Virtual Visit to The Père-Lachaise Cemetery

1. Oscar Wilde's grave, huh? All those lipstick marks -- yikes... They weren't left by women. The place must be a real drag queen shrine.

2. "Fighting the Fascists" sounds plenty noble until you recognize that the International Brigade were the communists of the 3rd International (a.k.a. Comintern). So, while Franco was nobody to prize, the International Brigade was the doings of "great humanitarians of history" like Stalin and Trotsky. They seem to have cleansed the records of that, though.

I've always been fond of this pic of my wife at Pere-Lachaise:

http://flickr.com/photos/astanhope/2384946/in/set-60666/

who cares about that? they were fighting for the legal republic and with the loyalists against rebel fascists. We should be thankful.

Yayo is right.

They were fighting on the side of legitimacy.

Mmm... if you really knew the history of French communism, you wouldn't be glad they were fightning for anything... Fighting evil by evil is not something you should take ligthly.

"La fin justifie les moyens".
Not sure.

Damn weird argument ^g^

Now... Let's think you're a statesman in the Republic of Spain back there in 1936 and some fascist nobles with a big part of the army and public forces raise in arms against your legal and democratic regime...

Will you then drop your arms and give up... or fight?

Fight is bad but it was a perfectly right objective to achieve freedom and defend the democracy... Almost that's what I think...

If some voluntarists come from foreign countries... Why should you refuse their help...

See that the passive countries around left Spain to die alone and then left Germany play around... Maybe that's the good thing to do...

I don't understand you at all ^^

Puhlease! You really think Stalin sent the Cominterns there to "defend democracy" and "fight for the republic"? It was all about advancing worldwide authoritarian communism and the people in Spain were the real die hard "koolaid-drinking" communists who were there for that reason alone.

Straight talk from Sid.

Volunteers came from England, France, etc. de Motu Proprio... Stalin was not there to tell them so...

OK, yayo, we can argue that point. I will rephrase into the passive voice to appease you:

"Puhlease! You really think the Cominterns went there to “defend democracy” and “fight for the republic”? It was all about advancing worldwide authoritarian communism. Those in Spain were the real die hard “koolaid-drinking” communists who were there for that reason alone."

Better?

Communism was invented in France (la Commune), so I don't think they needed Stalin to go there.

It was a clash of ideas, one extreme against another. The republic distributed land from rich to poor, was anticlerical, anti-army, and then in 1936 the leftist Popular Front won. The socialist Largo Caballero in power was called the Spanish Lenin. The Comintern was trying to boost its ideas there.

On the other side the nationalists-traditionalists were fuming. From THEIR point of view, Spain was not heading the right way. It lead to violence everywhere, up to the rebellion. The fights were assisted by outsiders, but started inside (hence the name "civil" war).

One side supported by the Axis, one by the Soviet Union.
(Evil vs evil, in my eyes yayo.)

If you were Communist at the time, your duty to the Internationale was to go and fight for your ideals.

Such as some people went as volunteers to fight with the Waffen SS.

If you were a nationalist-traditionalist you had to go to war with the Germans/Italians.

O tempora, O mores.

I think it's been a long time since then and we can clearly distinguish the facts and those told by Chris are true. Even the radical lefties wanted the republic to fall and wanted a militar raise against the regime.

Now. Those romantic (maybe alcoholic, maybe not) from foreign countries came to fight for freedom. Those from Italy came as "forced" volunteers, just like th so called Blue Division went from Spain to fight in Russia for Germany. I mean "forced" because they were regular soldiers or soldiers of fortune... And fighted with Franco.

War is war, and its really bad. As the war advanced the republic lack of help because of the passive politics of foreign countries went in desperation and most of the gold and resources from the public arks went to Russia as pay for unusable weapons and defective tools :(. Even politic control went to radical positions because there was a need of support. Democracy was left alone to die.

Most of people in Spain fighted for the side they were caught without any passion but to save their lives... But those who came "volunteers" to support the republic, even when they were manned here by hateable politics and communist commands, were here to fight for freedom in the so known as the Last Romantic War if there was ever one...

Remember that wars are created by kings and fighted by plain soldiers...

"wars are created by kings and fighted by plain soldiers… "

hear, hear!
over and out. Peace.

fun fact: one of the stories in the indie movie, Paris, je t'aime, had a scene there.