The Spanish Civil War w/ Thomas777 - Complete

Summary

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The Pete Quiñones Show

The Spanish Civil War w/ Thomas777 - Complete

Date: August 8, 2026
Host: Pete Quiñones
Guest: Thomas777

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Overview

This sweeping, multipart episode is a deep-dive revisionist exploration of the Spanish Civil War and its intricate place in modern European history. Pete Quiñones and Thomas777—who is known for his intellectual rigor and dissident perspective—take listeners on a journey through the broader historical context, social and political landscape of Spain, the ideological and military dynamics of the war itself, the intervention of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the role and legacy of Francisco Franco’s regime, and the war’s enduring impact on the 20th century geopolitical order.

Thomas frames the conflict as both the culmination of centuries-long Spanish peculiarities and as a critical precursor (even “first act”) to World War II, going beyond surface-level analysis to interrogate myths, paradigms, and symbolic events. He continuously returns to the importance of “zeitgeist”—the spirit of the age—over dry material explanations or simplistic left-right binaries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Framing and Historiography of the Spanish Civil War

• Early Exposure and Revisionism: Thomas shares how early left-wing mythologizing of the "Republican" (Communist) side inspired him to pursue revisionist history and challenge common misconceptions.
  • "[My] interest in the Spanish War was concomitant with my interest in the Third Reich and the Second World War because I came to realize these things were inextricably connected." (03:00)
• Spain as Outlier: Spain is described as the first truly national, Westphalian state long before others.
  • "Spain became the first truly, like, national state... It really was like an absolute monarchy of a national state..." (04:30)
• Myth and counter-myth, especially regarding the role of Jews in Spanish history and the often mischaracterized nature of the Spanish Inquisition and its supposed brutality (contrasted starkly to leftist atrocities in the 1930s).
  • "In one year, 1936, the Communists and their socialist allies in Spain slaughtered about 6,000 priests and nuns. ... within the first year of a three-year conflict, more clergy people were categorically slaughtered by the communists than the total number of people put to death by the Inquisition over three centuries." (63:36, Thomas777)

2. Pre-War and Socio-Political Context

• The Legacy of Constant Upheaval: Spain, from early modernity through the 19th century, is marked by almost ceaseless crisis: occupation, secession, and violent leftist or rightist regime changes.
  • "Spain was quite literally violently ripped apart... this is how the Spanish revolutionary left was born." (259:59)
• Unique Spanish Social Structure: Unlike other European states, Spain retained a rigid, almost medieval aristocracy and church alliance well into the modern era. Attempts at liberalism quickly derailed into factional violence.
  • "Spain was a century ahead of the curve in its political development... You had this starkly divided society." (259:59)
• Anarchist and Radical Influence: The role of early anarchists, syndicalists, and revolutionary sects (e.g. the legacy of Giuseppe Fanelli, Bakunin) feeding Spain’s uniquely combustible left, which was more violent and fractious than elsewhere.

3. The War as Precursory to WWII, International Dimensions

• Hitler and Stalin’s Motives & Intervention:
  • Germany saw Spain as a strategic field for testing military doctrine (notably Blitzkrieg), weapons, and building alliances; Hitler's intervention (via Condor Legion) began with intelligence from Franco’s agents in July 1936.
    • "Hitler convened Göring, Milch, Kesselring... All... said 'yes, we've got to intervene now.' Hitler authorized a full-scale Luftwaffe intervention..." (10:13)
  • Stalin intervened heavily but covertly, sending weapons and NKVD to guarantee that the communists would not fall, viewing Spain as a test case for eventual major war with Germany.
    • "Third Reich had to go fight in Spain because Spain is where the communists drew the line." (17:45)
    • On Stalin: "He wasn't saying 'oh, we've abandoned world revolution.' That's nonsense. ... Spain is where the Bolsheviks collided with the true reactionary enemy." (100:57–101:24)
• Unique ‘Holy War’ of the Right:
  • Massive cross-border solidarity among European rightist movements, as shown by multi-national funerals for foreign volunteers killed fighting for Franco.
    • "This funeral train literally did an entire tour of Europe and was greeted by throngs... giving it the Roman salute." (28:56)

4. Military Innovations and the German Contribution

• The Spanish Civil War as ‘Dress Rehearsal’:
  • Detailed discussion of German (Condor Legion) tank units under Von Thoma; development, deployment, and evolution of armored warfare, leading directly to the Blitzkrieg of World War II.
    • "German armored doctrine—its testing ground was the Spanish Civil War." (120:21)
    • "Wars are won by the ground element. ... And this [German] was essential to that effort..." (171:25)
• Organizational Lessons:
  • How German and Spanish military cultures clashed, Von Thoma’s reforms, and the eventual acceptance of rigorous, modernized combined-arms warfare.

5. Myths and Realities of Repression and Atrocity

• Violence and Clerical Killings:
  • Specific refutation of popular narratives about the Inquisition; direct archival evidence of leftist planning for mass executions and “exterminations” under Soviet/NKVD guidance.
    • "These political detainees, they are to be terminated. ... You're not worried about being taken to task... you had assurances from the Soviet Union from day one..." (78:59)
• Soviet Motives and the Fate of Spanish Gold:
  • The Soviets used Spain as strategic leverage, also looting Spanish gold reserves as "war payment" and with an eye to controlling a client state in the West.

6. The Role and Legacy of Franco

• Franco's Politics and Cold War Aftermath:
  • Critique of Franco as ultimately Machiavellian, self-serving, and stalling when true Axis collaboration was required; instead, Spain maintained “splendid isolation.”
    • "Franco, at the end of the day, accomplished nothing. I'd say he was a detriment, you know, over the long term." (183:12)
    • On Franco-Hitler negotiations: "Franco's demands were... extortionate... just Franco's favored method, once again, of... not commit[ting] to the alliance." (238:25)
• Unfulfilled Axis Alliance:
  • Deep look at negotiations between Franco, Hitler, and Vichy France, and why Spain stayed out of WWII proper (save the ‘Blue Division’).
    • "If the Axis went down, that was the end of Spain. ... Franco was really kind of a pox on the house of all patriotic forces then mobilized." (227:05)

7. The Enduring Spanish Tragedy and Modern Parallels

• Factionalism and Instability:
  • Chronic political deadlock, with both left and right using violence and refusing to yield power peacefully; repeated cycles leading to civil strife.
  • The uniqueness of Spain’s radical left: "In Spain the Spanish left, it was even more nakedly sectarian, personal ... and pointlessly inwardly directed and secretive..." (276:23)
• Modern Analogues:
  • Comparisons to later proxy wars (e.g., Syria, Ukraine) as expressions of a deeper 20th–21st century ideological conflict.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "The Third Reich had to go fight in Spain because Spain is where the communists drew the line."
  — Thomas777 (17:45)

• "In one year, 1936, the Communists and their socialist allies in Spain slaughtered about 6,000 priests and nuns. ... within the first year of a three-year conflict, more clergy people were categorically slaughtered by the communists than the total number of people put to death by the Inquisition over three centuries."
  — Thomas777 (63:36)

• "This funeral train literally did an entire tour of Europe and was greeted by throngs... giving it the Roman salute. ... I can think of nothing comparable in the communist world before or after 1945."
  — Thomas777 (28:56)

• "Franco, at the end of the day, accomplished nothing. I'd say that he was a detriment, you know, over the long term."
  — Thomas777 (183:12)

• "Armored warfare as we know it doesn't exist yet, you know, and this is four years... before the battle of France. So this is remarkably significant."
  — Thomas777 (159:03)

• "Spain was a house divided... that's why Spain was an outlier, but I accept what Payne is getting at."
  — Thomas777 (276:23)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:00 – Thomas discusses left-wing myth-making and his early revisionist interest in the Spanish Civil War.
• 10:13 – Hitler’s decision to intervene in Spain; Luftwaffe deployment described.
• 17:45 – The strategic and ideological stakes for Hitler and Stalin.
• 28:56 – Multinational rightist funeral and its symbolic resonance.
• 63:36 – The myth of the Inquisition versus leftist atrocities (clergy killings).
• 100:57 – Stalin’s rationale for entering the war; Soviet intentions.
• 120:21–171:25 – Military revolution: German tanks, the Condor Legion, and Spanish-German cooperation.
• 183:12–238:25 – Franco’s motives and failure to establish a lasting or meaningful alliance with the Axis.
• 259:59–303:12 – Unique aspects of Spanish political/social structure; emergence and in-fighting of revolutionary factions on the left.

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Overall Tone & Closing Thoughts

The episode is dense, scholarly, and unsparing in its criticisms—especially of mainstream history and the romanticization of leftist causes. Thomas777 repeatedly urges listeners to look past received narratives to difficult empirical truths and deeper symbolic meanings. The show is intentionally provocative and designed for a historically literate audience—especially those open to controversial or revisionist interpretations. It concludes with references to forthcoming episodes that promise to dig even deeper into the ideological, military, and social consequences of the conflict.

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Transcript

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Picanono Show. How are you doing today, Thomas? I'm well. Thanks as always, for. For hosting me on this fine day. Yeah, it's Mother's Day, so good fortune and long life till the mom's out there. Yeah, I wish mine was still around. Likewise. Yeah. All right. So this is long awaited. 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. 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 that it's like the WHO was arming and equipping and providing NKVD function areas to slaughter people behind the lines. It was the Soviet Union doing that. Okay. You weren't. They weren't fighting to create like 21st century Sweden. Not that that would be any great shakes either, but, you know, then. Oh, and, you know, we. There were some Russians there too, so that, 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,

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had to rely basically on the resources of your local library. And I was blessed in that regard because I live in Chicagoland 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 Weber or Weber, I guess he goes by, you know, and, and some, A lot, A lot of their kind of best contributors and editors, they were, 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, I think it was Celine who said that, you know, Stalingrad is where, where left and right Hegelians met to settle their differences. That first time that happened was in Spain. Okay. Even on the revisionist side, though, there's misconceptions. Like, I, I'm going to get into some of that today. Like, 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, I think he's, he's. He's the historian of the Third Reich and he's, he's just like a great individual, but he's, he mischaracterizes the political situation there relative to the, the combatants. And I'll get into what I mean by that, but I mean, it was basically it. 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, we're owing to ideological prejudices. Like I mean that, that was in my own lifetime. I mean that that happened in you know, Nicaragua and El Salvador. That's why like our dear friend Dan, who's a, an expert on that, you know, he'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, into the Spanish war, but also Spain. There's a little tragic character to Spain and, and Spain is really, I mean despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact. I, you know, and I'm not saying that that'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, 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 ball, in the, in the Balkans, like weren't dealing with that, you know, like, and you know, just the, the relationship of the, 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 remain kind of feudal and like they're sensibilities, you know, even until the, the early 20th century, Spain was the first truly kind of Westphalian national state. Like before Westphalia, you know, with it where, where you had a truly absolute monarch and the borders of Spain were national borders. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a confederation of palladies, 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. So I just got interested in like Spain like on its own terms because like I, you know, I'm a student of political theory, you know, and I. Isn't there, 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 span Spanish are being made, slaves are being made Slaves of Jewish masters. Yeah, that, 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, like, Jewish slave colony. Like Ukraine was, in my opinion, still is today. And I mean, not just like metaphorical terms, in real terms, particularly if you, particularly, you know, if you count pornography, which is, 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 Republic was, you know, as regards, you know, being in bed with, with, with Jewish users and other, you know, another, and other, and other, and other powerful people who were, you know, operating inimically to the, inimical to the national interest. This kind of like, out and out domination, you know, of peoples, you know, like, like, 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, Western Europe. But so, yeah, I mean, it was, it was kind of like this, it was kind of like this collision of like, the ancient and the very modern and, you know, stuff like that. But to your point, you know, about, about, you know, Spaniards and Jews, that, 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 it, I, I, I, I didn't, I, 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, 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, Muranos or Marano. Like, I don't, I don't, I, I don't know what the correct pronunciation is. You know, he's the one. Ferdinand demanded that, you know, like, all, 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, the first truly, like, national state. Buddy. But the point is, like, that wasn't just, that was, that wasn't just Ferdinand trying to kind of score points with the clergy or something like this. This was imperative In Spain, in a way, it was not other places, or maybe not. Maybe imperative is not the word. This was a measure that had a context in Spain than it did in other places, even where there was, you know, bad blood across ethno sectarian lines of a way that was, in a way that was very pronounced. But I want to do two things today. I want to get just kind of 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 context by virtually everybody, including some people who are very studied revisionists and should know better. But it, you know, that said, I'll. Let me, let me just let. Close out this window. Basically, I'm gonna start, it's gonna 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, if that makes sense. When did, basically, Hitler and the, the inner kind of core of the Third Reich, you know, that being gearing, Goebbels, you know, Himmler, they first kind of became, they first kind of became aware of Spain in strategic terms. It was July 25, 1936. This seems like something out of a movie, but Hitler was actually attending an opera, I think, at Bayreuth or Bayreuth. Like, I, I, I'm sure I'm butchering that pronunciation, but literally at the intermission of this opera, it. Canaris approaches that Admiral Kaderas, who was, you know, 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 advia, 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, in the interest of the Third Reich. You know, other times he was, you know, working as, just as actively to sabotage its strategic ambitions and arguably even its survival. But that's a, that's a subject to itself. But Canaris had actually introduced. Hitler to Franco's people. And Canaris, he approached Hitler during the intermission of this opera, and he brought him an urgent telegram, which was an appeal from two of Franco's emissaries, you know, asking them for immediate Asking the Third Reich for immediate assistance. Specifically Franco needed to transport the Moroccan legions were sympathetic you know, the nationalist cause from North Africa to the Spanish mainland, you know, to rapidly reinforce. And Hiller convened Gearing Earhart, Milch, Albert Kesselring who I made the point, you know, Kesselring was finally his final command was, you know, the defense of Italy. And he was never, his forces were never defeated. You know they, the war ended. So I mean the, the Vermont and the Luftwaffe just, just went home, you know it. But Kesselring at that time was, was the Luke father's chief of staff. Milch who was an absolutely brilliant guy in all kinds of ways and in operational terms he, he was second to none. But all. And this will become relevant later, um, all three of them said yes, we've got to intervene now. Hitler authorized a full scale Luftwaffe intervention. All the men present said we've got to be careful here. You know, we very. 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, Gearing deployed a bomber squadron under von Richthofen who along with von Thoma who commanded the ground element and we'll get into that later were they were both, you know, top, uh, they were both top commanders and they're somewhat overlooked and by people who like to rank the access generals and what have you. But 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, 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. Gearing at that time was still in

