What if the Republicans won the Spanish Civil War?

[minionofmidas]

Sadly, Stalin had plans for this: stage a takover by extreme-left elements in the Republic to topple the more moderate elements of the Republic and establish a Stalinist puppet state. From there, act just as the USSR did: i.e., ally with Hitler until Hitler invades the USSR. After that, I'm not sure just how a Stalinist Spain acts.

I think you captured the most likely scenario, WMS.  People influenced by Stalin were always mindless robots, parroting whatever line the Stalinistic Soviet Union, in its paranoid insanity, was favoring at any given time.  The same was true of the communist sympathizers in the US, though luckily they did not control the government.

Actually, that's not quite true. Stalin wanted to actually tried to stage a takeover by moderate elements in the Republic to topple the more extreme-left elements in the Republic and establish a Stalinist puppet state.
I don't know how many times I'll have to repeat this, but: The Communist Party in Spain was teeny-weeny-tiny at the outbreak of the war. Revolutionary Socialist sentiment, meanwhile, of both Leninist and Bakunite types, was running very high, but was not associated with the Communist Party. The Communist Party's rise in 1936-8 was due to a) Soviet arms and money pouring in b) Moderates looking for a strong man to protect them from both a social revolution and the Franquist firing squads. When months before the fall of Madrid, Stalin started to pull out, this mushroom growth quickly collapsed.


As to the original thread question. As usual in these things you can't answer a question like "what would have happened if" without first looking at what might have caused such a course of events.
And the Spanish Republic could not have survived without a French, British and American diplomatic or military initiative in its behalf.
Now, let's look at two scenarios:
I.
The Western countries damn Franco's coup in the strongest terms imaginable early on, offering military help to Spain if it should become necessary. Hitler and Mussolini chicken out of getting involved. The coup fails ignominously. Unfortunately, given the situation in Spain at the time, that's not the end of the story. Same as in real life, in Barcelona, eastern Andalusia etc, the coup's initial defeat is caused by the army's being defeated in the field by the Anarchist goon squads. This causes the next Anarchist attempt at revolution, which the Republic suppresses, relying on the army, noting it can't do without the army. The Civil War, in this scenario, is really just postponed rather than averted (though Franco wouldn't be the man to eventually lead the fascist side). The effect on World War II is possibly minimal.
II.
France and England intervene at some later stage, possibly to counteract rising Soviet influence. (This scenario requires a much higher composite IQ than was actually to be found in the late 1930's British and French administrations. As a result, the Second World War begins much earlier, in ways not planned by Hitler, with the Soviet Union a nominal ally of the West from the start. The war is much shorter, far fewer people die, the Holocaust doesn't happen. It's possible that Japan never gets involved (which would result in a very different postwar balance of power in Asia, and possibly very different wars in the region, 1945 to 1980). It#s possible that Israel would not today exist.

[minionofmidas]

You basically are syaing it's better than Franco won.

Considering that at the time the Republicans were pro-US and Franco was anti-US, this does nullify your utterly asinine and ridiculous claim that I support all anti-American governments and that I'm a seething American hater who will support anyone who is anti-American no matter what, despite the many examples to the contrary. You also failed to back up a claim I made earlier that I would suppor Pinochet if he was identical except anti-American. I'm interested in hearing your backing for this.

Read J.J.'s quote.  He makes a good point about the effect on the allies of a Franco victory vs. a Republican victory.

Franco held off Hitler possibly better than the Republican government could have.  For that reason alone, it may have been better that Franco won.  I make no comment on his internal policies, which seem to concern you far more than the effect of a potential Nazi victory.  You're not too good at looking at the big picture.  You might want to hone your skills in that area.

Neither of you seems to be.

[minionofmidas]

Touched off a debate, I see.

