin and Isabella, like the irony of, of them like proceeding the Westphalian state, you know, by a century and a half. But, but Catholic Spain, like Ferdinand really did make Spain a national Catholic state, sight unseen, you know, in a, in a way that is at odds with Spain's kind of stagnant and traditionalist culture. I don't mean that punitively. That's just a fact. But the Spanish Inquisition endured for 300 years.

It's agreed upon now by everybody. Okay, by court historianists or whatever. I could pull out citations, but I don't think it's necessary. If somebody really wants them now or on any topic we cover, I can provide them, but contact me directly. I'm not being autistic or something. Like, people do that to me. They're like, that's a bullshit figure.

Where's your source? Well, I can. source everything but I'm not going to sit here and relay you know citations like a shithead but um between 3,000 and 6,000 people in 300 years of the Inquisition Spanish Inquisition were put to death okay based on

convictions that's about 2.7% of all cases okay in one year 1936 the communists and their socialist allies in Spain slaughtered about 6,000 priests and nuns.

You know, it was outright. They just massacred them. Okay. So within the first year of a three-year conflict, more clergy people were categorically slaughtered by the communists and their democratic allies, than the total number of people who put to death by the inquisition over three centuries.

The inquisition is what you're like taught is this like event of abject horror in the struggle of record. like I'm not Cadillic so I don't have some like direct dog in that fight other than the fact that this kind of thing is discussing anybody was at all normal but that really jumped out at me like as I sort of deep diving into Cadillic history and probably like 25 years ago no okay not because like I believed that like you know the inquisition was you know this kind of horror show or this kind of singular instance of brutality that's just unparalleled by anything comparable I mean I knew that court history was histriotic and knew that they lied. But it's remarkable, like, contra the violence that was instigated against, you know, the Catholic clergy itself. You know, within, really, it was until a few years ago, a living memory, you know, the, if you want to, if you want to vilify the Roman church, there's a lot of ways you can do it without opening yourself up to that kind of criticism, okay?

that's another example of something like that particular myth I'm always making the point that much of the people lament you know the information age and the kind of corrupting influence of you know this kind of like totally immersion like in screens you know it there it's more it's more of a liberation mechanism than it is you know like one of then it then it is like a shackle psychic slavery and there's just like one example okay like 40 years ago you could ban you about the Inquisition was the most horrible thing ever. And thank God that, you know, the Democrats in 1936, you know, stopped it from, from oppressing women and slaughtering people and, you know,

like crucifying gay people and setting them on fire. Like, you get away with that, okay? Even people who knew it wasn't true, they couldn't just, like, rebut you, like, within seconds, like, from the phone in their pocket, okay? And it was making the point that, you know, we're not, we're not running an evangelical church. We're not missionaries. I mean, I don't go out in the world and say to people, like, see, like, this is what you've been allowed to.

Look, look at the figures on my phone for the imposition. But for the people who are, you know, interested in real history, and for the people who are charged for political or patriotic reasons or just because I could feel like a calling to them. I mean, like, corny that sounds, like, I feel like being a revisionist is just like my calling. That's like what God wants me to do. um it uh you don't feel so much like you're brushing up against leviathan in trying to correct these lies of history and it's also even if you think yourself basically immune to zeitgeist you're not okay you're going to internalize features of it even if you're doing so in oppositional terms but it's like the weather you know like when it's coming back you know like in natural

born killers with that might seem like a corny thing a site in a serious discussion, but it's actually a pretty profound film, I think. Owing, in large part of the screenplay, there's this one part where, you know, Woody Harrelson, he's like, he's modeled on Starkweather. You know, he says to the guy he's supposed to be like Geraldo, who's played by Robert Downey Jr. He's like, you know, he's like, media's like weather, but it's man-made weather, you know, and that's true, you know, and the degree to which there was only, the degree There was a bully pulpit for historical claims and narrative.

You know, the kind of brief window, an absolute turn brief, I mean, between when visual media, you know, from the movie house and then, you know, to the TV screen, and then to like the ubiquity of, you know, the cable media cycle that was edged out by internet very rapidly after we reached a zenith. But there was a brief period of a zenith, you know, in the 80s into like the mid-90s, where it was just absolute. okay like it it was it could not be fucked with it was like you like you were like if you were a visionist you were a proverbial 90 pound weakling and media was mike tyson in 1988 okay like it there's just nothing you could do to it okay and um even uh even the climate was such that even to even a people who were otherwise receptive you just come off like a crank okay because you know literally like the the the conceptual weather system, you know, to invoke the metaphor again, was completely at odds with what you were declaring, okay?

And that the degree to which... Ready for huge savings? We'll 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-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.

Lidl, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Super design that moves.

Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. You know, internet changed everything. Cannot be overstated.

That's why Twitter went early berserk, you know, like a few years back. And that's why now, like, you run an internet search. I just went into innocuous internet search for polio, like not even because of Twitter. I was doing a discussion with a guy who does a lot of research on AIDS and on like ideological like sources of disease. So I don't know like learn about polio. I didn't type in like, is polio fake or something? My first result is that there is a conspiracy theory that polio was created by the government

or by idea. It's like I didn't ask that. You know, it's like so they're showing their hand. Like you could probably, I could probably run a search like naval oranges or for like puppy dogs. And it would be like, you know, the Nazis, small-vassed group puppy dogs because they were the most evil people ever or something. Like, I should you're not. It's like that extreme.

But the point is, like, it's not, um, they're not even, they're not even willing to, you know, just kind of like deploy, like, legions of, uh, of, uh, like, this info people to, like, you know, Twitter or, like, or to, um, Instagram. And Instagram is interesting. There's so many people doing, like, screen capture to, like, get, like, concepts out, you know, um, and I'm interested in how they're, how they're, how they're already, shutting stuff down under auspices of, you know, that's inappropriate for children or something. But it's, I don't want to go too far the topic.

But in any event, okay, so why Spain and why do the communists attack the clergy like this? I mean, like, we know why, like, in terms of, you know, why they hated the church. And we know why, you know, Bolshevik cadres, if you, like, clergy people, like standard bearers of a counter-revolutionary tendency of tremendous power. but just hand over fist, like slaughtering clergy people. It seems like it's bad optics, okay? Now, for a long time, what the alibi was of the left in Spain, it was a strange transition period after Franco died. Franco was elderly, but he died somewhat abruptly.

And as you might have imagined, especially in those days, you know, in 1975, there was not a lot of news coming out of Madrid about, you know, the kind of health of Franco. But also, too, like people, like, like, I had a state now, he's got, he's got, like, doctors, like, up his ass, figuratively literally, like, all the time. You know, like, in those days, it was not, like, people, even, you know, it was not clear, like, what the state of someone. his health was always. And there wasn't this, there wasn't this kind of a, there wasn't this kind of ongoing, like, revolutionary shift, like there wasn't Portugal. You know, like, like Salazar,

among other things averted a bloody civil war. I mean, that's a topic for another pod or series entirely, but Francoe dies suddenly. It becomes clear if people aren't going to accept, you know, like, you know, the institution of just a constitutional monarchy. It becomes clear that, like, even if Franco

had a successor, he was, going to be accepted either. Spain's now been in NATO for many years. You know, it's been integrated. Poor man of Europe as it may be. It's, it had been integrated, you know, for decades into the EC. It, uh, but there was,

like, in terms of like the ideological culture, um, there was problems. You know, um, especially because, you know, not just going to the Cold War, but it's, you know, it's, they weren't going to, if they tried to pull like what South Africa did, you know, the Truth Reconciliation Committee or something, like that things would have deteriorated, if not into, you know, civil war. Like, it would have permanently gridlocked, you know, the government, the emergent government, and it would have had no legitimacy.

But the kind of alibi was always, well, that was the Soviets doing that, you know, and the NKBBB was doing that. And the or these were just, you know, outliers, you know, these were violent people doing terrible things because this was a, like a bad time. Well, interestingly, this was a... Well, they tried to blame, they always blame it on the anarchists. That too, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was these anarchist psychopaths and, you know, they, um... They were the one digging up the, you know, the famous picture of the disinterning

and taking pictures with them. But it, um, there was an incident, or there was a series of incidents specifically, from November 7th to December 4th, 1936. there's just kind of the peak of of revolutionary violence okay uh especially in um in the cities and uh like the provinces immediately abutting

um the ones uh containing the cities um November 7th to approximately December 4th 96 a bunch of political prisoners held in Madrid's jails they were just spontaneously evacuated like the outline provinces and these people were

these were all political prisoners okay like some of them had been incarcerated on grounds that they were anti-social or something but these these were trumped up charges these weren't criminals okay that I need to make that clear they were they were evacuated

over these weeks on mass and they were executed they were just exterminated um the man responsible at that time for jails in public order was a man named Solaris, Santiago Solares. He was all of 21 years old in 1936, and that was part of his alibi, okay?

Upon return from exile with the other than Franco, because everybody got, you know, amnesty, like the jury as well as like de facto. I mean, this was very much, and then he spattered to live through it, we'll tell you, I'm sure. this was really deliberate, you know, like, we've got to finesse these bad feelings and, and let the past become the past, you know, which under more ordinary circumstances would probably be laudable, what the, um, what Solaris defenders claimed, of course, well, these are just false propaganda, you know, outright, this just didn't happen. But then as evidence mounted, it, uh, you know, what, uh, what Solaris, as people, people themselves claimed, as well as kind of what the regime came to claim in like a soft

peddling kind of way, was that, well, you know, there were, there were extraditional killings that were wrong, but these were arbitrary and capricious, you know, extraditional killings that were isolated incidents, you know, they weren't categorical, they weren't organized. Well, in 2004, historian, a guy named Raverte, Spanish historian, kind of a right. friendly guy but like more of a conservative you know not he wasn't the guy who could be just kind of dismissed to some like right winger i mean that's not really that's not grounds of objective grounds that dismiss somebody's findings anyway but you're saying what i mean like this guy wasn't some ideologue with the you know the the kind of milk toast regime is the kind that you know

can be the only kind of regime in Europe after the Cold War could, you know, can kind of dismiss. He began digging into the archives of the Iberian Anarchist Federation and the National Confederation of Labor, which united at some point prior to the onset of hostilities. And their archives were housed in Antichael. Amsterdam, where I believe, and I'm not trying to upset Dutch people, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of communist cadre and revolutionary party archives and sensitive documents housed in Holland. Okay, I don't know why that is, but that I don't, that can't be disputed. Okay, that's why these documents were located there. where Verite discovered the literal minutes of meeting, you know, between the Iberian Federation field commanders and the National Federation of Labor, like, security element.

And they literally described a classification protocol for who should be exterminated, just on categorical terms. Okay. And these people who were evacuated, these political detainees, they all fell into that category. category, right? These are people who are identified as fascist, sympathetic, you know, people who were, you know, lay people in the Catholic Church who had some role of people who just been denounced, you know, and this was something of a mini scandal. I mean, not just an academic quarter, but because even obtuse, you know, and unfree as occupied Europe is. Like, Spain's kind of a different thing. Not just because it's not directly occupied by America, but it's, you know, it wasn't a direct combatant to World War II. which, you know, there was more, I'm not going to go as far. First of all, I'm not an expert in the culture at all, but, and I'm certainly not going to go as far as to say that, you know, Spain is a more kind of reasoned view of historical matters, but it's different, you know, that can't be denied. And as I've dived deeper into this, that becomes clear, like the historical controversies of Spain, you know. So the rebuttal to this evidence, there's a leftist historian named Angel Vinas. You catch them in the corner of your eye.

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Come see for yourself. The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Venus claimed like, well, yeah, this happened. The minutes from this meeting, that's not, you know, a forgery. However, he's like, this was, we were on, we were being ordered to do this by the Soviet, you know, like our predecessors, you know, they were being ordered to do this by the Soviet Union. And the man primarily culpill was a man named Alexander Orlov.

Who's Alexander Orlov? Well, he was the chief of the NKVD in Spain. Okay. So, okay, there's problems with an alibi for a lot of reasons. It's like, okay, if you're under, let's say, let's say that's 100% correct. Okay, so you're under duress. Why was there an NKVD in Spain? I mean, like there literally was an NKBD office in Spain, you know, and it, you know, I mean, that raises questions of its own. It's like, okay, well, they got there somehow. Are you saying the Soviet Union invaded Spain? You know, you were powerless to resist them. You know, they, they, you invited them in to help you fight against a fascist coup that was bargaining, but then they took over. I mean, this isn't, it's not just this is preposterous,

but I mean, in some ways it's worse than what, what the initial allegation was, you know, but it also, it cuts against, to your point, like the alibi for the preceding, you know, 60, 70 years had been, well, that was, that was these anarchists who were practically fascists themselves. They had nothing to do with us. These were just crazy people. You know, it's like, okay, so now, now you were acting under orders of the Soviets and not just the Soviets, but the NKVD. And like, you had Russian officers who had, you know, who were cadres who had authority over your own people in the field. Like, what is this? You know, like, I, I, weren't you all a bunch a bunch of liberal Democrats and you know that's why people who have freedom like joined to go to go to go fight against the fascists

I mean like it's this like in the one hand I'd say this I'd say that this guy is not particularly credible but again it's in some ways it's more incriminating than what than the prima facie inference one would draw

from documents but it also too and I a friend of my made this point when he and I were discussing this and uh you know he's got a law background like I do so I mean

maybe this is our kind of like bias in common for how we approach evidence but he's like you know he's like there's a if you're that cavalier about like who you're going to categorically annihilate you know we're talking about non-combatants and we're not using

euphemisms like these people are bandits or these are you know partisans you know we're not we're not using the language of like me like four and like saying well these people are insurgents like conveniently like leaving out you know like their age sex or or overall health you're just like literally talking about like okay people identified under these categories as political detainees you know there to be terminated like you're very very confident uh that this is never going to come to light you know it's basically you're you're not worried about being taken to task after you know, General Franco or, you know, or his German allies roll over you and then, and then put you on trial for this or like, you know, put two rounds in the back of your head as payback or just because, you know, you're obviously, you know, you're obviously an irredeemable partisan, you know, and his point was that these people had assurances from the Soviet Union from day one, like, don't worry about it. We're not going to. to let you lose. And I think that's a correct interpretation. Okay, I couldn't prove it in a court of law. But, you know, one thing you don't find,

you don't find the Soviet Union, like, issuing, you know, in 1939, you know, issuing telegrams to field commanders about, like, annihilating non-combatants at Katian. You don't find Heinrich Himmler saying, like, you know, hey, by the way, you know, these people, this is a race war and like these people are categorical enemies, so I'm going to put on paper. I just think you shouldn't waste them all. You know, I mean, this is remarkable for a lot of reasons, okay? Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Do you think that the Soviet Union was planning on winning the war and staying there? I mean, Orlov was the one who took all of the Spanish gold to Moscow. Right. And they bragged, and Stalin bragged about how it was going to be a robbery.

And then Orloff in 38 has to defect because Stalin starts his purge of, you know, a certain religious group. Right. What I think is, I mean, you get, the way the Soviet Union looked at things, I basically agree with Superov's hypothesis. I think Yakim Hoffman makes a better case for it. it. In purely strategic terms and like practical terms, pragmatic terms, okay, Stalin had to show up to fight in Spain, otherwise who would have lost all credibility as, you know, like the Soviet people would have lost all credibility as like, you know, the vanguard of, like, the world revolution. And like, as we discussed before, in a kind of currency capacity,

people misunderstand socialism in one country and what Stalin was trying, what he meant by that in literal terms and what he was trying to project by that in a sort of dog whistle way. He wasn't saying, like, we have abandoned the world revolution or that, like, we are some kind of like autarkic, inward-looking state, like a giant North Korea. He was not saying those things

at all, okay? You've got to be pretty well-versed to release in a rudimentary capacity. You've got to understand what orthodox, like, Leninism is to understand what he was saying. And you've got to understand why the Soviet people, like what

on what basis they were claiming, you know, to to be, like, the first among nations, like, in the source of revolution. That's the context with which to understand it. Spain was where, like, the battle lines were drawn. Spain is where, you know, the Bolsheviks collided, you know, with the true, like, reactionary enemy, like, the Soviets had to show up to fight. What I think Stalin thought he could do was he thought the NKVD of people like Orlov, people like Eric Milk. You thought that basically, like, you know, he could arm and equip the Reds, everything they needed. The Nationalists didn't really have a pot to piss in until Milch and Gering came to rescue, you know, after Canaris acted as emissary for Franco's people. You know, and then the Reds had a problem.