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You know, the broad economic planning, you know, in a way that would later end up in the lap of disasters. The Ernst 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 Spear, you know, his arm, its minister at this point during 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, that he reasoned could be bartered in direct exchange for military aid or, you know, acquired fire sale prices. Okay? It now by fall, a general war was underway in Spain, okay? And at this point, Milch Kessel, Ray Gehring 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, owing 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, okay? 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, rather, rather 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, this is, this is not orthodox Marxist Leninism, 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, that's 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 communists drew the line. Okay? That was, that, that was 800 and vice versa, like Stalin, this 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, if Stalin had not, you know, set the communists whatever they 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 you're undermining, you know, what you purport to be your own commitment to peace and, and, and aversion to escalation. I mean, what a Boss Tweed say, 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 to anybody, okay? But that's, that's, that's, you know, that, 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 and Irving, I found a citation in Irving's the war path also. And after, in early November, in November, December 1937, it's about a year onward. Hitler, Hitler had told Ribbentrop's chief of staff or his secretary that, you know, like something, something effect of, like an outright victory of Franco. You know, we actually might live to regret that because the guy's such a bastard, you know, Hahaha. But he also said, you know, our interest is first and foremost is preventing a communist victory, but also maintaining, maintaining existing tensions in the Mediterranean. You know, if, if the UK was being, you know, its way in and out of the medicine, you know, but also like, you know, the Spanish, you know, essentially preventing, like neutralizing the strategic benefit of the straight of Gibraltar to the UK there that give Germany tremendous power, you know, not just in terms of the fact that, well you know, the, the real Navy, the Royal Navy would then, you know, be at war in a t theater. But it would, it would give Berlin, you know, bargaining power with respect to London. And at that point, obviously, you know, Hillary didn't view the UK as an enemy. You know, so the fact that Hiller 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, 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, that aside, it's. One of the things that arguably, when I say arguably, I don't mean, I don't mean in my perspective. But you know, again, people who view the war in Spain is just kind of this, like, isolated occurrence where, you know, the communist support for, you know, for the, for the Republicans, as they're called, was, was just some kind of token perfunctory gesture or that, you know, the Third Reich wasn't really committed to, to it, you know, other than, you know, for the very limited purpose of, of, of, you know, cutting the combat teeth of the Wehrmacht. There really was cross border momentum developing behind parties of the right. Okay, no, there was not a fascist international, but that would have been self defeating. And also that's not kind of the, the claim to legitimacy that these rightist movements had, didn't entail, you know, some, 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, his 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 nothing, 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, two Romanian nationals, name of Vasil or Vasil Marine and Ayan Mota. Ayan Mota. Was Kodriano is number two in the Iron Guard. They'd, 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. 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It reached Berlin in February and everywhere they stopped they were met by, you know, SS and SA men and national soldiers, party officials, delegates to the Spanish Phalange. You know, guys former representatives of the fascist party in Italy. Obviously you know, a huge 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, in, in the communist world before or after 1945. You know, I can think of thing. I can think of people who the communists tried to glom onto like Bobby Sands, which was very misguided. Because Sans certainly wasn't one of them. I. They're people like from the Popular Front Liberation of Palestine, you know, years after the fact, they'd show up, you know, wearing, wearing shade Rivera badges and stuff before it became like some idiot hipster thing like the 2000s. It was, it's ironic because like the, the PFLP General Command and people like that would, you know, would, would employ his visage. But there's nothing comparable, you know, this, this really was like a holy war of the right against, you know, against what they perceived as Jewry, against Communism, you know, against, against, you know, again, against godless capital. That was, you know, that was, that was supporting both of those elements, you know, and that's why these fools who, you know, from the UK and from the usa, like, you know. Oh, I was, you know, they were. People say like they were fighting, you know, for, 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. That's born of ignorance, but it's, you know, it, 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 it as the, the. The dictates that Stalin was issuing to the General Staff of the Red army and the directives he was handing to the, to the main. What was called the main administration. 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, of war in May 1941, they were incessantly referencing the Spanish War and you know, the, like a literal quote from, from Army Commissar, uh, first rank. That's. I, I can't pronounce these like Georgian and Moldovan and Russian names. But his. He quoted Stalin as saying literally the situation is developing. Due to the situation is developing, we are compelled and duty bound to take the initiative and 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. We must be prepared for the complete smashing of German fascism. I mean this, this goes on and on and on. You know, like I said, we, 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 on direct testimony and things, but if you're talking about intent and you're trying to, you're trying to piece together intent, particularly of 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, who, what audience would they be speaking for? You know, these, these, these are the notes that were found later in some cases after the, you know, decades later at the opening of the Soviet archives, you know, and it's, you're talking like, like mirror Shemmer 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 apparatus and generals, they were constantly under surveillance and misspeaking could cost you your life. You know, like I, 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 eyes only statements from Stalin, you know, to his political commissars within the general, within the, within, within the. What amounts to the general staff of the Red army, that, oh, we, they were just saying these things to give an appearance of preparedness and, and keep the Germans on their toes. Like, how, 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, that's important. And you know, the before, before 1939, the last general deployment of, of Soviet forces was, 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 they're made, when Stalin is, is issuing edicts, you know, about, you know, the quote, 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. Now back to Spain. At long last, the war in Spain happened in Spain, not accidentally, you know, and not it's not, 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, like we're talking before we went live, you know, for centuries Spain was, was occupied like large areas of territory were, were occupied by Muslim elements. When that was finally defeated, the, you know, it, I mean basically the, the intermittent war against, against the. The Islamic Moors really began. I mean it was Viscoth warlords who began, you know, the Reconquista in, like the 700s, you know. And it like the, the territorial, the. The territorial control of, of the Spaniards or the Moors, you know, like varied depending 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 centuries long process to liberate Spain from, you know, from, from heathen occupation. And it was finally realized by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, which is a banner year. You know, it's Ferdinand Isabella like we talked about a moment ago, I believe, before it went live. 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you got 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 is reality. Okay, so the kind of prototype of. 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 Reconquista, particularly in the later phases, is that you got to feed your army. Like, okay, well, you know, we're going to seize common land, you know, and. And we're gonna. You know, we're gonna put animals out the pasture there. You know, if we need, like, wool or, you know, leather or anything else, you know, that's. That's just what we're gonna do, you know. So it was kind of the. It was kind of the 15th century equivalent of, like, eminent domain, you know, I'm, like, being silly, it sounds like, but I'm not. And a lot of that land was not being used. That's true, too. Yeah, a lot of that land was not being used at all. So. No, but that. And a lot. A lot of these guys were happy to. I mean, they. 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 merino wool that's coveted, you know, all through Europe, so you can raise money, you know, so that you can put gold in the coffers of, you know, the sex and weapons developers that you need, you know, to fight the Moors. Like nobody's, Nobody's using that land, you know, to, to. To. To build up, you know, to build up the agrarian economy, you know, and develop it and refine it and God willing, you know, create, create or generate on surplus for export, you know, like none of that is happening, you know, and it, 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. The optics of authority or something, you know, like, if you're gonna. If they were. If you're gonna 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, you know, 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, you know, these martial efforts, necessary as they may be, can. Can continue. You're left with a situation where, like, noblesse kind of becomes the order of the day. Okay, In a way it's not in. In other societies, at least in Europe. Like, it become. It takes on an outsized importance is what I'm getting at. Okay? And that's exactly what happened. And that endured, you know, perpetually, like after. After the Europeans, like, won the Spain back, you know, for. For Christendom. It. Beaver made the point too. And Beaver's book is great because it's loaded with facts and he makes some great points. He's got some conceptual prejudices and. But I rely on him a lot. He made the point that in the Middle Ages, from the Middle Ages until the end of the. Until the end of the 18th century, Spain lost something like half its population. You know, some of that was just kind of like, you know, the kind of, you know, changing patterns of fecundity and things. But part was because, like, Spain really had to downsize because they couldn't Fe. It couldn't sustain the population that had 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. And like Prussianism and socialism is all

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mid 1500, 1600, 1700. Spain. Yeah, yeah, 100%. 100. So again, it was. It was. It was highly unusual. I mean, I don't know if, despite what people say, there's not. 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. Even people who are more sophisticated than that don't seem to realize there's not some, like, template or something. It's kind of like natural, you know, developmental cycle other than. Other than. I mean, 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. Of how an empire acquires its fortunes, you know, maintains its hegemony and then ultimately, you know, loses its ability to compete with its. Either compete with its enemies or. Or to sustain its. Its own existence at scale. But this kind of warrior, holy warrior ethos developed in Spain, but it was. Came to exist among like, a real kind of perennial destabilization. You know, it's Isabella, like one of her. One of her final kind of acts of state, like late in life, de Cisneros, who was this kind of legendary. I mean, you probably know this because, I mean, you're a Catholic guy and like a Latin dude. I. I didn't know anything about Cisneros until, like, very recently, but he was. He was like this kind of. He was. He was. He was like this pious friar. You know, he's kind of the guy who's credited with sort of structuring the Inquisition as it came to. As it came to exist. It. And that's another thing that's grossly misunderstood by people kind of on both sides of the. 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 revolt. That was Burgundy 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. And political cultures. So they're the. 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 to kind of restore the status quo. But the, 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, and the absolute endorsement of other Catholic charity. You know. So it was, it was centralism against regionalism. It was, you know, that, that weakened the structure that Fernand created. It was the odd dynamics at play between the papacy and, and you know, the cardinals in Spain itself and elsewhere. It was, there was a rising, there was a, there was a, there was a rising uh, against Charles V, who was Isabella's grandson. That was uh, that was you know, provoked by like what was viewed as like his, his abuse of, of public monies and things, you know, which is just like typical sort of discontent, you know, with, I mean with, with rulers didn't well handle.

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and conditions apply the fortunes of the country, like material and otherwise. But it took on, 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, in the, in the Castilian rule through like marriage, you know, so you had, you had a Spanish Habsburg line, you know, that like found itself at odds with, with or with, with a lot of the peasantry, you know, owing to, owing to complicated reasons of bloodline and things that like, wouldn't mean anything to an American, but had deep, deep significance to, to, you know, to the, the people in that time and place. I'm sure even today there's people like, where that has meaning to them. I'm not saying that derisively, but. And there was times when you had an officer corps who was sympathetic to, you know, these kinds of like, nascent 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, with Pinochet and the officers contra, like civil society. Like you'd be right. Like there's something, there's something to how, you know, Latin America like mirrors Spain and the way that, you know, the UK like mirrors the United States in terms of political sociology and zeitgeist and other things. I find that fascinating. But it's the, the like all these things 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, 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 only reason why the Church retained the Roman Church retains Power in Spain is because like the last, the final recourse of the capitalists 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, owing to this. Owing to the punctuated disruption 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. As it happened. But there was also in more kind of. In more. 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 Bolshevik uprising in Spain, you know, and, and. And the. The Soviet Union was going to be. 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. The. Ironically, though. And again, you know, into the 20th century, Spain remained economically backwards. There was a basic hostility to commercial activity. Like, it's like the. The code of Hidalgo or whatever. It really. 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. There's something not just unbecoming a nobleman or any. Or any man who's, you know, an upright Christian of good race and breeding, you know, taking any interest in. In money not derived, you know, from. 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, despite what, you know, despite what liberals claim, like they're Marxist counterparts, you know, it's not. Capitalism isn't like this fundamentally like actually 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. The economic victims 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. A basically reactionary conservative elite, you know, that they. It's. It's literally impossible for them to, you know, transition a. A medieval economy into a modern market, a modern value Added economy with, you know, where, where revenues are reinvested in a productive capital. Like, that's because, like that's. That, like that is literally a story of Germany and especially Prussia. Okay? But there was a certain rigidity to things in Spain that, that, that just did not or could not happen. It was exacerbated, you know, like I said, the, 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, there was a, you know, you had a. You had a nascent middle class or at least a wealthier, you know, kind of freehold class, you know, who were attracted to the ideas of. Of. Of these Enlightenment propagandists, at least superficially, that put, that put, that put pressure on Charles III to issue reforms which in turn reduced the Church's influence over the army, where a lot of officers were being, you know, 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, well, 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, no, I don't want people sending me hate email or something. But that in turn caused, you know, like people who, who were, you know, sympathetic to the ancient regime or who were committed to the kind of cast structure and, you know, the, the kind of paradigm of, you know, an officer corps that works hand in glove with the army, both of whom are, you know, beholden to an absolute monarch who in turn abides, you know, their traditional privileges and benefits, like, socially, materially. So this is like a. This is like literally like a perfect storm of like, dysfunctional tendencies. You know, it. And that's, that's why when things jumped off in Spain, you know, finally in, in 1936, I mean, there was such a. There was such hostility. And that's all. I mean, just. I mean, reciprocally. But it was also the. It's easy to understand why even guys who weren't, you know, die hard National Socialists or like Iron Guard partisans, it's easy to see why people looked at it like, look, this is. The communists are like, they're making an example here. You know, these. The body, everything they hate, they want. 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. And they were right. Okay. I mean, that's why it became so critically symbolic. I know it seemed like I was jumping around a lot and there was a lot of, like, I hope it, 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'll refer to things that I'm. Okay. No, but we need that backstory because most people don't know the history of Spain. They. 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%. 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Refreshers contain caffeine. All right, do some plugs and we'll end it. Yeah, for sure, man. You can find me on Twitter for the time being at Real capital rel._ number 7H1 as 777. You find me at substack. That's our primary home now. Real Thomas 777. That's substack.com I think in good progress towards the channel. I promise things are getting done, even though it doesn't seem like it. I've been trying to work my ass off pointing 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 keep that in mind if it seems like I'm being idle or inert rather. But I, I've gotten more confidence, like, in shooting video. Uh, it just comes out of editing it and making it, you know, content worthy. And I, I, I basically just got to decide on a format for, you know, like my kind of like, for, for Thomas tv, which I think is going to be something like a video blog, but like I, or a, or a, 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, not just Pete, who's my dear friend, but like, other people 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 Pican Yonez show. We are here for part two on the Spanish Civil War with Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well, thank you. But I wanted 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 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'll return 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 owes to my own conceptual prejudices in my kind of Hegelian orientation and my tendency to, towards German historicism. But the, the animating catalyst for the Spanish war was, was Zeitgeist. You know, we got, we got into that in the first episode. You know, I made the point that despite the, a lot of historians make a point of the conspicuous absence of a fascist international, you know, contra Communist international, some of that's a Cold War hangover when you know, you'd have, you'd have progress, you know, self identified progressive historians, you know, attempting to present the issue as well. See that, you know, this, this was just, you know, these are just capitalist states in 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 momentum 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, and like I said, I, I, I, I make a lot, I guess, of prime symbolic events, you know, I mean, prime symbols dominate human psychology, you know, especially at scale, you know, sociologically, you know, that's, that's why iconic events, you know, define 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 during the Inner Warriors. But you know, we talked about the, we talked about the funeral, the funerals of the common funeral of Ayan Mota and Vasil 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, to literally salute, you know, the, the, the funerary train, you know, when they were greeted everywhere they went by these cadres. And that's not something, that's not something that could Just be, you know, cobbled together for, 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're. They were being greeted and saluted by, you know, shoot stuff woman, you know, and you had Italian priests, you know, like, like blessing them and things. And then, and then there's even like secular, like French fascists, like, action French say types like, saluting them, you know, who had obviously, like, no, 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, 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, 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 when he talks about the Spanish War being, you know, a precursor to the Second World War. I mean, he perceives even a guy like him who rejects, you know, the kind of historicism of a guy like Nolte and, and you know, as well as, you know, the, the. The contra historicism of people like Hobbsbaum. But he does identify, you know, like a common nucleus of approximate causation there, but 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 intentions. You know, it really, it really was apocal and, and ideological in a matter of zeitgeist as to why. As to why. Why what animated Germany to intervene in Spain, why the Soviets staked it the way they did. You know, why. You know, why progressives in America and in the uk, you know, who identify themselves as, you know, on the side of the, quote, democracy movement, which, which is incredibly misguided. It was a deliberate lie and we're going to get into that. So that's a question that bars kind of like, why Spain? Well, when we think of, like speaking of civic myths, okay, when we think of. We think of the kind of prime symbols the left likes to trot out as, like, the horrors of know that which came before. 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's 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 Ferdinand Isabella, like the irony of, of, of them like proceeding the Westphalian state, you know, by a century and a half. But, but, but Catholic Spain, like, like Ferdinand really did make Spain a national Catholic state, sight unseen, you know, in, in a way that is at odds with, 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 historians, revisionists or whatever. I could pull out citations, but I, I don't think it's necessary. If somebody really wants the them now or on any topic we cover, I can provide them autonomy directly. I'm not being autistic or something. Like, people do that to me. They're like, that's a 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. But 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, just 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 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 record. Like, I'm not Catholic, so I don't, I don't have some like direct dog in that fight, other than the fact that this kind of thing is disgusting to anybody who's at all normal. But that really jumped out at me. Like I started deep diving into Catholic history. I'm talking like 25 years ago. No, okay, not because, like, I believe 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, I knew that court history was histrionic. I 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, living memory. You know, the, if you, if you want to, if you want to vilify the, the Roman Church, there's a lot of ways you can do it without opening yourself up to that kind of criticism. Okay? But I, that's another example of some, something like that particular myth. I'm always making the point that much as people lament, you know, the information age and the kind of corrupting influence of, you know, this kind of like total immersion, like in screens, you know, it, they're, it's more, it's more of a liberation mechanism than it is, you know, like one of the, like a shackle of psychic slavery. And this is like one example, okay? Like 40 years ago, you could ban you out of 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 I was making the point that, you know, we're not, we're not running an evangelical church. We're not missionaries. So I mean, I, I, I don't go out in the world and say to people, like, see, like, this is why you've been lied to. Look, look at the figures on my phone for the Inquisition. But for the people who are, you know, interested in real history and for the people who, who are charged for political or patriotic reasons or just because I could feel they get calling to them, I've been like, corny. That sounds like I feel like being a revisionist is like my calling. That's like what God wants me to do it. You don't feel so much like you're brushing up against Leviathan and 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 because it's like the weather, you know, like, I always come back, you know, like in Natural Born Killers. That might seem like a corny thing to cite in a serious discussion, but it's actually a pretty profound film, I think, owing in large part of the screenplay, this one part where you know, Woody Harrelson, he's like, he's model on stark weather. You know, he says to the guy who'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, and that's true, you know. And the degree to which there was only the degree to bully pulpit for historical claims and narrative, you know, the kind of brief window and absolute terms. Brief. I mean between when visual media, you know, from the movie house and then, you know, to the TV screen and then like the ubiquity of, you know, the, the cable media cycle that was edged out by Internet very rapidly after it reached its 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 with. It was like, 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 even, even the climate was such that even, even the people who, 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.

