“Gerald Howson,
photographer, musician and writer, born 29 November 1925; died 7 June 2014”
“Gerald
was born in the Cambridgeshire village of Buckden, but grew up in the East End
of London, where his father, Vincent, previously an actor, was an Anglican
vicar in Limehouse; his mother, Kate, was the daughter of the housekeeper at
the Savoy hotel in the West End. The Howsons' home was destroyed in the blitz,
which triggered a lifelong interest in military aircraft in the then
14-year-old Gerald, culminating in one of his later books, Aircraft of the
Spanish Civil War (1990).”
“The other myth he takes a shot at is the myth that the major powers'
policy of 'non-intervention' (that is, an arms embargo) was equally harmful to
both sides. He traces the origin of non intervention to a combination of the
spinelessness of the newly elected 'socialist' prime minister of France, Leon
Blum, and the machinations of a British government who mainly wanted to halt
the spread of Bolshevism. Thus the committee that was supposed to enforce
non-intervention was not allowed to take evidence from either Franco's side or
the republicans. This was so that the Italians and Germans wouldn't walk out if
someone were to point out that they were engaged in substantial military
support for Franco up to and including direct intervention of fighting troops
and air forces. The author takes up the right-wing view that non-intervention
and later the appeasement of Hitler were necessary to give Britain time to get
its act together to defeat Hitler. He takes it up and trashes it, showing that
the British ruling class didn't begin preparing for war with Germany until
after the Spanish civil war was over, and that in any case, one single arms wholesaler,
based in Britain (where else) could have easily supplied the majority of the
republic's fighting forces with rifles, machine guns, artillery and plentiful
ammunition from stock. Instead, the republic and its various armed forces had
to deal on the shady side of the shadiest business in the world, the
international arms trade. The author provides a fascinating account of the
maddening process by which their efforts were frustrated and betrayed, and the
many ways in which they were cheated.”
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