But, you know, the view from Moscow was, you know, the kind of... revolutionaries, you know, the phalanches, the national Catholics, the Carlis, they're going to get smashed. We're going to mop up, and if we have to stack a million bodies up, a priest, nuns, phelangis, and anybody else who's not with the program, we'll do that. The Germans are then going to freak the fuck out, you know, and especially because, you know, Spain and France it already, like, openly declared, you know, sympathy, if not yet,

allegiance, you know, with the reds. That was going to exacerbate, you know, like the war in the West that Stalin always believed was imminent. The Germans were going to get bogged down like they did in 1914. As, like, Germany bleeds white. Like, Stalin and the Red Army was going to, like, smash through from the east. You know, that was, like, ideally it would have happened, you know. But it wasn't.

but just Stalin wasn't ready yet. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

that's, the non-aggression pact owes to also, because, um, there's this odd situation where, I mean, once, once,

the Vermacht actually did deploy, and like I said, we'll get into, like, von Tomas's, uh, like, ground element,

too, which is fascinating. Like, the Germans were, the Germans were fighting in Spain. It wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just,

you know, it was just, like, loofaft of, like, flying a handle of sorters. Like, you know, you had very much elements, like, going into ground action against the communist. They were killing Russians, okay, and vice versa.

Potentially, that's explosive, you know. But again, too, like, a non-aggression pact only has a context that you're careening towards war anyway. I mean, like, otherwise, it doesn't make sense. But it, I believe that was Stalin's notion. But it's also the, the, the, the, the, the, the Soviet. it's the duration of their existence. I mean, people like to look down

in the Russians and, like, make fun of them and stuff. And, I mean, whatever. Like, I'm not going to open up some kind of general discussion about, like, the character of Russians or whatever, but they, the Russians are serious people, man. And, like, they, like, whatever their shortcomings are, like, in war and peace,

they're really, really good at intriguing. And they're really, really good at insinuating their people into, into proxy elements that serve their interests and kind of like fortifying and shaping those interests the way they want them to develop. Okay, I mean, examples are legion.

Like right up until the end, they were doing this in, you know, in Nicaragua and El Salvador, you know, like they, which frankly was incredible because that was, that would have been, that would have been like the feather in their cap, you know, like, hey, we've got... You catch them in the corner. corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new

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Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. You know, we've got actual, like, Marcos Lennon's client regimes, you know, like on the American continent, there's nothing American can do about it,

you know, without waging some kind of jungle war with, you know, half of, half the countries in the Panama zone. But, um, as it may, like, that's what I believe the Soviet notion was. And when, um, when the Reds got the, first of all when Germany came in like in the

with when it deployed in depth the way you did I don't think Stalin got very worried I don't think he knew that the Germans were capable of that I don't think a lot of people did and plus it was that's when Garing was like as it best arguably he was an addict then and he but he

still had it together like Erhardt Millets who I think was the best he was Eric Mills is one of the best field marshals that Germans had the guy was like a literal genius you know and he later like he's the guy relieved the beleaguered

Vermak and Norway and like literally saved the day you know like he Von Toma was one of the was one of the

was one of the was one of the army's best freaking commanders like these guys these weren't like second raiders who were going to fight in Spain

and you know these were these guys like the cream and like the hear and the lufufa you know like at that point and they they

they very much had a sense of a I mean they're very gungho guys you know they're like hey we're going to fight the Reds you know we're not there's been some stupid

war we're roped into against France because like we're always dealing with the French or something or it's not you know it's not it's not a inconvenient border dispute like we're fighting the communists like this is it you know like this is this is uh this is our chance to to smash these people you know like after they've been racking up victories you know for the last last 20 years you know it um but it's hard to say i mean Stalin played things close to the chest I mean what Stalin did say and like we've got into both in the last episode um the Spanish war but you know know, in our, in our Second World War series, throughout the 1930s, Stalin was addressing, like, particularly cadres and general officers in the Red Army, and kind of, like, feeling them out,

you know, as a group, you know, to see, like, really, if they were, like, battle-ready, you know, in a general war against Germany. I mean, Germany's always, like, Russia's probable opponent, but, you know what I mean, like, in more concrete terms. But then it was after about, It was about 1937, 98, that, like, suddenly Stenland starts talking about, like, look, like, you know, our doctrine, our political doctrine and our battle doctrine is synonymous. You know, like, we, we never fight defensively. Like, we always fight on foreign soil unless, like, you know, we're affecting, you know, like a fighting retreat because we're essentially threatened. You know, like the, like, you know, like the Bolshevik cause is inextricably linked, you know, to the Russian national ambitions. he started talking like a warlord.

You know, he started talking to, you know, he started issuing these like proclamations from on high, you know, just to the Soviet people, you know, about all like, we've got, you know, we can withstand any hardship. And, you know, we, we can never like lose, we lose our faith in the communist clout, like how grim things are for us moving forward. It's like, what was he talking about?

He's not, he's not talking about like breadlines getting longer. He was not talking about it being really cold next winter. You know, he's, it's obvious what he's talking about. And it, um, and Garing, um, it was 37, I think when Garing, um, as a, you know, he went with, like, the Lufa, like, military liaison, you know, to these, to these, to these, to these aircraft factory in the year olds. And, like, the single aircraft factory had, like, quadruple the capacity of, like, all German aircraft factories combined.

Like, I mean, you don't, you don't, you don't build some. like that like unless they're mobilizing for war you know i mean it's it so i mean taken together it um i know historians including bivore they'll always say like well of course the soviet you know the soviets they they try to cast the war they can try to guess warfare generally as like a school yard fight like oh well you know the germans struck first it's like i mean it's like saying that like that like that's like calling somebody who moves first and chess the aggressor okay like it doesn't the soviets there's no such thing if you've got it If you got five million men under arms and you're building military aircraft by the hundreds,

like there's not a defensive purpose for those. I mean, the decision is mean defensive and offense in war doesn't make sense anyway, but all that matters in strategic planning is capabilities. And what Stalin was doing was he was amassing the mightiest military force the world has ever seen. And then made the point, once the stories develop the bomb, even after the devastation of World War II, I believe Stalin was a single most powerful man who's ever lived.

Okay. People can't conceptualize that these days, I don't think. Okay. But that's what I think, that's what I think, that's what I understand it was. But it's also, you know, it bears noticing, too, that there was, obviously, you know, like during the Munich Soviet and during, like, the Weimar years, I know that, like, Tarrots. forces had gotten spanked in Poland. And obviously the Soviets were, like, arming those cadres, like, cause,

you know, havoc in Germany. But it's not, you know, the NKVD wasn't deploying to Munich, you know, like, I mean, it wasn't, like, the Soviets were, regardless of the fact that, you know, again, Soviet control is invoked as an alibi by apologists for communist violence in Spain. Regardless of that, and regardless of the degree of culpulatory.

ability in relative or absolute terms between the Red Spaniards and between the Soviet cadres. The Soviet Union had an actual NKVD branch there. They had beyond like nominal like political representation just to be like relaying to Moscow what the battlefield situation was. You know, like this, this was not normal for the Soviet Union. And I realize the Soviet Union was an abnormal state. But in terms of its power projection, tendencies and strategy, this was an outlier in terms of how. how it usually behaved. So, you know, again, I think like a lawyer, in terms of the evidence I favor and in terms

of the way I calculate intention, ridiculously in war and peace terms, but motive means and opportunity tends to be how you convince the trier effect of scienter. The courtroom is not bound by formal logic. anything, but we're talking about human affairs, there is something to that. You know, whether you're talking about individual men or at scale, and again, I, I, I, I don't think this can be denied. And even, even where, uh, there can speak to his absence of some of this, um, some of this data, evidentiary data, again, the, the Soviets couldn't afford to not fight in Spain. Ditto for the Third Reich, but even more so for the Soviets.

did sit out World War I. And that interestingly, that that contributed in oblique ways to the political situation in the 30s. Spain was a weird state, man. Like, on the one hand, I mean, Spain had an African empire. You know, they had, they couldn't be said that Spain wasn't like a place of high culture. But they became this, you know, and again, like they literally were like the first truly like national state in Europe, despite their kind of inextricable relationship to the Roman church in political terms. But they were something, they were and are something of an inward-looking people.

You know, they weren't practicing a global politic or even really a European power polity, you know, like they, um, there became an unprecedented demand for Spanish goods during World War I because they were a neutral. But the influx of capital, like, caused all kinds of problems with what they're already, you know, kind of troubled currencies. It swelled the cities, which, I mean, as the cities were, were, you know, they were the repository of red sympathy, but it's not as clear as people think, man.

I mean, there was national districts in Madrid and in Barcelona. And there was also, I mean, there was, there was people, there was guys, there was Catalans, secessionists. We're just like, catching their wagon to the communists because, like, they thought that, hey, if we fight and like issue this as our demand, you know, to like the cadres, they'll have to give it to us. I mean, it was, it was kind of a colligated bastiche.

But another thing guys like B-Borm has understand, he makes the point that he's like, well, you know, why why Spain gets so behind the head like church and get so outraged that the mass court clergy, only 20% of people went to church? It's like, you can't adjudicate like the kind of conceptual spirit for like a better word of a country and a culture, like by how many. people are like sitting in pews on Sunday. Like, even the way the communist framed their propaganda was like Catholic.

It was like a perverted iteration of it. I mean, the inquisition didn't end until 1814, 1815. And the Catholic Church was basically the courts up until then. You know, they weren't the executioners, but you know, they were the courts. Yeah. And it's also

even a guy like, even in a guy, only times he'd been in church was like when he was baptized in like his mom's funeral like that guy would like view the world in like catholic terms and he'd look at the church as like you know kind of the instantation of like you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cooper plug-in hybrid range for mentor leon and terramar now with flexible pcp finance and trade boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers.

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Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

Come see for yourself. The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You know, God's authority on earth. You know, like, it's not, there's, I don't know if Biebore's back around, but I bet that a lot of Tories

is like a Church of England type. And he, he doesn't really understand like faith as like a conceptual sort of orientation you probably use americans as like a bunch of rednecks like me who like read the bible all day and are idiots and they use catholics as like well they some of them don't even go to church like not not even not understanding that it's like it's something that's like interstitially bound up with like your entire sense of culture like you know i mean you understand this but it's it didn't matter that uh it didn't it didn't matter that like most that that most people weren't going to church

I mean, it's, but it's also, too, I mean, even if, I mean, even if, you know, the action France say, uh, during their zenith, you know, they kind of, they got, they got kind of edged out by, like, later, like, fascist and nationalist, uh, um, militias in France. But, you know, they, they always made the point that, like, we're, we're like a secular movement, but that doesn't mean you can attack the mother church. You know, I mean, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, They were willing to go to war to, like, protect, you know, the Roman church as, like, the state religion of, like, what they viewed as, like, you know, the ideal, like, French Republic moving forward. You know, like, like, Italy, where a lot of people did go to church, but it'll, like, the kingdom of Italy under Lduce was basically a secular society. You know, it didn't matter that, like, you know, half of Italians were, like, in church every Sunday. You know, I mean, it's, it was totally different than it's, you know, like, I said. said it's it's something of a it's something of a blind spot it said someone political and like deliberate and ideological but it's something part of it too it's like a cultural blind spot interestingly too like it you know it's been redacted from this drug of record

that there's a huge outpouring of uh support for the nationalist cause in ireland and uh the regime there of valera like he had a problem he had to finesse public opinion when I mean, Ireland just like declared outright neutrality on the question. A lot of voters, you know, in the Republic who were basically like liberals, like, why aren't you going to defend the church? What's the matter with you? You know, and the blue shirts, you know, Duffy's blue shirts, between two and three thousand men signed up to go fight on the nationalist side, like all Irishmen.

I mean, Ireland is a tiny country. That's significant. You know, and in America, Catholic media, they gathered up signatures of school kids. You know, like they got something like a million and a half signatures like kids, like progial school kids. You know, saying like Mr. Roosevelt, why we love our sisters and priests? Why are you letting them be murdered by communists? You know, I mean, like, and obviously like New Dealers types are like, you know, that that's, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's exploitative. And that's, that's just, you know, propaganda by, um, by, by, uh, by atrocity story.

But I mean, it's like, well, he's saying this just wasn't happening. I mean, you know, the, the Catholic Church doesn't have its own army. Stalin famously said that, okay? I mean, like, if you, the, the church militant, it has to defend it. You know, I mean, and that's Ed, you know, as well as, like, as other, as well as other, you know, as well as other, you know, as other patriotic elements and Orthodox guys and, and, you know, in German prods who, you know, realized what the stakes were. But it's also, during the great, well, during World War I, there became a, there became like a deep uh that's when the divisions originally uh kind of became like insurmountable like it wasn't until the 1935 it wasn't until like the night like even the 936 election you actually had candidates for parliament saying you know like we will not accept you know like a nationalist victory at the polls like we will go to war and vice versa but it um the uh people uh military officers uh, uh,

farmers, you know, people, like clergy people, like laymen who are active in the church, they tend to side with the Kaiser Reich, you know, and these kind of, and these guys like urbanite, francophile types, like, tend to decide with, you know, with London and Paris. It's just interesting. And so, I mean, I was making a point that, like, the war in Syria, one of the reasons, I mean, Assad's a hero anyway. I mean, he's just a great man. But it was imperative for people on the right, you know,

to back Syria any way they could. You know, in theater, and as well as people in a position to like send money to, you know, to Syrians defending themselves and the regime from terrorism. You know, like, as that, that, that was not to the same degree and not to the same. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you.

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from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Subject to lending criteria Terms and conditions apply Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th

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Liddle, more to value. It's not impactful in the way the standards work. was but that's you better believe that was a war of zeitgeist and ideology and thank God you thank God um you thank God um you know Assad uh defeated Islamic terrorism

you know that's brought to his brought to his own soil by by America and Israel. I mean that's always the case I mean the you can tell you can tell it's on the right or wrong side of the things by the Ukraine war I mean that's like a more that that's ridiculous example because it's literally just like this

it's literally just kind of like this human trafficking, like Zionist mafia, like, propped up by, you know, these, like, degenerates in Washington, you know, and they're, they're just like, there's like, there's like provoking a conflict against, like, all strategic reason. But the point is, like, anybody, you know, you better believe that's an ideological war and that, you know, that's, that, that's, that's, like, the designated battleground for, you know, the, uh, between, uh, the opposing camps that constitute, you know, both sides of the, of the zeitgeist, president. Um, I would have been far afield today on um on um on um and what i wanted to talk about uh i hope that was okay with people um i got i got i got i got chaff

track with the uh with the question about um the gold and oh no no no no that's an input that's a fascinating uh that's like something like frederic foresight or like john la curry would have written about it's like a fascinating little uh little um a side note um what i want to get into to a, I'd like to get a little bit deeper and like theory, I mean, I know it's like my wheelhouse and I don't want to subject people to it. I think it's boring, but I want to get a little bit into like Demitre next time and like how

like the counter-reformation like impacted political thought, which ultimately made the kind of like the Nationalist Coalition possible, but we'll get into like the actual onset of hostilities like in the next episode

and we'll we'll devote just a little background time to what I just referenced, but then kind of get into like the military situation and how it develops. If that's okay by you, which is your show, that's not the time of my show. That sounds great to me. Yeah, de Maestro, I'm getting ready to actually go over some of his writings on the Inquisition on my show. So, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about, like, specifically. But it's, I mean, he, he's a very, like, heterodox, like, Catholic thinker in some ways.

but in terms of how Catholicism like in foreign politics, especially, you know, from really you know, like 1812, 1813, like onward, like it, they can't really be overstated. I mean, you know that because you're a

learning guy, but this was great, man. And again, I really, really appreciate you giving me the platform. All right. We'll do what we do every time. Get plugs. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm still on Twitter. Who knows for how long. I shut down my telegram channel for my mind beings.

It's just becoming like a huge hassle. I know that made everybody upset. I will launch another one, but I got to get things in order for some of my other projects. I've got to catch up on these long-form manuscripts that I had to neglect because I've been, you know, I mean, I've been busy with them stuff. It wasn't just that I was neglecting things. But the, um, I am in fact shooting.

channel footage. It's an involved process. Actual, like, long episodes are probably only going to come out, like, bi-monthly. But I'm going to start shooting, like, two and three-minute videos, like, and we'll drop those weekly, okay? But there's a lot that goes into it. I'm not saying that to play martyr. I'm saying that to people don't think I'm being, like, slack. And season two, a mind phaser. I'm recording the next episode with my dear friend Giles tomorrow night. That's going to be the last episode of season one.

