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Musings about the game, mostly Republican ..

Wed May 28, 2014 11:02 pm

Carried from another thread ..

The main topic is that the civil war was to a large part decided by politics and to what extend this could be modeled in the game. In the discussion about Republican strategies we have touched this issue, and this is still very interesting to me.

I has been some time since I opened a book on the topic, but some things have stuck in my mind. I still cannot say I really understand the many parties, who was exactly the POUM, the CNT, PCE, or the PSUC, but I think one can say that there is a very fragile relationship between the government and their strongest allies, and there were too many different actors (parties) to really call the Republic a functioning entity.

In the game, the anarchists in Catalunya are a very numerous force, and can be used to "overrun" the nationalists early on. I personally believe anarchist were not bad people, they believed strongly in individualism, lack of submission to any other person, and that this would somehow work out for all society. But that also meant that it was practically impossible to organize real military regiments from anarchists: they were willing to fight, but not to take orders before they agreed to them personally or as individual groups. From what I know, anarchist guerillas were never functional in real divisions. It is not completely inconceivable that this should not have been possible, but if the game allows that, it should only be with a big tradeoff, a reform that means there is much less military order in all formations, because it has to respect the individual spirit on an unprecedented level.

So this first suggestion would go along the lines of: make the anarchist an independent, allied faction at the start. Make them only fully available if there is a reform that accepts their utopia of a military in which the individual has the right to make individual decisions. Also on economical terms their participitation should alienate large groups of people because anarchist were very keen on collectivization. On the other hand, a reform along the lines of anarcho-syndicalsm could also result in am increase of "man"power, if large numbers of women were also available for military service.

Secondly I think of some events related to that. One thing that stuck in my mind was the question of the arms factory in Toledo. There had been very urgent pleas that the factory should be relocated to Barcelona (where it would have been safe from Nationalist forces, but also under anarchist control). In the event, it appears to have not been in the interest of the government (because it did not trust the anarchists) and predictably fell under Nationalist control in 1936. From what I know it had been the only such factory that the Republic ever had available, and was subsequently dependent on foreign sources for weapons (see below for Soviet aid).

Suggestion: a political decision to move the factory when there was still time (and good reason to it), could change the WM income of the Republic considerably, but could result in a loss of support and influence of all non-anarchists. It should not be a no brainer decision, but something that has the potential to shift power from Madrid to Barcelona.

Third, the government secretly ferried the Spanish Gold reserves (which was enormous at the time, one of the largest in the world) to "safe" Moscow, where it would be used to pay for Soviet weapons and other material. It had been agreed that the gold would remain sole property of Spain, that the USSR would only "protect" it, and it could at any time be relocated to any place of Spains choosing. But when the gold had arrived, Stalin reportedly said that "The Spaniards will never see their gold again, just as they don't see their ears,", and so it happened. The Soviet Union delivered substantial quantities of arms with gold used as payment, also large percentages were subtracted as fees for transporting / storing it but later no one in Spain ever saw anything of it again. I have no figures ready, but the remaining gold must have been immense, and was probably spent by the USSR during WW2 and beyond.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold

Last suggestion, if this event could somehow be modeled in the game. That the government did this in a covert operation speaks volumes. It can be called an act of desperation and great stupidity, and it cannot have been without repercussions.

One more thing, it is sad that there are no real squadrons of airplanes (I-16, Me 109 etc), because they are so iconic of this war. This is something I had hoped to see in the game, squadrons of these famous airplanes, not just an abstract regional decision thing.

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