Tag: Communism

The Unquiet Death of Peter Fechter

Richard Barnes

Most of us are not given to much self-analysis, but if I were to be asked what marked or set the long-lasting or permanent influences or directions for my life, I’d likely join millions in crediting my detestation of godless totalitarian regimes and philosophies. Of course, each of those millions came to his or her position via different paths.

In my case, my father’s unwavering condemnation of Communism — whether of the European, Asian, Latin American, or the American intellectual varieties made no difference to him — undoubtedly set my gut-level course far earlier than that of my heart and mind, which explained to me the religious basis for such a system and the importance of the historic Faith in defending and strengthening the liberties we have enjoyed.

For instance, as an elementary school pupil in El Pao, I instinctively questioned why the Weekly Reader, so popular in schools across the country, would seemingly tip toe around America’s role in the Cold War, such as its purporting to explain that MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) actually made sense. It didn’t to us, but what did we know? We just wanted to win the Cold War over the Communists. We had to wait several more decades for that victory to be accomplished, albeit not in American faculties.

And then there was the Berlin Wall erected in 1961. After President John F. Kennedy’s inaction and failure to provide the agreed-upon backup in the Bay of Pigs operation, surely he’d act to stop this inhumane attempt to physically divide peoples in Europe, no?

Not even a peep from his administration.

Then, on August 17, 1962, close to the first anniversary of the wall, the utter cruelty, pitilessness, and godlessness of Communist philosophy and politics were laid bare yet again for the world to see and ponder.

In the early afternoon, two teenagers attempting to flee Communist oppression in East Berlin, ran towards the wall not far from Checkpoint Charlie. One clambered to the top as gun fire rained on them, yet stopped to look back for his friend who seemed stuck, unable to move. “Run! Come here!” he screamed, but his companion fell back to the “death strip” on the East Berlin side. Seeing this, the first boy jumped to the West, landing safely.

The border troop files later revealed that the two fugitives were shot at without warning. Four border guards fired at least 35 shots. Peter Fechter was hit as he jumped up onto the wall and fell backwards, leaning against the wall for support. Instead of arresting the defenseless young man, the guards took up new positions and continued firing until he collapsed to the ground.

Gravely wounded, he calmly, but loudly, pled for help, as East Berlin soldiers kept their rifles aimed at him, but did nothing to assist him. On the West Berlin side, American GI’s also remained impassive, doing nothing, one actually saying, “It’s not our problem.”

The wall cut right through the heart of what had once been a vibrant Berlin neighborhood, separating friends and family, in some cases for decades to come. One thing atheistic philosophies are known for is their contempt for anything outside the state. That would include church and volunteer associations; but most importantly, the family. Anything that weakens or divides the home is pursued with gusto, including incentives for family members to report on one another to the state.

So physically dividing a neighborhood is small potatoes for such regimes.

As Peter Fechter twisted in agony and called for help, men, women, and children on either side of the wall watched in horror from their apartments. There is one photograph of an elderly lady, covering her mouth with her hand as she beheld in dismay, unable to help.

His screams eventually ceased after 50 long minutes. Finally East German border troops carried him away and later pronounced him dead.

Pictures had been taken by western photographers and shown around the world, turning his death into a symbol of Communist inhumanity, thereby presenting a ticklish situation to all right thinkers and spineless or bought politicians.

The regime’s chief propagandist’s words should send chills down the spines of anyone alive the past three years of mandated lockdowns and faux medical mandates: “[This event] was good for and in the interest of the state…. The life of each one of our brave young men in uniform is more important to us than the life of a lawbreaker. By staying away from our state border — blood, tears, and screams can be avoided.”

Yes, to avoid unpleasantries, simply bow down and submit.

For decades thereafter, the young man’s family was subjected to state-sponsored harassment, which ended only after the defeat of East European Communism. His sister, Ruth, expressed herself through her attorneys to no longer “be damned by passivity and inactivity.” She told how the family had felt powerless to act against the public denunciations instigated by the state.

One of the more dastardly characters of the “Cold War”, Willy Brandt, was then mayor of Berlin. He called for “calm and prudence”. Even as a child, I felt negatively toward that man. And that sense only intensified as I matured and saw that he always took the Soviet line, no matter what the provocation. 