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You know, Internet changed everything cannot be overstated. That's why. 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 ran an innocuous Internet search for polio, like, not even. Because I was having a discussion with a guy who does a lot of research on AIDS and on like, idiola etiological, like sources of disease. So I'm gonna, 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 D. It's like, I didn't ask that. You know, it's like, so they're showing their hand. Like, I could probably. I could probably run a search like navel oranges or for like puppy dogs. And it would be like, you know, the Nazis massacred puppy dogs because they were the most evil people ever or something. Like, I should you not. It's like that extreme. But the point is, like, it's not. They're not even. They're not even willing to, you know, just kind of like deploy like legions of. Of of like disinfo people to like, you know, Twitter, like, or to Instagram. Instagram's interesting. So many people are doing like, screen capture to like, get like, concepts out, you know. And then I'm interested in how they're. How they're gonna. They're already shutting stuff down under auspices of, you know, that's inappropriate for children or something. But it's that. I don't want to go too far the topic, but any event. Okay, so why Spain and why did 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, at cadres, if you like clergy people as standard bearers of a counter revolutionary tendency of tremendous power, but just hand over fist, like slaughtering clergy people. It. It seems like it's bad optics. Okay, now, for a long time, what the. What the l. 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. 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 and literally, like all the time. You know, like in those days, it was not like people. Even if, you know, it was not clear like, what the state of somebody's health was always. There wasn't this. There wasn't this kind of. There. There wasn't this kind of ongoing, like, revolutionary shift. Like there was in 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 Franco dies suddenly, it becomes clear people aren't going to accept, you know, like, you know, the, the reinstitution of just a constitutional monarchy. It becomes clear that, like, even if Franco had a successor, he wasn't going to be accepted either. Spain's now like, been in NATO for many years. You know, it was. It's been. It's been integrated. Poor man of Europe as it may be. It's. It. It had been integrated, you know, for decades into the ec. It. But there. There was like. In terms of like, the ideological culture, there was problems, you know, especially because, you know, not just going to the Cold War, but it's, you know, it's. They weren't gonna. If. If they tried to pull like, what South Africa did, you know, the Truth Reconciliation Committee or something like that, they. That things would have deteriorated if not into, you know, civil war. Like, it would. It would. 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 NKVB was doing that. And the. Or these were just, you know, outline. These were outliers, you know, these were violent people doing terrible things because this was like a bad time. Well, interestingly, this was. Well, they. 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. They were the one digging up the nut. You know, the famous picture, turning and taking pictures with them. Yeah, but it. There was an incident, or there was a series of incidents specifically from November 7th to December 4th, 1936. This is kind of the peak of. Of revolutionary violence. Okay. Especially in. In the cities and like the provinces immediately abutting the ones containing the cities. November 7th to approximately December 4th, 1936, a bunch of political prisoners held in Madrid's jails. They were just spontaneously evacuated, like the outlying 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 are trumped up charges. These weren't criminals, okay, That I need to make that clear. They were, they were evacuated over these weeks en masse and, and they were, they were executed. They were just exterminated. The man responsible at that time for jails in public order was a man named Solaris, Santiago Solaris. He was all of 21 years old in 1936, and that was part of his alibi, okay, upon return from exile within a Franco. Because everybody got, you know, amnesty like the jury as well as, like de facto. I mean this was very much. And then you spare to live through it. We'll tell you, I'm sure this is very deliberate, you know, like we, 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. But the, what Solari's defenders claimed, of course were, well, this, these are just false propaganda, you know, outright. This just didn't happen. But then it's evidence mounted it. You know, what, what Solaris's people themselves claimed as well as kind of what the regime came to claim in like a soft pedaling kind of way, was that, well, you know, there were, there were extradition 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, a historian, a guy named Reverte, 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 as some like right winger. I mean that's not really, that's not grounds, objective grounds to dismiss somebody's findings anyway. But you understand what I mean, like this guy wasn't somebody ideologue with the, you know, the, the kind of milquetoast regime is the kind that, you know, Only kind of regime in Europe after the Cold War could, you know, can kind of dismiss the. He began digging into the archives of the, 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 Amsterdam, where I believe, and I'm not trying to upset Dutch people, but there's, 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 are located there. Roberta 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, 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. People just been denounced, you know, and this was something of a mini scandal. I mean, not just in academic quarters, but because even, 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 combat into World War II. It's, 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 Venus. Venus claimed like, well, yeah, this happened. These, these. The minutes from this meeting. There's not, 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 color Bill 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. 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 NKVD 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 Burgundy. But then they took over. I mean, this isn't. It's not as 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. That was these anarchists who were practically fascist themselves. They had nothing to do with us, or these were just crazy people. You know, it's like, okay, so now, now, now you're 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, Who. Who had authority over your own people in the field. Like, what is this? You know, like, I. Weren't you all a bunch of. Weren't you all a bunch of liberal Democrats? And you know that. And that's why. And people love freedom. Like, join. To go. To go. To go fight against the fascists. I mean, like, it's this. Like, on the one hand, I'd say this. I'd say that this guy is not particularly credible, but again, it's. That in some ways, it's more incriminating than what. Than the prima facie inference one would draw from documents. But it also, too, when I. A friend of mine made this point when he and I were discussing this, and, you know, he's. 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. Yeah, we're talking about non combatants. 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 life for. 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, they are to be terminated. Like, you're very, very confident that this is never going to come to light. You know, it's basically, 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, 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, you've 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 let you lose. And I, 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 the field commanders about, like annihilating non combatants at Ketchen. 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 gonna put on paper, I just think you should 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, or 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 Super Off's hypothesis. I think Joachim Hoffman makes a better case for it. In purely strategic terms and like practical terms, pragmatic terms. Okay. Stalin had to show up to fight in Spain, otherwise he would have lost all credibility as, you know, like the, the Soviet people would have lost all credibility as like, you know, the, the vanguard of like the world revolution. And like, as we discussed before in a kind of cursory 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, in a sort of dog whistle way, like he wasn't saying like we have abandoned the world revolution or that like we are some kind of like autar, 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 or at least in A rudimentary capacity. You got to understand like what, what, 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 people, people like Orlov, people like Eric Mil, he 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 uh, Gearing came to the rescue, you know, after, uh, after Canaris, uh, act as emissary for Franco's people, you know. And then, and then the Reds had a problem. But you know, the view from Moscow was, you know, the, the kind of revolutionaries, you know, the phalanges, the National Catholics, the Carlos, they're going to get smashed, we're going to mop up and if we have to stack a million bodies up, a priest, non phalanges and anybody else who's not with the program, we'll do that. The Germans are then going to freak the out, you know, and any, especially because, you know, Spain and France, it already like openly declared, you know, sympathy, if not, you know, allegiance, you know, with, with the Reds. That was going to exacerbate, you know, like the war in the west that Stalin always believed was imminent. The uh, 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 gonna like smash from the through from the east. You know, that was like ideally what had happened, you know, but it wasn't. But Stalin wasn't ready yet. And that's, that's, that's something that the non aggression pact owes to also because there's this odd situation where I mean once, once the Vermont actually did deploy and like I said, we'll get into like Von Thomas, 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 like luff or like hot shots, like flying a handle of sorties. Like, you know, you had Vermont elements like going into ground action against the communists. They were killing Russians, okay? And vice versa, potentially that's explosive, you know. But again too like a non aggression pact only. Only as a context if you're careening towards war anyway. I mean like it. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. But it. I believe that was Stalin's notion. But it's also the, the. The Soviets for the duration of their existence. I mean people like, like to look down on the Russians and like make fun of them and stuff. And I mean whatever. 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You know, we've got actual like Marcus Lennon's client regimes, you know, like on the American continent. There's nothing America 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 as it may, like, that's, that's what I believe the Soviet notion was. And when, when the Reds got the first of all, when Germany came in, like in the, with when it deployed in depth the way it 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 Gearing was like at his best. Arguably he was an addict then and he, but he, he still had it together. Like Earhart Milch, who I think was the best. He was. Aaron Mills is one of the best field marshals the Germans had. The guy was like a literal genius, you know, and he later like, he's the guy relieved the beleaguered Vermont in 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 army's best freaking commanders. Like these guys, these weren't like second Raiders were who were going to fight in Spain and you know, these were, these guys are like the cream of like the here and the Lufafa, you know, like at that point. And they, they, they, they had a, they very much had a sense of, I mean they're very gung ho guys. You know, they're like, hey, we're going to fight the Reds. You know, we're not. There's 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 an inconvenient border dispute. Like we're fighting the communists. Like this is it, you know, like this is, this is, 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. But it's hard to say. I mean, Stalin play things close to the chest. I mean what Stalin did say and like we've got into both in the last episode on the Spanish War, but you 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 As a group, you know, to see like, really if they were like, battle ready, you know, in. In a general war against Germany. I mean, Germany's always like Russia's probable opponent, but you know what I mean? Like, in. In more concrete terms. But then it was after about. It was about 1937, 1938, that like, suddenly Stalin starts talking about, like, look, like, you know, our doctrine or our political doctrine and our battle doctrine is synonymous. You know, like we, We. We never fight defensively. Like, we always fight on foreign soil unless, like, you know, we're. We're affecting, you know, like a fighting retreat because we're existentially threatened. You know, like the, like, you know, like the Bolshevik cause is inextricably linked, you know, to the. To. To Russian national ambitions. You know, he started talking like a warlord. You know, he started talking to, you know, like, you started. He started issuing these, like, proclamations from on high, you know, just to the Soviet people, you know, about how, like, we've got, you know, we can withstand any hardship and, you know, we. We. We can never like, lose. Lose our faith in the. In the communist cause, like, no matter how grim things are for us moving forward. It's like, what was he talking about? He's not, he's not. He's not talking about like, bread lines getting longer. He's not talking about it being really cold next winter. You know, he's. It's obvious what he's talking about. And it. And gearing. It was 37, I think when gearing, as a, you know, he went with like, the Luftwaffe, like, military liaison, you know, to these, to these, to this aircraft factory in the Earls. 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 build something like that, like, unless you're mobilizing for war, you know. I mean, it's. It. So I mean, taken together, it. I know historians, including Beaver, they'll always say, like, well, of course the Soviet, you know, the Soviets, they. They. They try to cast the war they can't try against. Warfare generally is like a schoolyard fight. Like, oh, well, you know, the Germans struck first. It's like. I mean, that's like saying 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. If you got 5 million men under arms and, you know, you're building military aircraft by the hundreds like there's not, there's not a defensive purpose for those. I mean the decision defensive and offensive war doesn't make sense anyway. But it all that matters is strategic planning is capabilities. And what Stalin was doing was he was amassing. He was amassing the mightiest military force the world has ever seen. And they made the point once, once the stories developed the bomb even after the devastation of World War II, I believe Stalin was the 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, that's what I think. That's, that's what I think would understand it was but it's also, you know, it bears noticing too that there was obviously, you know, like during, you know, the Munich Soviet during like the VMAR years. I know that like Chi's forces have 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, so Soviet control is invoked as an alibi by apologists for communist violence in Spain. Regardless of that and regardless of degree of culpability in relative or absolute terms between the Red Spaniards and between the Soviet cadres, the Soviet Union had an actual NKVD branch there. You know, they had it beyond like nominal like political representation just to be like relaying to Moscow the battlefield situation was you know, like this, this was not normal for, for the Soviet Union. And I realized the Soviet Union was an abnormal state but in terms of its power projection tendencies and strategy, it, this was an outlier in terms of how it usually behaved. So you know, again I, I, I think like a lawyer in terms of the evidence I favor and in terms of the way I calculate intention, particularly in war and peace terms. But motive means and motive means an opportunity. It tends to be how you convince the tri effect of scienter. The courtroom is not bound by formal logic or anything but we're talking about human affairs is something to that you know, whether you're talking about individual men or at scale. And again I, I, I don't think this can be denied. And even, even where their conspicuous absence of some of this, some of this data, evident 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 the did sit out World War I and that interestingly that, that, that contributed in, in oblique ways the, 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. It 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 troops 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 in our. Something of an inward looking people. You know, they weren't practicing a global politic or even really a European power politic. You know, like they. 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 their already, you know, kind of troubled currencies. It swelled the cities, which I mean is the, the cities were, were, you know, they were the repository of red sympathy. But it's not as clear cut as people think, man. I mean there was nationalist districts in Madrid and in Barcelona and there was also, I mean there was, there was people, there was guys, there's. Catalan secessionists were just like hitching their wagon to the communists because like they, they thought that hey, if we fight and like issue this is 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 conjugated pastiche. But another thing guys like B? Bor misunderstand. He makes the point that he's like, well, you know, why, why, why did Spain get so behind the Catholic Church and get so outraged that the mask are a clergy. Only 20% of people went to church. It's like you can't, you can't adjudicate like the kind of the 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 communists frame their propaganda was like Catholic. It was like a perverted iteration of it. But 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, they weren't the executioners, but you know, they were the courts. Yeah. And it's also even a guy who, like, even in a guy, the 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. The instantation of like, you know, God's authority on earth. You know, like, it's not. There's. I. I don't know BE's background, but I bet that, like, a lot of Tories is like a Church of England type. And he. He doesn't really understand, like. Like faith as like a conceptual sort of orientation. He probably views Americans as like, a bunch of rednecks like me who like, read the Bible all day and are idiots. And he views Catholics as like, well, they. Some of them don't even go to church. Like, not. Not even not understanding that. It's like 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 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 French say during their zenith, you know, they kind of. They got. They got kind of edged out by, like, later, like, fascist and nationalist. 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 were willing to go to war to, like, protect, you know, the. The Roman Church as. As. As like the state religion of. Of. Of like, what they viewed as, like, you know, the. The idea, like, French Republic moving forward, you know, like, contrary. Say, like Italy or a lot of people did go to church. But it'll. Like, the kingdom of Italy under El Duce 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. And it's, you know, like I said, it's. It's something of. It's something of a blind spot. It's somewhat political and, like, deliberate and ideological, but it's something. It's part of it too. It's like a cultural blind spot. Interestingly, too, like, it. You know, it's been redacted from the struggle record that there's a huge outpouring of support for the nationalist cause in Ireland and 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, even a lot of voters, you know, in the Republic who, who are basically like liberals. Like why aren't you going to defend the church? What's the matter with you? You know, and, and the blue shirts, you know, Duffy's blue shirts between 2 and 3, 000 men signed up to go fight on the nationalist side. They're all Irishman. I mean, I was entire. Ireland is a tiny country. That's significant. You know, in America, Catholic media, they give it up signatures of school kids, you know, like they, they got something like a million and a half signatures like kids, like frugal school kids, you know, saying like Mr. Roosevelt, why let it. Why we. We love our sisters and, and, and priests. Why. Why are you letting them be murdered by communists? You know, I mean like, and obviously like New Dealer types. Like, you know, that, that, that's, you know, that's, that's exploitative and that's, that's just, you know, propaganda by, by, by atrocity story. But I mean, it's like. Well, he's saying this wasn't happening. I mean it, you know, the, the Catholic Church doesn't have its own army. Stalin's famously said that, okay, I mean like if you. The. The. The church militant has to defend it, you know, I mean. And that's it, you know, as well as like, as other. As well as other, you know, as well as other patriotic elements and, and orthodox guys and, and you know, in German prods who, you know, realize what the stakes were. But it's also during the great. During World War I, there, there became. There became like a deep. That's when the divisions originally 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. The people, military officers, farmers, you know, people like clergy, people like laymen who are active in the church. They tended to side with the Kaiser Reich, you know, and uh, and, and these kind of. And these kind like urbanite, uh, Francophile types like tended to side with uh, you know, with um, with, with London and Paris. It's just interesting. It's. I mean I, I always make the 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, to back Syria any way they could, you know, in theater and as well as, you know, people in a position to like send money to, to, you know, the Syrians defending themselves and the regime from terrorism. You know, like I said that that was not to the same degree, not to the same.