And season two with the pod is going to change substantially. But I believe everybody will approve of the ways in which it's changing. Like we're not, we're going to stick to the same as a topic. So there's other things I want to emphasize. I mean, you'll see. Okay. And I'll give it a write-up on my substack. so to kind of hit people to what I'm thinking.

But yeah, and you can find me on Substack at RealThomas-777.7.com. And that's all I got for now. Thomas, until the next time. Thank you so much. Yeah, man. Likewise. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinez Show. I'm here with Thomas 777 again, part three, Spanish Civil War. How are you doing? John. I'm very well, man. Thanks again for making this happen. I'm thinking a lot about

the revolution in military affairs and what people trace its origins to. That's not just a discrete question of interest to military science types or, you know, like war college types who, you know, study this kind of thing for its own sake, not just to understand things for the sake of posterity but to also gain future conflicts but it relates in peculiar ways to the conditions

that you know in the decisions of an almost purely political nature like the true revolution in military affairs was something that occurred on the command and control side owing to the

only to the information age and the advent of it, I believe what its origins lie in Blitzkrieg or what some people commonly understand is Blitzkrieg and how that doctrine came to develop. The best explanation of what the controversy is, there's Basil Liddell Hart, who I think is something of a problematic historian. but he does flesh out what the kind of the key variables are in in um you know material to the question um john meersheimer i find him more accessible meershammer is highly theoretical but he's less deliberately esoteric than somebody like heart and he presents these things uh ironically because i think one of the mirror chamber's blind spots is other political conditions which underlie

at all times and what what the interplay is i mean he's very much a claus of witsy and he's also very much you know a quantitative thinker i mean i i got like tremendous respect for him um but i part ways with him in basic terms um in his understanding of the interplay of political and military affairs but his book conventional deterrence okay it made It was highly impactful during the late Cold War. People were asking me for sources and things. All right. The journal of the atomic scientists,

you can find most of that the archives for free if you dig deep, okay, online. Now it's become kind of this like, like, you know, pointless kind of peacnic, environmentalist kind of journal that no one takes, seriously but it had real relevance uh you know from the isaner era until you know november 91989 frankly and the final phase of the cold war they started running a lot of informed pieces by people like meersheimer about the reemer of the re-emergence of of conventional forces as you know a a key variable

you know, owing not just to to emerge in deeper parodies, but, you know, it's just like a more, you know, the, the, the, the information revolution, it led to just more complete understanding of, you know, the interplay of conventional and nuclear forces in, in, in a few, in a then future conflict with, you know, then extant platforms. But this piece that I'm referencing in Journal of the Tomic Scientists, it's basically a condensed version of Miros' book, Conventional Deterrence, which was published in 1982, 83. And obviously, the article, it talks to from, you know, then current, like from the headlines, issues relating to the Able Archer era and stuff. and the Pershing 2 deployment and the Minuteman system and things. But the book Conventional deterrence remains relevant because it's about the best statement of the controversy, the historians debate on the question of Blitzkrieg. Basically, it boils down to this.

You know, was Blitzkrieg, this revolutionary doctrine that was conceptualized in purely theoretical terms? before the Battle of France specifically, you know, whereby people like Heinzgerian and people like Werner von der Pritch were understood that masked armor was going to supplant conventional infantry, you know, as the as the Scherplan. of a of on a ground assault operations or was blitzkrieg this kind of a you know technique that developed only to the unique exigencies of the modern battlefield conditions and you know as uh as the as the as the as the french collapse and as the mainline resistance you know kind of rapidly just evaporated um at points where massed armor was employed to great effect.

You know, was that just basically like, you know, German battlefield commanders who were strongly oriented towards what's called mission oriented tactics anyway and had an inherent, you know, kind of tendency towards experimentation and flexibility. You know, they just adopted these things like in theater. And then, you know, very organically, a combined arms doctrine developed, you know, like, owing to trial and error under the critical conditions of combat. Or, you know, was it again, like just a theoretical coup, you know, owing to kind of the latent brilliance of the German general staff? And of course, people favor the latter. That's really, I mean, that sounds on his face. It might not be particularly credible in like general terms, but the, you know, the Germans, the Prussian army, and especially if you view the Vermeck, does the direct legacy of the Prussian army, which I do. And I don't know it can be disputed.

They invented the staff structure, okay? The United States, the UK, France, Japan, everybody imitated the Prussian staff structure where, you know, you have a permanent general staff that constantly studies and games work. warfare and they also pioneered war gaming as we know it okay you know like discrete scenario building with coded variables to you know tailored to mimic likely battlefield conditions and things um so in the german case it's a more credible postulate than it would be you know as applied to other um as applied to other military cultures in a speculative capacity. If you accept that Blitz-Crieg was a discrete doctrine that emerged, you know, from theoretical quarters of the Vermont, you also basically, like, a concomitant, like, claim they're in is that, well, like, Hitler sabotaged this by micromanagement, or Hitler was basically, like, you know, a seed.

oriented commander um you know he was uh basically cautious um in critical capacities you know um and uh i basically agree with that but not for the reasons most people do um if you look the way hitler behaved in a warlord role um he wasn't this crazy reckless gambler like a lot of court historians or hollywood like make it out you know quite the kind of contrary, he was basically like a conservative German siege commander, you know, and when objectives were reached, you know, he, he was obsessed with protecting flanks and, you know, constituting forces such that they could defend in depth, you know, if necessary. But in any event, one of the reasons why I think that the whole controversy is kind of a fool's errand, is because, German armored doctrine, its testing ground was the Spanish Civil War. Okay.

And von Toma, who, as we'll get into, he's an underappreciated German commander. More so than some of the other general officers, which revisionists, you know, have kind of discovered weren't higher praise and they were afforded. Other for political reasons, just because they were, like, overlooked in favor these more kind of dashing characters. like Ramel or like Darien or like Van Manch thing. I put a I put von Toma I consider him the same class as a Rick Toffin as Fernand Schorner who was the last German field marshal um ever. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Terra Marr, now with flexible PCP

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But he was a technical, genius, I believe. And it's another reason I like that book by Hoffman. Staling's War of Extermination. It's not just because it's a great scholarship, but he makes that point in some of his other stuff, too, that Ferdinand Scharner was a great battlefield commander. But in any event, armor was dispositive in the Spanish Civil War. And the Nationalists, you know, the Franco's forces, I mean, if you want to think of them as nationalist, fascists, you know, the, like we talked about it was a constellation of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of just fascists who had general sympathy for, you know, the, for the church and for the, you know, and for the, for the traditional regime, um, political and social. But they, like, however you want to describe on it was, it was this kind of confederation.

of different forces, with sometimes competing loyalties. And, you know, like we talked about, before the Luftwaffe came to their aid, you know, not just to literally transport the forces and being they had across the Mediterranean Sea to the battle space. But, you know, they were, they were in darker straits.

And one of the reasons why they were just outgunned was because the enemy had T-26 tanks provided by the Soviet Union. And those tanks were obsolete by the advent of World War II, but they were in some ways, perfectly suited to the combat on the Spanish battlefield. And one of the reasons I emphasize von Toma, it's not just because I've got sort of like a nerds interest in, in the ground element of condor leading, I think is cool. But out of all the men that, you know, Hitler and, you know, the, the OKW could have deployed, you know, to command that element that chose Van Tome.

You know, who was this guy who was a student of Vansik, who was an incredibly progressive commander in terms of his understanding of combined arms. And just an all-around, like really well-rounded guy. You know, they didn't just drop, you know, like some, you know, some, some, some tried and tested, you know, Prussian infantry commander, you know, and that's remarkable. Vantoma also, like, he was, he was knighted owing to, you know, World War I. And, I mean, he was, he was, he was granted the title for heroism, you know, like he wasn't born an aristocrats. I mean, this was a guy who really, really had his shit together in command roles, you know. but he um he uh you one second he fought on basically he literally not basically he fought on every front of the first world war too which is rare he fought he joined the bavarian army and outside of hostilities uh he fought on the western front intermittently finally he fought the battle the marne and was captured by american and french forces and became a poohw for the you know for the final two months of the war but you know he'd fought on the eastern front extensively, and most men had not, with some exceptions,

you know, spent like basically equal time, like in the east and in the west. You know, like he fought in Romania. He fought throughout the Serbian campaign, you know, very well-rounded guy. He was awarded the Order of Max Joseph by the Bavarian army, which was like the, you know, was the equivalent of the Blue Max, basically. you know, but it it was a corner of the Knights Cross and that's why he, that's why he got

you know, the, the, the honorific in his name. But he, Von Broushich, who is kind of an under-examined commander. I mean, everybody, the falling out between him and Hitler,

you know, in the wake of the Vermeck being a hauled, army group, being halted in Moscow. It's kind of what he's most known for as well as there's some strange intrigues. He seems to have been involved in, you know, relating to the July 20th plot. But other than that, he's kind of treated as a footnote, you know, because for the remainder

of the war, like, you know, he'd been, he'd been cashiered out, you know, owing to him, the fear's loss of confidence in him. But he was a far more dynamic character in, at least in the terms of, you know, his profession and how he pursued it, then people often acknowledge. So he was, you know, he would, he basically, Van Brouss had, had, you know, cultivated Vantoma's talents by, by, you know, asking of him, they'd become an expert in armored warfare, which I assume Vantoma had, had been kind of pursuing his own course of learning in that capacity anyway. I mean, just like going to, his battlefield record and everything else.

He ended up commanding a, he ended up commanding 17th Panzer, um, later on in Operation Barbarossa. Um, he fought at the battle of Moscow. Then he was trained, he received the,

the Knights Cross, the Iron Cross. Subsequently, he was transferred to North Africa. And he was captured at the, in the aftermath, the second battle of el-alemine and um that's why like uh hearts like uh in the german generals talk and like all the hearts like uh you know kind of books on on vermoch leadership like von tomah like features looms large because like he was he was frankly in the custody of of the british army

for years you know and he he developed something of a rapport with these guys you know i mean it which is interesting. So, I mean, some people would say, like, well, you know, that gives him kind of an outsized presence in the historical record. I don't really think so. I mean, there's plenty of, especially after the cessation of hostilities. I mean, after the day of defeat, there was plenty of surviving general officers who, you know, could have been debriefed all day. And they would have been happy to have bad beat their lot. in lieu of the gallows or, you know, being unceremoniously, you know, it's kind of like cast out

as unpersons. Plus, to, the British, whatever we can say about them, they, I mean, they're not a bunch of jokers when it comes to the capacity to evaluate military talent at command level. I think anybody would acknowledge that, regardless of their feelings. about old blighty otherwise. But Fontoma ended up in Spain in October 36. The first shipment of German tanks was 41 Panzer Kampwagon type 1. Panzer 1 tanks.

And like the T26 tanks that they were deployed to combat, They were obsolete by, you know, 93, 940. But again, for the Spanish battlefield, they were perfectly suited. And also, the Germans, as the Panzer 2 had already been developed, the Panzer, one, was being used largely as a training tank, like, by the Vermacht. because it, I mean, for various reasons, and including it was, it was just a simpler machine, you know,

and it was, you got to understand, too, like most men at this time, like, never even, like, driven a car, you know, so it's, I, even today, I mean, with all the advantages somebody would have, and, you know, learning how to fight in armor and, you know, like a contemporary tank, I mean, imagine, imagine a guy who's never even been in, like,

an automobile, you know, like it's, um, and plus fighting an armor is scary. It's claustophobic. You're inhaling diesel fumes. It's loud as hell. Like in those days, your visibility's compromised. Like if you get hit, you're probably going to burn to death or, you know, get your face ripped apart by shrapnel. I mean, it's, um, it's no joke, you know. Um, so training in armor is not just like teaching somebody to fire a gun or or to drive or to drive a shot. shet i mean i that should go without saying but i maybe it's because i mean maybe it's because like i i i don't like i'm i'm claustrophobic in a real way and my room 101 horror is being burned alive but i i i've always i've always i've always thought it would be uniquely uh scary to fight in a

tank and i don't generally have a fear of higher risk situations but the total uh the total uh the total number of panzer ones to reach Spain was 72 as regards forces in being by the end of I still between 936 to 39 a total of 122 were deployed you know including like

replacements and everything else you know like owing to going to attrition and owing to you know just a mechanical failure and things but ready for huge savings will mark your calendars from November 28th because the Liddle Newbridge warehouse sale is back

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Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. And like we mentioned that the nationalists were outgunned by the Soviet T-26, which were fitted with a 45-millimeter main gun, which was heavy, heavy firepower for the era. The Panzer 1, its armament was two M-13 light machine guns. It was a truly light tank. Like in fact, like by today's metric, or even by the metric, you know, of, of, you know, by the, by the metric of, you know, by the, by the mid-40s, it'd be a light, it'd be a light armored vehicle. It wouldn't even be considered a tank, you know, and owing to these, only to this disparity of, of arms and, you know, firepower, rather, like Spanish officers started agitating for the, for the platform to be retrofitted with a breeder 20 millimeter main gun. You know, that's home. strongly oppose this you know he said you're going to compromise the integrity of the hull uh you're

going to literally have to drill holes that expose the gunner um you know to being targeted at visual range you know it's it's it's it's it's it's a fool's errand you know and it was um and that's important you know i mean it's not the spanish were thinking about this you know like You know, like, like, like, like a, like an infantry commander would. You know, like we, we just need to match firepower. You know, it's, Lantoma understood. Yeah, I mean, a lot of what goes into, a lot of what goes into combined arms warfare. I mean, always then and now.

But also specifically, I mean, yeah, the German general staff is oriented towards, you know, warfare is the advanced. of fire, but it's not, you know, packing as much firepower onto a platform, I mean, for its own sake, you know, because you're, you know, it's some kind of, it's some kind of caliber race with the enemies, misguided, but it's understandable why they would think that way. But interestingly, what ultimately was agreed upon was, uh, von Toma, discovered um and this was abided because he pretty rapidly won the confidence of the spaniards we'll get into the interesting like paradigm and kind of interplay the sociology of it in a minute but uh what was most effective was uh they have one tank per section

uh for per company size like a tank section would be you know about 15 10 to 15 panzers Like one for every, one, one retrofitted 30 millimeter gun or 20 millimeter main gun for every 15, 10 to 15 panzers was what made it most effective because, you know, they could, you want to, you wouldn't sacrifice, you know, the, your defensive armor. You know, but you could bring the firepower to bear that was required, you know, in, in, in, in, in killing enemy tanks or, you know, assaulting hardened targets. But what was also revolutionary was Comptopht Group Toma as it came to be. It was reinforced by the three tank companies were reinforced by an anti-tank section. You know, because they have eight anti-tank guns. The early models, which again, this was another, this platform popped up in the Second World War some, but it was basically, you know, obsolescent because they didn't have the power to kill, you know, the main battle tanks.

the T-34 is the Ponzer Obdorconin. And one of the things people today, unless they're kind of students of World War II or like prior service type guys, the advent of a main battle tank, you know, which is, you know, which can function, you know, somewhat like an assault gun. It has the power to kill enemy tanks, you know,

like going to its penetration capabilities and things. you know like having that in on one platform like that's that that's a post rule or two innovation i mean it started coming about during the second world war but you know um your tanks your assault guns your dedicated you know anti-tank platforms they these were like discreet um discreetly purposed um set pieces um which is interesting but um Latoma was deployed as an Obrst Leitnott which is a lieutenant

lieutenant colonel approximately Franco appointed him quote tank tank inspector which seems on its face largely symbolic of a title especially when you consider that there wasn't a dedicated tank element you know armament in the Spanish army because there wasn't

in any army really except you know France and Germany and in both cases it was nascent and Italy too but um this he Vantoma enjoyed tremendous authority um and there's a lot of surviving correspondence in the form of telegrams um between Vantoma Franco's staff Franco himself um one of uh the primary liaisons between um between von Toma and the Spanish High Command was a German guy who'd come up through the ab there, but he joined up with a phalanjist outfit, and he was fighting in Spain against the communist before, you know, the Reich even deployed forces. And he ended up working as von Tomas interpreter.

It's hard to find out a lot about him, but he's a fascinating character. if I can find out more about him. Adolf Klaus was his name. I'll include it. But he became Vantoma's official interpreter. And despite the inherent tensions, frankly,

there was something of a classic culture as extent. Not just because Vantoma was kind of a consummate, like Teutonic officer, like very uncompromising, very rigid, you know, very much a taskmaster. The Spanish army was tough. Like, nobody would say that it was not.