Brandt resigned in 1974 when it was discovered that his close aide was an agent of the Stasi. When the wall fell, no one in authority called for the prosecution of the brutal and pitiless Erick Honecker, dictator of East Germany. Could it be they took seriously his threat to reveal “interesting interlocks” with the former West Germany’s political class, including Brandt, should he be prosecuted (cf Judgment In Moscow, Vladimir Bukovsky)?

But we did not act honorably either. American City Commandant, Albert Watson, ordered all our men to “stay on our side!” He then called John F. Kennedy’s White House to ask for direction. Kennedy was in California at the moment and was called, “Mr. President, an escapee is bleeding to death at the Berlin Wall.” But no answer was forthcoming. Hours later, Watson called again to say, “The matter has resolved itself.”

For the first time since the war, the call “Ami, go home!” was heard. A sign with the words, “Protecting forces? Murder condoners = accessories to murder” was seen at demonstrations. Cars drove back and forth outside the US Mission gates, honking in protest. When a US patrol was harassed by a passerby, the military dispersed the crowd using M14 rifles with mounted bayonets.

US politicians and media were also unsympathetic, calling the protesting Berliners a “mob”. The US State Department refused to rule out military force against the protests in West Berlin, without a peep of dissent by her mayor, Willie Brandt.

Western European newspapers tended to be more realistic, with one article declaring, “In Communist systems, it’s a good thing to shoot citizens who harbor the wish of escaping from the system.”

As with the Bay of Pigs matter in April, 1961, then the initiation of the Berlin Wall construction in August, 1961, Kennedy, also did nothing in the face of the cold blooded murder of Peter Fechter in August of 1962. Such timidity led to the “Cuban Missile Crisis a mere two months later, in October, 1962.

Peter Fechter was not an “activist”. He was a bricklayer who was close to his family and was used to visiting his sister and her loved ones in West Berlin. When the wall went up and the totalitarian character of Communist East Berlin no longer had the escape valve to the West, he and his friend decided to escape. They simply said in their hearts, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

This post concludes with the words of Peter Fechter’s sister: 

“My parents were broken by [his murder]. My father died young, in 1968, at the age of just 63. He couldn’t get over the death of his son. My mother went to the cemetery every day after the funeral. That was her home. At first, she was always observed by Stasi people during her visits. By the next day, freshly planted flowers had been ripped out or were gone. My mother couldn’t get her head around the fall of the wall. She always said, ‘We just drive to the West and no one shoots, but they killed Peter for it.’ My mother died at the age of 76 in 1991.”

Peter Fechter (1944-1962)

Peter Fechter pleaded for help for 50 minutes. In great pain he finally bled to death in agony before the Communists “rescued” his cadaver.

August 18, 1962. This photo of President John F. Kennedy at a California beach was published in newspapers around the world as West Berliners protested US inaction as Peter Flechter, in great pain, pleaded for help.

Apprehensive East German soldier helps a young boy who had been separated from his family pass through, in 1961. The soldier was seen by his superior and dismissed. Germans affirm that he was shot, although nothing was officially heard from or about him since that day. The wall (obstructions) went up overnight with strict orders to not let anyone pass.

Seeds Planted

Richard Barnes

(Note: This post largely extracts a letter I wrote 22 years ago, which is even more relevant today)

We’ve heard it said that seeds planted in a given century come to fruition in the next. If so, it may be helpful to look at 19th century seeds which gave the 20th and the 21st (so far) centuries a harvest of depravity unknown to the first 1,800 years of the Christian calendar.

We begin (without seeking to offend our neo-Darwinian friends) with Darwin’s (1809-1882) On the Origin of Species, which purported to explain why some “races” are superior to others (this purpose, actually in its original subtitle, is rarely mentioned today, and new editions omit it. The full title is: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life). 

The book was published in 1859; its first 1,250 copies sold out overnight. It was not the common folks, but rather the intellectual elite, which bought it out and began to apply it, for it gave a patina of scientific support (emphasis on patina) to the ancient desire to divorce oneself from the claims of a Creator. Claims seen in political documents until then, such as the Declaration of Independence, which presupposed that we are created men and women with God-given (inalienable) rights. (The authors of the declaration knew pagan history; they knew the pagan idea of the eternity of matter and ascending circles of existence. This preceded Darwin by millennia. Yet, though knowing this, the Founding Fathers rejected it. They knew that inalienable rights could not be grounded on a la-la theory.)