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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. 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, in the. In from. From really, you know, like 1812, 1813, like, onward. Like, it. That 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. Do what we do every time, Give plugs. Yeah, I mean, I'm still on. I'm still on Twitter. Who knows for how long. I shut down my telegram channel for the beings are just becoming Like a huge hassle. I, I know I 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 in the glitch because I've been, you know, I mean I've been busy with other stuff. It wasn't as I was neglecting things but the. 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 I will drop those weekly. Okay. But there's a lot that goes into it. I'm not saying that play martyr. I'm saying that to people don't think I'm being like slack. And season two of Mind Phaser. I. 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 of the POD is going to change substantially. But I believe everybody, everybody will approve of the ways in changing. Like we're not, we're. We're gonna stick to the same as a topic. So there's other things I want to emphasize and you'll see. Okay. And I'll. I'll give it a write up on my sub stack so to kind of hit people to what I'm thinking. But yeah. And you can find me on [e-mail] 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 Pinones show. I'm here with Tom 777 again, part three, Spanish Civil War. How are you doing? I'm very well, man. Thanks again for making this happen. I mean 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 the things for the sake of posterity, but to also, you know, game future conflicts. But it relates in peculiar ways to the conditions that, you know, Decisions of. Of an almost purely political nature. Like the true. 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. But its origins lie in blitzkrieg or what some people commonly understand as 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, you know, material to the question. John Mearsheimer, I find him more accessible. Mearsheimer's highly theoretical, but he's less deliberately esoteric than somebody like Hart. And he presents these things ironically because I think Mirror. One of Mirror Shamrock's blind spots is the political conditions which underlie warfare at all times and what, what the interplay is. I mean he's very much a clause of Witsy. And he's also very much, you know, a quantitative thinker. I mean I, I got all like tremendous respect for him, but I part ways with him in basic terms in his understanding of the interplay of political and military affairs. But his book Conventional Deterrence, okay, it made. It was, it was highly impactful during the late Cold War I. People always 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, you know, pointless kind of peacenik environmentalist kind of journal that no one takes seriously. But it had real relevance, you know, from the Eisenhower era until, you know, November 9, 1989, frankly, and the final phase of the Cold War, they started running a lot of informed pieces by people like Mearsheimer about the reemergence of conventional forces as a key variable owing not just to emergent deeper parodies, but it was just like a more the information revolution. It led to a just more complete understanding of you know, the interplay of. 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 site I'm referencing in general the atomic Scientists, it's basically a condensed version of Mere Summer's book Conventional Deterrence which was published in 1982, 82 or 83. And obviously he. The article talks to from. From you know, then current like from the headlines issues related to the Able Archer era and stuff and, and the Person two deployment and the, the. The Minute man 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. Like basically it boils down to this, you know, was Blitzkrieg this revolutionary doctrine that was conceptualized in. In purely theoretical terms before the battle of France specifically, you know, whereby, whereby people like Heinz Guderian and people like Werner von Fritz were, you know, understood that mast armor was going to supplant conventional infantry, you know, as the, as the, the fairpunk of, of. Of. Of ground assault operations. Or was blitzkrieg, this kind of, you know, technique that developed owing to the unique exigencies of a modern battlefield conditions and you know, as, as, as the, as, as the French collapse and as the main line of resistance, you know, kind of rapidly just evaporated at points where masked armor was employed to great effect, you know, was that just basically like, you know, German battlefield commanders who, who were strongly oriented towards what's called missionary tactics anyway and had an inherent, you know, kind of tendency towards experimentation and flexibility. You know, they, they just adopted these things like in theater. And then you know, very organically a, A combined arms doctrine developed, you know, like owing to trial and error under the critical conditions of combat. Or you know, was. Was it again like just the, just a, a theoretical coup, you know, owing to kind of the, the latent brilliance of the German general staff and of course people who 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, the Germans, the Prussian army, and especially if you view the Vermont as the direct legacy of the Prussian army, which I do, I don't know, it can be disputed. They invented the staff structure, okay? The, 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 in games 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. So in the German case, it's a more credible postulate than it would be, you know, as applied to other, as applied to other military cultures in a speculative capacity. If you accept that blitzkrieg was a discrete doctrine that emerged, you know, from theoretical quarters of the Vermont. You also basically like, 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 siege oriented commander. You know, he was basically cautious in critical capacities, you know, and I basically agree with that, but not for the reasons most people do. If you look at the way Hitler behaved in an ex. In, in a warlord role, he wasn't this crazy reckless gambler like a lot of court historians or Hollywood, like make it out you know, quite the contrary. He was basically like a conservative German, like, 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 that whole controversy is kind of a fool's errand is because German armored doctrine, it. Its testing ground was the Spanish Civil War. Okay? And von Thoma, 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 than they were afforded, either for political reasons or just because they were like, overlooked in favor of these more kind of dashing characters like Rommel or, or like Darian or like von Manch. Thing I'd put, I put von Zoma. I consider him the same class as Richtofen, as Ferdinand Schorner, who was the last German field marshal ever.

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But he, he was a tactical genius, I believe. And that's one of the reasons I, I like that book by Hoffman Stallin's War of Extermination. It's not just because it's a, it's great scholarship. But he makes that point in some of his other stuff too that Ferdinand Sher is, was a great battlefield commander. But in any event, armor was dispositive in the Spanish Civil War. And the nationalists, you know, the, the Franco's forces, I mean if you want to think of them as nationalists, fascists, you know, About is a constellation 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, political and social. But they like however you want to describe them, it was, it was this kind of confederation of, of, of, of different forces or sometimes competing loyalties. And you know, like we talked about before, 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, they were, they were in dire straits. And one of the reasons why they were just outgunned was because the, the enemy had T26 tanks provided by the Soviet Union and those tanks were obsolete by the advent of World War II. But they were per, they were in some ways perfectly suited to the, to combat on the Spanish battlefield. And one of the reasons I emphasize von Thoma, it's not just because I, I've got, you know, sort of like a nerd's interest in, in the ground element of Condor Legion, 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, they chose Vantoma, you know, who was this guy who was a student of unseeked, 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 tried and tested, you know, Prussian Infantry Commander, you know, and that's remarkable. Von Toma 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 aristocrat. So I mean this was a guy who really, really had his, together in command roles, you know, but he, he give me one second. He fought on, basically he fought literally not basically he fought on every front of the First World War II, which is rare. He fought, he joined the Bavarian Ar. An outside of hostilities. He fought on the Western front intermittently. Finally he fought at the Battle of the Marne and was captured by American and French forces. It became a POW 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, the, the Order of Max of Joseph by the Bavarian army, which was like the, you know, was the equivalent of the Blue Max basically, you know, but was the equivalent of the Knight's Cross. And that's why he, that's why he got, you know, the, the, the, the honorific in his name. But he, Von Brauchic, 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 Vermont being hauled Army Group center being halted in Moscow is 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 20 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 the furious loss of confidence in him. But he was a far more dynamic character and at least in, in the terms of, you know, his profession and, and how he pursued it then people often acknowledge. So he was, you know, he would, he basically Von Brauchitz had had, you know, cultivated vantoma's talents by, by you know, asking of him they become an expert in armored warfare, which I assume von Thoma had been kind of pursuing his own course of learning in that capacity anyway. I mean just like going to this battlefield record and everything else he ended up commanding. He ended up commanding 17th Panzer later on in Operation Barbarossa. He fought at the Battle of Moscow. Then he was tr. He received the, the Knight's Cross, the Iron Cross. Subsequently he was transferred to North Africa and he was captured at the, in the aftermath of the second Battle of El Alameen. And that's why like hearts like in the German general's talk and like all the hearts like you know, kind of books on, on Vermont leadership like von Thoma, like features looms large because like he was Used 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, he, 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, I. There was plenty of. There's plenty of surviving general officers who, you know, could have been debriefed all day and they would have been happy to have that be their lot in lieu of the gallows or, you know, being unceremoniously, you know, kind of like cast out as unpersons. Plus to the British whatever we can. 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. Regardless of their feelings about old Blighty otherwise. Butoma ended up in Spain in October. 36. The first shipment of German tanks was 41 Panzer Comp Wagen Type 1 Panzer 1 tanks, okay? And like the T26 tanks that they were deployed to combat, they were obsolete by, you know, 39, 40. But it. Again, for the. For the Spanish battlefield, they. They were perfectly suited. And also the Germans, as the Panzer 2 had already been developed, the Panzer 1 was being used largely as a training tank, like by the Vermont, because it. I mean, for various reasons and including, it was. It was just a simpler machine, you know, and it was. You gotta understand too, like most men at this time, like, I've 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. It's. And plus, fighting an armor is scary. It's claustrophobic. You're in. You're inhaling diesel fumes, it's loud as hell. Like in those days, your visibility is compromised. Like, if you get hit, you're probably gonna burn to death or, you know, get your face ripped apart by shrapnel. I mean, it's. It's no joke, you know, so training an armor is not just like teaching somebody to fire a gun or, or to dry or to drive a Chevy. 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 claustrophobic in a real way and my room 101 horror is being burned alive. But I, I've always thought, I've always, I've always thought it would be uniquely scary to fight in a tank and I don't generally have a fear of high risk situations. But the total, the total number of Panzer ones to reach Spain was 72. As regards forces in being by the end of Host still between 1936 and 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