And, I mean, frankly, they would not have undertaken this crusade against the communists, facing the kinds of odds that were extant. Like, were they not very game, tough men? But they were all fucked up. Their army was not at all professionalized. You know, you still had a lot of aristocrats in the officer ranks who felt entitled to things. You know, it was rife with corruption. you know there was all kinds of favoritism you know that had nothing to do with the

with actual battlefield performance and suitability for command there's vestigial trappings like coda had algo and von tomma issued a scathing report when he'd only been in country a couple of months among other things he came to notice that although there was many volunteers like for the tank branch. A bunch of other men that simply been ordered there by Spanish commanders who wanted to get rid of them. You know, so I will send this guy's a troublemaker or like, I don't like

him or like maybe I want to even screw his wife or something. I know I'll send him to send him to the Kondo religion. And Von Toma pulled no punches and he he threatened to leave. He threatened to in his words

you know, just just like resign command and leave. um and um he was able to convince franco or more properly i mean i mean franco was uh franco new outside his bread was buttered on he recognized he needed the germans and he needed vontoma but the whoever in in the high command were you know his primary points of contact he was able to finesse them to um you know that look like whoever the menu sent me they've got to be the concept of the Panzer group they've got to be comfortable with a variety of functions and roles of a type that you are not habituated do and probably are probably are our occupational

um functions of first impression um you know like i said they had to be psychologically tough and fortified to deal with the inherent difficulties of fighting in armor um they uh he said that just in in raw like staff needs um or personnel needs you know that's almost said there there had to be at least 50 uh volunteered troops posted at all times to the tank school you know the tank training around that monta was overseeing 25 dedicated gunner trainees 25 dedicated drivers you know being uh you know after uh after their initial training subjected they they should then undertake a four-week course, combat training course,

upon completion of which they could be immediately posted at a front as needed as replacements. To be a constant rotation of a tank crews, you know, who are highly trained in every function of armored warfare, you know, they deploy together. you know, they were habituated and they'd be accompanied by their officers or NCOs, you know, that had overseen them during the training cycle. And Vantoma insisted upon this, too, just as a general postulate that was to become doctrine. Squad COs, who would be NCOs in the Spanish Army, I believe, you know, like senior NCOs and company commanders, who would be officers.

they they they had to always be present with their squad and company actively leading the men from the front um this was not this could you know this was not negotiable um and he concluded this report by stating openly that if the tank section um cannot make up for the casualties that you know they're going to suffer with troops and commanders and NCOs who are both tactically and technically proficient that we're going to lose the war. There's no two ways about it. This war is going to be won or lost

with the ground element and it's going to be won by proper deployment of armor. Okay. And now I hope it's coming into focus why I subjected the listeners to that extended introduction about the Revolution and Military Affairs

and Mearsheimer's postulates they're in and what can be thought of as the Blitz Creek controversy okay because what I am positing is in rebuttal to both of those perspectives as I'm sure people are discerned. I'm not any kind of military expert at all, okay, but I do know something about history and I do know something about, you know, the Vermont, all right? And I think I know something about military science.

As much as, you know, like a layman who's not like a game theorist or like a prior service officer type can. You know, people are welcome to take me to task for this. And I mean, you know, I make myself available anybody who wants to debate these things that I propose. But, you know, like I said, I'm relying upon the direct testimony of the participants to these events. And, you know, the, and relying upon, you know, the conditions leading to the outcome. of um this engagement you know it's i don't think it can be said that i'm speculating lontoma also and again um this is something that people generally only discussed when the context of the battle of france um i realized the first open-ended deployment of uh the vermic

was in poland but poland didn't have a meaningful uh you know tank uh section So we're talking about, you know, modern combined arms between, you know, forces where there's like a general parity, you know, technological as well as numerical. Our analysis begins in 1940. The Ventoma directed that tank companies could not operate in isolation from one another. They had to utilize massed firepower and advance of fire. In addition, the transport company and the supporting mobile workshop and maintenance company, you know, they had to be maintained at optimal capabilities and deployed to the front at all times in support of the assault element.

You know, regardless of the drain that this is, going to, you know, place on, on the regular infantry and on, you know, the Corps of Engineers and anybody else. You know, this is your, this is your assault element. This is the spherpunt of your assault element. You know, it has to take absolute priority. And that, yeah, okay, we take that for granted today. But again, this is, this is 1936 in Spain. Okay, armored combat armored warfare, as we know, it doesn't exist yet, you know, and this is four. years this is three three years and some months before the Battle of France okay so this is remarkably significant um I spoke a moment ago about there's a lot said especially because you know

relations were not always particularly amiable you know between um the the Germans and their latin allies whether we're talking about you know the Italians or the Spaniards um a lot of people insinuate that there was a kind of like ugly racial prejudice that were up there. I think that's overstated. What came to be known, perhaps kind of, you know, I mean, what can be known is the Tamari affair, which seems to overstate the significance of it, you know, by characterizing it as if with some sort of scandal. On December 31st, 1938, von Toma sent an urgent telegram to, to infantry colonel Ricardo Fernandez de Tamarit.

He was the primary liaison with Franco's high command, or the equivalent of a general staff, okay, in some basic capacity. And this was going into the final phase of the war. Vantoma demanded, in no uncertain terms, to be informed beforehand of any change of an operational or logistical nature. or any personnel related matter or policy.

And this had to all these things had to be subject to his veto or approval. You know, and he reiterated, you know, I was appointed by Franco, his tank inspector, you know, and is, is, is, my demand is not immediately obeyed. I will withdraw my contribution in his words. So again, this is him threatening and throw his hands up and resign. You can read that as him being a prima don't, uh, I think he was entirely serious. I don't think that can be disputed. And again, you're looking at this army, which, you know, in the Spaniards, which, again, has some very, core of very game, tough men, but is unbelievably almost comically corrupt, you know,

and it's only kind of held together at the level of a general law officers by people like Tom Areech, who were, you know, and later Serrano sooner, who we'll get into, it was a great man. But, you know, cracking the whip on these people was what was essential, you know. It doesn't owe to some kind of like Teutonic racism against, you know, Latin's or something, which that kind of interpretation has become increasingly common. I've noticed, you know, even in like military history, which is supposed to be just kind of like hard and fast accounts of the facts, you know, and the quantified. fiable side of things. I think that's bullshit. You know, I mean, that's why I, but it's also, there's what came of, of the Tamarit memo is, or telegram, Vantoma got whatever he wanted. He got everything he wanted, you know, and he basically became the de facto, you know, commander of armored forces for

nationalist Spain, you know, and that's, that goes to sort of the degree to which the Vermac was the key to you know, nationalist victory in the war. It wasn't, you know, the Lufvah made a tremendous contribution. And like we discussed, you know, in the previous two episodes, Earhart Milch was a,

was a military genius and an incredible commander. And one of the greatest air commanders of all time. I take nothing away from that. But it was, you know, wars are won, you know, by the ground element. okay they are and um this was essential to that effort and um we're not just talking about you know um without von tomo like there is no there is no there is no spanish armored element you know you're throwing

you're throwing spanish infantry at these t26 tanks they're being cut to pieces you know um is the fact not only that he was able to constitute you know um an armored front forest or before there had been nothing. But he managed to do this really with a handful of Panzer 1s, armed with a couple of light machine guns and not particularly durable armor. And he was able to convince a much of proud Spaniards to basically hand him like absolute authority over the

over the entire enterprise. That's nothing sort of remarkable. I don't think it could be contested. But there's a subsequent and particularly in like the final months of the war in 1939 they developed this kind of like genuinely amicable cordiality

at least as far as you can discern through the language barrier and through the you know brevity of these written communicates and telegrams between von Toma and Temerite but the

the rest of these Spanish officers too who initially had uh you know been not out and out hostile because they realized a severity situation and that they needed the they needed the Germans but you know they certainly um spaniards are a proud people um if nothing else and i it was a better pill for them to swallow to seed control to a very strong to a very We're a Bermachto officer in that way, although there's no shame in that. You know, that Bermacht was the best, and they're the greatest of all time.

By the end of the war, ultimately Spanish tankers, they were undergoing a 60-day course, basic course for all personnel. you know those those who were trained to be drivers as well as those trained to be gunners it was 30 days of theoretical training 30 days of practice duration and then intensive combat training

and then deployment to the front as needed so there's a constant you know like as discussed a moment ago There was a constant flow of replacements, you know, who had at least cohesion within the squad of a kind that only comes from, you know, living and fighting together, ordinarily, because they'd gone to the training cycle. And a lot of these men were combat veterans, too, just not of, you know, obviously not of fighting an armor. You know, some were, some had no prior experience, but they were the minority.

But the, what's fascinating, too, is that the, uh, the anti-tank element that Montemansisted upon, that particular assault gun, it was a 3.7 centimeter assault gun. It was manufactured by Ryan Metal Borsig. Um, and it rapidly became ubiquitous. Like that itself, that, like that, make and model itself, as well as reverse engineered knockoffs. um in the in this in the red army in the in the u s army the japanese imitated it um uh the the the the the the the the the the the viremock faced them in the in the benlux countries when they went through holland um the italians deployed it you know as late as uh as late as um 43 like around the salernal

landings so again like even even though these uh pretty much every um pretty much every weapons platform we described again it was like obsolescent but they had been a world war two but these were perfectly suited to the spanish um battle space and it was uh it was the experience of these platforms there you know in heavy combat over years that led to the development of you know successor um technologies and i find that fascinating and um you know that's why Like I said, there's plenty of historians who posit that the Second World War truly started in Spain. From a historicist, got a Hegelian perspective. I've got more than a little bit of sympathy for that perspective.

But it's also military objectives were oddly bound up with policy. objectives in the 20th century in a way that was not conceivable before or since. And it wasn't just that, you know, the German Reich and Hitler himself had a concept of Laban's Rome and racial posterity and the need to develop Europe up into a superpower because the age of the superpower had arrived. That was part of it. but it owed also everybody from Werner Sombart to George Sorrell to Ernst Younger made the point you know sometimes obliquely sometimes very directly

that just the nature of labor and production and techniques in the first half of the 20th century just lent itself to warfare and organized violence at scale just became something like potentialities therein like led to it being a tactic of first recourse you know whether you're talking about the internal

situation of states or whether you're talking about you know resolving iridentist claims as were always you know an ongoing um issue in a European cabinet politics

you know there's not i made the point again and again um it's fascinating that the german contribution to the enlightenment and kind of their only full embrace of rationalism was in military science through klausowitz but war is not just diplomacy by their means or politics by their means there's always a political aspect of warfare but going to war it doesn't solve political problems you know in fact it almost never does um the 20th century in a rare capacity um there was a perfect congruence between a military power and the ability to realize high political objectives and that is kind of the moral of the story here if there is one i realize that this was a very heavy

kind of technical discussion, but it's important to understanding the German contribution to the war. And I wanted to, this was my dedicated Condor Legion episode. We'll get into the flange and we'll get into the ideology of the Spanish nationalist and we'll get into kind of the development of the situation there in the next episode. But I wanted to get this out of the way. Plus, I hope people find it interesting because I, I mean, admittedly, one of my primary research areas of the Third Reich. But even were that not the case,

this positive variable in the Spanish Civil War was the intervention of Condole Legion or bicondrial Legion. So I think it's just material on its own terms. Today has been a long day. Give plugs and we'll get out of here. Yeah, man. You can find me always on Substack at Real Thomas 777. 7.substack.com.

In a couple weeks, I'm launching season two of the Mindphaser podcast. And when I do, all the season one episodes will be available for free. A lot of things are going to change in my content brand. I think everybody will find that

to be a positive change. I've got a lot going on. I'm still on Twitter, but I am trying to disengage from there a bit, as I've said. I know I said about a week ago I was going to drop a statement on my substack about moving forward, like how things are going to work relating to, you know, I'm going to make a lot more stuff free, but also, like I said, there's some projects I kind of want to plug that I had to put on the back burner,

like, going to, frankly, like, ill health and stuff, but that's back on track. I'll explicate that on my substack by this weekend. I'm not going to take up Pete's time on his show to do that. But thanks again for the invitation today and always, man. I hope everybody found this to be constructive and stimulating. Well, and I just want to encourage people to go to Thomas's substack and subscribe. I mean, I went there, read one free article and subscribed and immediately started promoting Thomas's work on Twitter. And then Thomas was nice enough to come on the show.

and what is this 40 episodes later? No, yeah, that's a fantastic endorsement, man. I mean, not just because you're a serious guy and you're my friend. But, no, I really, really appreciate you giving me a platform, man. Otherwise, I would not have nearly the audience that I have. And plus, I mean, like I said, I think I hope people will get something else. And I think they do. His feedback has been, you know, formally positive.

I mean, I'm not always the case with things I do. Yeah, I can't thank you enough as well as the people who tune in and, you know, remain engaged. That's just great. I appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingiazza show, part four of the Spanish Civil War series. I'm going to turn it over to Thomas 777 and just let him go. Let me just ask, how you doing, Thomas?

I'm very well. Thanks. What do I want to talk about? today it might seem as I'm jumping around a lot on the topic and forgive me for that but there's some things that I sort of want to tie in not just to our earlier series revisionist series that we've done but also people have been asking questions that I want to kind of address now um you know one of which is two things people ask me why I'm so critical of Franco because

Franco is somewhat revered and part of that owes to frankly kind of a lingering kind of a lingering Cold War hangover, you know, especially after Spain sort of normalized and, you know, not, it was brought into the to the EC, at least in

a rudimentary way. I mean, shit back then it was the European, it was the ECSC, the coal and steel community, you know, by Eisenhower. And it wasn't until much later that Spain was assimilated into NATO. But the Franco regime is always it's

I mean even before officially assimilated and formally assimilated to NATO there was a lot of you know during command post exercises and stuff you know like Spain would you know be included in a basic way there was Spain was kind of viewed as you know the good guy like quasi-fascist regime during the Cold War

and I think that a lot of scholarship like otherwise pretty based and pretty correct you know, right-wing scholarship, you know, that was written in like the 70s and in the 80s. You know, I think people internalize that. And also, you know, their kind of view of Franco is of, you know, the flange movement and, you know, the heroics of the war and, you know, condoledion and all of that. You know, they don't realize kind of how perforatist and Machiavelli and Franco was. And I think that could be justified of what Franco had accomplished

with some sort of enduring political culture, you know, that that served, you know, the Spanish as a people, you know, and as a race, you know, in historical terms and things. But that's not at all what he accomplished. I mean, Franco, at the end of the day, accomplished nothing. I'd say that he was a detriment, you know,

over the long term. But, you know, so people ask, I want to get into a little bit, like, what exactly, you know, Franco's sensibilities were on political matters, you know, particularly at the most critical junctures,

you know, which, and the most critical, obviously, would be the the warriors, the Second World War, I mean, not the Spanish War. But also people ask me, like, what exactly was the nature of the relationship, you know, between Madrid and

Berlin and the rest of the Axis Alliance? And, you know, I've made the point that, Serrano Suner was a great man and he was very, you know, he was very, very pro-axis. You know, he wanted to formally join the Axis Alliance and we'll get into who Sunner was in a minute. So I kind of want to get into that today. And then we'll pivot in the next episode and talk about, you know, what the Philanage movement was proper and, you know, kind of pick up as a follow-up, you know, to the

Condor Legion episode. just did but for now um for the day that's that's what i want to cover and and plus it's like on my mind i was researching this a bunch like going to some other stuff i'm writing so i mean it's convenient too there's only so much time in the day and while it's like fresh in my mind that's kind of what i wanted to get into um david irving who i i mean it goes out saying i've got huge esteem for him irving lived in spain and one of his one of the one of his wives was a spanish woman. I think his first wife was a Spanish woman.

And he famously said life in, quote, life in Spain during the Franco years was very cheap, very simple, and very unthreatening. There was little criminality, no drugs, and no street muggings. The roads were primitive. The life was quiet and the sunshine

made up for everything. I mean, that was kind of, in some ways, that's like a very English, like backhanded compliment. In other ways, it's you know, it's a very on and those suggestion that, you know, Spain was just remained a backwater. You know, I mean, I realized there was a Spanish miracle and, you know, conspiracy-minded types. Like, say, like, oh, that was Opus Day, you know, laundering money through Spain under auspices of economic development.

