Hermit Notes: There are only a handful of Substack Subscriptions I would recommend and Karl Dahl’s is at the top of the list. I also Highly recommend his Fiction.
WARNING!
Don’t get any silly ideas – the information contained herein is for historic and informational purposes only. The author and publisher disclaim any liability from any damages or injuries of any type that a reader or user of information contained within this article may encounter from the use of said information. There are federal, state and/or local laws which prohibit the possession and/or manufacture of the devices described. There are no secret formulas or special information contained within this article that cannot be found in a Wiki article. Comprehensive documentation regarding commercial and hobbyist pyrotechnic production processes and formulas, safety practices, etc. are available online – what follows is merely a high-level summary with the occasional teasing detail. Don’t be naughty and don’t blow your hand off like a silly goose. To reiterate, the author and publisher disavow bad things and hurt feelings.
“[A]ges in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon – so long as there is no answer to it – gives claws to the weak.” – George Orwell, You and the Atom Bomb
One fascinating aspect of the Spanish Civil War is the distinct manner in which the entirety of Spanish society, in both the Nationalist and Republican Zones, became organized around the war. This included a level of military industrialization rarely addressed in the few English-language sources about the war, as both sides lacked sufficient equipment needed for modern war as established during World War One, not to mention the new age of mobile warfare of which this war was a harbinger. A curious element of this militarization was the local and factional development of hand grenades, as some sides in the war already came to the fight with their own hand grenades, referred to in the Spanish as “artisanal,” which has the same definition as in modern-day English – boutique, small batch, locally-sourced, and hand-crafted with love by skilled artisans.
As of November 2023, the very best source regarding the depth and breadth of Spanish Civil War arms is the website www.amonio.es, a treasure trove of Spanish-language armaments research that you can’t find anywhere else. These anons cracked the code on the origin and iterations of the infamous FAI bomb! If you don’t read Spanish, use your preferred free online translation software; if the output doesn’t seem correct, look up individual words or phrases with online dictionaries as machine translation often fails with technical terms. The amount of work done by these collectors, amateur archeologists and autists – please interpret this author’s word choice in the loving spirit which is intended – is truly impressive and deserves a great deal of credit.
