*The Story of Fascism in Europe,* NEW From Rick Steves
PREVIEW. New 1-hour special, airs on Public TV, Oct.- Nov. Rick travels back a century to learn how fascism rose & then fell in Europe- taking millions of people with it. We'll trace fascism's history from its roots in the turbulent aftermath of World War I, when masses of angry people rose up, to the rise of charismatic leaders who manipulated that anger, the totalitarian societies they built, & the brutal measures they used to enforce their ideology. Our goal: to learn from the hard lessons of 20th-century Europe, & to recognize that ideology in the 21st century.
*WATCH FULL PROGRAM* Public TV Viewing Dates, More: https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/fascism
*'Fascism: A Lesson From Oradour-sur-Glane,' French Town Frozen in Time Since WWII, Daily Kos.*TAKE A LOOK.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/8/1802489/-Facsim-a-lesson-from-Oradour-sur-Glane?utm_campaign=spotlight
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The memory of these dark times is as important as ever. And the people who lived through Europe's fascist nightmare — the destruction of Europe, the Holocaust, and the ultimate, heroic Allied victory — are like flickering candles keeping the memory of those dark times alive.
A few years ago, while walking the beaches at Normandy and making a pilgrimage to concentration camps in Poland, it occurred to me that the last of those candles are flickering out. And for those who respect the value of learning from history, the passing of the last people with a firsthand, living memory of Hitler and the Holocaust puts us at a kind of crossroads. Future generations have a responsibility to keep those lessons alive.
Insightful observers note that the rise of fascism took Germany and Italy by surprise — and it could take any nation by surprise today if conditions line up in the same way.
"The Story of Fascism in Europe" — while chillingly engaging and thrilling to watch — also has a practical purpose: to help us learn from Europe's experience and to show how, even today, would-be autocrats follow the same playbook in their attempts to derail democracies. It's a case study in how fear and angry nationalism can be channeled into evil, and how our freedoms and democracies are not indestructible…in fact, they are fragile.
>Visiting Germany, Italy, and Spain, we talk with Europeans whose families lived through fascism. We explore the still-stern remains of fascist societies and ponder the powerful memorials built in the wake of their defeat. And we learn just what fascism — which rose from the rubble of World War I 100 years ago — looks like. From our perspective in 2018 — with extremist movements on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic — watching this special program is an hour well-spent.
Last edited Mon Oct 8, 2018, 10:31 PM - Edit history (1)
Spain, like other nations at the time, was making the awkward transition from 19th-century monarchy to 20th-century democracy. By the 1930s, it was governed by a modern but fragile democracy.
By 1936, the Spanish people had become extremely polarized, as the old guard of royalty, military, and industry pushed back. Representing this reactionary faction, a military strongman, General Francisco Franco, invaded Spain from Spanish Morocco. Using colonial troops and borrowed Italian planes, he attempted a coup d'état.
General Francisco Franco, 1964.
Like Mussolini and Hitler, Franco vowed a return to order and to restore Spanish power and national pride. But the democratically elected government fought back, and the nation descended into a bloody civil war.
Conservatives under Franco fought the liberal democratic government. It was a brutal war between classes and ideologies, dividing both villages and families. In three years of fighting, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards died. Franco used predictable strongman tactics — including intimidation by police and the military. Hitler and Mussolini, who mistakenly believed Franco would join their fascist alliance, threw gas on the fire.
One of the most tragic episodes of this tragic war was in Guernica, a workaday town in the Basque region of northern Spain. It was here that the world first witnessed the terrible power of the fascist state — a prelude to World War II.
Guernica was the capital of an independent-minded Basque community that stood up to Franco. To break their spirit, Franco enlisted the help of Germany's air force, and the defiant town was decimated in the world's first saturation aerial bombardment.
The Spanish artist Pablo Picasso heard the shocking news and immediately set to work sketching the destruction as he imagined it. In a matter of weeks, he wove these bomb-shattered shards into a large mural called Guernica.
- Francoist Spain, 1939-1975
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francoist_Spain
'Guernica Anniversary, Picasso's Painting,' The Guardian, April 5, 2017.
Also, https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/apr/05/guernica-anniversary-basque-country-picasso-painting-peace
'Guernica,' by Pablo Picasso, 1937. Madrid, Reina Sophia Museum.
June 10, 1944 tragedy. The place where this event occurred is a small town in rural western France called Oradour-sur-Glane. For those unfamiliar with French, the root of the town’s name is Oradour (from Occitan, an ancient Romance language of southern France, Italy, and Spain, which derived its word orador from the Latin term oratorium, a place of [in this case, religious] oratory). It’s sur (meaning on, in this case, on the banks of) the river Glane. So, in English, the town name means a place of religious oratory on the banks of the river Glane. Oradour-sur-Glane lies a little more than 23 kilometers (14 miles) west-northwest of Limoges, a city renowned for its porcelain industry.
This was a peaceful and apparently prosperous rural village of a few hundred people that had existed since the 11th century. Its population in the mid-1940s had swelled to nearly 1,000 because it had absorbed refugee families from the civil war in what had at that time become Franco’s Spain, refugees from French Lorraine, a northeastern part of France that had been annexed by Germany as part of its invasion in 1940, and some Jewish families escaping the occupied region around Paris. Beyond that, up until June 1944, Oradour-sur-Glane was essentially untouched by war. -Read More...
'Fascism: A Lesson from Oradour-Sur-Glane.' German-Occupied French Town, Nazi Massacre, June 10, 1944.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/8/1802489/-Facsim-a-lesson-from-Oradour-sur-Glane?utm_campaign=spotlight
