Emilio Mola Quotes
How can you expect us to exchange a Spanish gentlemen for a red dog?
Emilio Mola, 1887-1937, Spanish Nationalist General, Quoted in Williams, The Story of Spain
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In a massive terror campaign captured Republican males were shot and the Republican women were raped as a matter of the General’s policy. He would commonly broadcast—see {592113}—what had and would happen to Republicans who remained loyal to the government and continued to fight. It was the actions of men like this that led to the modifications of the Geneva Conventions.
Spain was the most backward of the European countries at the time and had great difficulty coming to grips with modernity, not unlike the Muslims of the Middle East would 60 years later. The cultural influences of the “degenerate” democracies were to blame for Spanish ills.
Many Americans and Europeans fought on the side of the Republicans against the Fascists.
The Title of the Article has often been used to summarize his thesis in this quotation. It has been used so much that most people think that Huntington first originated the phrase and idea. Actually, it was Bernard Lewis. See {636820}
Ibarruri is thought to have originated this slogan, in the context of the Spanish Civil War, during a radio speech to Madrid in 1936 when he declared, “Fascism will not pass, the executioners of October will not pass.” For use in a different context see Petain {46976}
It was this perverted logic that led the Nationalists to adopt a policy of killing lower class and poor workers. Though there were communists in Spain at the time, most of the peasants and the abject poor had little or no political philosophy or education. More sophisticated Nationalist apologists observed that the ultra poor were easily enlisted into left-wing causes like communism, so their elimination before the fact was a preventive technique.
The Nationalist/Fascist views in the Spanish Civil War were so gross that they actually hurt the Nationalist cause in International opinion. See {592113} for another example. Despite the facts, most of the Western world was not then knowledgeable about the evils of Fascism and distrusted democracy, socialism, and communism more.
There violence was extreme on both sides. However, the Fascist / Nationalists had a firm policy of violence and terrorism. The institutions of society had so broken down that vigilantism and revenge drove the Republicans to almost the level of atrocities as the Nationalists.
At that time the Israelis had been rebuffed after offing several major peace proposals and most were convinced that the Palestinians were so fractionated that no one would dare sign a peace even giving Palestinians their own state and sharing Jerusalem as the capital. So they just organized around security needs and walling Israel off from terrorist attacks while maintaining the occupation until something radially changes amongst the Palestinians. The Palestinians and the other Arabs did not want to negotiate either as they felt so weak that they believed they could never get decent terms, and they hoped for some military or terrorist victories where the Israelis would make large concessions to a strong opponent. At the same time there were a few ultra-orthodox Jews who did not want a peace and wanted to do what conquering nations had done throughout history—annex more conquered territory. There were a number of Arab groups, in addition to some Palestinians who did not want a peace at all, as for them there was no satisfactory solution so long as there was a Jewish state in their midst. See {632822} for more on the Israeli attitude then.
Speaking of the Italian support of the nationalists and their bombing of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.
Emilio Mola y Vidal, 1st Duke of Mola, Grandee of Spain was one of the three leaders of the Nationalist coup of July 1936, which started the Spanish Civil War.