Another 19th century seed, Karl Marx (1818-1883), first dedicated Das Kapital to Charles Darwin, who, in a rare fit of prudence, declined the honor. Darwin could never fully shake off his Christian heritage. His doubts pursued him to the grave. That was not the case with Marx. For more on this monster, known for “howling gigantic curses”, we would recommend Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals. For our purposes, suffice it to say that this seed reaped a more overt harvest than Darwin and Nietzsche (see below). Darwin and Nietzsche’s harvests are obvious to anyone who pauses but a moment. But to see Marx’s harvest doesn’t require a pause; it merely requires that one be sentient. His assertion that man is a mere economic animal fits nicely, as intended, with Darwin’s theory. In both, man is declared to be an animal.

The third seed, Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose most famous work was Thus Spake Zarathustra, was grossly antichristian. His most salient ideas were a despising of the weak, the mediocre, and the altruistic. He exalted war and chaos as a stimulus for energy and the triumphant life. He was hostile to Christian morality. To him, each individual — not a transcendent Creator — defines his or her identity, not to mention morality. But he did preach a morality of the lords and a morality of the slaves. The former, a superior morality, is characterized by power and dominion; the latter, a weak morality, is characterized by compassion, humility, and patience. He died a madman.

We hardly need to comment on the 20th century harvest from these seeds. The thoughtful reader will recognize how the above philosophies prevail in today’s political and corporate life. As illustration, we will simply summarize that harvest in terms of a basic rule: the good tends to life; the evil tends to death. Clearly the harvest of the 20th century  has tended to death. And the progress so far of the 21st has not abated that tendency much. 

The following statistics are conservative estimates. More data continues to become available which reflects numbers far higher than these (for example, The Black Book of Communism, Mao: The Unknown Story, Hungry Ghosts, etc.). Nonetheless, the data below will suffice for our purposes. It declares the 20th century tale of deaths caused by deliberate state policy:

95.2 million deaths; 477 per 10,000 population — Communist states (international socialism)

20.3 million deaths; 495 per 10,000 population — Fascist states (national socialism)

3.1 million deaths; 48 per 10,000 population — Partially free

8 million deaths; 22 per 10,000 population — Free

The above figures exclude the 60 million estimated deaths caused by abortions since 1973 in the United States and their territories; the 35.7 million estimated deaths caused by 20th century wars; and the 15 million deaths caused by the state-sponsored Ukraine famine of the early 1930s. Be reminded: the first two state systems in the list above are/were atheistic, antichristian systems, whose first order of business was to suppress the Bible and the Christians. This is well documented and overt, but hardly ever stated in polite company. If the Spanish Inquisition of a few centuries back deserves censure, then surely the regimes alluded to above deserve opprobrium. But the public elite has never been known for consistency … or honesty.

The biggest characters (using that term deliberately) associated with the statistics above, were ALL disciples of the ideas of Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche.

Is there cause for optimism in the 21st century? Well, if evil seeds can be expected to germinate in subsequent centuries, then surely good seeds will do the same. On that basis, we can be cautiously optimistic, although the harvest may be more fully enjoyed by our children and grandchildren. We’ll mention only one such seed, but a most critical one: the great shift in education from a state sponsored function back to a father and mother duty.

This tectonic redirection was clearly seen in the latter part of the 20th century but was accelerated after the draconian measures imposed by most — though thankfully not all — “First World” governments since early 2020. These mandates — very few were formally passed into law by legitimate legislatures — ironically exposed the philosophies pushed by state education systems to horrified parents who promptly removed their children from government schools and either began to educate them at home or, at great financial sacrifice, in private religious schools.

This is a consequential shift back to first principles. We are already seeing some impact in that major universities are actively seeking home-educated children or at least those whose education has been closely overseen by their parents. In sharp contrast to the Zeitgeist since the mid-19th century, the late 20th and early 21st centuries mindset of many is that the child is on loan to the father and mother by God. And it is the family’s duty, not the state’s, to educate him or her. We are convinced this shift tends to life and, therefore, will result in a more compassionate and a more life-supporting and life-affirming 21st and 22nd centuries. May our children and grandchildren see that day!