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You know, he said, you're gonna compromise the integrity of the hull. You're gonna literally have to drill holes that expose the gunner, you know, to being targeted at visual range. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a fool's errand, you know, and it was. 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, like a, like an infantry commander would, you know, like we, we just need to match firepower, you know, it's. Vantoma understood. Yeah, I mean, a lot of what goes into. A lot of what goes into combined arms warfare. I mean, it always then and now, but also specifically, I mean, yeah, the The German general Staff is oriented towards, you know, warfare is the advance of fire, but it's not, you know, packing as much firepower onto, on, onto a platform. I mean for its own sake, you know, because you're, you know, you know, it's some kind of, it's some kind of caliber race with the enemy. He's misguided but it's understandable why they would think that way. But interestingly what ultimately was agreed upon was Lantoma discovered and this was abided because he pretty rapidly won the confidence of the Spaniards. We'll get into that interesting paradigm and kind of interplay the sociology of it in a minute. But what was most effective was have one tank per section for, for company size. Like a tank section be would be you know, about 15, 10 to 15 panzers. Like one for every one, one retrofitted 30 mm gun or 20 mm main gun for every 15, 10 to 15 panzers was what made it most effective because you know they could, you wouldn't, 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 killing enemy tanks or you know, assaulting hardened targets. But was also revolutionary was Comp Group Thoma 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, this platform popped up in the second World War some but it was basically, you know, obsolescent because it didn't have the power to kill, you know, the main battle tanks like the T34, it was the Panzer Abdurkhan. 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 own penetration capabilities and things, you know, like having that in on one platform like that's that, that's a post World War II Innovation. I mean it can't, it started coming about during the second World War. But you know, your tanks, your assault guns, your dedicated, you know, anti tank platforms, they, these were like discret discreetly purposed set pieces. Which is interesting. But. Tom was deployed as an oberst lieutenant which is a 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, armored element in the Spanish army, because there wasn't in any army really, except, you know, France and Germany, and then in both cases it was nascent, and Italy too. But this, he, Vantoma, enjoyed tremendous authority. And there's a lot of surviving correspondence in the form of telegrams between von Toloma, Franco's staff. Franco himself. One of the primary liaisons between, between von Thoma and, and the Spanish high command was a German guy who'd come up to the AB there, but he joined over the Phalanges outfit. And he was fighting in Spain against the communists before, you know, the, the Reich even deployed forces. And he ended up working as von Thomas 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 clash of cultures extent, not just because vantoma was kind of the consummate, like Teutonic officer, like very uncompromising, very rigid, you know, very, 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 up. Their army was not at all professionalized. You know, you still had a lot of aristocrats in, in, in, 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, with actual battlefield performance and suitability for command. There's vestigial trappings, that code of Hidalgo. And von Thoma 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 had simply been ordered there by Spanish commanders who wanted to get rid of them, you know, so I will send him. 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 Condor Legion. And von Thoma pulled no punches. And he, he threatened to leave. He threatened to, in his words, you know, just, just, just like resign command and leave. And he was able to convince Franco, or more Properly, I mean, I mean Franco was, Franco knew what side his bread was buttered on. He recognized he needed the Germans and he needed von Toma. But the whoever in, in the high command were, you know, his primary points of contact. He was able to finesse them to, to, you know, that look like whoever the men you send me, they've got to be to constitute the panzer group. They've got to be comfortable with a variety of functions and roles of a type that you are not habituated to do and probably are. Probably are are occupational functions of first impression. You know, like I said, they had to be psychologically tough and fortified to deal with the inherent difficulties of fighting an armor. They. He said that just in, in raw like staff needs or personnel needs, you know, Atoma said there, there had to be at least 50 volunteer troops posted at all times to the tank school, you know the tank training ground that anton was overseeing. 25 dedicated gunner trainees, 25 dedicated drivers. You know, being a, you know, after, after their initial training subjected they, they should then undertake a four week course.

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You know, Together, you know, they, they were habituated and they'd be accompanied by their officers or NCOs, you know, that had overseen them during the training cycle. And Von Tom insisted upon this too. This is a general postulate that was to become doctrine squad cos who were, who would be NCOs in the Spanish army, I believe, you know, like senior NCOs and company commanders who would be officers. They, they, my informant says they had to always be present with their squad and company, actively leading the men from the front. This was not, this could, you know, this was not negotiable. And he concluded this report by stating openly that if the tank section 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, we're going to lose the war. You know, it's just, there's no two ways about it. You know, this war is going to be won or lost with the ground element and it's going to be won by proper deployment of the of armor. Okay. And now I hope it's coming into focus why I subjected the listeners to that extended introduction about the revolutionary military affairs and Mearsheimer's postulates therein and the, you know, what's, what can be thought of as the blitzkrieg controversy. Okay. Because what I am positing is in rebuttal to both of Those perspectives, as I'm sure people are discerning. 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 it. You know, I, 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, the conditions leading to the, the outcome of this engagement. You know, it's. I don't think it can be said that I'm speculating. Vantoma also, and again, this is something that people generally only discuss within the context of the battle of France. I realized the first open ended deployment of the fair mock was in Poland, but Poland didn't have a meaningful, you know, tank section. So if we're talking about, you know, modern combined arms between, you know, between forces where there's like a general parody, you know, technological as well as numerical, Our, Our analysis begins in 1940, directed that tank companies could only, could not operate in isolation from one another. They had to utilize, they had to utilize massed firepower in advance of fire. In addition, the transport company and the supporting mobile workshop and maintenance company, you know, they had to be, like, maintained at optimal capabilities and deployed to the front at all times in support of the assault element. You know, regardless, the drain that this is gonna, 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 fairpunk 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 con, 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. I spoke a moment ago about. There's a lot said especially because, you know, relations were not always particularly amiable, you know, between the, the Germans and their Latin allies. Whether we're talking about, you know, the Italians or the Spaniards, a lot of people insinuate that there was a kind of like, ugly racial prejudice that worked there. I think that's overstated. What came to be known, perhaps kind of, you know, I mean, it's what came into the Tamari affair, which seems to overstate the significance of it, you know, by characterizing it as it was some sort of scandal. On December 31, 1938, Von Thomas sent an urgent telegram to Infantry Colonel Ricardo Fernandez. He was the primary liaison with Franco's high command, or the equivalent of a general staff, okay, in, 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 all these things had to be subject to his veto or approval, you know, and he reiterated, you know, I was appointed by Franco as tank inspector, you know, and is, is, are my demands not immediately obeyed. I, I, I will withdraw my contribution in his words. So again, this is him threatening to throw his hands up and resign. You could read that as him being a prima donna of a sort of. I think he was entirely serious. I don't think that can be disputed. And, and again, you're looking at this army which, you know, in the Spaniards, which again, is some very core, very game, tough men, but is unbelievably, almost comically corrupt, you know, and it's only kind of held together at the level of the general officers by people like Tom Reed, 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 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, of the facts, you know, and the, the, the quantifiable side of things. I, I think that's, you know, I mean, that's why I, but it's also, there's what came of, of the Tamari memo is, or telegram. Vantoma got whatever he wanted. He got everything he wanted, you know, and he, he basically became, uh, the de facto, you know, commander of armored forces for nationalist Spain, you know, and that's, that goes to show you the degree to which the Vermont was the key to, you know, nationalist victory in the war. It wasn't, you know, I, I, the Luftwaffe made a tremendous contribution. And, and like we discussed, you know, in the previous two episodes, earhard Milch was, was a, 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, by the ground element. Okay? They are. And this was essential to that effort. And we're not just talking about, you know, without Von Toma, like there is no, there is no, there is no Spanish armored element. You know, you're throwing, you're throwing Spanish entry at these T26 tanks. They're being cut to pieces. You know, it's the fact not only that he was able to constitute, you know, an armored force where before there had been nothing, but he managed to do this really with a handful of, of Panzer ones. Cha cha cha cha.

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armed with a couple of light machine guns and not particularly durable armor. And he was able to convince a bunch of proud Spaniards to basically like hand him like absolute Authority over the, over the entire enterprise. That's, that's nothing short of remarkable. I don't think it could be contested. But there's. Subsequent and particularly in like the final months of the war in 1939, they developed this kind of like and genuinely amicable cordiality, at least as far as you can discern through the language barrier and through the, you know, brevity of, of these written communiques and telegrams between Ventoma and Tamari. But the, the rest of these Spanish officers too who initially had, you know, been not out and out hostile because they realized the severity of the situation and that they needed, they needed the Germans, but you know, they certainly Spaniards are a proud people if nothing else. And I, it was a better pill for them to swallow to seed control to a fair mocht officer in that way, although there's no shame in that. You know, the Vermont 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, 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 through the training cycle. And a lot of these men were combat veterans too, just out of, you know, obviously not of fighting in armor. You know, some were, some had no, no prior experience, but they were the minority. But the, what's fascinating too is that the, The anti tank element that Montol insisted upon, that particular assault gun, it was a 3.7 centimeter assault gun. It was manufactured by Rhein Metal Borsig and it rapidly became ubiquitous. Like that itself, that, like that make and model itself as well as reverse engineered knockoffs in the, in, in this, in the Red army, in the, in the U.S. army. The Japanese imitated it. The, the, the, the, the Vermont faced them in the, in the Benelux countries when they went through Holland. The Italians deployed it, you know, as late as, as late as 43, like around the time the solarium landings. So again, like, even, even though these pretty much every, pretty much every weapons platform we've described again was like obsolescent by the admin of World War II. But these were perfectly suited to the Spanish battle space. And it was. It was the experience of these platforms there, you know, in heavy combat over years that led to the development of, you know, successor technologies. And I find that fascinating. And, you know, that's why, like I said, there's plenty of historians who posit that the. The Second World War truly started in Spain from a historicist, kind of 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 Leben's rom and racial posterity and the need to develop Europe into a superpower because the age of the superpower had arrived. That was part of it. But it owed also. Everybody from Verner Sombart to George Sorel to Ernst Younger made the point, you know, sometimes obliquely, sometimes very directly, that just the nature of labor and production and technics 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, the states, or whether you're talking about, you know, resolving irredentist claims, as we're always, you know, an ongoing issue in European cabinet politics. You know, there's not. I made the point again and again. It's fascinating that the German contribution to the Enlightenment and kind of their only full embrace of rationalism was in military science through clause. 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 doesn't just solve political problems. You know, in fact, it almost never does. The 20th century, in a rare capacity, there was a perfect congruence between 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. This is. This was my dedicated Condor Legion episode. We'll get into the flange and we'll get into the ideology of the Spanish nationalists, 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, that this positive variable in the Spanish Civil War was the intervention of Condor Legion or Bicondor Legion. So I think I, I think it's just material on its own terms. Today's been a long day. Give plugs and we'll get out of here. Yeah, man. You can find me always on [e-mail] In a couple weeks, I'm launching season two of the Mind Phaser 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've. I know I said about a week ago I was gonna drop a statement on my sub stack about moving forward, like how things are gonna work, relating to, you know, going to make a lot more stuff free. But also, like I said, I. There's some projects I kind of want to plug that I, I had to put on the back burner, like, owing 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, 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, man. Yeah, I. That's a fantastic endorsement, man. I mean, not just because you're a serious guy and you're my friend, but. No, I, I really, really appreciate you giving me a platform and otherwise.

[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

I would not have nearly the audience that I have. And plus, I mean, like I said, I hope people will get something else. And I think they do because feedback has been uniformly positive and frankly, it's not it's not always the case with things I do. So yeah, I can't thank you enough as well as the the people who tune in and, you know, remain engaged. That's just great. I appreciate it, Thomas.

[Thomas777]

Thank you.

[Pete Quinones]

I want to welcome everyone back to the P Show, Part four of the Spanish Civil War series. I'm going to turn it over to Thomas777 and just let him go. Let me just ask how you doing? Thomas? I'm very well, thanks. What 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. You know, one of which is two things people ask me why I'm so critical of Francois because the Franco is somewhat revered and part of that owes the frankly kind of the 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, 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 that officially assimilated and formally assimilated in 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, their kind of view of Franco is of, you know, the Phalange movement and you know, the heroics of, of the war and you know, Condor Legion and all of that. You know, they, they, they don't realize kind of how perfidious and, and, and Machiavellian Franco was. And I think that could be justified if, if what Franco accomplished was some sort of enduring political culture, you know, that, that served, you know, the Spanish as a people, you know, and as, as a race, you know, in historical terms and things. But that, 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, 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, would be the, the war years, the Second World War, I mean, not the Spanish War. But also people asked me, like, what, what exactly was the nature of the relationship, you know, between Madrid and Berlin and Madrid 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, he was very, very pro Axis. You know, he, he wanted to formally join the Axis alliance. And we'll get into who Sunir was in a minute, but 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 Falange movement was proper and, you know, pick up as a follow up, you know, to the convolution episode we just did. But for now, for today, that's, that's what I want to cover. And, and plus, it's like on my mind. I was, I was researching this a bunch like, owing to Some other stuff I'm writing. So I mean it's convenient, 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. 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 the, 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's 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, it's, it's very on the nose 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, 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 even, I don't have any opinion on that. They don't. I, I don't get into like interseen Catholic fights and I'm not a bigot, so I don't, I don't tear down the Catholic Church, you know, 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, in the 1960s, 1970s, you know, remained kind of in, in splendid, splendid isolation. It was, I think of it almost as kind of like a right wing version of, of like the Tito model, you know, like obviously like there wasn't, I mean that there I realized 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, 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, the nations that constituted Yugoslavia, like contrivances 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 Bundeswehr and even, even 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 Tujiman's independent Croatia. But the point is such that Franco accomplished anything. I mean, he basically. Yeah, he basically just, you know, he basically just, just, just put Spain under, like, lock and key, like, you know, in every conceivable sense, like, figuratively and literally. But again, that's not. That doesn't generate anything sustainable. So what, what, what exactly happened between, um, Germany and Spain? Um, Ribbentrop 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 go on? Because this, this, this is something that people would ask were they in any kind of shape to join? I mean, they just went through three, you know, three and a half years of hell, yeah. And we're going to get into that. Like Franco had. 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. It fairly quickly became clear that he was not negotiating in good faith. You know, the, the, the extent of these demands was such that they just. They could not be met. You know, 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 uncompromising claims they were making on French Africa as well, particularly, but not exclusively, Morocco. Finally, Spain basically needed to do. Avail itself as, as part of fortress Europe, as, you know, France had, Had done, admittedly, like post defeat. And France plays into this equation more than people might think, okay? The France and Germany, despite what people claim, like there was not like VC France and then free France. I mean, it's obviously de Gaulle was, you know, the Allies were suggesting that, you know, de Gaulle was the true, like, you know, French president in exile and that, you know, Patan's regime was illegitimate, but Patan 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 on my timeline footage of, you know, the Germans, like, you know, allowing. Allowing the defeated French, like, full honors and allowing to, like, march past, you know, the Wehrmacht. They were like, saluted, you know, and 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 has hated Germany with this kind of like, hellbent passion and, you know, the Vichy regime was. 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 servicemen, 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 Portuguese coastal soil. And those though, you know, those were basically like, what the furor's ambitions were. But even in. As things had 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. You know, not withstanding the idiot, the idiosyncrasies actually perceived of, you know, the respective regimes in place and in Vichy, in Berlin and in Madrid. It on 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, Gibraltar offensive and, you know, encourage them to join what he called the grand coalition. Hitler said to Ribbentrop in uncertain terms, every aspirin would have to be left. In the, quote, heavy belief that his wishes would be largely fulfilled, Ribbentrop wrote in his own notes that to accomplish this would require, quote, fraud on a grand scale. Ribbon trop wasn't saying like, oh, Hitler, you know, was. Was. Was, you know, anticipating, you know, perpetuating such a fraud. Like what he was saying was that Hitler's dreaming because this can't be realized owing to the going to the unwillingness of the. Of the. Of the parties to the, you know, to, you know, to the situation, you know, and they're. 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 in Africa. I mean, these particularly with you know, the, the realization of strategic air power, but. Existential matters of, of security, you know, to the, the states that supported the Mediterranean. So I mean, that, that should be, that should be clear. And plus two, they, you know, the Spain and France were not, there wasn't the, there wasn't the ongoing, you know, kind of enmity, you know, only kind of the tragedy of geostrategic situation that there was between Germany and France. But France and Spain weren't, were natural allies by any means. You know, I mean, it's not, it's not as if there's some sort of, you know, common bond owing to, you know, Latin heritage and the Roman church or something really. It was just absent like even between Portugal, even between Salzburg's Portugal and Franco Spain. I mean, that didn't exist, you know, I mean, it wasn't 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, you know, Europe. A lot of these, a lot of these political cultures were still mired and kind of like the warring States period, you know, which endured in Europe until 1914. I mean, you know.

