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Ridgerunner
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Produce documentation from a reputable source that any did, or I guess we’ll have no choice but to conclusively conclude this is just an expression of bigotry against the Catholic Church.
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estesbob
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Can you point me to the post where I said that Franco supporters committing rape weren’t all that bad? I can assure you not find such a post nor will you find any post where I called Franco’s troops “heroic”
It is obvious that the opposition to Franco in this thread is based solely on the fact he was a fascist while communists who did similar things are called “heroic”
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Ridgerunner
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While it could certainly be argued otherwise, that might not be an incorrect statement. One has to wonder whether the Stalin regime could have survived the German assault had Germany been able to devote 100% of its resources against the Soviet Union alone.For the next hundred years, American conservatives will continue to remind Europe that they will always “owe us” for “saving” them in World War II.
Germany couldn’t, though, because it was fighting the Brits and had resources stationed in France and the low countries as well as in Scandinavia, because it was fighting the Brits.
But for American assistance, even Churchill admitted Britain could not have long survived, even in food resources, let alone in armaments, ships and material resources of every kind. Had it been forced to capitulate or even tacitly quit the hostilities, Germany would have had more resources to devote against the Soviets.
There are those historians who say the Soviet Union was absolutely prostrate at the end of the war. It had given its all, so to speak, and had little energy left. If so, the Eastern Front might have been a closer thing than we sometimes think.
So, while Soviet troops certainly bore the heavier burden, manpower-wise, and for a much longer time, it is at least arguable that had the U.S. not intervened (even before it entered the war) in Britain’s favor, the Soviet Union could not have survived against Germany all by itself.
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Rich_Olszewski
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I agree. Your contention that the Soviet Union all alone might have fallen to the Germans is quite valid, as is your point that the victory was also attributable to America’s intervention and material aid.
The hubris is on the part of those who would have one believe that it was the United States that won the war - oh, yes, with some peripheral aid from the others.
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estesbob
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Nobody here claimed that. .
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estesbob
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Nobody here claimed that. However we have had many here claim that there is something noble about a Communist Army that raped and killed and kept Eastern Europe under its heel for 40 years after the end of the war.
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John_of_Woking
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Spain and Ireland are lapsing at an alarming rate. For sure there were problems a generation ago in both churches but its sad that people leave the Sacraments behind and embrace vacuous bland godlessness
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AngryAtheist8
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I suspect you know that I was not really suggesting that people were forced to go to mass at gunpoint (I was using a metaphor to make my point) But let me clarify my position anyway.
The point is that people were punished for not being Catholics in good standing (or at least for not acting like Catholics in public). Moreover if you were a critic of the regime or the Church, you were all too likely to disappear (and reappear in a mass grave).
Here are some sources to support my claims:
A news article about how the Nationalists stole babies from couples on the other side (and had them raised to be God fearing Nationalists):
expatica.com/es/news/spanish-news/prosecutor-seeks-probe-into-lost-children–of-franco-regime_115868.html
A news article about how many victims of the Nationalists and the Franco regime seemed to simply disappear during the Franco years (when in reality most of them were imprisoned or killed and put into mass graves):
csmonitor.com/2003/0206/p06s01-woam.html
Furthermore women and Protestants were very much discriminated against under the Franco regime. Non-Catholics and women were second class citizens at best under Franco.
Here are some sources to prove this claim:
Here is a study done for the U.S. Library of Congress talking about how married women needed permission from their husbands to own property, be employed, or even travel away from home during the Franco era:
countrystudies.us/spain/43.htm
And here is an article from a newspaper in 1959 talking about how Protestants in Franco Spain were not allowed to hold public office, teach, serve in the military, do religious ceremonies in public, or open new churchs. As well as facing constant harassment from the authorities and the Catholic majority in Spain:
time.com/time/magazine/ar…2433-1,00.html
This article by the Rutherford Institute talks about how Protestants were not allowed to open schools (as well as being persecuted in other ways):
religiousfreedom.lib.virginia…and/Spain.html
And here is an article by the Christian Science Monitor talking about how women were not allowed to have their own property, as well as being treated as second class citizens in other ways in Franco Spain:
csmonitor.com/2002/0628/p07s02-woeu.html
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Rich_Olszewski
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Nobody here claimed that. It is a fact that there is a lot heroic about a Red Army that in World War II defended its homeland at terrific cost in lives and its country’s infrastructure, and fought and broke the back of the invading German Army, so as to allow its Western allies to defeat the Germans in the West. It is not for nothing that the Russians call it the Great Patriotic War, and it is not for nothing that we owe them great thanks.