Declaration of Independence, original (“engrossed copy”) on display in the National Archives

Charles Darwin, 1809-1882

Karl Marx, 1818-1883

Frederick Nietzsche, 1844-1900

Statism

Richard Barnes

“A number of years ago I shared a taxi with Francis Schaeffer in St. Louis. During our cab ride I asked Dr. Schaeffer: ‘What is your greatest concern for the future of America?’ Without hesitation or interval given to ponder the question, Schaeffer replied simply, ‘Statism’.” — R. C. Sproul, circa 1990

Some years ago, the Wall Street Journal published an essay documenting the number of state-sponsored killings in the 20th century, not counting 20th Century wars. Conservative estimates range from 80,000,000 to 100,000,000 killed by Communist regimes, including forced famines, forced marches, and mass executions. Nazism accounts for another 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 mass murders.

For perspective, maximum military action deaths in World Wars I and II are estimated at 13,000,000 and 26,000,000, respectively. Killed in the Korean and Vietnam Wars totaled 3,000,000 and 1,500,000, respectively. These figures do not include famines and plagues ensuing from those wars since estimates vary very widely, but they were certainly in the millions.

However, from the above one easily sees that the major statist ideologies directly accounted for more deaths than direct military actions in the 20th Century.

Thus far in the 21st Century one would have to be willfully blind to not see that statists willingly pursue policies on the mere word of “experts” who have been proved wrong over and over. In Australia we even saw the state force people into “quarantine” camps; and The New York Times soft shoed the tyranny, “Australia Is Betting On Remote Quarantine”. Sounds non-threatening, doesn’t it?

Not to be outdone, The Washington Post reported, with color photos, on a woman who returned from Moscow to her home in Australia but had to quarantine 14 days in a camp: “In Australia’s northern quarantine camp, a disused construction workers’ hostel outside Darwin, the rooms are basic and the food is, well, institutional. But the fresh air, eucalyptus trees, blue skies, and wind on your skin are sources of joy.” [sic!!!].

Tons of fun!

What about the US? Well, there was actually talk and even action. And the fact checkers at USA Today worked hard to put us at ease: “Fact check: Quarantine ‘camps’ are real, but camp claim stretches the truth”. 

Ah! I feel so much better now.

Dear friends, this executive overreach ought to concern us. If not for ourselves, then certainly for our children and grandchildren, we must take a page from our colonial and early republic history and truly push back. Hard. About a year ago as I walked to a post office, two men were talking about their anger at people who were not following a certain CDC guideline which had been mandated by mere executive order: “The police ought to arrest such and throw them in jail for six months.”

That’s a direct quote.

In the first place, such a mandate was not law. It was a mandate by an executive. In our system, laws are passed by the legislature, not by governors or presidents.

Were you at all bothered hearing pre-recorded messages in airports saying, “This is federal law”? It was never “federal law”. It was an executive order which was later overturned. It was not a law. Even private airlines were using that terminology. I wrote one of the airlines’ CEO and respectfully requested they get their facts straight and stop trying to instill fear into their customers by repeating lies.

In the second place, it turns out the guideline was all a bunch of hooey. And most of us knew it was nonsense from the very beginning. 

Why did we acquiesce so easily?

I believe the reasons, as is the case for most issues in life, are principally religious, because all people are created in the image of God and are therefore religious, regardless of whether one is a believer or an atheist.

First, we — and by “we” I include the majority of professing Christians — have so severely downplayed the Bible, especially the foundational book of Genesis, that we no longer think of the prior claim that the Triune God has on us. We do not think of God when “political” crises are thrown at us. Sadly, very sadly, we first think of the State. Can you, for even an instant, imagine the first and second century Christians thinking of Nero or Domitian first when faced with a political test? I didn’t think so.

For example, based on news reports and personal observation, it appears that most churches in the United States closed their doors based, not on law, not on advice of your personal doctor, but on mandates by governors or “public health authorities”: political figures. Did Christians even consider that the Bible does not mandate quarantining healthy people, but only the sick? Very few did so (Quarantine, Addendum). And those few were in many cases attacked or mocked. Even by fellow Christians.

If you believe that God is the Creator of heaven and earth and that we are made in His image, you will defer to Him. If you believe that man is a product of chance and chaos and randomness working through muck and mire, then you will defer to whomever has the power to tyrannize you and your family.

Second, we do not know or study or even care about our history. A cursory reading of 17th and 18th Century correspondence, sermons, and essays are eye-popping with regards to our ancestors’ genuine distrust, if not fear, of centralized authority. They truly, and Calvinistically [there you have religion again!], believed that man is depraved and, left unguarded or without checks and balances, will usurp authority in order to chain free men and women. This is an inescapable fact of our early psyche, which we need to revive.