[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

you know, in a. In a real sense, I'm talking about abstract postulates here, assuming there's that to keep in mind, too. Even if Franco was more worldly and even if Patan was, you know, a younger man and not, you know, this kind of inflexible, you know, octogenarian field marshal, I. 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 the former French ambassador, Ponce, or Poncet, who Hitler had always had a good rapport with. He was going to feel him out about a personal meeting with the 10 and basically use him as kind of like his unofficial emissary. He would go to visit Patan, 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. They've humiliated France not just at the car, but also by, you know, assaulting and sinking its navy in Algeria. You know, it's. It's you. You have to accept the situation as it is that, you know, France and, and London are at war and, you know, Germany is really the only port 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 Patain and use that as the basis for future collaboration, which seems somewhat harebrained, 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. There'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. 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 1942-44, April 42 to August 44, you know, and he'd served previously in. In the same role in the third republic from 31 to 32, and then I think from 1935, 36, 37. So again, that. And Hitler and Laval had had a basic Rapport or their, respectively, a did. You know. But again, I raised this because it becomes so much significant later. But it's also like Laval, again, he. He was serving, you know, the, quote, Vichy government, which supposedly was, you know, this illegitimate regime. I mean, this was not uncommon. I mean, he was one of the most. He was one of the more prominent, you know, cabinet ministers who found self in the same role that he had before because, like, the idea this was just some kind of, like, you know, client regime that, know, had no kind of like, organic legitimacy or something is. Is nonsense. But Hitler. Hitler sent out feelers to Laval as well, for the purpose of. And Laval didn't have any formal office at this point, um, for the. For the purpose of getting a. A personal audience with Paten, which was no, um, easy thing. And again, you know, it tells you to, 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 was definitely more kind of cultured and diplomatically cautious than people allege, but who is not exactly, you know, a man who favored a finesse over. Over action, sometimes brute action and the threat of it. You know, it's like if. If. If. If the Vichy regime is this completely artificial regime, like, why isn't Hitler just directing Patan to do whatever he orders? You know, I mean, it's. That right there. I mean, kind of shoots the pieces, the. The narrative of, you know, Vichy being artificial or, you know, France just either like, not existing after, you know, cessation of hostilities in 1940, or, you know, being. This is completely astroturf, like, artificial edifice, you know, And I bring that 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, and it's older, too. Yeah. I mean, Darlon, who was the. You know, who was the martinet or. I don't know what you'd call him. Procurator, you know, maybe. I mean, he was the military leader of. Of French Africa. And yeah, he. Darlon, 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 got. You got to look at France as one of this. 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 they definitely were on the side of the Axis where the rubber met the road in. In the key theater of engagement, such that, you know, France was still capable of projecting power to protect its. Its core interests and. Yeah, exactly. That was in. 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 Lavelle said, you know, Britain that dragged France into an unwanted war, then abandoned her, you know, then, you know, made war on her, besmirching her honor and killing her people at Marisol Kabir. Operation catapult. That was July 1940. That's where the British assault and destroyed the French fleet, killing over 1200 people, like French servicemen and civilians. And then more recently in September, the. As we indicate, as we mentioned, the Port of Dakar in French West Africa. And again, several hundred, not just servicemen, but. But French civilians, were killed. But the. But French forces held, you know, and Lavelle promised to return, you know, to see this, you know, to seek audience with the 10 and, you know, return with an answer in two days time. And, uh, that's, uh, that's exactly what he did. October 23rd, Hitler believed. 1940. Two days subsequent, Hitler believed that Franco's willingness would absolutely depend on the tenor of the approach. It. Like. What is. Like. What is meant by that is that. 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, however 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 was. 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, you know, consumption, because Franco didn't have an actual mandate anyway, other than from this kind of coterie of officers and, you know, and. And phalanges who are. Who are a minority within the party, I might add, you know, who kind of agreed to cooperate after 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, and as I mentioned this before we went live, Franco'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 these demands, like, you know, Franco's obsession with Morocco, you know, him, you know, saying he wanted like equality of status like in, you know, in terms of like maritime passage in the Mediterranean. Like he meant all these things like on their own terms like over stupid. That might seem any. He actually viewed Spain as some like serious major power, you know. And again like preposterous. Is that as that might seem. As it happened, Hitler met with Hitler and the, and Ribbentrop and the, the diplomatic contingent, the diplomatic contingent respectively of the Reich and of nationalist Spain met uh, before, uh, Heller got his audience with Patan on October 23, 1940. It was the. In the frontier town of Hindai Hindi, France. I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation. Hitler was present, obviously. Franco was present. So is von Ribbentrov and so was Serrano Sooner Suner was the newly appointed foreign minister. Now who was Serrano Sunir? 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 a. That was the only legal party in Spain and it was a. It had come about by merger of the Phalange and the Integralist Catholic Traditionalist Union. Okay. Part of the kind of optics the Franco regime where they claim to both represent the church and represent the phalanges, 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 phalange against. Against Franco's dictatorship. And that ultimately the, the kind of. The kind of enduring ripples of that ultimately led to Suner's dismissal. Because Sun Air actually was a dedicated phalangest, you know, and had he not been related to the Cadillo, he would not have found himself in this role. There's a cruel irony here too, because Yakovam Ribbentrop and Seranu Suner 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. So I think it was last year when the university was death rolled around. I remember talking on Twitter and some other, on some other platforms with people, they're asking me what my take on Ribbentrop was. There are some incredible diplomatic coups that Ribbentrop pulled off and he had some remarkable insights in at key junctures. But at the end of the day, he was an international businessman, okay, Business, diplomats. And no 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 would, he wouldn't, he wouldn't have made any, any headway. Okay, because, you know, for reasons that should be obvious to anybody but that we covered extensively and our earlier series. But Ribbon Trop 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 Suner and I. You know, like I said, Suner, not only was he a dedicated philologist, he was, he was, 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. Like 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 in strategic as well as political terms.

[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

he also knew that, you know, part of Franco's strategy, you know, would be to issue demands that could not reasonably be met either because, you know, realistically, you know, forces and being weren't there were, you know, and those that were like that, you know, foodstuffs, petroleum, weapons, aircraft, you know, that which was in being, you know, Berlin would never part with because it, it was an unconscionable demand. But Sunir 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 Ribbon Drop wanted the same things and they, they, but they, they couldn't, they, you know, they couldn't overcome this, this kind of personal animus, what Ribbon Trop reported. And Ribbentrop was something of a haughty tuton of, you know, a caricature sort. 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, Cardillo demands, you know, all of French Morocco and Algeria, you know, for Laban's rom. But this could probably be finessed if, you know, he was offered Portugal because geographically speaking, in Suner's words, Portugal has no right to exist. Quote. And this apparently outraged Ribbentrop, you know, like, who the hell is a Spaniard think he is, you know, Spain is a, is a country. It's, you know, he's talking like he's, you know, he's talking to me like we're peers. And you can almost see like if you read about these personages, like you can almost, you almost like feel all this like outrage Ribbon Trop. But I mean again, if you're a diplomat, you've got to stay cool no matter what. But again, part of the tragedy of this is that a man like Sunair who I think was a real hero in a lot of ways. But you know, this, this kind of, you know, this, this kind of self important pompous Latin guy and this kind of, you know, supremacist Teutonic Type like people like that are gonna mix like oil and water, you know, and I, you can just see just kind of by like, like the words jump off the page and when you read of this meeting, how, you know, just like what a disaster it must, must, must have been. Additionally, Serrano wanted, he wanted, he wanted guarantees of military and economic support, you know, immediately too. Like, you know, this wasn't. He. He said he wanted to go back to Madrid, you know, with, with a concrete offer of what, you know, Hitler is willing to provide, you know, kind of like down to the letter, you know. And this is not. That's not the way. That's not, that's not the way diplomacy is done either. You know, it. And this would be the cost again of, of um, you know, joining the war and specific, specifically, you know, immediately planning for an operation. Apparently RIM 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. You know, 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 Ribbentrop said that, you know, the aid you're gonna get is, you know, you're, you're gonna become a dedicated, you know, destination for German manufacturers. You know, we're gonna put your people to work, you know, as we see fit, you know, sustain the war economy. But, you know, basically you're a coolie, you know, go back. He basically told him like, go get his shine box. And you know, the. He deliberately insulted him by, you know, not just portraying Spain as, you know, like a future satellite state, but it's like a second rate one at that. It's. This came as apparently a great shock to sooner because it, I mean again like these guys weren't ribbon trop had done business in America and like actually up until, you know, the, the evil World War I and, and then subsequent he'd spent a lot of time in Canada. So I mean he was worldly, but like not. Neither of these men should have been negotiating anything of, of, of of the nature that they were charged with. You know, like I, Siegfried Cash, I, Sigrid Cash wasn't a diplomat, but he, he was slated to be the gal later of uh, the Moscow, uh, commissariat, you know, had it come to fruition and he uh, he was, 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, with Cash. You know, again, it's a, it's. 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 it. And it becomes Franco's private correspondence to Suner, you know, his telegrams to him, but specifically like his private letters. So I mean, you know that these were intended only for sinner's eyes. He was, he was Franco's effusively praising Hitler as a wise man, you know, and like a great man and you know, he was dismissing ribbon trope as a, you know, ribbon trop is. You know, he's a fool. He. He's. He fails to appreciate, you know, what we can offer the Axis and you know, these kinds of things, you know. So again it's, and if it's, it goes to show you how essential too. 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, of literal physical security, but, you know, because every, 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, you know, you, you basically have to communicate through liaison. But it was just show you like how. How important it is that the man in, in that role or in those roles, you know, in, in. In discrete capacities, you know, really, really have to, you know, be. Be able to check their ego at the door. You know, there was 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, even after when a protege, a Sooner, uh, a guy named Pedro Gamero del Castillo, uh, in 1941, January 1941, he reached out to the press secretary of the German embassy in Spain, Hans Lazar, and he, he begged him basically. He's like, look, you know, tell Berlin that a Serrano sunnier government, in other words like Franco could be sidelined or killed. You know, a Serrano Suner government, you know, with Suir at the helm in L. The Cardillo would commit absolutely to the Axis powers, you know, and this was incredibly risky. You know, that he was that he was 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 that the true flange like pro axis elements Spain, like we're holding out hope still that, you know, Spain would join the axis as a, you know, as a, as a full partner. It it's unclear whether Lazar ever reached Hitler or reached like the right chancery. And if he did like what he said when it was said to Hitler when it was like not, not by not by Castillo, but Hitler said to Walter Huell later on was he said that, you know sunair and not, you

[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

trying harder and doing whatever he could to sued the Cardillo was quote the grave digger of the new Spain. And you know Hitler. The man always who always took the long view. Whatever else you're going to 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 his little like, you know, Garrison, you know, Disneyland, like Fascist Disneyland for 30 years subsequent that, you know, his lasting legacy, that of Franco, I mean, amounts to exactly zero. Sunair and Castillo proposed. They were the ones who proposed the Blue Division, you know, after the onset of hostilities with the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. And, you know, it's clear that it's. It's clear sooner realized the opportunity that he'd missed or. Or his cogs in his own failure. Two days after Barbarossa, June 20th or 24th, I've seen it cited as I've seen both citations of the date. He. He delivered a famous kind of stump speech from the balcony of what had been FIS party headquarters called Rusia is copabal, forgive me, butchering Spanish. I don't speak Spanish at all. What translates as Russia is guilty. And it's essentially, you know, bellicose apologia for, you know, why. Why Spain needs to join, you know, the war effort or the flange need to join the war effort. You know, like all. All true patriots need to slay the Judeo Bolshevik beast. You know, so he was. He was like, like many people, you know, 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 and a great patriot and, you know, kind of circumstances intervened to prevent him from realizing, you know, what he wanted to 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 Sunera was to make clear, like, what the stakes were of the. Of the summit between Hitler and Franco, but also, you know, to kind of understand, you know, how the personages directly engaged, you know, determine the outcome of this negotiation. The basic object was to resolve, you know, outstanding disagreements over the. Over. Over conditions for Spain to join the Axis powers in their war against the British. Okay, do me a favor. Do me a favor. You cut out. You cut out there. When you, when you first started what you were going to say right now, you cut out like, like five seconds ago. Can you, can you restart that? Yeah, yeah. No, it's the. To bring it back to the. The summit between, you know, Hitler and Franco. It. 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, two. I mean, but you know, owing to the going to 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, you know, would be the Caesar, Gibraltar, you know, the Royal Navy would then be shut out of the Mediterranean. They'd lose Africa. You know, they'd, they'd be, they'd be, 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 in their. Rather Franco wouldn't waver in demands that Hitler described as extortionate. His demands were. Franco's demands were the handing over of Gibraltar to Spain once the British were defeated. This, you know, the seating 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 Africa becomes Spanish Africa. 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, with, 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 NC was the defeat of the Soviet Union. But you know, the, 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 that's an important. That doesn't nullify, You know, RHS Stofli's claim and I mean Hitler's notion, I mean the notion of Hitler himself that, you know, the like, final, like final victory is conquering is, is when Moscow falls. Okay, But I just wanted to reiterate that for clarity. But the only way that this, The only way that this, that this alliance, that this Mediterranean alliance can work is like, like France is the linchpin. Okay? For reasons we already discussed, Franco is making that impossible for, you know, for, for France to, to come to terms based on what he is demanding. And Hitler was beside himself. But also, he just didn't, he, he didn't understand the abject, you know, kind of stubbornness. I mean, he, he viewed it as. Really sabotage the proceedings. And I believe that's true. I've said in Mussolini that he would rather have three or four teeth extracted than go through that again, that being negotiation or attempted 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 impassioned person and a military man as, as well as a, you know, a revolutionary type. He, he continually interrupted in, in a way that apparently Hitler viewed as totally tactless and stuff like that made Hitler very angry as a kind of, as it kind of would any sort of like old world Habsburg 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, every conceivable sort of aspect of this, of this affair just became a, you know, a fiasco, you know, a, a literal comedy of errors. But Hitler kept at it even, even, even through, you know, when dinner was served and even afterwards.