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AngryAtheist8
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You need to get your irony detector replaced.
I am saying it is not fair to compare Sister Martha (or those like her) to a mass murderer such as Franco.
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AngryAtheist8
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I cannot speak for other posters, but I despise Franco because he created and ran a bloody regime that discriminated against women and non-Catholics.
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estesbob
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But were his troops heroic and noble like many here believe the germans and russians were? or, as it appears, is the usual leftist double standard at work?
I find nothing noble and nothing to support on either side of the Spanish Civil war. nor do i think one can easily dismiss the despicable behavior of the Russian arm against civilians as being the product of a “heroic” army.
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AngryAtheist8
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The Russian army was horribly brutal, and committed at least as many atrocities as the Nazis during World War II.
What of it?
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estesbob
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So you do not agree with those in this thread who have expressed admiration for it and descibed it as “heroic”?
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Ridgerunner
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So many points. So little time.
First: Nobody knows how many people died in the runup to the Spanish Civil War, the war itself and its aftermath, or even who they all were or why they died. The scholars vary wildly in their estimates and attributions of responsibility. I previously posted a source on this. If you look at it dispassionately, you have to conclude that nobody really knows.
Second: When I was growing up as a Catholic in the Bible Belt, the KKK was very much evident and included all the most prominent Protestants in the area. They made it very difficult for a Catholic to obtain employment, operate a business, and it presented a physical peril to kids (including myself) leaving the Catholic school grounds. I remember priests being beaten up in a town near here by a mob. My state, following the Civil War, underwent the worst reconstruction period of any state. That oppression was improbably, but factually, combined with an anti-Catholicism that also bloomed during the postwar period. As a consequence, Catholics were forbidden to receive the sacraments, including marriage, and at least one priest was hanged for doing it anyway. My state was also affected by the “Blaine Amendment” declaring that, among other things, no state resource of any kind could be used to support Catholic education in any manner; a thing that is still in effect.
And you know what? Other than the Blaine Amendments, those days have passed, and Protestants nowadays acknowledge that it was an evil time with evil deeds done. But they haven’t recoiled from Protestantism as a consequence of it. Nor have Catholics made a big deal out of it now that the persecution has been abandoned and repented. Religious people are, I think, better people than you make them out to be; understanding that some will still cling to excuses for their own misdeeds and bad consciences.
And yes, as an Irish poster above has said, the Irish no longer hate the Brits, notwithstanding centuries of oppression based on religion. Possibly he’s wrong about that, but nobody has yet proved him wrong on here.
I do understand that those who bear the Church ill will would like to think that somehow because someone they hate did not hate the Church, people whose religious practice is wanting is somehow due to that. But there is no particular reason to make a cause/effect relationship out of such poorly-fitting stuff. And certainly, none in this thread has done so.
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Ridgerunner
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Parenthetically, I could recommend Solzhenitsyn’s account of his own vanity and ruthlessness in the Red Army; something he did not even think of negatively at the time. It is fascinating to read how he later repented the (rather minor in his case) ill treatment he gave to a German civilian, and blushed to think how vain he was, adorned in his captain’s shoulder boards in East Prussia, “enshrouded by fire”, as he expressed it, of the battery he then commanded. He talks also about SMERSH murderers accompanying the Red Army, and how they enslaved, tortured and murdered not only civilians, and not only Germans, but their own troops as well. Sure, the ordinary Russian soldier gamely downed that issued ration of vodka and shouted “For Russia; for Stalin” as they leapt up to face the scythe of German machine gun fire. But right behind them were the political officers who would have shot them down, (and very often did) if they did not leap into that maelstrom. And surrender? Knowing Stalin would utterly abandon them, as he did his own son, to Germans who would immediately kill the “cadres” and starve the rest to death? No, it was “over the top; for the Motherland; for Stalin” Tragic, the situations of those Russian soldiers. Not so much heroic as tragic.
But there was a darker side. A history professor I had in college was an interpreter at the end of WWII, being fluent in both German and Russian. He recounted how the very first Russians in Berlin were. He was taken aside by one Russian officer and told that “These men (his soldiers) are good men, who will harm no one. But tell the Germans that the next wave behind us are savages who will kill and rape.” And it turned out to be just exactly so.