This will require us to teach our children and grandchildren, with particular emphases on the origin of man and the Calvinistic origin of our heritage. If taught sincerely and historically, the Triune God is utterly unavoidable. This teaching will require sacrifice of time and money. Clearly state schools are not teaching this. So if your children are there, and your circumstances are such that you cannot remove them, then you must work daily with them to ensure they know the Truth. If you can remove them, then you will either homeschool them or register them in a good Christian school. By “good” I mean a school that not merely “baptizes” the public school system, but actually teaches on the basis of presupposing the veracity of God’s Word.

Third, we continue to be beholden to the regular media — major newspaper chains, major news outlets, and big tech — as the supposed purveyors of reality. They are not. If we’ve learned nothing from the past two years, certainly we’ve learned that, no? Have you done a check on the “conspiracy theories” of the past two years that have now turned out to be true? Seeing Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, admit that his quashing of a major news story in 2020 was “a mistake” is not comforting. It turned out to be true, like so many others his company its sisters have silenced.

A superficial review of the media in Communist regimes — Pravda, Granma, Voice of Korea, People’s Daily — demonstrates that the media simply parrots the party line. Do you seriously see our major media doing anything different? They long ago ceased to be a check on the power of the state or its usurpation of the liberties of its citizens. Only contentious polemicists will deny this.

We have myriads of alternate media today. Some good, some bad, some not worth the time. We must work to discern and choose rightly: “Prove all things; hold fast to that which is good.” We must not adjust or conform to the major media and its cheerleaders in dingbat late night or daytime TV shows.

Fourth, too many of us still vote for [establishment] party, as opposed to principled candidates who are true to their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution. Yes, I realize that, often, a particular party’s platform is practically all we can go by as we may not know how true a particular candidate will be to his or her oath. Well then, if your party’s platform accords with your understanding of our history and heritage, then it is your duty to hold your representative and senators responsible for adherence to the platform to which they affirm loyalty.

In the 1980 presidential campaign season, an establishment candidate was asked about his party’s platform and he simply tossed the question aside, “No one pays attention to that after the election.” Precisely. We must pay attention and if our representative or senators are untrue then we must support a primary challenge to them.

I once heard that Yogi Berra said, “The trouble with Socialism is that it takes too many evenings.”

Yes, it does. Most of us are busy with our families and businesses or careers. We have church activities we don’t want to miss and by the time a decade has flown by, we look up to see our beloved country further down the road to ruin. And we see dangers rising to both our home and church. Our forefathers found the time to work to secure and then preserve our liberties. We need to look at our calendars and agendas and shuffle where it’s needed but we must fit in time, even if only once a week, to fight the good fight for our liberties. Not so much for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren; for the religious liberties we inherited; for the God we profess to love and the advancement of His kingdom.

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” “For where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

The atheistic state simply transfers the attributes and claims of God to itself. The results are not pretty. The above are conservative figures.
Pregnant mother arrested in Australia for promoting online protest against lockdowns and mandates

El Bogotazo: Aftermath

Richard Barnes

‘During the bloody civil war of 1948-1953, a group of bandits burned the home of a wealthy Conservative landowner, killed his foreman and two sons, ravished his daughter, and left the owner wandering dazedly before his flaming hacienda. In shocked horror, the man mumbled over and over, “¿Pero porqué?” — “But why, why?”

“And the scornful answer was: “Porque usted es rico y blanco” — “Because you are rich and white”‘

Vernon Lee Fluharty, quoted in Guerrilla Movements in Latin America

Readers of this blog (see, for example, War to the Death) know that violence and savagery in South America was inaugurated, not by Spain, but by men such as Simón Bolivar and his French Revolutionary ideology. Note that the reply quoted above addressed envy and race, “You are rich and white”. It said nothing about El Bogotazo.

“Certain techniques of death and torture became so common and widespread that they were given names, such as ‘picar para tamal‘, which consisted of cutting up the body of the living victim into small pieces, bit by bit. Or ‘bocachiquiar‘, a process which involved making hundreds of small body punctures from which the victim slowly bled to death. …  quartering and beheading were … given such names as the ‘corte de mica‘, ‘corte de franela‘, ‘corte de corbata‘, and so on. Crucifixions and hangings were commonplace, political ‘prisoners’ were thrown from airplanes in flight, infants were bayoneted, schoolchildren … were raped en masse, unborn infants were removed by crude Caesarian section and replaced by roosters, ears were cut off, scalps removed….” (ibid). 