[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

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[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

And it you know, it came to nothing. And that was the last, that was the last summit, the last summit between Franco and, and the Fur. And really like any, any official representatives of, of of their respective office, you know, it's the, the Blue Division deployed, you know to the Eastern front. Know they fought valiantly, particularly at Leningrad. But I mean that, 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. Soon air, you know, if anything he probably sabotage the, 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. Hitler went on to meet patan on the 24th October. He greeted Patan as the victor of Verdun, you know, saluted him, you know, again like treating him like, you know, with all, not just with all the honors to a field marshal, but you know, as also as the President of France, you know, it you know, but he had nothing, he had, you know, he had nothing to offer, you know, in the French the potential 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 the final defenders of, of the Reichstag and the fear of bunker were, you know, French Waffen ss, you know, Charlemagne, you know, but it was, it was, you know, he just reiterated, you know, contain, 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, there's nothing to be done unless you know, Spain's willing to come to terms. And that was that kind of the final kind of the final chapter was the final. They're the nail in the coffin rather. A month subsequent November 28, 1940, Ribbentrop's ambassador in Berlin, the foreign, the German ambassador to, to Madrid to Spain. In Madrid, not Berlin, he relayed that Franco was now willing to proceed with 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. Hitler took this to mean that this meant that Franco was. Was willing to enter the war immediately, you know, pending the satisfaction and conditions precedent. On December 4, he sent Canaris to Franco with a personal letter proposing that German troops formally enter Spain and, you know, prepare to assault Gibraltar, Which sick was 600 miles from the frontier. Okay, so we're talking. You're talking about a real deployment across. Across, you know, the Spanish heartland, which is no small thing. But again, it, I mean, considering. Considering, you know, the course of negotiations. This would 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. 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, this, this was perfectly well placed in customary, you know, terms as well as, you know, the commonly accepted sort of rights and privileges of. Of allies. You know, Franco afforded Canaris a long audience on December 7, 1940, as an auspicious date. Auspicious day, you know, one year prior to Pearl Harbor. Exactly. Franco said to Canaris that for economic reasons relating to, you know, 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. 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, it, it was, it was. It was just. It was just Franco's favored method, once again, of, of finding a way to. To, you know, to not. To not commit to the alliance while wrong footing his enemy in. In some. In some ways, however transparent that might have been it. Hitler's rebuttal or response to the Canaris meeting was you know, just again, you know, to. To reiterate, you know, the. That Gibraltar was essential that, you know, unless. Unless the United Kingdom was deprived of its access to the Mediterranean, you know, 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 general officer, which seemed to sting 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, he, 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 into question the sacrifice of Spanish manhood. But the fury 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, all this which is obvious kind of who's culpable and who, you know, was responsible for the inability of, you know, any, any kind of real concord to emerge between, you know, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. It's clear that, I mean, Franco was, unless one puts, you know, self preservation above all other goods, it's, it's obvious that Franco was really kind of a pox on, on the house, proverbial house of, of, of all patriotic forces then so mobilized and engaged against, you know, the Bolsheviks and, and their allies in Britain. This situation also 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, 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, that's the strategic timetable for any sort of remedial action to be taken with respect to Gibraltar or anywhere else in 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, you know, to what degree the, the North African campaign should be prioritized and to what degree then, you know, that this, this was before, you know, Rommel had, had, had, you know, struck these great victories out in, you know, in, in the North African theater. I mean, initially it was initially the ever corps deployed, you know, 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, Rommel, I think is somewhat over. Overly praised because he's a romantic figure and plus, you know, people look at him as a good guy because he, he, he was wrongfully implicated in July 20 plot, but he was nonetheless implicated. And you know, the SD Gestapo, you know, forced him to commit suicide, but he, it was, you know, it was Rommel's, you know, you know, Prussian commitment to mission oriented tactics, like writ large, which kind of, you know, which kind of made North Africa into like a, into like a, you know, a real battle theater because of the fact is like, he kept succeeding. But yeah, the, the, that, that was basically the Italian armies, that, that's what, that, that, that's what their responsibility was, you know, vis a vis the, the Axis alliance. And it, and yeah, the Italian army in North Africa was problematic. I think the Italians fought pretty heroically on the Eastern front, but the, and in the Balkans, their, their mountain troops were real game and real tough, but the, 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 like Italian people to get mad or something or think I'm saying something bad about them. I'm not. But the Italian army, you've already pissed off the Spanish. So, I mean, yeah, I don't wanna, I don't know, it's upset. I don't want a whole quorum of Latin people who are mad at me. But the, you know, that was, that was a, that was that and a lot of this too. I mentioned, I mentioned Vaulter. Right, as you said, I mentioned and then you cut out. So what'd you say? I said, I mentioned Walter Huell, um, a minute ago. A lot of this testimony comes from Huell, you know, and what he, what he documented in his diaries and things. And Huell was, he was a career diplomat. And after 1933 he became chief of the East Asian Disc, of the Foreign Ministry. And then during the war, he became special liaison between the Foreign Ministry and the Fuhrer. And he and Hitler became quite close. And Huo was an interesting guy, kind of like an unassuming guy, like the kind of guy who is a great diplomat. Like, if, if Huell could have been negotiating with Sunair, there would have been a very different outcome, I believe. But my point is that he was, he's a credit. He, 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, there really would be no reason for him to like, finesse these things. And frankly too, I Mean, again, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think anybody really looks good or reasonable in this milieu except Hitler himself. I'm sure that take makes people mad too. But speaking within, you know, the boundary rationality of, 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, that 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, and everything else. I mean it is, is like what sabotages the best laid plans of nations more than any enemy army could. You know, much of the time, man, like that's not just some dumb cliche, but that's, that's the story of, this is the story of, you know, the cardillo and the furor and you know, the conspicuous absence of Spain and you know, on the, on the battlefields of World War II, save for the Blue Division, later the Blue Legion as when they were reconstituted, who were very, who fought heroically again. But you know, that's, 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 realized I haven't been plugging my website. I do have a website now. It's number 7H1S777.com which is thomas777.com it's kind of like a one stop. Not kind. I mean it's a one stop place for all my content. Okay. And I still gotta like tweak some stuff so 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 one off streams I appear on and stuff like that. You can find it there and I, I'm gonna sex it up and like fix some of the glitches and. But I mean you can go there now and 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, 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 Zerg rush me and get me Banned, which has happened like 12 times. I'm not just talking. You can find me at Substack that you can find my podcast foreign. It's real, Thomas. 777 substack.com and 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 my dear friend and editor Rake. We're a two man operation. But I'm. I'm working on the second season of Mind Phaser at which time the first season episodes will all become free. But there's a hell of a lot going into that. There's a hell of a lot going into like the video we're shooting and I've got a hell of a lot of footage, but I got, I got to make it into something and it's damn time consuming. Just please continue to bear with me. Like I'm getting 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 Quinones 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 wanna, like I was telling Pete before we went live, a huge amount of people reach out out of genuine concern. And that's incredible, man. You know, it's really that, I mean, not just because that, you know, makes anybody feel good and know they have friends that love them, but that's the essence of the social capital I'm talking about all the time. It's like building, you know, not just pragmatic networks for, you know, like political action things, but in day to day life, like, you know, when crises emerge, you know, as they always do on personal terms because someone's being and terrorized by the regime. You know, there, 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 the, you know, that structure very much kind of like came into focus, you know, owing to. Owing to. Owing to something that I mean, frankly, in a broad scheme, like was not a big deal. But it's. When it's going on, it's up and you like disappear off the earth. You get arrested because they, they take away all your means of communication. So I just, I didn't, I'm not trying to eat up the clock. I just, I just wanted this is a good opportunity to kind of like address our friends direct. But today, Bubba Wallace here from 2311 racing on the track.

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[Pete Quinones]

I this is, this is the last episode where I'll, I'll, I'll approach it in what appears perhaps to be kind of a scattershot topical 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 the fear and the Third Reich as well as, you know, Spain and its geostrategic situation generally, you really, you gotta understand how unusual of a 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. I disagree. I take strong exception to people who. To try and identify, you know, and people with people. And then a lot of. A lot of people who abide kind of Mearsheimer's perspective do this. And I only reference that because generally I agree with those people on. On certain matters. And this is one of those cases where I don't. But, you know, they posit that there's this kind of school. There's this discreet, you know, sort of school of. Of political thought, particularly in strategic matters, you know, of realism and that, you know, there's some. There's some sort of straight line, basically linear trajectory between Thucydides, you know, all the way through to people like James Burnham. And that's nonsense. However, the first truly modern political theorist was Machiavelli, okay? And there's a reason why Machiavelli, he identified. He identified Ferdinand Isabella as the first true, like, you know, architects of the modern state, you know, and this proceeded. This proceeded not just with failure, but the 30 years war 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, backwards state, comparatively, or the state that's, you know, 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. Than they are Europe, you know, America, North Asia. But Spain was a century ahead of the curve in its political development. You know, even amidst these arguably, you know, conditions of impoverished, you know, material and social capital. And that's a curious question because to a lesser degree and 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. That's why communism found such fertile ground. But, you know, again, Russia was decades ahead in terms of. In terms of. In terms of. In terms of the intellectual paradigms it was playing with as regards statecraft. But in terms of material capital and the conditions that allow for material capital to truly flourish and provide technological development, those things were absent. And that also Spain, unlike most empires, the Spanish Empire didn't become rich. It probably in. In. It's in. In the terms we understand wealth and money. The Spain, The Spanish Empire Zenith was. Was. Was the wealthiest empire that ever existed. Okay? You know, it spanned this planet. It was able to challenge the Royal Navy, you know, was just. It was just, it was, it was a juggernaut, basically. You know, it was just incredibly powerful. But its social architecture didn't really become more complex. Complex with that. You know, it's. It's wildly overstated for 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 serve and between like aristocrat and peasant or between, you know, proletarian and, and, and. And high bourgeoisie and, and that's nonsense. But there is like something of a causal nexus there. I think it's more just that, you know, as sociological architecture becomes more diversified, owing to the increased complexity of economic activity and behavior at 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, being a bad, you know, playing an ambassador role, but regardless of, you know, the chicken of the egg and how that resolves in one's own mind or in real terms, that. 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 of 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, 1808-1814, you know, they were occupied by Napoleon. You know, they didn't just, they weren't just, you know, they weren't just part of, you know, the, the alliance that. At the battle of nations or something, you know, they, they were, they were under occupation for, for. For close to a decade, you know, and from there it, you know, like we talked about in 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 Franco Prussian War, there was the Crimean War, but neither one of those, you know, really was impactful, like, outside of a theater level. And there's the 1848 revolutions, but that, that, that, that was nothing like 1917 or like, or like 1789, you know, but in the case of Spain, they. There, they, they. They came to civil war. Conditions were emerging in 1822, 1823, and French military intervention ended that 1827. There was the Catalan insurrection, you know, in These, in these, in these, these, these secession oriented, you know, political movements all in sundry in Spain like always had always had traction in peculiar ways. 1833, 1840 there was the First Carist War which was incredibly bloody. You know, 1859, you know, the Moroccan War of Independence pops off. 1870 or 1876, there's a Second Carlist War. During this whole time Spain was fighting in, in, in the Americas, you know, because of, of these Hispano American colonial revolts, you know, 1860, 181868 to 1878, there's the Ten Years War in Cuba and subsequently Spain literally fought America. You know, I mean this, this is the, the degree, to the degree with, and in Spain and the two Cuban, and the two Cuban wars lost over a hundred thousand kia. You know, no European power absorbed that much military attrition nor lost as much territory in so rapid a time frame as Spain did in the 19th century. You know, I'd say what happened to Spain at reduced scale and adjusting for strategic conditions of the, of the, of the power political landscape, what happened to Spain was as catastrophic as what happened to the Soviet Union. Arguably even more so with Spain was quite literally 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 anybody except probably the Bolsheviks who succeeded them and you know, and the Jacobins who inspired every, every radical tendency subsequent. But in 1818, 21 is 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 subsequent to, you know, Ferdinand 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 the constitution. Or they were called Dokianistas or dosinistas. I don't know if it's a hard or soft C, but they were pretty, pretty rapidly moderated after they got their weight and they, 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 is the last time any faction of the left ever abided that. And by 1821 the, the disinfection from within, you know, essentially the Young Turks who came to know as the exaltados. Their whole notion was look, you know, the, the prize in, in political contests, you know, within the state or the state itself. Okay? If, you know, if, if, if we're gonna, you know, if every, if every three or six or, or eight or 10 years, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna briefly capture, you know, we're gonna briefly capture, you know, legislative, you know, and then just rush to, you know, implement as much relief to, you know, to, to our class comrades as as possible, but then immediately, you know, hand the range of state over to our enemies and, and watch that be undone. You know, we're, 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 beyond an even pointless, you know, sort of acceptance of the status quo because that like, obviously over time that somebody grinds down, you know, the revolutionary impetus like in, in the minds of, of anyone who participates in the system. Because you know, by definition the system exists in neutralize, you know, not just like, like reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary ones. Okay? So exaltados were not willing to surrender political ground, you know, for the sake of due process or, or, or, or constitutional, constitutional power sharing or, or anything else. Okay? And that's a very schian concept of state, you know, and not, and, and that, I mean, and that, that, that makes sense, okay? For, for all kinds of reasons, but the, the main, the main characteristic of the ex, and what remained as kind of the core essence of the French or the Front, the Spanish radical left subsequent was a total rejection of moderation and an employment of violence not just to secure, not just to secure absolute, you know, majoritarian consensus, but also to enforce government policy once they accomplished or captured that consensus, you know, and, and, and a view that it was perfectly legitimate to enforce, not just enforce compliance, you know, through use of, of, of a violent terror apparatus, but also to crush all, all resistance and the president they drew upon. You know, when, when, when these kinds of more liberal minded moderates would say, look, you know, we all want the same things, you know, we're, you're setting us back with these kind of sanguinary longings. The rebuttal was, look, you know, our precedent for this is, is 1789, you know, and if you think the Jacobins were, you know, we're willing to come to the table with royalists and, and engage in horse trading, you know, you're, you're out of your mind or You're a liar, you know, and within the boundary rationality of their objectives, they didn't 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 you can't the entire theory of, of progressivist government with a capital P, even that itself, you know, as 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 factors, you know, many, many owing to an inescapable precedent that set Spain on a. A uniquely kind of tragic course. But also, you know, just after. Yeah, after that technical difficulty, that's all good. It's. It's kind of nostalgic, you know, but the uh. But at the same time, I mean, no matter how much you exalt the, you know, the, the kind of law of the blade and the barrel of a gun over, you know, that of the perial pen and paper of, you know, money and buying your way to, to, you know, policy realization, no matter how much you're enthralled with violence and coercion as sort of the currency of, of Ryan Seacrest here.