I don't have any opinion on that. I don't get into interseen Catholic fights. And I'm not at biggest. I don't tear down the Catholic Church, you know, at, you know, at, at every opportunity, like some revisionists do. Quite the contrary. But regardless of anyone's feelings on that, I mean, Spain was not exactly lighting the world on fire, okay?

Like in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, it, it remained kind of in splendid, splendid isolation. I think of it almost as kind of like a right-wing version of like the Tito model. You know, like, obviously, like there wasn't, I mean, that I realize that Spain's, you know, had and has, like, you know, violent separatist movements and it's ethnically diverse. But, you know, obviously, it's nothing like the hostility between, um, between populations, like in the Balkans. But, you know, Tito's whole notion was to keep, you know, just kind of keep things frozen and keep this kind of quarantine, almost like prophylactic armor, like, over, you know, the, the, the nation that constituted Yugoslavia, like contrivance as it may have been as a state, you know, kept the Soviet Union out, it kept America out, it kept everybody out, you know, kept the Germans out, the Bundesphere.

And even, even, um, Germany was very much tethered to the Balkans and not in geostrategic terms. You know, as we talked about before, that's why Helmut Cole immediately recognized Tuchman's independent Croatia. But the point is, uh, except that Frank will accomplish anything. I mean, he basically, yeah, he basically just, uh, you know, he basically just, uh, just put Spain under, like lock and key. you know in every conceivable sense like figuratively and literally um but again that's not that doesn't generate anything sustainable um so what uh what uh what exactly happened between um germany and spain um ribandrop was you know as foreign minister was primarily charged with finessing the franco regime you know, to join the war effort.

It, can I ask a question before you are? This is something that people would ask. Were they in any kind of shape to join? I mean, they just went through three and a half years of hell. Yeah, and we're going to get into that. Like Franco had a list quite literally of ever increasing material demands, both material and political demands that had to be met for Spain to join the war

effort owing to that very reality. However, it fairly quickly became clear that he was not negotiating in good faith. The extent of these demands was such that they just could not be met, and that was the whole point. But we'll get into that in a minute. But what, What the Reich needed of Spain, the Reich needed, the Reich needed unconditional access to Gibraltar. The Reich needed the Spanish to join in Africa and abandon, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the uncorpromising, um, claims they were making on, um, French Africa as well, particularly, but not exclusively Morocco. finally um Spain basically needed to do a bail itself as as part of fortress Europe as uh you know France said had done admittedly like post defeat and France plays into this equation more than

people might think okay the uh France and Germany despite what people claim like there was not like Vichy France and then free France I mean it's uh obviously de Gaul was uh the allies were suggesting that, you know, de Gaulle was the true, like, you know, French president in exile and that, you know, Patin's regime was illegitimate,

but Patin was literally a national hero. Okay. And the French accepted the fact that they were defeated. You know, I posted up the other week or the other day of my timeline. Footage of, you know, the Germans like, you know, allowing the defeated French

like full honors and allowing to like march past the Vermeck like as they were like saluted you know in in full regalia and everything I mean this was very much like a Westphalian paradigm at work okay you know this idea that you know France just hated Germany with this kind of like

hell-bent passion and you know the Vichy regime was was completely contrived and was a fiction like that's not true and furthermore the British immediately began attacking French forces in Africa. You know, they killed thousands of people, you know, not French tourists, men, civilians. I mean, we'll get into that too. But essentially what the Reich needed in the West, they needed France and Spain somehow come to terms, you know, on sovereign claims in Africa. Spain had to, you know, cooperate operationally and politically with, you know, a Gibraltar operation.

And, you know, Spain had to fortify and, you know, prepare for, prepare to resist any Anglo-American assault on Spanish or a Portuguese coastal soil. and those those you know those were basically like what the fears, ambitions were but even in as things that developed, I mean, with respect to, you know, the pattern of hostilities between combatants, you know, regardless of ideology

because, you know, the war in the West was very different than the war in the East. There were certain complexities present there. Even in purely geostrategic terms this what i just outlined is what would have what would have been required okay um you know notwithstanding the idiosyncrasies actually perceived of um you know the respective regimes in place and um in abyss in berlin and in um madrid it uh on um october september 1940 was when Hitler first directed Ribbentrop, you know, to push as hard as he could

for the Spanish to cooperate with, you know, a Gibraltar offensive, you know, encourage him to join what he called the Grand Coalition. Hitler said to Ribentrop in uncertain terms, every aspirant would have to be left in the quote, heavy belief that his wishes would be largely fulfilled. Rembrandtrop wrote in his own notes that to accomplish this would require quote fraud on a grand scale. Remedrop wasn't saying like, oh, Hitler, you know, was, you know, anticipating, you know, perpetuating such a fraud.

Like what he was saying was that Hitler was dreaming because this can't be realized, going to the, or into the unwillingness of the parties to the, you know, to the, you know, to the situation, you know, and their unwillingness to, you know, compromise on on issues that might appear to be of secondary importance from, you know, where Hitler was sitting in Berlin, but, you know, was of paramount importance to, you know, to them. And looking at it, too, like, it wasn't just a prestige thing, what Spain and France were looking at it in Africa.

I mean, these, particularly with, you know, the, you know, the, the realization of strategic air power. But not for these were existential matters of security, you know, to the states that supported the Mediterranean. So, I mean, that should be clear.

And plus, too, the, you know, the Spain and France were not, there wasn't the, there wasn't the ongoing, you know, kind of, amity, you know, only kind of the tragedy of geopolitic situation that there was between Germany and France. but France and Spain weren't natural allies by any means. You know, I mean, it's not as if there's some sort of, you know, common bond

only to, you know, Latin heritage and the Roman church or something. It really, it was just absent. Like, even between Portugal, um, even between sales, there's Portugal and Franco, Spain. I mean, that didn't exist, you know, I mean, it wasn't, um, that might seem strange on some level to people who live, you know, kind of the globalized 21st century, but at the same time, like, it doesn't, um,

you know, Europe, a lot of these political cultures were still mired in kind of like the war in states period, you know, which endured in Europe until 1914. I mean, you know, in a real sense,

not talking about abstract postulates here. So I mean, there's that to keep in mind, too. Even if Franco was more worldly. And even if the 10 was, you know, a younger man and not, you know, this kind of inflexible, you know, octogenarian field marshal. I don't think it would have been any easier to accommodate, you know, these kind of competing egos and demands. The, what Hitler's plan was at the Berghoff, you know, he, his timetable was this. he was going to contact a former French ambassador,

Ponset, or Ponset, who Hitler always had a good rapport with. He was going to feel him out about a personal meeting with Patain and basically use him as kind of like his unofficial emissary. He would go to visit Patin. He would make his pitch to Patain that, you know, the United Kingdom, regardless of the outcome of this war, is going to leave France out to dry. You know,

they've humiliated France, not just at Dakar, but also by, you know, assaulting and sinking. It's Navy in Algeria. You know, it's, you have to accept the situation as it is that, you know, France and London are at war. and, you know, Germany is really the only poor you have in a storm.

And once he got a war guarantee from Patin, he would take that to Franco and ask Franco to abdicate, if not moderate, Madrid's demands to Morocco, take that to Patin and use that as the basis

for future collaboration, which seems somewhat a hairbrained, but again, a lot of what Hitler got done was based on personal relationships and the fact that he was able to finesse these relationships into actual policy commitments. Something that's precedent for this in what Hitler had accomplished in the preceding, you know, several years, including after September 1939, you know, so this was not just a pipe dream. And people can't just dismiss it outright as, oh, you know, that was just Hitler being crazy. because everyone knows Hitler went crazy, you know, after, you know, the Battle of Moscow or something, or whatever they like to say.

But Hitler, interestingly, too, Pierre Laval, who was the prime minister of France, he ended up being the prime minister of 1942 to April 42 to August 44. You know, and he'd served previously in the same role in the third or point. public from 31 to 32 and then I think from 935 or 36 37. So again and Hitler and Laval had a basic report

or their respective liaisons did, you know, but again, I raised this because it becomes somewhat significant later, but it's also like Laval, again, he was serving, you know, the quote Vichy government, which supposedly was, you know, this illegitimate regime.

I mean, this was not in common. I mean, he was one of most he was one of the more prominent um you know cabinet ministers who uh found himself in a in the same role that he had before is like the idea that this was some kind of like you know client regime that you know had no kind of like organic um legitimacy or something is is nonsense but um hitler uh hitler um sent out feelers to laval um as well um as well for the purpose of a and lavelle didn't have any formal office at this point um for the for the purpose of getting a personal audience with petan which was no easy thing and again um you know it tells you too like hitler's approaching patan you know carefully and he's treating him with all the honor and respect of a field marshal but also as you know a sovereign head of state you know i mean like think about this and especially hitler who um was definitely more kind of cultured and diplomatically cautious than people allege but who was not

exactly you know a man who favored a finesse over uh or action sometimes brute action and the threat of it you know it's like if if the vichy regime is this completely artificial regime like why isn't a hitler just directing patan to do whatever he orders you know i mean it's that right there, I mean, kind of shoots to pieces, the narrative of, you know, Vichy being artificial or, you know, France just, um,

either like not existing after, you know, cessation of hostilities in 1940, or, you know, being this just completely astroturf, like artificial, um, edifice, you know, um, and I bring it up to people again and again. And,

I mean, you went, you went over in, in the World War II series. that when American troops landed in Africa, who were the first people firing upon them? Yeah, it was the French. And it was, well, then it's all the two. Yeah, I mean, Darlane, who was the, you know, who was the martinet or, I don't even know what you'd call him procurator, you know, maybe.

I mean, he was the military leader of a French Africa. And, yeah, he, Darlane considered Vichy to be the legitimate government of France. and he considered France to be at war with the United States of America. So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't, yeah, you've got to look at France as one of the, as not, obviously, they were not formally part of the Access Alliance, and there wasn't that kind of command and control integration, you know, that, you know, such was the case with, you know, like Romania, but, or Italy, but, uh, they definitely were on the side of the act, where the rubber met the road and the key theater of engagement, such that, you know, France was still capable of projecting power to protect its core interests. And yeah, exactly. That was in Africa.

Now, what did Laval say in his response to Hitler? This very much emboldened Hitler with respect to, you know, his Mediterranean strategy. and his ultimate goal of, you know, bringing Franco into the fold after his meeting with the 10. Like Laval said, you know, Britain that dragged France into an unwanted war, then abandoned her, you know, then, you know, made war honor, besmirching her honor and killing her people at the Nerselkabur. Aboriginal catapult. That was July 940. That's where the British assault and destroyed the French fleet. killing over 1,200 people, like French servicemen and civilians.

And then more recently in September, as we mentioned, the port of Dakar in French West Africa. And again, several hundred not just servicemen, but French civilians were killed. But French forces held. you know and um Lavelle promised to return um um um

to seek this you know to the see audience with the 10 and uh you know return with an answer in two days time and uh that's uh that's exactly what he did um

October 23rd Hitler believed 9040 um two days subsequent um Hitler believed that Franco's willingness would absolutely depend on

the tenor of the approach to the patent um it uh like what is like what is meant by that is that

um Spain at least had to have they had to believe at least that Hitler was advocating for the legitimacy of their claims in Africa and in the Mediterranean and treating Spain like something of a great of something of a great power like whoever preposterous that might seem and I think in that regard like Hitler had Franco's number and it wasn't just it wasn't just for sake of appearances

like the way you know it wasn't it wasn't just like some people speculate and I mean Franco was a limited guy and and kind of a buffoon like a lot of people I've read it speculated like, well, you know, this was only for domestic consumption because Franco didn't have an actual mandate anyway other than from this kind of coterie of officers and, you know, and phalanjus, who were a minority within the party, I might add, you know, who'd kind of agreed to cooperate at a cessation of hostilities. I don't believe that to be true at all. I think as time went on and as we'll get into it, as I mentioned this before we went live, um frango's demands were were deliberately like so obtuse and so unreasonable that you know it was it was kind of his way out of joining the war but um these demands like you know franco was obsession with morocco you know him you know saying you wanted like equality of status like um in you know in terms like maritime passage in the mediterranean like he meant all these things like on their own terms like over stupid that might seem um and he uh he actually viewed

Spain is some like serious major power, you know, and again, like, reposterous is that, as that might seem. As it happened, Hitler met with, Hitler and the, and, um, Rubintraub, and the, uh, the diplomatic contingent, respect of the way of the Reich and of nationalist Spain, um, met, uh, before, Hitler got his audience with Patin. On October 23rd, 1940, it was in the frontier town of Hindai, Hindi, France. I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation.

Hitler was present, obviously, Franco was present. So was Von Ribbentrov, and so was Serrano Sooner. Sooner was the newly appointed foreign minister. Now, who was Serrano Suner? He was Franco's brother-in-law, but more importantly, he was president of the traditional, of the quote, traditionalist Spanish phalanx and of the councils of the national syndicalist offensive. What that was is that was the only legal party in Spain, and it was a, it had come about by merger

of the phalanche and the integralist Catholic traditionalist union. Okay. part of the kind of optics of Franco regime were they claim to both represent the church and represent the phalanches, which was a fiction. If anybody knows the history of these tendencies, and we'll get into that next episode. And there was a revolt of the phalanche against Franco's dictatorship. And that ultimately, the kind of enduring ripples of that. that ultimately led to Sunererre's dismissal because Stuner actually was a dedicated philangist.

And had he not been related to the Codillo, he would not have found himself in this role. There's a cruel irony here too, because Yakuban Ribbantra up and Serrano Sunaer came to quite literally hate one another. And they'd had quite a lot of contact during the Spanish Civil War and beyond. and Ribbentrop was beside himself when Suner was appointed foreign minister.

And Ribbentrop was the anniversary of his death, I think it was last year when the anniversary was death rolled around. I remember talking on Twitter and some other platforms of people. They were asking me about what I take on Ribbentrop was. There was some incredible diplomatic coups that Ribbentroth pulled off, and he had some remarkable insights. at key junctures. But at the end of the day, he was an international businessman.

Okay. And businessmen are diplomats. And the matter what, the most prestige posting before he became the foreign minister, was his ambassador to the United Kingdom. And no matter who had been in that role, you know, he wouldn't have made any headway, okay, because, you know, for reasons that should be obvious to anybody, but that we covered extensively in our earlier series.

But, um, Reverend Trap was incapable of, of coming to terms with people who he developed a relationship characterized a personal animus opposite. And this was the case with Sunaire. And like I said, Sunaire not only was a dedicated phalanjist, he was incredibly pro-axis. the previous September, the month prior, Sooner had visited Berlin, he'd sought out Ribbentrop at the foreign ministry to discuss how Spain could enter the war on the axis side. Now, mind you, like, Suner knew that Franco was dragging his feet. He knew what Hitler's demands were, and he knew that those demands were sound and strategic as well as political terms. Um, he also knew that, um, you know, part of Franco's strategy, you know, would be to issue demands that could, would, would not reasonably be met either because, you know, realistically, you know, forces in being weren't there, were, you know, and, and those that were, like, that, you know, um, food stuff, petroleum weapons, um, aircraft, you know, that which was in being, um, you know, Berlin would never part.

with because it was an unconscionable demand. But Sunner honestly visited the foreign ministry in good faith to try and realize terms by which, you know, Frank would be painted into a corner in my belief, in my opinion, you know, such that, you know, the, the Reich would contribute, you know, everything that it possibly could to facilitate Spain's entry into the war. so i mean suner and ribandrop wanted the same things and uh they uh they um but they they couldn't they you know they did they couldn't overcome this this kind of personal animus what uh ribandrop reported and ribandrop was something of a haughty teuton of uh you know a caricatur sort um

And again, that's another reason I think he should not have been in the role that he was. But Sunera said that, you know, Ocadillo demands, you know, all of French, Morocco and Algeria, you know, for Laban's wrong. But this could probably be finessed if, you know, he was offered Portugal. Because geographically speaking, in Sunnare's words, Portugal has no right to exist, quote. And this apparently outraged Ribentra. up. You know, like, who the hell is this Spain or think he is? You know, Spain is a shit country. It's, you know,

he's talking like he's, you know, he's talking to me like we're peers. And, um, you can almost see, like, if you read about these personages, like, you can almost, you almost like feel of this, like, outrage, ribbon trope. I mean, again, if you're a diplomat, you've got to stay cool no matter what. But, um,

again, part of the tragedy of this is that a man, like Suner, who I think was a real hero in a lot of ways. but you know this uh this kind of a you know this this kind of self-important pompous latin guy and uh this kind of you know supremacist's teutonic type like people like that are going to mix like oil and water you know and um i you can just see um just kind of by like the words jump out of the page and when when you read of this uh meeting how you know just like what a disaster it must must must have been. Additionally, Serrano wanted,

he wanted, he wanted, he wanted guarantees of military and economic support, you know, immediately, too. Like, you know, this wasn't, um, he, he, he, he said he wanted to go back to Madrid, you know, with, with a concrete offer of what, you know, Hitler was willing to provide, um, you know, kind of like down to the letter, you know, and, uh, this is not, that's not the way that's not the way diplomacy is done either, you know,

it's, um, and, uh, this would be the cost, again, of, uh, of, um, you know, joining the war and specifically, you know, immediately planning for an operation.