Well, I was going from my memory of a rather good article on it in, no kidding, Vanity Fair from a few years ago. In essence, while the Stalinists were not initially capable of seizing control of the Republic, they gained power during the Civil War because the Soviet Union denied many of its military supplies to the Republican government, redirecting them instead to organizations friendly to or controlled by the Soviet Union - including the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, which had morphed from independent leftist anti-Fascists to near-Soviet puppets due to Stalin's influence on their leadership. Actually, the role of the ALB was what got Vanity Fair started on their story, anyway...there were some eerie interviews with surviving ALB-ers in which they admitted that back then, they would have done whatever the Stalinists had told them to do. So despite the lack of popular support for the Stalinists, they would've staged a left-wing military coup once the Nationalists had been defeated.

This is, by and large, all very true.

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The Communists did not demand immediate collectivization of farmland. The Communists went on and on about having to win the war first and deciding the state of the economy afterwards.
The Anarchists, and much of the Socialist base too, meanwhile, tried to effect a social revolution during the war.
Stalin effectively served as protector of Spain's lower middle classes in 1937, and it was they who made up the bulk of the Communist membership in those years.
You can look it up in any lengthy history of the war.
Of course Stalin's support of capitalism in Spain was tactical. But then pretty much anything Stalin ever did was tactical. He didn't have much of an ideology beyond his own paranoia.

[minionofmidas]

Your scenario is based on a lack of any sort of understanding of Spain. It doesn't work without that.

[minionofmidas]

Well, it obviously depends on how the Republicans win.

If the Republican trend towards Communism continues, you could have either:

A) A Stalinist Puppet State

B) A crazy revolutionary-anarchist state that even Stalin's lost control over.

If, as the Republicans do better, they regain sanity, then you just have a hard-left state, probably too far out of the clutches of Stalin to be in his grasp (I defer to Lewis Trondheim on this question).

There is, quite literally, no way (short of divine intervention) for the Republicans to win unless you change the foreign involvement parameters. It's no coincidence that the Republicans never, in the entire course of the war, conquered a single major city.

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No...the whole exercise is totally pointless without that can of worms.

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Remember that Stalin withdrew from what was effectively a Stellvertreterkrieg (damn, is there an English equivalent to that term?) with Germany in Spain before the civil war ended, and months before the Hitler-Stalin Pact. A Communist victory in Spain - no matter how unlikely, of course, maybe Hitler noticed there's no Jews in Spain, or Franco publicly slapped Mussolini or whatever - in all likelihood means no Hiter-Stalin Pact either.

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The Anarchist state would be much too involved in deconstructing itself. Something similar actually happened in Spain in the 1870's (under the "Federalists", whose ideology bore some resemblance to Anarchism). Anyways they'd fail to see much of a difference between France and Germany.

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The problem would not be to get in immediately, but to stay in. As Napoleon learned the hard way 130 years previously, as Hitler learned the hard way at the same time in the Balkans, as indeed the Spanish governments themselves had been learning the hard way for ages. It's "the classical country of insurrections".

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[minionofmidas]

There is, quite literally, no way (short of divine intervention) for the Republicans to win unless you change the foreign involvement parameters. It's no coincidence that the Republicans never, in the entire course of the war, conquered a single major city. 

Lewis, we are looking at a "counterfactual" here.  The conditions change to result in a Republican victory. 

Exactly. That's what I've been preaching all the time. You can't just assume they won, you need to present what conditions change...since that will also affect the continuation of the story.

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Several of his co-commanders were indeed killed. Alas, the "it was Franco that they could all agree on" part is pretty much bollocks. In the early part of the war at least, someone else would have stepped into his shoes without the slightest problems...and after that period (after there's an established front), the chance of Franco getting killed drops dramatically.

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Nobody quite acceptable to the Anarchists would be quite acceptable to the Communists' middle class supporters. Anyways the Left side had too many leaders, not too few...Largo Caballero is probably the closest you'll get.

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Well, yes, that would have happened.

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A disunified Right would have meant no civil War, and a Republican Spain. That's true. It's also the reason why there was no disunified Right. 

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Depends...

[minionofmidas]

Here is a scenario:

1.  Franco cannot hold his coalition together; it was diverse and it was Franco that the could all agree on.  He may just not have been quite so charismatic or he may have been killed or injured in 1936, and not able to lead (I believe several of his co-commanders were killed).  There was no strong Nationalist leader to take his place.

