Told for the first time in English, Paul Preston's new book tells the story of a preventable tragedy that cost many thousands of lives and ruined tens of thousands more at the end of the Spanish Civil War. This is the story of an avoidable humanitarian tragedy that cost many thousands of lives and ruined tens of thousands more. On 5 March 1939, the eternally malcontent Colonel Segismundo Casado launched a military coup against the government of Juan Negrin. To fulfil his ambition to go down in history as the man who ended the Spanish Civil War, he claimed that Negrin was the puppet of Moscow and that a coup was imminent to establish a Communist dictatorship. Instead his action ensured the Republic ended in catastrophe and shame. Paul Preston, the leading historian of twentieth-century Spain, tells this shocking story for the first time in English. It is a harrowing tale of how the flawed decisions of politicans can lead to tragedy.

In this distinctive new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War, James Simpson and Juan Carmona tackle the highly-debated issue of why it was that Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. They explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility and the creation of mass competitive political parties, and how these limited the effectiveness of the new republican governments, and especially their attempts to tackle economic and social problems within the agricultural sector. They show how political change during the Republic had a major economic impact on the different groups in village society, leading to social conflicts that turned to polarization and finally, with the civil war, to violence and brutality. The democratic Republic failed not so much because of the opposition from the landed elites, but rather because small farmers had been unable to exploit more effectively their newly found political voice.

This book proposes an interpretation of Francoism as the Spanish variant of fascism. Unlike Italian fascism and Nazism, the Franco regime survived the Second World War and continued its existence until the death of dictator Francisco Franco. Francoism was, therefore, the Last Survivor of the fascisms of the interwar period. And indeed this designation applies equally to Franco. The work begins with an analysis of the historical identity of Spanish fascism, constituted in the process of fascistisation of the Spanish right during the crisis of the Second Republic, and consolidated in the formation of the fascist single-party and the New State during the civil war. Subsequent chapter contributions focus on various cultural and social projects (the university, political-cultural journals, the Labor University Service, local policies and social insurance) that sought to socialise Spaniards in the political principles of the Franco regime and thereby to strengthen social cohesion around it. Francoism faced varying degrees of non-compliance and outright hostility, expressed as different forms of cultural opposition to the Franco regime, especially in the years of its maturity (decades of the fifties and sixties), from Spaniards both inside Spain and in exile. Such opposition is explored in the context of how the regime reacted via the social, cultural and economic inducements at its disposal. The editors and contributors are widely published in the field of Spain of the Second Republic, the civil war and the Franco dictatorship. Research material is drawn from primary archival sources, and provides new information and new interpretations on Spanish politics, culture and society during the dictatorship.

A prequel to the authors previous monographs on the Great War and the Foundations of the Spanish Civil War, this book analyses the troubled and often violent path of Spain to modernity. During the nearly 30 years of history explored (18921921), the country appeared to be caught in a kind of Groundhog Day. It was rocked in the 1890s by an ill-fated colonial adventure and a spiral of anarchist terrorism and praetorian-led repression, mostly in Barcelona, which culminated with the murder of the Conservative prime minister, Antonio Canovas, in August 1897. Twenty-four years later, Spain was undergoing a similar set of circumstances: a military quagmire in Morocco and vicious social warfare, with its epicentre in the Catalan capital, which resulted in the killing of the then Conservative prime minister, Eduardo Dato, in March 1921. The chronological framework highlights the gradual crisis, but also resilience, of the ruling Restoration Monarchy. Francisco Romero Salvado pursues the thesis that this crisis could be largely explained by focusing on the correlation between two apparently contradictory conceptual terms, but which in fact proved to be supplementary: the extent to which the persistence of the political comedy embodied by an unreformed liberal but oligarchic order perpetuated a social tragedy. Notwithstanding the peculiarity of the authors approach, this study rejects any notion of determinism or exceptionalism. On the contrary, Spain was not an extraordinary case within the European context but constituted a laboratory par excellence of the turmoil which marked this age. Indeed, a watershed period of fast technological progress, economic modernization and cultural awareness clashed head-on with traditional constitutional and liberal states that found they were unable to retain their past hegemony in the dawning era of mass politics. The outcome was unprecedented social warfare which led in many cases to a reactionary backlash and the establishment of authoritarian formulas of governance. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) the British public raised an estimated one to two million pounds for Republican Spain, mostly through small individual donations at a time when large parts of Britain were experiencing severe economic depression. Across the country people were moved by the plight of Spain, a land in which most had never set foot. The response was quintessentially British; through picnics, whist drives, concerts, dances and rambling expeditions, the war in Spain became embedded in British social and cultural life. Innovative fundraising campaigns ran alongside lectures, film screenings and exhibitions, engaging people with the Spanish conflict. But it was a fragile alliance of progressive opinion, for those involved often had very different interpretations of the political significance of the war and of the Republics fight for a broadly defined concept of democracy. The book provides a fresh perspective on what is a well-trodden area of scholarship. It places British humanitarian responses to Spain within the context of Britains flourishing civic and popular political culture, following the advent of mass democracy in 1928 as supported by the Equal Franchise Act. Emily Mason explores engagement with Spain through three foci: the peace movement, the co-operative movement and British Christians groups that were at the heart of the humanitarian response, but which remain underexplored in current historiography. The book explores how the Republican cause resonated with notions of British identity and with the crises that different groups perceived to be threatening their world order. It explores the dilemma that non-intervention posed for many Britons, and argues that humanitarian support for the Spanish Republic offers an example of active citizenship and popular internationalism in Britain between the wars. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