The city's trope-holtar. Apparently Raventrov hit the roof and he said that he'd approach, the furor and talk about maybe letting Spain maintain territorial rights to

one of the Canary Islands but that's it he said that Spain's never going to have Morocco that you know France is an essential ally and you're not you know this is paraphrase you know and finally

Riventrop said that you know the aid you're going to get is you know you're you're to become a dedicated, you know, destination for German manufacturers. You know, we're going to put your people to work, you know, as we see fit, you know, to sustain the war economy, but, you know, basically, you were coolie, you know, go back. He basically told him, like, go get his fucking shinebox. And, you know, the, uh, he deliberately insulted him by, you know, not just portraying Spain

as, you know, like a future satellite state, but as like a second rate one at that. this game is apparently a great shock to soon air because it uh i mean again like these guys weren't ribbon trough had done business in america and like actually up until you know the the evil world war one and then subsequent he'd spend a lot of time in canada um so i mean he was worldly but uh like neither these men should have been negotiating anything of the nature that they were charged with. You know, like, I, um, Sigfried Cash, I, uh, Sigrid Cash wasn't a diplomat, but he, he was slated to be the galiter of, uh, the Moscow commissariat, you know, had it come to

fruition. And he, uh, he was, um, he was the military liaison. to the independent state of Croatia. I mean, I just think he's an interesting guy, but I, in counterfactual terms, I was thinking about that, like Sigri Cash, like should have been the man negotiating with Spain, and it should have been a man from the traditional, from the traditional aristocracy of the church

or the church, like negotiating with cash. you know again it's a it's a splendid example of two men who basically agree on everything in terms of like ideology and politics who you know could not agree on like what day it was um it uh and it becomes franco's private correspondence to sooner you know and his telegrams to him but specifically like his private letters so i mean you know that these were intended only for suner's eyes um he was he was a he was a he was a fuchsively praising hitler as a wise man you know like a great man and you know he was dismissing ribbon trope as uh you know ribbren

trump is you know he's a fool he's uh he feels to appreciate you know what we can offer the access and you know these kinds of things you know so again it's and if it's um it goes to show you how essential to I mean if you're if you're ahead of state

particularly if you're a warlord as Hitler was by this point you've got to be insulated. I mean, not just for, you know, reasons of literal physical security, but, you know, because anybody and everybody is going to be, you know, trying to sway your opinion and make demands on you and things. I mean, you just, you know, you basically have to communicate through liaison. But it will just show you, like, how, how important it is that the man in that role or in those roles, you know, in discrete capacities, you know, really, really have to, you, you

know, be, be able to check their ego at the door. You know, if there was, there's no reason why, like, this, this could not have developed into a real, you know, a real strategic, you know, alliance, you know, in operational terms. I mean, he, uh, he, uh, even after, uh, one of a protege, a Sooner, uh, a guy named Pedro Gamero del Castile uh in 1941 January 1941 he reached out to the press secretary of the German embassy in Spain Hans Lazar um

and he he begged him basically he's like look you know tell Berlin that a Serrano Sunnir government in other words like Franco could be sidelined or killed you know a Serrano Suner government you know, it was Sunnara at the helm and Lou of the Cardillo would commit absolutely to the access powers, you know,

and this was incredibly risky, you know, that he was, um, that he was, uh, talking about these things in a basically above board capacity with a German diplomatic representative, but, I mean, it goes to show you how Spain was a house divided and it goes to show you, too, how, you know, the true flange, like pro access element in Spain, like, were holding out hope still that, you know, Spain would join the Axis as a, you know, as a, as a full partner. It's unclear whether Lazar ever reached Hitler or reached, like, the right chance.

And if he did, like, what he said, when it was said to Hitler, when it was, like, not, not by not by Castillo about Hitler said to Walter Huell later on was he said that

you know Sunner and not you know trying harder and doing whatever he could to Sway the Cardillo was quote the grave bigger of the new Spain and you know

Hitler the man who always who always took the long view whatever else you can say about him. You know, he realized more than anybody that you know, Spain's fortunes were inextricably tethered to Germany's.

And if the Axis went down, that was the end of Spain. You know, it didn't matter that Franco was able to create a little like, you know, garrison, you know, Disneyland, like fascist Disneyland.

for 30 years subsequent that you know his lasting legacy that of frank I mean it amounts to exactly zero um Sooner and uh Castillo proposed they were the ones who proposed the blue division um

you know after the onset of hostilities with the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 and uh you know it's clear that it's clear that sooner realized the opportunity that he missed or was cognizant of his own failure. Two days after Barbarossa, in June 20 or 24, I've seen it cited, I've seen both citations of the date.

He delivered a famous kind of stump speech from the balcony of what had been Philongis Party headquarters. orders called Russia is Copa Bal. Forgive me butchering Spanish. I don't speak Spanish at all. But translates as Russia is guilty. And it's essentially, you know, a bellicose epilagia for, you know, why Spain needs to join, you know, the war effort or why the flange need to join the war effort. You know, like all true patriots need to slay the Judeo-Bolshevik beast. you know so he was uh he was like like many people you know um like many great men you know he was complicated and again that's part of the tragedy is that serrano was basically a heroic type um and a great patriot and you know kind of circumstances intervened um to uh prevent him from realizing you know what he wanted to do uh accomplish for the sake of

Spain and, you know, the national socialist cause and everything else. But back to, forgive that tangent, I had to kind of flesh out who sooner was to make clear, like, what the stakes were of the summit between Hitler and Franco. But also, you know, to kind of understand, you know, how the personage is directly engaged, you know, determine the outcome. of this negotiation. The basic object was to resolve, you know, outstanding disagreements over the conditions for Spain to join the access powers.

In their war against the pressure, okay, Jimmy, do me a favor. Do me a favor, you cut out, you cut out there.

when you first started what you were going to say right now. You cut out like five seconds ago. Can you restart that? Yeah, yeah. No, to bring it back to the summit between, you know, Hitler and Franco, the object of that meeting, it was to resolve, you know,

the outstanding disagreements over or what conditions had to be met for Spain to join the Axis powers. in the war against the British Empire, okay, because obviously, you know, this is October 1940. The German Reich and the Soviet Union are not yet at war, okay? France has been soundly defeated. The British were defeated at, you know, too, I mean, but, you know, over into the war at all cost crusade, you know, they're refusing to negotiate. and Hitler doesn't want to go through with sea lion. I think sea lion was always a strategic ruse,

but that's another question. But the nail in the coffin of the British Empire would be the Caesar of Gibraltar. The Royal Navy would then be shut out of the Mediterranean. They'd lose Africa. You know, they'd be a garrison. state on their home islands, you know, and the U-boat fleet could do the rest, really, okay? The meeting endured for seven hours.

The Spanish wouldn't waver, or rather Franco wouldn't waver in demands that Hitler described as extortionate. His demands were, Franco's demands were the handing over of Japan. to Spain once the British were defeated. The seeding of French Morocco and part of French Algeria to Spain. The attachment of French Cameroon to the Spanish colony of Guinea.

So basically, you know, French adagego become Spanish Aragge. Okay. And finally, German supplies of food, petrol, arms, and ammunition. as needed, you know, to relieve the critical economic and military situation to your point faced by Spain after the civil war. And, you know, and subsequently as needed, you know, for long-term development.

Now, Hitler couldn't disturb relations with France, okay? I mean, as we just talked about, that was the key. that was really the key to you know victory in the West okay the key to the key to Enseg

was the defeat of the Soviet Union but you know the Barbarossa hasn't happened yet and ideally you know if the war in the West can be won first I mean that's obviously ideal

even if this was always a secondary theater and, you know, a war that the Germans did not want to fight vis-a-vis the UK and, you know, the Mediterranean and Northern Africa. But the strategic landscape is what it is. Okay. So, and that's an important, that doesn't nullify, you know, RHS Stofley's claim. And, I mean, Hitler's notion, I mean, the notion of Hitler himself, that, you know, the like final victory is conquering is when Moscow falls okay but I just wanted to reiterate that

for clarity but the only way that this uh um the only way that this uh that this alliance uh that this Mediterranean alliance can work is uh like France as the linchman okay for reasons we already discussed um Franco is making that impossible for you know for for france to come to terms based on what he is demanding um and hiller was beside himself but also he just didn't he didn't understand the abject uh you know kind of stubbornness i mean he he viewed as the in a that he's never to really sabotage the proceedings and i believe that's true uh said in musilini that he would rather have three or four teeth extracted, then go through that again, that being negotiation or attempt a negotiation with

Franco. Sooner, who was again, he was not habituated to being a diplomat, and he was apparently something of a boisterous, you know, an impassionate person and a military man as well as a, you know, a revolutionary type. He continually interrupted in a, in a, a way that apparently Hitler viewed is totally tactless and still like that made Hitler very angry as it kind of would any

sort of like old world Haftsburg German but Hitler especially it was you know it's basically like look if you're a diplomatic representative even if you're a foreign minister you know when heads of state are talking you don't say anything you know

I mean so it's just every conceivable sort of aspect of this it was a fairer just became a you know a fiasco you know a literal comedy of errors um but uh Hitler kept at it um even uh even even even through you know when dinner was served and even afterwards um and uh it uh it uh you know it came to nothing and that was a last that was a last summit there's the last time between Franco and the furor and really like any official representatives of their respective office. You know, the blue division deployed, you know,

to the eastern front, you know, they fought valiantly, particularly at Leningrad. But, I mean, that was that. You know, there was no... Franco was no nearer to, you know, joining the Axis than he had been at, you know, prior to the meeting. Sooner, you know, if anything, he'd probably sabotage the proceedings in some small way, or possibly even a major way by his, you know, kind of uncouth conduct, however well-intentioned it might have been. you know and it was uh

Hitler went on to meet uh, on the 24th, um, on the 24th October. He greeted Patin, um, as, uh, the victor of Verdun.

Um, you know, saluted him. You know, again, like treating him like, you know, well, not just with all the honors do, a field marshal, but, you know, as also as the present of France, you know, it's, you know, but he had nothing, he had nothing to offer, you know, and the French, the Patain's perspective was, you know, we're already at war with the UK, like, what more do you want from us, you know, and, I mean, for the record, you know, that continued throughout the war, you know, I don't need to remind people, you know, who know their history, that, uh, the final defenders of, uh,

of the Reichstag and the fear of bunker were uh you know French Vof and SS you know Charlamagne you know um but it was um it was uh you know he just reiterated you know Patain you know it's the France can only afford the role of non-belligerent in official capacities you know for the time being you know otherwise otherwise you know and defend as you know what we can in africa you know from the common enemy but you know beyond that there's there's nothing to be done unless you know spain's willing to come to terms and uh that uh was that kind of the final kind of the final chapter was uh the final or the final or the nail in the coffin rather. A month subsequent, November 28th,

1940, Riventrop's ambassador in Berlin, the German ambassador to to Madrid, to Spain, in Madrid, not Berlin. He relayed that Franco was now willing to proceed with these of cursory preparations for Spain's proposed entry into the war. if you know Hitler is willing to you know if Hitler was willing to now come to terms you know in some way that you know both men could live with um

Hitler took this to mean that this meant that Franco was was willing to enter the war immediately you know pending uh satisfaction of conditions precedent um on December 4th he sent Canaris to Franco with a personal letter proposing that German troops formally enter Spain and prepare to assault Gibraltar, which was 600 miles from the frontier. Okay, so you're talking about a real deployment across, you know, the Spanish heartland, which is no small thing, but again, I mean, considering considering, you know, the course of negotiations, this was not, this was not an outlandish request.

And let us forget that, you know, German forces spent three years fighting, you know, on Spanish soil to, you know, guarantee the existence of Franco and his people, you know, and subsequently the government that they now, you know, they now, they now enjoyed in Madrid. So this was perfectly well-placed in customary terms, as well as the commonly accepted sort of rights and privileges of allies. Franco afforded Canaris a long audience on December 7th, 1940. That's an auspicious day, one year prior to Harbor, Pearl Harbor, exactly. Franco said to Canaris that for economic reasons, relating to the terrible cost of the Civil War,

Spain could not be ready to assault the UK by January 10th. Spain could only, and Spain could only join the war furthermore if Britain was on the brink of collapse. You know, any kind of attrition contest, you know, Spain just could not commit to that. which again was just you know it was um it was it was it was it was just

it was just Frank was was favored method once again of uh of finding a way to to you know to not to not commit to the alliance um well uh wrong footing his enemy in some

in some way how we're transparent that might have been um Hitler's rebuttal or response to the Canaris meeting was, you know, just, again, you know, to reiterate, you know, the Gibraltar was essential that, you know, unless the United Kingdom was deprived of its access to the Mediterranean. you know, it would soon prevail in North Africa. Hitler had no illusions about that. And ultimately, that would be the end of Spain.

And, you know, he reminded him, too, that without the help of, you know, himself and Mussolini, there would be no nationalist Spain today, nor would there be any Cadillo, you know. And he said that Franco's vast, quote, vacillating attitude was, not befitting a general officer, which seemed to stink deep because Franco proceeded to angrily denounce not Hitler himself, but he came close. He told Canaris that he never vacillated, you know, that he was always committed to the cause, but that, you know, Spain has been bled white, you know, because the fight against Bolshevism, you know, occurred

you know, on their territory first and foremost and, you know, how dare you call it a question the sacrifice of Spanish man? I don't know. But the fear was right and Franco was wrong. And, I mean, it's that

simple. I, and again, too, I mean, aside from that, I mean, all of this, which is obvious, kind of who's culpable and who, you know was responsible for the inability of

you know any kind of real concord to emerge between you know Germany, Italy, Spain and France it's clear that I mean Franco was a

unless one puts you know self-preservation above all other goods it's obvious that Franco was really kind of a pox on the house, proverbial house of

of all patriotic forces then so mobilized and engaged against you know the Bolsheviks and their allies in Britain.

This situation was all complicated by Mussolini jumping the gun and informing Hitler that he intended to assault Greece, which in turn obviously would have given the UK a pretext to occupy Crete, and then, you know, to bring their strategic bombers within striking distance of the Mediterranean Theater. I mean, there was other things, too, that were rendering this, the timetable, you know, and it's that we're putting pressure on, you know, the strategic, the strategic,

timetable for any sort of remedial action to be taken with respect to Gibraltar or anywhere else the Mediterranean. So, go ahead. Wasn't Hitler really at that point had just asked Mussolini to make sure that the Suez Canal was secure, right? Yeah. And there was an ongoing, there was an ongoing, you know, controversy as to what degree. the uh the north average campaign should be um prioritized and to what degree then you know that

this is before uh you know rommel had uh had you know struck these great victories out in you know um in uh in the north african theater i mean initially it was initially the abracur deployed to relieve, you know, the Italians who were, you know, failing in every conceivable capacity in operational terms. You know, and then later when, you know, Romo, I think is somewhat overly praised because he's a romantic figure. And plus, you know, people look at him as a good guy because he, he was wrongfully implicated in July 20 plot, but he was nonetheless implicated. and, you know, the S.D. Gestapo, you know, forced him to commit suicide. But he, it was, you know, it was, it was, it was, you know, Prussian commitment to mission-oriented tactics, like writ large,

which kind of, you know, which kind of made North Africa into, like, into, like, you know, a real battle theater. Because of the fact is, like, he kept succeeding. But, yeah, the, the, that was basically. basically the Italian armies, that's what their responsibility was, you know, vis-à-vis the Axis Alliance. And that, and yeah, the Italian army in North Africa was problematic. I think the Italian is fought pretty heroically on the Eastern Front. But the, and in the Balkans, their mountain troops were, were real game and real tough, but the Italian forces in Africa were not, they were not good,

and they were a liability in a lot of ways, with some exceptions. I don't, I don't want Italian people to get mad or something. I think I'm saying something bad about them. I'm not, but the Italian army had, you've already pissed off the Spanish, so, I mean, just keep on. Yeah, I don't want to, I don't know, upset. I don't want a whole quorum of Latin people who are mad at me. But the, you know, that was, that was that was that was that was that.