Readers might think that we are dealing with violence and ferocity unparalleled in modern times. However, if one includes the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution in “Modern Times”, as most historians do, then such savagery as cited above is not unparalleled. A cursory reading of The Black Book of Communism will disabuse anyone of thinking such violence was unique to South America. It is a common thread throughout the history of Jacobinism, whether Robespierreist, Marxist, Maoist, or whatever stripes. 

As the avalanche of savage murders and violations crashed down on Colombia, blaming such on El Bogotazo ought to have been seen for what it was: a diversion from its actual antecedents.

But history persists in blaming that event of early April, 1948, for a “decade of mayhem” except that the mayhem began at least two years before. What it lacked was a pretext. El Bogotazo provided that.

The immediate aftermath of El Bogotazo were the deaths of at least 3,000 persons.

By the mid-1950s, that toll had risen to 135,000 direct killings, the vast majority of which were peasants. One thing about Communism: it is historically consistent in mostly killing the people they claim to represent.

Students of this period, known as La Violencia, estimate that the toll was closer to 200,000 when one includes those who died from their wounds. And these figures do not include the tolls of forced displacements and disappearances.

One thing is very clear for anyone willing to put the effort to read beyond Wikipedia, The New York Times, and the like: La Violencia was in no way, shape, or form an “indigenous uprising”, nor was it something in the “genes” of Spanish-American descendants. This was the product of an ideology alien to our upbringing; an ideology which, as Simón Bolívar himself put it, served to destroy centuries of a civilization which was truly a wonder once one steps back and considers (So Close to God).

Fidel Castro returned to Havana having understood the scope of the vast upheavals caused by inflaming envy and unleashing mob passions. He put this understanding to good use throughout his career, including in Venezuela.

Schoolchildren “conscripted” by Communist guerrillas, Colombia, circa 1953
Displacements are a toll that’s difficult to quantify, but we must note its harsh reality.
Manuel Marulanda (seated), known as “Tiro-Fijo”, one of many maniacal murderers unleashed during La Violencia (see Playa Hicacos).

Franco and Forrest: Exhumation or Reconciliation?

Richard Barnes

You may have seen the news recently that, after legal battles culminating with a unanimous ruling from Spain’s Supreme Court, Spain’s Socialist government will proceed with the exhumation of the body of General Francisco Franco. Having lost their efforts to prohibit this action, General Franco’s family had requested the body be buried next to his daughter in Madrid. The Socialists have also rejected this and will bury him in a state cemetery outside the city.

According to the New York Post (link below), the Socialists want to convert this site into a memorial to victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

That’s very thoughtful.

Except that, it is a memorial to the fallen, as witness the very name of the site: Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen). Anyone who has visited and studied up on it a bit, fully understands that. Unless, of course, the Socialists  plan to define “victims” differently. An altogether predictable expectation.

If you read the article about the site, you could be forgiven if you did not know that:

It was built without state monies.
It was built with mostly free labor, but also prison labor; the prisoners were paid the same rate as the free.
Some prisoners, after completing their sentence or buying their freedom, voluntarily continued to work at the site.
Political events are prohibited but it is freely available for religious and cultural research. 
There is a monastery on the site.
There is no separation between Nationalists and Republicans in the cemetery; the men are buried as brothers.
Many bodies were transferred from hastily dug mass graves which made it impossible to properly identify them.

The key to the monument is reconciliation, hence, the site is dominated by a large Christian cross: the means of reconciliation between God and man and between men themselves.

Now, I have dear childhood friends who, to this day, are very passionate about General Franco, whether pro or con. 

I remember having visited the Valle de Los Caídos in 1987 and then visiting a Spanish childhood acquaintance and her family some time later. During the course of our conversation I mentioned my visit to the valley and, let us say, she was not pleased that I had gone. What struck me most was her rapid-fire declaration of “facts” about the site and about the war that simply were not true, however strongly she believed them to be. Seeing it would not have been productive to engage in an argument, I let it pass, mumbling something about agreeing that the war was a terrible event. Thankfully, the rest of the afternoon’s atmosphere had a chance to improve!

I also recall running into some pro-Franco folks who were vigorous defenders of Franco and whose passion led them to label anyone opposed to him as a Communist. Which would have come as a shock to my childhood friend.

