What Is The Importance Of Following Orders In The Spanish Civil War

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The Spanish Civil War was a bloody conflict in which the rebellious Nationalists and the resisting Republicans fought for control of the country. The two sides went about fighting in different manners. The Nationalist soldiers followed orders strictly, doing as told when a superior gave them a task. The Republican soldiers, however, maintained a sense of equality amongst themselves, following orders they individually agreed with. As demonstrated in the 2007 movie Pan’s Labyrinth, during the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist soldiers respected rank and followed orders blindly, while the Republican resistance put no such pressure on rank and allowed its members to choose whether or not to follow orders, taking into consideration their morals …show more content…

In The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, Helen Graham explains how “the best-known… example of symbolic killing in Republican Spain was anticlerical violence on an unprecedented scale which claimed the lives of nearly seven thousand … religious personnel” (Graham, 27). As Spain was a very religious country, predominantly Christian-Catholic, it is unexpected for the Church to be attacked. This lack of concern regarding the position of clergymen signifies that the Nationalist soldiers let go of their beliefs and morals to kill individuals considered close to God. Later, it is stated that, “in a letter [Franco] wrote on 11 August 1936 to General Mola, the commander of the rebels’ northern forces, he stressed the need to annihilate all resistance in the ‘occupied zone’” (Graham, 33). This letter emphasizes the rank present, in which a superior instructs his subordinate. In this case, Franco tells Mola to kill all resistance in the ‘occupied zone’; in turn, General Mola would then order his troops to do so. As they were ordered by a superior, the soldiers will commit mass murder, regardless of their own thoughts on killing hundreds of human beings. The Nationalists stuck to the belief that orders are to be followed, especially those coming from superior

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