And a lot of this too, I mentioned, I mentioned Volta Hewool. Right as you said, I mentioned and then you cut out. So what did you say? I said I mentioned Walter Hewell a minute ago. A lot of this testimony comes from Hewell. you know, and what he documented in his diaries and things. And Hewell was, he was a career diplomat. And after 1933, he became chief of the East Asian desk of the foreign ministry.

And then during the war, he became special liaison between the foreign ministry and the furor. And he and Hitler became quite close. And Hewell was an interesting guy. Kind of like an unassuming guy. Like the kind of guy who was a great diplomat. like if if he will could have been negotiating with um soon air there would have been a very different outcome i believe but um my point is that uh he will's uh he's he's he is a credible source on this and he he really had no observing these things in his like private diary where he was

talking to himself you know like he there really would be no reason to like finesse these things and frankly, too. I mean, again, I don't think, I don't think anybody really looks good or reasonable in this Milloo except Hitler himself. I'm sure that take makes people mad too, but speaking within, you know, the bound of rationality of, you know, the strategic planning, you know, based on the conditions confronted, you know, by all combatant states on the axis side as of October 1940. And, you know, this should not have developed the way it did. But it goes to show you the human factor, you know, and people in their, you know, idiosyncrasies of personality and everything else.

I mean, it is a, is, like, like sabotage is, the best late plans of nations more than any any army could you know much of the time man like that's not just some dumb cliche but that's uh that's a story of uh this is a story of um you know the codillo and the furor and you know the conspicuous absence of spain and you know on the on the battlefields of world war two save uh for the blue division later the blue legion um when they were reconstituted, who were very, who fought heroically again. But, you know, that's why. And that's all I got for today.

So let's do plugs and get out of here. Yeah, for sure. I realize I haven't been plugging my website. I do have a website now. It's number seven, H-M-A-S-777.com. It says Thomas-777.com. It's kind of like a one-stop. Not kind of.

I mean, it's a one-stop. place for all my content. Okay, and I still got to, like, tweak some stuff that, like, my Twitter feed, like, shows up there in a timely manner, but pretty much all, like, the video stuff I do, like, here with Pete and other things, you know, shows up here, like, my podcast. You can, like, access it there, you know, just, like, went off streams I appear on and stuff like that. You can find it there, and I'm going to sex it up and, like, fix some of the glitches.

And, but, you can go there now when it's, like, up and running, okay, but the stuff that doesn't work particularly well yet. That's getting worked out. You can still find me on Twitter. If you request to follow me, I will let you follow me. I just rubber stamp it, as it were. But I've got to have my tweets protected because otherwise, like, a bunch of freaks, like Zerdrush me and get me banned, which has happened like 12 times.

I'm not just talking shit. You can find me at Substack. If you can find my podcast. it's real thomas 7777.7.com. That's pretty much what we're up on. Like a lot of things are happening now. I know I've been saying that for a minute, but I am a one-man operation.

Like with my dear friend and editor, Rake, we're a two-man operation, but I'm working on the second season of Mind Faser, at which time the first season of episodes will all become free. But there's a hell of a lot going into that. There's a hell about going into, like, like the video we're shooting and I've got to hell

a lot of footage, but I got to make it into something and this damn time consuming, just please continue to bear with me like I'm getting shit together, but it's, and it will be dope, but it's just taking time. That's all I got. Well, until part five, thank you so much. I appreciate it, Thomas. Likewise, man, thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cignanez show.

We had a little delay in between episodes because Thomas's life is exciting. How you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well, man. Yeah, I apologize for that. That's okay. I wanted, like I was telling Pete before we went live, a huge amount of people reached out out of genuine concern.

And that's incredible, man. You know, it's really, I mean, not just because that, you know, makes anybody feel good and know they have friends that love them, but that's, um, the, I'm saying the social capital what I'm talking about all the time is like building, you know, not just pragmatic networks for, you know, like playful action and things. But, um, in day-to-day life, like, you know, when crises emerge, you know, as they always do on personal terms, I guess someone's being terrorized by the regime, you know, there's, there's a network of people that organically like springs into action, you know, and that, so that that's been, that's kind of the silver lining man. Like if there, if there was one, because that, you know, that's the, you know, that's the. structure very much kind of like came into focus um you know owing to um owing to uh owing to something that i mean frankly in the broad scheme like was not a big deal but it's when it's going on it's fucked up

and you like disappear off the earth if you get arrested because they they take away all your means of communication so i just um i'm not trying to eat up the clock i just um i just wanted this is a good opportunity to kind of like address our friends direct but today I, uh, this is the last episode where I'll, I'll, I'll approach it and what appears perhaps to be kind of a scattershot, topical, um, orientation. And we'll get into like the nuts and bolts of the battlefield situation and how it resolved in the next episode. But to understand the Spanish war and frankly, too, to understand the path that Franco struck out as regards to the fear and the third Reich as well as, you know, Spain and its geostrategic situation generally, you've got to understand how unusual the state and a society Spain is. You know, it's a complete outlier.

And what I mean by that is this. Even, you know, I disagree. I take strong exception to people who are trying to identify, you know, and people with people, and a lot of people who abide kind of Mearsheimer's perspective do this. I only reference that because generally I agree with those people on certain matters. And this is one of those cases where I don't. But they posit that there's this kind of school or there's this discrete sort of school of political thought, particularly in strategic matters, you know, of realism.

And that, you know, there's some sort of straight line, basically linear trajectory between lucidities, you know, all the way through with people like James Burnham and this nonsense. However, the first really modern political thought, furious was Machiavelli, okay? And there's a reason why Machiavelli, he identified, he identified Fernand and Isabella as the first true, like, you know, architects of the modern state, you know, and this proceeded, this proceeded not just was failure, but the 30 years were itself by 100 years,

you know. So there's this weird economy with Spain, because Spain, you know, in living memory, it's always viewed as either the sick man of Europe or this kind of, you know, backward state comparatively or the state that's compromised in terms of its social sociological architecture, you know, by reactionary tendencies and, you know, things that are more characteristic of the developing world, you know, than they are, then they are Europe, you know, America, North Asia. But Spain was a century ahead of the curve and its political development, you know, even amidst these arguably, you know, conditions of impoverished, you know, materials of, you know,

material and social capital. And that's a curious question because to a lesser degree in in different capacities, you know, Russia was like that too. You know, there was this tremendously evolved intellectual climate in Russia. I mean, and it had horrible outcomes. Okay. I mean, that's why communes have found such fertile ground. But, you know, again, Russia was decades ahead.

in terms of, in terms of, in terms of the intellectual paradigms, it was playing with as regards to statecraft, but in terms of material capital and the conditions that allow, you know, for material capital, which really flourish in, you know, and provide technological development. Those things, those things were absent. And that also, you know, Spain, unlike most empire, space, the Spanish, the Spanish, the Spanish Empire didn't. become rich, it probably, in the terms we understand wealth and money, the Spain, the Spanish Empire of Zina was the wealthy's empire that ever existed, okay? You know, it spanned this planet. It was able to challenge the Royal Navy, you know, it, it was just, it was a juggernaut, basically. You know, it was just incredibly powerful. But its social arts sector didn't really become more complex with that. You know, it's, it's widely overstated

there are people to talk about this, you know, the middle class, like it's this ambassador class. And like it can finesse these intrinsic, you know, alleged hostilities, you know, between a master and serf and between like aristocrat and peasant or between, you know, proletarian and, and, um, and a high bourgeoisie.

And, and that's nonsense. But there is. is like something of a causal nexus there. I think it's more just that, you know, as sociological architecture becomes more diversified or into the increased complexity of economic activity and behavior and scale, that there just becomes more and more kinds of threads

of complex integration and interdependence between institutions and peoples. And that appears from without, you know, if you want to like turn into a Venn diagram as this kind of middle class, you know, playing an ambassador role. But regardless of, you know, the sugar of the egg and how that resolves in one's own mind or in real terms.

That didn't happen in Spain. Okay. You had this starkly divided society. And they, you know, finally, when the 19th century arrived, you know, the Spanish didn't, Spain had a totally different experience in the 19th century than everybody else did. You know, like the long peace, they didn't experience that. instead of they experienced incredibly, you know, chaotic circumstances that were punctuated by crisis after crisis after crisis after crisis, you know, um, 1808 to 1814, you know, they were occupied by Napoleon. You know, they didn't just, they weren't just, um, they, you know, they weren't just part of, you know, the alliance at the Battle of Nations or something. You know, they, they were, they were under occupation for, uh, for, for, for, for, for close to a dead.

decade, you know, and from there, it, you know, like we talked about a week or two ago, really the only kind of punctuated military crises in the 19th century in Europe were localized. You know, there was like the Francoe Prussian War, there was the Crimean War, but neither one of those, you know, really was impactful, like, outside a theater level. And there's the 1848 revolutions. but that that that was nothing like 1917 or like 1789 you know but in the case of Spain they um they they they they came to civil war conditions were emerging in 1822 1823 and french military intervention ended that um 1827 there was the catalan insurrection you know and these

and these uh these uh these uh these uh these secession oriented uh you know um political movements all in sundry in spain like always had uh always had traction in peculiar ways 1833 1840 there's the first carlist war which was incredibly bloody you know 1859 you know the moroccan order of independence pops off um 1870 or 1876 there's the second carlist war during this whole time spain was fighting in in in the Americas, you know, because of these Hispanic American colonial revolts. You know, 1868 to 1878, there was the 10 years war in Cuba. And subsequently, Spain literally fought America. You know, I mean, this is the degree, they agree with, and in Spain and the two Cuban,

and the two Cuban war has lost over 100,000 KIA, you know, no European power absorbed that much military attrition or loss as much territory and so rapid a time frame as Spain did in the 19th century. I'd say what happened to Spain at reduced scale and adjusting for strategic conditions of the power political landscape. What happened to Spain was as catastrophic as what happened to the Soviet Union, arguably even more so, Spain was quite literally really really violent. violently ripped apart, you know. And it was, this is how the, this is what gave birth to the Spanish Revolutionary Left. Okay, the Spanish Revolutionary left was always more savage, more sanguinary, more aggressive, more unwilling to compromise than than anybody, except probably the Bolsheviks who succeeded them. And, you know, and the Jacobans who inspired every, every radical tenancy.

subsequent. But in 1821, it's kind of viewed as the year that the Spanish Revolutionary Left came about. What they were, the big, the kind of seminal moment in, in, in, in, in, subsequent to, you know, Fernand and Isabella, you know, creating the Spanish national state was the constitution of, of 1812. And I'm sure I'm going to butcher this pronunciation. but these liberal reformers, like some of them are quite radical, you know, who are most responsible for structuring and authoring that Constitution, or they were called docianistas. I don't know if it's a hard or soft seat, but they were pretty rapidly moderated after they got their way. And they tried to implement a parliamentarian structure, you know, of true sort of power sharing arrangements at interval that. by which, you know, due process would be abided regardless of the outcome of parliamentary elections. Okay. This was the last time any faction of the left ever abided that.

And by 1821, the disinfection from within, you know, essentially the young Turks, who came in known as the exultados, their whole notion was look, you know, the prize in political contests, you know, within the state or the state itself. Okay. If, you know, if, if, if, if we're going to, you know, if every, if every three or six or eight or ten years, you know, we're going to, we're going to briefly capture, you know, we're going to briefly capture, you know, legislative majorities and things, you know, and then just rush to, you know, implement as much relief to, you know, to, to our class comrades as, as, as, as possible.

but then immediately, you know, hand the range of state over to our enemies and watch that be undone, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's beyond a fool's errand, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's gonna, and it's, it's, and it's, it's, it's beyond an even point with some, you know, sort of, uh, acceptance of the status quo, because that, like, obviously over time, that simply grinds down, you know, the revolutionary, uh, impetus, like, in, in the minds of, of, of anyone who, who, who, participates in the system because, you know, by definition, the system exists and neutralize, you know, not just like reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary ones. Okay. Um, so exultados, we're not willing to surrender political ground, you know, for the sake of due process or or, or constitutional, constitutional power sharing or anything else. Okay. And, um, that's a very schmitty and concept of state, you know, and not, um, And I mean, and that, that makes sense, okay, for all kinds of reasons. But the main, the main characteristic of the Isletos and what remained as kind of the core essence of the French or the Spanish radical left subsequent was a total rejection of moderation and an employment of violence, not just a secure. not just a secure absolute, you know, majoritarian consensus, but also to enforce government policy once they accomplished or captured that consensus, you know,

and a view that it was perfectly legitimate to enforce, not just enforce compliance, you know, through use of a violent terror apparatus, but also to crush all resistance. And the president they drew upon, you know, when when these kinds of more liberal-minded moderates would say, look, you know, we all want the same things. You know, you're setting us back with these kind of sanguinary longings. The rebuttal was, look, you know, our precedent for this is 1789.

You know, and if you think the Jacobins were, you know, we're willing to come to a table with royalists and engage in horse trading, you know, you're out of your mind or you're a liar. you know um and within the bound of rationality of their objectives they did have a point you can't you can't transpose you can't transpose parliamentarism into a body politic where there's no moral consensus and uh you can't the entire theory of of progressivist government with a capital p um even that itself uh you know um as uh it's epistemic priors are basically that you know, in conditions where that consensus didn't exist before, it has been achieved, you know, as a condition precedent of, you know, of our program. Okay. So all these things, it should become clear that kind of like a perfect storm, I mean, not to sound corny, but a perfect constellation,

maybe more properly of factors, you know, many, many owing to an inescapable precedent. that set Spain on a uniquely kind of tragic course, but also, you know, just after that, uh, technical difficulty. Uh, that's all good. It's, uh, it's kind of nostalgic, you know, um, but the, uh, but at the same time, I mean, no matter how much you result the, you know, the, the, the kind of law of the blade and the barrel of a gun over, you know, the out of the, for real pen and paper of, you know, money and buying your way to, you know, policy realization. No matter how much you're enthralled with violence and coercion as sort of the currency of authority, at some point that sort of runs its course, you know, and it develops a crisis

legitimacy, you know, and the people just get sick of it. And this is exactly what happened. And the, the, again, once again, too, the exultados were overthrown by, by the French army. And, which, which became, you know, it's interesting because a peculiar kind of, a peculiar kind of interdependence developed, like, like these multiple French military interventions, you know, this wasn't, this wasn't like the Vermach, like, assaulting the Soviet Union or like the Soviet Union, like, you know, assaulting Poland or something. I mean, yeah, there's always,

like, there's always categorical hostility, like, de jure and de facto, when you're talking about, you know, armed men, um, of, you know, under the status of alienage, you know, crossing a sovereign frontier. But, um, after, uh, after Waterloo, it, it, there just became, you. you know, like the, one of the checks on anarchy as Spain, you know, kind of went through this painful 19th century was, you know, a tolerance, if not, you know, out-acceptance of, you know, out-acceptance of a French interventionism, you know, beyond their common border. when, you know, things appear to be careening towards open civil war. And, I mean, that's a tangent, but it is, it is interesting. And it goes to show you that some of the Westphalian paradigm, in conditions of peace between states, is a myth. Like this idea that, you know, borders are rigid to the point that, you know, we can't even talk about, you know, complex interdependence as having any, you know, sort of,

sort of high concern and high politics but um to put this in perspective uh like a dear friend of ours who came to visit me the other week uh he uh he was kind of to mail me

Stanley G Payne's P-A-Y-N-E like I guess like Max Payne for the for the gamer bros on death um but this is a this is a very like

storied book that And our friend, like, mailed it to me, which is great. So I read it after I got back from jail. And it's chocked full of facts and figures. And it basically deals with, like the book itself, it basically deals with, you know, what, like the unraveling of the Spanish Republic, you know, especially the critical months through 1935. even in 1936

for I'm at the point of the formal onset of hostilities, but people are going to ask, people are going to ask what the name of the book is. Oh, it's the collapse of the Spanish Republic.

Yeah, I'm sorry. By Stanley G. Payne, again, P-A-Y-N-E. It's going to do it like murky, Merck though, like in Max Payne. I have like six bucks by him. So, yeah.

