The pictures Woolf has conjured up do not in fact show what war,
war as such, does. They show a particular way of waging war, a way
at that time routinely described as
"barbaric," in which civilians are
the target. General Franco was using the same tactics of
bombardment, massacre, torture, and the killing and mutilation of
prisoners that he had perfected as a commanding officer in Morocco
in the 1920s. Then, more acceptably to ruling powers, his victims
had been Spain's colonial subjects,
darker-hued and infidels to boot;
now his victims were compatriots. To read in the pictures, as Woolf
does, only what confirms a general abhorrence of war is to stand
back from an engagement with Spain as a country with a history. It
is to dismiss politics.
Comments
The first two chapters.
by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 05/01/2013 - 7:29pm