Several of his co-commanders were indeed killed. Alas, the "it was Franco that they could all agree on" part is pretty much bollocks. In the early part of the war at least, someone else would have stepped into his shoes without the slightest problems...and after that period (after there's an established front), the chance of Franco getting killed drops dramatically.

Lewis, the question is, in 1936, would the Franco successor be able to unify the force and complete the war.  Franco pulled it off; I'm far from certain that any successor could have.   You might have very well seen a fractured right in Spain without Franco.

Probably yes, they would. After all, what was the alternative?

[minionofmidas]

This is because the leadership of either camp functioned very differently, and because the different Republican groups had much more to distrust each other about, had much less of a history of cooperation, and much less to lose. They're not really comparable.

[minionofmidas]

Anyone as long as he was seen as winning. These are Conservatives we're talking about, after all. Also, look just at the 15 years that went before, Gil Robles, Primo Rivera. If Primo Rivera could keep the Spanish right united for years, then so could your hamster.

[minionofmidas]

Franco's designated heir was assassinated in 1969 IIRC. (And Trotski wasn't Lenin's "designated heir" by any sort of yardstick.)
Not to mention that the dictatorship was dismantled after Franco's death, and few (but not none) politicians associated with it have wielded any sort of power in Spain after ca.1980.
And no, Spain's constitutional framework now bears no resemblance with that of Franco's lifetime. It's one of the most devolved countries in Europe now; it was one of the most centralized under Franco.
It's true that Franco held power for 35 years after 1939, and he must've been doing a couple of things right to do that - these were mostly foreign politics things though, like keeping the straits of Gibraltar open during WWII, signing up for Marshall Plan aid, getting into NATO.

[minionofmidas]

Franco's designated heir was assassinated in 1969 IIRC. (And Trotski wasn't Lenin's "designated heir" by any sort of yardstick.)
Not to mention that the dictatorship was dismantled after Franco's death, and few (but not none) politicians associated with it have wielded any sort of power in Spain after ca.1980.
And no, Spain's constitutional framework now bears no resemblance with that of Franco's lifetime. It's one of the most devolved countries in Europe now; it was one of the most centralized under Franco.
It's true that Franco held power for 35 years after 1939, and he must've been doing a couple of things right to do that - these were mostly foreign politics things though, like keeping the straits of Gibraltar open during WWII, signing up for Marshall Plan aid, getting into NATO.

Spain wasn't in NATO untill after Franco died (the Cotes voted on it in late 1981) and wasn't even into the UN until 1955.  There were sanctions from the Allies after WW II.

Franco, in the "Law of Succession of the Head of State," acually envisioned a monarchy.  This was 1947.

Your entire concept doesn't mesh with the facts.

My bad on NATO...
There was a vote on the monarchy thingy some point in the 60s or 70s, pretty much the only one during Franco's time in office. It was won by monarchy because of opposition support.

[minionofmidas]

There were two referenda that I got mixed up. One in 1948 on the monarchy (after Franco's death), and one in 1966, nominally effective immediately, on splitting the offices of head of state and head of government. The Prime Minister (sheet, why didn't I take down the name), the man Franco handpicked to hold all power after him, was assassinated by ETA in 1973.
Spain was not a member of NATO until 1982, but the US have maintained military bases there since 1959, and it got US aid based on the Marshall Plan structure, but not under the same legislation and not to the same amounts as many other Western european countries, since 1953.
Spain's economy didn't start seriously booming (the way most of Western Europe's had in the 50s and 60s) until the 60s and 70s.
It hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, but it's an interesting detail, that small scale guerilla warfare resurfaced in parts of Spain in the mid-40s.
I haven't found any evidence of "sanctions" against Spain in the 40s and 50s.
Now, obviously Franco showed great skill in getting into office and holding it down for so long...I think we're quite united on that point actually...and also on evolving to the position of sole undisputed leader of the coup - that wasn't quite obvious at the time the war started. Franco was nothing more than military commander of the Canaries or something. In fact, it might not have happened if several of his co-coupists hadn't been killed.