However, it is true that, in 1944, General Franco warned the West about the dangers of Communism and offered to mediate between Axis and Allied Nations as a check against the occupation of Eastern Europe and Germany by the Soviet Union’s Red Army. He believed that if nothing were done, such a take over was inevitable because of the vacuum which would ensue given the Allied demand for unconditional surrender.

Franco was spurned and ridiculed and the news was leaked so as to add insult to injury. A mere 3 years later, in 1947, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech which, in effect, affirmed Franco’s warning, only in this case it was after the fact. Churchill was hailed as a great statesman. Maybe he was; but Franco foresaw this years earlier, when it might have been prevented, yet was never credited for it.

Referring to this incident, the Christian Science Monitor of November 10, 1961, provocatively reported, “Generalísimo Francisco Franco recently castigated the tendency abroad to identify authoritarian Spain with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ‘without taking into account our own characteristics. In the same way,’ he said, ‘we could tar as Communist the countries of the West which allied themselves with the Soviets in the last conflict and contributed greatly to their power.'”

It was clear during my visit that unreconciled partisanship did not allow folks to reasonably discuss the roots of the terrible conflict, the atrocities, and its aftermath. And to mention, let alone seek to discuss, the Republicans’ anti-Christian hatred was a non-starter, unless you were prepared to do so behind some strong body armor. 

(The intense hatred against Christianity in that war has been described as “the greatest clerical bloodletting Europe has ever seen,” with mass tortures and murders and graves emptied and corpses mocked and mutilated. This was also seen in the French Revolution, likewise characterized by mass clerical tortures and killings and hundreds of burned and desecrated churches and monasteries. The “left” in both conflicts was characterized by the same anti-Christian animus. Some might object by noting that the opposition was only against the Roman Catholic Church, not Christianity. After spending time seeing countless photos and reading hours of narratives, I have to disagree. We might develop this in another post.)

Socialist policies may sound good in the abstract; however, their incompatibility with man’s sinful nature has always been their Achilles heel and, hence, has led to totalitarianism, as, witness: Venezuela, for instance. Socialism requires compulsion; it is incompatible with liberty. It requires perennial enemies, be it the church in the wars of France and Spain or be it the United States in the case of Venezuela. It requires ongoing vengeance, even reaching into graveyards if necessary. 

This is something George Orwell, an otherwise brilliant man, failed to recognize given his sincere anti-Stalinism coupled with his equally sincere and persistent adoration of Socialism. It was the Socialists who were hunting him down in Spain when he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Unsurprisingly, he chalked it all up to Stalinists. His experiences in Spain and in the Soviet Union gave us both Animal Farm and 1984, books worthy of reading, along with Huxley’s Brave New World. Unsurprisingly, Huxley also supported the Loyalists, although, unlike Orwell, he did so long distance.

About fifteen years ago, the BBC produced a surprisingly objective 6-part series on the Spanish Civil War. The link is below and I would encourage all with even a passing interest in that awful event to parcel out the time to watch it. The attitudes, arguments, passions, and hatreds you see reflected in the documentary are very “20th-century-like” and they are with us today.

As witness, the Memphis city council’s unanimous vote to exhume the bodies of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann. They plan to remove them from a public park. They also voted to remove the statue of the General, which deed was done illegally, under cover of night. Litigation is currently ongoing but the spirit of the exhumation forces is similar to that which animates the Socialists in Spain. “It is no longer politically correct to glorify someone who was a slave trader, someone who was a racist on public property,” said City Council member Myron Lowery.

Mr. H. K. Edgerton, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, strongly opposes the exhumation as well as the removal of the statue. He and his organization strenuously object to the misinformation promoted about General Forrest.

Mr. Edgerton is an African American. You would be forgiven if you did not know that.

You would also be forgiven if you did not know that:

General Forrest did not start the Ku Klux Klan. In 1871, Congress itself exonerated the General of having anything to do with the Klan. He called on it to disband. He challenged one of the “liars” to a duel to defend his name.

Union General W. T. Sherman admitted that General Forrest had done nothing wrong in the “massacre” at Fort Pillow. Here again, the abolitionist-dominated Congress absolved him from any wrong-doing. General Forrest demanded, in writing, that the Union General at the time clear his name.

General Forrest had one of his slaves, Napoleon Winbush, serve as Chaplain for his troops. The Union Army would never have allowed such a thing. Chaplain Winbush’s grandson is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

General Forrest enlisted 45 of his own slaves to fight with him, and freed them 18 months before the war was over because he was afraid he would be killed in battle and wanted to make sure they were free. Of the 45, 44 of them stayed with him.

