Hmmm…should I follow you or Miguel de Unamuno on what to think of Franco and the boys????? I think I’ll stick with Unamuno on this one. The falangist “death cult” was no friend of the Church, but an expression of fascist ideology and nihilism if ever there was one. That Franco backed away from the thuggish elements as the threat of war subsided says something in his favor…but at that point was there any other choice?

THE ANALOGY SUCKS.

Well, yeah. What do you think my piece said exactly?

To Bleepless:

The Republic ended up a Soviet puppet, the Nats not a puppet of Germany or Italy.

How can you be so sure of what you have happened in the counter-factual scenario of a Republican victory? It would seem unlikely to me that Hitler would have allowed a communist Spain to continue after he ahd defeated France and was planning to turn on the Soviets….that is presupposing that the USSR-German pact would have been agreed to as it was.

It also seems eviednt that a German invaded Spain would have fallen under US/British controll after the defeat of the Nazis. Given the horsetrading at Yalta I dont think it would go any other way.

But all of that is the idlest of speculation since one can have no idea how things would have played out.

In any event, in what sort of shape would Spain have been to aid the German war effort? They had less capabilities militarily than the Italians (by all accounts), they had large segments of their population whose loyalty was iffy at best, and an economy still largely in tatters. I’ll agree with anyone who say it was in Spain’s best interest to sit out WWII. That they did so was due less to the wisdom of Franco than to the realities on the ground in Spain.

that’s all.

“the four divisions of fascist Italians fighting for Franco…” prove nothing.

he took aid.

spain would have become anarcho/atheistic communist if he had not taken over.

AS YOU WROTE/ADMIT: “It seems likely that the civil war would have continued between various communist and anarchist factions, or that Spain would have been fractured into several autonomous regions.”

pinchet was better than a marxist tyranny.

franco was better than anyone else at the time.

he was pro church and pro West – and pro a unified an independent and neutral SPAIN.

the real proof that franco was no “fascist” is in what he provided for his people: a PEACEFUL transition to a constitutional monarchy.

i cannot reiterate this enough: mussolini was a SOCIALIST; italian fascism is a spin on socialism as was marxism and nazism.

when an italian fascist said CORPORATIST they literally meant UNIONS. that what it means. it NEVER meant that the sate was run to benefit big business owners.

the sate was for the people, das volk. PERIOD.

franco was not like that. he defended the Church and kept spain out of ww2, and was on our side in th cold war.

this proves everything.

no foreign power had 20 divisions in spain.

NONE. there was no occupation.

THE ANALOGY SUCKS.

it is ignorant of the facts.

there was ZERO chance of the democratic of spain surviving – without franco. as there was none for chile – without pinochet.

the spain-chile (franco-pinochet) analogy is better than the spain-iraq analogy.

the specter of repeating the post-vietnam mistake is the best analogy.

and if we keep fighting the left then we can prevent them from LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY repeating history.

AND REMEBER:

the dems pulled the plug on our south vietnamese allies TWO FREAKIN YEARS AFTER THE LAST US COMBAT TROOP HAD LEFT.

so there is a REAL threat the Dems in Congress cvan do that. not just now, but even a few years down the line.

IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO:

iraq stabilizes and we elect hillary.

and she and the dems stop financing iraq’s govt and kazai’s.

what happens next is likely to be similar to what happened after they pulled the plug in 1975.

that’s the analogy bush made.

HE WAS RIGHT.

all the best!

I’ll agree that Franco was not a Mussolini or a Hitler, but that is as far as I’ll go.

franco was no fascists.

mussolini was.

fascists was a form of socialism – as was Nazism

franco knew that spain needed time apart from the socialist/atheist axis in order to survive.

he saved spain much like pinochet saved chile.

he kept spain out of ww2 despite hitler PERSONALLY pleading with him for hours.

hitler said upon leaving: i’d rather have all my teeth pulled then spend one more minute with thast mand.

fracnco was loyal ally to the free world during the cold war.

and he provided for spain’s transition to a true democracy which respected religion and the monarchy.

franco is a hero.

had he not staged his coup then spain woudl have become a socialiist atheist tyranny allied to the nazis and we might have lost ww2.

the correct analogy for iraq is se asia and korea.

i said/posted on this this in 2004.

Perhaps it’s better to avoid historical analogies altogether…