It was a very mixed thing, just as it was with the Germans, most of whom were good soldiers, not rapists or murderers. But lurking behind them were the Einsatzgruppen, who enslaved and looted and raped and killed.
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Ridgerunner
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Well, since I’m not in Russia, perhaps I can feel reasonably safe in telling the truth.
Look again. I did not call Russian soldiers cretins. Nor do I think they were. I stated, quite accurately, that many, many, many of them were given a shot of vodka and sent into almost certain death; a near-certain death about which they knew. And yet, what were their choices? To possibly be shot by Germans or shot for sure by the political officers or perhaps hauled off to the Gulag? Over the top they went. You can call that heroic and, in a sense it is extremely heroic when a man charges into a tide of machine gun bullets, knowing his chances of survival are not good or practically zero as was the case in the punishment battalions. But it is also tragic that men would have been presented with that, and despicable on the part of the leaders whom they absolutely had no choice but to obey to the letter, who often sent them to their deaths when it was not necessary to do it. Stalin, like Hitler, often forbade retreat when retreat would have been the reasonable thing or even a better strategic move. And Stalin’s orders were executed by the political officers who would not hesitate to kill their own troops, and did.
And I didn’t say none were ever heroic without being motivated by the political officer’s gun at their backs. Indisputably, many were. But it was also a heroism that had no choices. And that’s tragic.
And yes, Russian troops invading Germany were indeed told that the German women were “theirs”. Some acted on that vicious indulgence of Stalin’s, and some did not.
These things have been written by so many eyewitnesses that it’s ridiculous to even imagine that they are not true. And the truth should not offend you.
And certainly, it was not me who “dragged it off topic”. Scroll up a bit and you’ll see that I didn’t. In any event, it is not entirely irrelevant to the topic. Some maintain that reds were more vicious than fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Some take the opposite position. While the actors were different in the German invasion of Russia and the repusion thereof, one might maintain in the latter, as in the former, that being “red” or being “fascist” in war is no particular indicator of meritorious behavior.
Look again. I did not call Russian soldiers cretins. Nor do I think they were. I stated, quite accurately, that many, many, many of them were given a shot of vodka and sent into almost certain death; a near-certain death about which they knew. And yet, what were their choices? To possibly be shot by Germans or shot for sure by the political officers or perhaps hauled off to the Gulag? Over the top they went. You can call that heroic and, in a sense it is extremely heroic when a man charges into a tide of machine gun bullets, knowing his chances of survival are not good or practically zero as was the case in the punishment battalions. But it is also tragic that men would have been presented with that, and despicable on the part of the leaders whom they absolutely had no choice but to obey to the letter, who often sent them to their deaths when it was not necessary to do it. Stalin, like Hitler, often forbade retreat when retreat would have been the reasonable thing or even a better strategic move. And Stalin’s orders were executed by the political officers who would not hesitate to kill their own troops, and did.
And I didn’t say none were ever heroic without being motivated by the political officer’s gun at their backs. Indisputably, many were. But it was also a heroism that had no choices. And that’s tragic.
And yes, Russian troops invading Germany were indeed told that the German women were “theirs”. Some acted on that vicious indulgence of Stalin’s, and some did not.
These things have been written by so many eyewitnesses that it’s ridiculous to even imagine that they are not true. And the truth should not offend you.
And certainly, it was not me who “dragged it off topic”. Scroll up a bit and you’ll see that I didn’t. In any event, it is not entirely irrelevant to the topic. Some maintain that reds were more vicious than fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Some take the opposite position. While the actors were different in the German invasion of Russia and the repusion thereof, one might maintain in the latter, as in the former, that being “red” or being “fascist” in war is no particular indicator of meritorious behavior.
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estesbob
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But Ok to smear those who served in Francos army?
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Rich_Olszewski
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Brutal? It could be. Committed at least as many atrocities as the Germans? Not true. What the Russians did to the Germans from the late Summer of '44 when they crossed from Poland into Germany until Germany surrendered, is not comparable to what the Germans did to much of Europe’s population from September '39 until they surrendered.
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Rich_Olszewski
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It was a heroic army, for heroism is a quality displayed when one is in combat against an armed enemy. There’s no doubt that the Red Army was heroic.
Was it, however, always honorable? No. For there were those who committed crimes against civilians along with those who didn’t. It is easy for armchair generals to be critical of an army that had to fight desperately to survive and to win, and to claim that the dishonorable acts were typical of that army.
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