But there is even more to his life.

General Forrest began attending church with his wife at the Court Avenue Presbyterian Church in Memphis. The minister was Reverend George Stainback. Late in 1875, Forrest heard Stainback preach from Matthew 7 and after the service, “Forrest suddenly leaned against the wall and his eyes filled with tears. ‘Sir, your sermon has removed the last prop from under me….I am the fool that built on sand; I am a poor and miserable sinner.'”

Shortly before his death in October, 1877, he told his lawyer, General John T. Morgan, a U. S. Senator:

“General, I am broken in health and in spirit, and have not long to live. My life has been a battle from the start. It was a fight to achieve a livelihood for those dependent upon me in my younger days, and an independence for myself when I grew up to manhood, as well as in the terrible turmoil of the Civil War. I have seen too much of violence, and I want to close my days at peace with all the world, as I am now at peace with my Maker.”

Fast forward 142 years and, instead of peace, we are faced with a powerful propensity to destroy or mutilate, a ghoulish yen that reaches for even the long-buried dead, who are grotesquely slandered.

Nevertheless, as with Forrest, the story of Franco is far richer and more complex than the cartoonish characters foisted upon us.

The fervor for exhumation, the clamor for punishing folks who have died decades, centuries, and millennia ago, and who cannot defend their name against attacks today, does not lead us to reconciliation and understanding.

It leads us to new wars.

In closing this post, it is instructive to quote Abraham Lincoln who, in 1864, presciently said, “Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

https://nypost.com/2019/09/24/spanish-court-says-government-can-exhume-francisco-francos-remains/
New York Post article on the exhumation of Franco

http://www.valledeloscaidos.es/monumento
Above link is for those who might be interested in reading more about the Valle de los Caídos site. In Spanish.

Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen)
Famous photograph of felled Loyalist militia, taken by Robert Capa.
The Republican forces and supporters, also known as Loyalists, desecrated many churches and monasteries and tortured and killed many thousands of clerics and nuns. They went on to desecrate graveyards and to mock the dead. Their anti-Christianity was well known and feared. The yen to desecrate is with us today.
The Spanish Civil War attracted men and women from many western countries, including England (above, on the Loyalist side) and Ireland. United States citizens also came, most famously, The Lincoln Brigade, also on the Loyalist side.
General Franco, center, during the war.
General Nathan Bedford Forrest, circa 1865.
General Forrest statue in Memphis. It was removed by the city council at night, in defiance of state law.
Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest III and his wife, Frances. He was a great-grandson of the Confederate General and the first general to be killed in action in WWII. He is mentioned here simply to note that he, fully reconciled, fought for the “Union” less than a century after his great grandfather had fought for secession.
Countless United States Civil War veterans’ reunions were celebrated for many years after the terrible war. Above photos were taken in the early 20th century.
Above two photos are of Henry Albert Woolson, Union Army. Top photo was taken during the war; second was taken in the 1950’s. He, the last Civil War veteran, passed away in 1956.
H.K. Edgerton is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Many African Americans fought on the Confederate side. Mr. Edgerton strongly opposes the exhumation of General Forrest and his wife and also opposed the removal of the statue.
Nelson W. Winbush, grandson of Napoleon Winbush, who was appointed by General Forrest as chaplain for his troops. Mr. Winbush, born in 1929, is also a proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a courageous opponent of the destruction of Confederate monuments and flags.
Above scene from She Wore A Yellow Ribbon reflects a time (movie was made in 1949) when we could honor both sides of a very bloody conflict. At about the 1:30 minute mark Ben Johnson and John Wayne approach “Trooper Smith”, who calls for Captain Tyree (Johnson), of the Confederate Army. Tyree remains silent, not wishing to disrespect Captain Brittles (Wayne). But Brittles commands Tyree to answer the dying Trooper. The music in the background is Dixie.
Above is the final 4 minutes of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. At about the 58 second mark, Captain Brittles (Wayne) reads that he’s received a coveted appointment. In the minute that follows, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Lee are all mentioned. With honor. That’s what reconciliation does. The fact that such scenes would be unthinkable in a Hollywood film today is not comforting.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4w-2j6Q0Qj4iJ7GmEoQGWMUBeE5h1GVq
Above link is to the 6-Part BBC documentary on the Spanish Civil War. It is well done and reasonably objective.