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[Pete Quinones]

At some point that, that sort of runs its course, you know, and it develops, it develops a crisis of legitimacy, you know, and if people just get sick of it. And this is exactly what happened. And the, the again, once again too, the exaltados were overthrown by, by the French army on which. Which became, you know, it's, 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 Vermont 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 jurean, de facto when you're talking about, you know, armed men of a, you know, understood of alienage, you know, crossing a sovereign frontier. But after, after Waterloo it there just became, you know, like the. One of the checks on, on anarchy as Spain, you know, kind of went through this painful 19th century was you know, a tolerance of not, you know, out and out acceptance of a French interventionism, you know, beyond their, their common border when you know, things appear to be careening towards open civil war. And I mean that's, 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, high concern and high politics. But to put this in perspective, like a dear friend of ours who came to visit me the other week, he, he was kind enough to mail me Stanley G pains P A Y N E like I guess like Max Payne for the, for the, for the Gamer Bros. On the. But this is if this is a very like storied book that. And, and our friend like mailed it to me, which is great. So I read it after I got back from jail and um, it's chock full of facts and figures and it basically deals with like the, the book itself. It basically deals with you know, what, like the unraveling of the Spanish Republic, you know, especially the, especially the critical months through 1935 and in 1936, before the point of the formal onset of hostilities. But people are gonna ask. People are gonna ask what the name of the book is, so. 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 gonna do like Murky Merc though, like. And Max Payne. But that's like. I have like six books by him, so. Yeah, yeah, no, he, he's written some great stuff and like, I, it's not, I mean, everybody especially, like, all I really do is, is research, man. You know, it's not me like, patting myself on the back about like, what a good boy I am or something. But even somebody like me who's kind of stuck in trade is, is academic research. There's, there's certain authors that you're, you know, you're going to rely on more than others and 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, or praising, but for whatever reason, pain never sort of entered into my personal canon. So again, dude knows who he is who sent us this book. And it's awesome and it's been a huge help for one of the reasons why it's shock. Full of, of data that, you know, is not, I mean, not data for data's sake, but, you know, data of a material evidentiary nature that helps put things into, you know, kind of high relief as regards perspective. And kind of the sequences after. From, from the Napoleonic occupation or, and, or Waterloo onward, the kind of phases in, in modern Spanish politics were, you know, from 1808 to 1814, there was a, There was a leftist regime in power. You know, and it's that, that'd be a, that'd be worthy of an entire episode or a couple episodes like what the relationship was of Napoleonism to. Or Bonapartism to Jacobinism and that's that, that's, that's, that is Hegelian processes written all over it. But make no mistake, this, this was, this, this was a neo Jacobin regime at the reigns during the occupation, again from 1820-1823-1835-1838, 1850, 40 and 56, 1868, 1873, 1917 and 1923. And then of course, 1931 and 1939. You know, these were the, these were the, these are the phases of the, or the, or the electoral cycles or constellation of cycles where in the radical left essentially controlled the entire national government. Okay. And again, you know, as soon as one, as soon as, as soon as one faction would, would lose to the other, you know, they every. Everything they're everything their outgoing enemy had done what was sabotaged. You know, I mean, so it was this, it was just kind of like stalemate by design in government, you know. And I mean that, that's a case of the center not being able to hold. Also, even if conditions aren't such that, you know, civil war is inevitable. You're, you're dealing event, you're dealing with a state that eventually is going to become a failed state. Okay. The, the right wing control of the regime. You know, whether it was, you know, whether, whether it was, you know, gonna get conventional Spanish nationalists, you know, like Carlos, you know, like, just like various right wingers, you know, their, their, their tenure or their other phases of, of, of government, you know, dominance was, you know, post water. 1814-1820-1823-1833, 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 1931 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 1954 as being rightist. I, I just don't. Okay. Again, it was in another example of Spain being a remarkable outlier, but I accept what pain is getting at. And again that same paradigm was re. Emergent. It wasn't, you know, there was, it wasn't bloody and. An almost apocalyptic like as was the case with the Salazar regime, you know, which, and Salazar's a fascinating guy and you know, and, and the Portuguese were, were fighting alongside the Rhodesians 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. And Smith talks about Salazar is a truly great man. You know, he said if salad or 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 and, you know, and, and the proxies of the, of the Warsaw Pact, but it's, it. But again, you know, they're like, like Franco wasn't Salazar and there was no Carnation Revolution or whatever the, the progressive uprising against Salazar was. Brandon, 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 then like guzzling scotch or something. I mean like, I got my ass kicked this weekend and it hurt my brain. But the another thing to consider too, you know, the, the strong suit, I think inarguably in every other state where, you know, radicals and, or Bolsheviks and or, you know, ideological offshoots, you know, whether they were, you know, left wing syndicalists, you know, anarcho syndicalists, like anarchists. I mean, even among the anarchists, there was a kind of rigid cadre structure whereby the inner discipline of the party and its cadres was what carried the day and allowed them to allow, you know, and carry them to victory. In Spain, the Spanish left, it was even more nakedly sectarian, personal like, characterized by the faux messianic delusions of, of individual, like players within it. You know, 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 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, I mean, the right wing is a lot more organic, okay? And, and that, you know, and it's, it doesn't emerge, it didn't and doesn't emerge from some, you know, from, 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 radical left has more internal discipline than the right, okay? But that's why it's so striking that in Spain, like this was, it was literally the opposite, you know, and it also explains why there, this thing started when the Vermont intervened, you know, in Vantoma's, you know, Counter Legion and Vantoma's tanks and, you know, these. And he's been any stud like battlefield commanders and Franco had had a great eye for, for like company level officers. I don't know what their equivalent would be in Spanish army of the day, but like, like junior officers who you need, you know, to be like platoon leaders and company commanders, like Franco and, and Franco's staff, like they, they knew how to cultivate 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, and not even. Not even, you know, not even the NKVD on the ground. Not even goons like Eric Milk, like, you know, just like, whacking people who just like, you know, just. Cause like, he was probably an. Anyway, and, you know, he. His. 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 comic. They'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 like this. It still couldn't even, like, phase, like, the dysfunction of the process that I just enumerated. And towards that end too, 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. 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 through 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 anarcho cynicalists and like, talking. Talking like Marcus at Lennonus. You know, that's pretty crazy and pretty remarkable. All right, Especially again, if we consider that, you know, it's. I'm not like, trading Spain, like, Spain is incredible. What is it? But, you know, we're not talking about, like, Paris, and we're not talking about, like, Berlin, and we're not talking about, like, 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. Their kind of cosmopolitan embrace of exotic ideologies, you know, and things that just kind of, like, tickle the fancy of aristocrats. It's, you know, thought experiments that can be.

[Thomas777]

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[Pete Quinones]

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 amidst, you know, a, a state that was, that was still like, you know, almost entirely like agrarian in terms of uh, its local, its local economic output. That at Cyrus says in the warriors is a miracle. But Giuseppe Finelli, he was an early figure of massive importance within the post Jacobin, but pre Leninist left and he arrived in Spain in 1868. He'd been a great admirer of Bakunin, you know, who is Marx's great opponent in the first international Giuseppe finale 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, pairs of thought, you know, we'd call it the faith, even though that's what it is, it's an airsoft faith. He said, the idea, 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 fertile, proverbial fertile soil than the Spanish body politic to embrace Marxism, okay? And he was right. Okay? Rapidly, this kind of, this, this abundance of sex just popped up, you know, like anarchist, libertarian, you know, anarcho cynicalist, you know, independent socialist, like everything you can possibly think of, okay? And again, that ultimately served like the, like the, the inherent fractiousness and, and sort of anarchic nature of that political culture of the post Jacobin left in Spain. I mean, that cost him the war. And it's not. I, I don't accept the kind of Thomas Paine idea that like, the more, the more you hold an endless conversation, you know, the more like marvelous things just kind of like emerge out of mouths. But, but my point is that there was a, there was a remarkably developed intellectual culture on the ground as regards politics and you know, political theory. Unless you're talking, unless you're truly talking about like Straussian types or just like, you know, positing like, you know, like values, claims and, and trying to mine 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, 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. I, it's not. I don't, I, it's. But it's inarguable, 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 that as it was, but again, was it, it was the, it, it was supposed to act as the vanguard. Okay. It wasn't, you know, a question of taking a head count. 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 they're 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 without 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, we're not going to go to, you know, like the monastic order is to like help out widows of, of like the men of ours who die, okay? Like, you know, we're not, we're not, we're not gonna, we're not, we're not gonna try and capture, you know, the, like the local constable's office in, in Catalonia or whatever. You know, like, we're gonna, we're gonna maintain our own cadre discipline. You know, we're also gonna like handle our own like justice. You know, we're never going to rely upon, you know, the state or any of its affiliated institutions and bureaucracies, you know, to guarantee as it's justice or anything else if we started at the Star of Death, but that's the way it's going to be. And that is something enduring too, that basically everybody imitated. Even, even, even, even the fascists and the National Socialists to some degree imitated that, okay? Because it's just in, in a political warfare situation, especially during a long struggle like you, 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, of the state behind them, but they have, they have acted in authoritative capacities on marital life and death. And in some cases their existence is going back decades. And you know, they had existed as, you know, floating like sovereigns and to themselves, you know, in the fact they commanded, you know, they commanded and 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 semantics when they're like, oh, but that's not really a government, so what are you talking about? Why, you know, why would you even care about, you know, why would you go to the, that trouble to try and replace the, you know, pre, pre existing institutions of, of state? Well, that's, that's why this shouldn't be, it 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. They viewed the Church and they viewed. Despite the fact that, I mean, there's a delicious irony to Ferdinand 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. Of the papacy in a way, sight and seen probably for 500 years. And there's also, there's also a. There's also real irony in guys, you know, like, waving a red banner as they charge into combat, you know, demanding, you know, social justice. Basically, you know, seven of the Marxist gobbledygook. 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 intermediary between us and our would be class oppressors or aggressors, you know, yet we reject the Catholic Church. I 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. I mean, now that I'm so sophisticated, but I mean, do spend all day like reading all this stuff. But, you know, the, it's. It should, it should become clear, you know, at least in part, why some of these silly peculiarities became, you know, not just sort of, you know, quirkily identified with the Spanish modern state, but somehow inextricably bound off with like, it's, it's. It's essence, you know, and that's,

[Thomas777]

and

[Pete Quinones]

that's about all I got for today, man. Again, I'm still kind of recovering from my, from my, my vacation, 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, um, aspects. And I didn't want it to be. I didn't want them to be issues the first impression, you know, as they kind of re. Emerged. But I promise, when we record next, we'll, 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, the nationalist element and Counter Legion and the Vermont and, and Thomas Tanks, you know, and the, and the Reds and, and Republicans all in sundry. Does that sound good? Sounds great. Plug away. What? Yes, sir. I'm still playing catch up, but I'm, as I've disclosed to people, you know, last few weeks, me and My. My crime partner, Rake. We're, We're. We're trying at a feverish pace to get season two of the podcast up and running, and I promise it'll 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 the sub stack. Like, today I. I just uploaded an interview with a friend of mine, like, you know, older dude who. Who knew Jeff Fort, and he banged with the El Rukin here in Chicago. I'm gonna be. I'm gonna. When I, you know, I'm gonna be dropping a lot of that kind of stuff until we kind of formally relaunch the brand I've been doing. I've been recording a lot with Nico Cloud, who's a fascinating guy, an artist, and a very controversial figure that's gonna. He's gonna feature heavily in season two. But you can find the sub stack in the pod@real. Thomas777.substack.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 nuked so many times for, you know, and never once have 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. Even when the commissars aren't, you know, like, busily, like, and excited. I mean, it's like. It's like. It's like porn to them or something to just, like, censor people, I think, because they're freaks. But point being, like, I do protect my tweets because I. It seems to be the only way to like, not be nuked, you know, just arbitrarily. But you can find. You can always find me on my website. It's just. Thomas777.com Number7H1S777.com that's where all my, like, fresh stuff, like, appears. It's still, like, somewhat under construction, but you can. Oh, 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 like one thing at a time. And I'm, I wanna, I'm. Yeah. And it's. But that's, that's basically where we're at. Okay. And just keep, just keep your eyes peeled for like, fresh stuff because I'm gonna be uploading. I'm gonna be uploading a ton of like, just free stuff like I did today every several days. And when, when the season two of the pod launches, all season one content is going to become free immediately and it'll be dope. Like. And when I say like rebranding, like, we've got the resources and kind of the knowledge as well as, you know, sort of like the, you know, a higher profile in terms of the people who are willing to work with us, you know, like, like Nico Cloud, like yourself. I'm not saying you guys are like similar people.

[Thomas777]

Understand.

[Pete Quinones]

Okay, no worries. But. And, and people like, know my friend Big D, you know, who dropped his testimony on us about the Alrukin. But like, we're, we're popping quite splendidly. And, and that, that, that's, you know, I'm allowing for other potentialities. So. Yeah, I won't, I won't hold up the recording anymore, man. That's. That's all I got. Thank you so much and thank you again for like, the trans love and concern for me when, you know, I went dark on account of being arrested. Like, I really mean that. I. I got huge love for all of our friends. All right, man. I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Thomas777]

Tyler redic here from 2311 Racing. Game night's fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot. Chalk.

[Pete Quinones]

Breathe.

[Thomas777]

Rechalk still aiming. While they figure it out, I fire up Champa Casino. I can spin anywhere, anytime. And there's always a new new social casino game every week. Spins happen way faster than that shot. Play [e-mail] let's Chumba.

[Pete Quinones]

Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

[Thomas777]

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