Yeah, no, he's written some great stuff. And like I, it's not, I mean, everybody, especially like all I really do is research, man. You know, like, it's not me like, Pan on the back about like what a good boy I am or something. But even somebody like me who's kind of stock and trade is, is academic research. There's certain authors that you're. you know, you're going to rely on more than others. There's going to be some that just aren't really in your personal canon. And like not only any conceptual prejudice or something or judgment on quality,

you know, punitive or praising. But for whatever reason, pain never sort of entered into my personal canon. So again, a dude knows who he is who sent us this book. And that's awesome. And it's been a huge help. for one of the reasons why it's shock full of data that, you know, is not, I mean, not data for data's sake, but, you know, data of a material of an entering nature that helps put things into, you know, kind of high relief as regards perspective. And kind of the sequences after, from the Napoleonic occupation and or Waterloo onward, the kind of phases in modern

Spanish politics were, you know, from 18 to 1814, there was a there was a leftist regime in power. You know, and it's, that, that'd be, that'd be worthy of an entire episode or a couple episodes, like what the relationship was, um, of Napoleonism to, to, to Bonapartism to Jacobinism. Um, and that's, that, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

this Higalian process is written all over it. But make no mistake, this was a neo-Jacoban regime at the reins during the occupation. Again, from 1820, 1823, 1835, 1838, 8.50, 40, and 56, 1878, 1873, 1917, 1923. And then, of course, 1931, 1939. you know these were the these are the these are the these are the these are the electoral cycles or constellation of cycles where in the radical left essentially controlled the entire national government okay um and again you know as soon as one as soon as um as soon as uh one faction would would lose to the other um you know they ever everything they're everything they're outgoing

enemy had done what was sabotaged you know i mean so it was this it was this kind of like stalemate by design and government you know and i mean that that's a case of the center not being able to hold also even uh if conditions aren't such that you know civil war is uh inevitable you're you're dealing a state that eventually is going to become a failed state okay um the uh the right wing control of the regime, you know, whether it was, you know, whether it was, you know, whether it was, you know, going to get conventional Spanish nationalists, you know, like Carlos, you know, like, there's like various right wingers, you know, their, their, um, their tenure, or there, or their, there, there, there phases of, of, of, of government, you know, dominance was, uh,

you know, post-water, 1814, 1820, 1823 to 1830. 1839, 1854, which is interesting because, again, Spain being an outlier, you know, they avoided the 1848 revolutions because, you know, the right had the country locked down. 1856 to 1868, 1874, 1917, 1923 to 931, and of course, 1939 to 1975. I take some exception to that. I don't think we can talk about the Franco regime after about 954 as being rightest. I just don't, okay?

Again, it was another example of Spain being a remarkable outlier. But I accept what pain is getting at. and again, that same paradigm was reemergent. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't bloody and an almost apocalyptic, like, as was the case of the Salazar regime, you know, which, and Salazar's a fascinating guy. And, you know, and the Portuguese were fighting alongside the Rhodians against the communists, you know, for, for decades in Africa, you know, Ian Smith, who, who is, it's not like his prose is particularly elegant or like edifying.

I'm not saying that ahead of state should bother with that. But if people are looking for a book that provides that sort of inspiration and kind of pleasurable reading, that's not the book for you. But there's key insights into the mind of Ian Smith. then Smith talks about Salazar is a truly great man. You know, he said if Salazar could have hung on, you know, for two or three more years, we probably could have, you know, we probably could have smashed, you know, like Zan UPF

and, you know, and, you know, and the proxies of the Warsaw Pact. But it, it's, it, but again, you know, there, like, like Franco wasn't Salazar. and there was no carnation, revolution or whatever. The progressive uprising against Salazar was branded. Memory fails me at the minute. I'm still kind of shaking off the weekend.

But I don't mean like I was out, like chasing skirt and like guzzling scotch or something. I mean, like I got my ass kicked this weekend, and then it hurt my brain. But the... Another thing to consider, too, You know, the strong suit, I think, in arguably in every other state where, you know, radicals and or Bolsheviks and or, you know, ideological offshoot, you know, whether they were, you know, left-wing syndicalists, you know, anarcho-sindicalists, like anarchists. I mean, even among the anarchists, there was a kind of rigid cadre structure.

whereby the interdiscipline of the party and its cadres was what carried the day and allowed them to allow, you know, and carried them to victory. In Spain, the Spanish left.

It was even more nakedly sectarian, personal, like, characterized by the faux, messianic delusions of individual, like, players within it. it was it was pointlessly like inwardly directed and secretive like these guys were

constantly at war with each other you know far far far far more than and far more fractious than the right wing was you know and that's the only state like that and that's not me saying like I mean the right wing is a lot more organic

okay um and and uh and that you know and it's um it doesn't emerge it didn't then doesn't emerge from some, you know, from a literal central committee. Okay. It's, there's, there's reasons of a structural and, like, sociological and historical nature, like conventionally, you know, the modern, uh, radical left has more internal discipline

than the right. Um, okay. Um, but that's why it's so striking that in Spain, like this was, it was literally the opposite, you know, um, um, And it also explains why this thing started when the Vermeck intervened, you know, in Von Toma's, you know, Counter Legion and Ventoma's tanks and, you know, these, and these stud, like, battlefield commanders. And Franco had a great eye for, like, company-level officers.

I don't know what their equivalent would be in Spanish Army of the day, but, like, junior officers who you need, you know, to be, like, platoon leaders and company commanders, like Franco and Franco's staff like they they knew out of Caldera that kind of talent okay so by the time these pressures came to bear like politically like the French left was just like falling apart you know um and not even uh not even you know not even you know not even the nkvd on the ground not even goons like eric milk like you know just like you know just cause like he was probably an asshole anyway and you know he his is you know he he wasn't doing what he had to do to, you know, sustain, like, internal discipline, you know, within his own chain

of command and stuff. Like, even with all that, like, conventionally, like, almost comically, it's not comical, we're talking about, like, extreme brutality. But that kind of, like, you know, even that kind of, like, ridiculous level of, like, Stalinist, like, you know, like, compliance through, like, massive brutal violence. So, like, it still couldn't even, like, phase, like, the dysfunction of the process that I just, um, enumerated. And towards it and two, you know, talking about Spain being ironically, you know, decades. And in the case of the Spanish modern state emergence, you know, a century, you know, ahead of the rest of the continent. The first, the first attempt to truly organize like a trade, like a trade union that, you know,

with an eye for the ability to ultimately, you know, extort concessions to general strike. That occurred as early as the 1830s, okay, like decades before the American War between the States. You know, there's guys in Spain, you know, who are talking like an archicinic list and like talking like Marcos Lennonists. You know, that's pretty crazy and pretty remarkable, all right? Especially, again, we consider that, you know, it's a, I'm not like traitors, Spain like Spain is fucking incredible. But you know we're not talking about like terrorists and we're not talking about like

Berlin and we're not talking about London. You know we're talking about Spain in some cases, you know like very provincial places in Spain that you know not only weren't known for their kind of cosmopol an embrace of exotic ideologies

you know and things that just kind of like tickled fancy of aristocrats, just you know, thought experiments that can be played out with real people. you know, these guys were thinking in absolutely in like 20th century terms, but they were doing so a century early, you know, and they were doing so amissed, you know, a state that was still like, you know, almost entirely like agrarian in terms of its local economic output.

That, it Cyrus says in the Warriors is a mirror. miracle. But Giuseppe Finnelli he was an early figure of advanced of importance within the post-Jacoban

but pre-Leninist left. And he arrived in Spain in 1868. He'd been a great admirer of Bakunin, who was Marx's great opponent in the first international. um justi feenelli he right here out of madrid without speaking any spanish he basically had no money

but he said look and people thought he was crazy but he said look he's like the idea as he called it you know because god you know uh pairs of thought you know we'd call it the faith even though that's what it is it's an irsatist's faith he said uh the idea uh he said he said look this is the most fertile like this is almost fertile ground you know we can find for you know for Marxism on the continent okay

there's literally no more like proverbial fertile fertile fertile soil than the Spanish body politic to embrace Marxism okay and he was right okay rapidly rapidly

this kind of this this abundance of sex just popped up, you know, like anarchist, libertarian, you know, anarcho-cinicalist, you know, independent socialist, like everything you can possibly think of, okay? And again, that ultimately served like the inherent fractiousness and sort of anarchic nature of that political culture of the post-Jacob and left and Spain. I mean, that cost them to war.

and it's not I don't accept the kind of Thomas Payne idea that like the more you hold an endless conversation you know the more like marvelous thing you just kind of like emerge out of motherfucker's mouth but but my point is

that there was a there was a remarkably developed intellectual culture on the ground as regards politics and uh you know um political theory

unless you're talking unless you're truly talking about like Straussian types or just like positing like you know like values claims and and trying to mind clout from the fact that you know they call themselves philosophers or something like if you're talking about if you're talking about political theory you're talking about

you know you're talking about it imagining the architecture of the state as an instrumentality of what you want to accomplish and you're imagining, you know, how that can be structured in order to accomplish those objectives, okay? So it is essential any revolutionary enterprise, okay? Yeah, there can be too many theorists and too few, you know, partisans, but the, the converse is just as self-defeating. Okay. I'm sure there's those who are going to say that's like my egghead prejudice.

It's not, it's not. I don't, but it's in arguable, okay? It's not, it's not something that, it's not something that political theory geeks just insist upon as, as a cope or whatever. But the, what did prevail initially in terms of the dominant strain, now bear in mind, epistemic priors that informed everyone in the radical left were 100% Marxist in nature. but the practical tendency, ideological tendency that became, you know, most dominant very rapidly, was, were things of an anarchist nature, okay? And in the early days, it was the largest force within the urban working class of Spain. Small as it was, but again, it was, it was, it was the,

it was supposed to act as the vanguard. Okay. It wasn't, you know, a question of taking a headcount. And there's a lot of reasons why anarchism appealed so much to this population, you know, a lot of which we just got into. But also something that the left in Spain realized very early on was there like, look, okay, the structure of this state entails things, you know, like the Roman church, you know. and entails things, you know, like, like chartered, like chartered companies, you know, that are bound up with the private fortunes of aristocrats, you know, the very architect for the state

is like teams with hostility to our objectives. So we've got to create parallel institutions, okay? So we're going to have, you know, like the workers relief organization. You know, we're not, we're not going to go to, you know, like the monastic order is to, like help out widows of like the men of ours who die, okay? Like, you know, we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not going to, we're not, we're not going to try and capture, you know, the, like, the local constables, um, office and in Catalonia or whatever. You know, like, we're going to, we're going to maintain our own cadre discipline, you know, and we're also going to, like, handle our own, like, justice. You know, we're never going to rely upon, you know, the state or any of its, um, affiliated.

institutions and bureaucracies, you know, to guarantee us justice or anything else. We starve to death. We starve to death, but that's the way it's going to be. And that is something enduring, too, that basically everybody imitated. Even the fascists and the national socialist, to some degree, imitated that. Okay. Because it's just in a political warfare situation, especially during a long struggle, like you just have to do that. Okay.

And also then, you know, you have, you have new institutions in being that, you know, have never had sort of the sovereign authority of the state behind them, but they have, they have acted in authoritative capacities on matters of life and death. And in some cases, their existence had gone back decades. And, you know, they had existed as, you know, floating like sovereigns into themselves, you know, in the fact that they commanded, you know, they commanded controlled, you know, tens of thousands of men under arms, you know, they had

operational areas that constituted like, you know, territory they literally held. You know, at some point, people are talking, um, semantics. When they're like, oh, that's not really a government. So what are you talking about? Why, you know, what, why would you even care about, you know, why would you go to that trouble

to try to replace the, um, you know, preexisting institutions of, of state. Well, that's why. This shouldn't be mysterious. And finally, or I mean, not relatedly, it wasn't just that. The church, and in Spain, we can talk about the church, because I mean, Spain, the Spanish are a Catholic people. You know, it, the the Spanish left viewed

they viewed the church and they viewed despite the fact that I mean there's a religious irony to Ferdin and Isabella you know basically removing the mandate of of the Holy See to render judgment on power political

questions of war and peace while at the same time you know enforcing you know the moral law according to the understanding of of uh the papacy in a way sight and seen probably for 500 years and there's also um there's also a there's also a there's also a real irony in guys you know like waving the right banner as they charge into combat you know demanding you know social justice

basically you know aside of the marxist gobbly gook they're basically saying like we're Catholic people, you know, who need, you know, who need a Catholic church to sort of act as an intermediary between us and our would-be class oppressors or aggressors, you know, yet we reject the Catholic Church and want to destroy it. But again, the internal logic of it, of the enterprise, that's what they would have had to do. Okay. And that's one of the reasons people recognize us on some level, even people who aren't, you know, ultra-sophisticated. not that i'm so sophisticated but i mean do spend all day like reading about this stuff but um you know the uh it's um it should uh it should become clear you know at least in part why some of these um so these peculiarities became you know not just sort of you know quirkily identified with

the Spanish modern state but somehow inextricably bound up with like its essence you know and that's and that's about all I got for today man again I'm still kind of recovering from my from my

vacation that the Cook County, at the Cook County Resort and Hotel. But I thought this was important to cover because we're going to come back to a lot of these aspects. And I didn't want it to be, I didn't want them to be issues of first impression, you know, as they kind of reemerged. But I promise when we record next, we'll get into, you know, General Franco arriving back from Morocco. and, you know, kind of how battle resolved between, you know, between the nationalist element and a counterlegion and the Vermact and Thomas tanks, you know, and the Reds and Republicans, all in sundry. Does that sound good?

Sounds great. Plug away. Yes, sir. I'm still playing catch up, but I'm, as I've disclosed the people, you know, last few weeks, me and my crime partner, Rake, we're, we're trying at a feverish pace to get season two of the podcast up and running. And I promise it will be in the next few weeks, you know. In the meantime, I'm going to be uploading a lot of free stuff, you know, to, um, to, um, the, substack. Like today, I just

uploaded an interview with a friend of mine, like, you know, an older dude who knew Jeff Fort, and he banged with the El Rukin here in Chicago. I'm going to be dropping a lot of that kind of stuff until we kind of formally relaunched the brand. I've been recording a lot

with Nico Klaus. It was a fascinating guy, an artist, and a very controversial figure. He's going to feature heavily in season to, but you can find the substack in the pod at real Thomas 777.7.7.com. You can find me on Twitter, but my tweets are protected. People tell me Twitter's not censoring as aggressively as before, but I've literally had my accounts, nukes so many times for, you know, and never once if I... I got suspended for 12 hours yesterday, and they didn't even tell me why.

yeah yeah yeah i mean there's just like crazy bullshit even when the commissars aren't you know like busily like like and excited i mean it's like it's like porn to them or something to just like censor people i think because they're fucking freaks but uh point being like i do protect my tweets because i

it seems to be the only way to like not be fucking nuked um you know just arbitrarily but uh you can find you can always find me on my website um it's just thomas777.com number 70 HMAS 7777.com. That's where all my like fresh stuff like appears.

It's still like somewhat under construction, but you can, that will always be around, okay? And as, people keep asking about the channel content, that is coming too. I haven't figured out exactly how I want to integrate it with the pod. I want some, I don't want to just be like a mirror of the pod,

but with video. I mean, if people want, I know some people like that, and they just like listening to stuff. on like Odyssey or YouTube, I'll do that. But I do want some original video content. I want primarily that, the channel to be that, but like one thing at a time. And I'm, I want to, I'm, yeah, and it's, but that's basically where we're at, okay?

And, um, just keep, uh, just keep your eyes peeled for, like, fresh stuff because I'm going to be uploading. I'm going to be uploading a ton of, like, just free stuff, like today. every several days. And when the season two of the pod launches, all season one content is going to become free immediately. And it'll be dope. And when I say like rebranding,

like we've got the resources and kind of the knowledge as well as sort of like the higher profile in terms of the people who are willing to work with us, you know, like Nego Klau, like yourself. I'm not saying you guys are like similar people. I understand. I understand. I understand it.

Okay. No worries. And people like, you know, my friend Big D, you know, who dropped his testimony on us about the old Rukin. But like we're popping quite splendidly and that's, you know, allowing for other potentialities. So yeah, I won't hold up the recording anymore, man. That's all I got. Thank you so much. And thank you, again, for the tremendous love and consideration.

for me when, you know, I went dark on account of being arrested. Like, I really mean that. I got huge love for all of our friends. All right, man. I appreciate it. Thank you.