In Spain today the civil war remains 'the past that will not pass away'. The long shadow of the Second World War is now also bringing back centre frame its most disquieting aspects, revealing to a broader public the stark truth already known by specialist historians -- that in Spain, as in the many other internecine wars soon to convulse Europe, war was waged predominantly upon civilians -- millions were killed not by invaders and strangers, but by their own compatriots, including their own neighbours. Across the continent, Hitler's war of territorial expansion after 1938 would detonate a myriad 'irregular wars', of culture as well as of politics, which took on a 'cleansing' intransigence as those driving them sought to make 'homogeneous' communities, whether ethnic, political or religious. So much of this was prefigured with primal intensity in Spain in 1936, where, on 17-18 July, a group of army officers rebelled against the socially-reforming Republic. Saved from almost certain failure by Nazi and Fascist military intervention, and by a British inaction amounting to complicity, these army rebels unleashed a conflict in which civilians became the targets of mass killing. The new military authorities authorised and presided over an extermination of those sectors associated with Republican change -- especially those who symbolised cultural change and thus posed a threat to old ways of being and thinking: progressive teachers, self-educated workers, 'new' women. In the Republican zone, resistance to the coup also led to the murder of civilians. This extrajudicial and communal killing in both zones would fundamentally make new political and cultural meanings that changed Spain's political landscape forever. Helen Graham explores the origins, nature and long-term consequences of this exterminatory war in Spain, charting the resonant forms of political, social and cultural resistance to it and the memory/legacy these have left behind in Europe and beyond. Not least is our growing sense of the enormity of what, in greater European terms, the Republican war effort resisted: Nazi adventurism, and the continent-wide wars of ethnic and political 'purification' it would unleash.

The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War offers the first comprehensive account of the Spanish Civil War from an archaeological perspective, providing an alternative narrative on one of the most important conflicts of the twentieth century, widely seen as a prelude to the Second World War. Between 1936 and 1939, totalitarianism and democracy, fascism and revolution clashed in Spain, while the latest military technologies were being tested, including strategic bombing and combined arms warfare, and violence against civilians became widespread. Archaeology, however, complicates the picture as it brings forgotten actors into play: obsolete weapons, vernacular architecture, ancient structures (from Iron Age hillforts to sheepfolds), peasant traditions, and makeshift arms. By looking at these things, another story of the war unfolds, one that pays more attention to intimate experiences and anonymous individuals. Archaeology also helps to clarify battles, which were often chaotic and only partially documented, and to understand better the patterns of political violence, whose effects were literally buried for over 70 years. The narrative starts with the coup against the Second Spanish Republic on 18 July 1936, follows the massacres and battles that marked the path of the war, and ends in the early 1950s, when the last forced labor camps were closed and the anti-Francoist guerrillas suppressed. The book draws on 20 years of research to bring together perspectives from battlefield archaeology, archaeologies of internment, and forensics. It will be of interest to anybody interested in historical and contemporary archaeology, human rights violations, modern military history, and negative heritage.

More than 2500 volunteers took the extraordinary decision to risk their lives in a foreign war, and more than 500 of them died. The book looks at their role in the key battles in Spain, including the heroic work of the medical volunteers. Drawing on contemporary photographs and images, Antifascistas documents the artistic and historical legacy of the International Brigades, and demonstrates the idealism, commitment and sacrifice of these exceptional men and women.

Shortlisted for the History Book of the Year category of the 2009 Saltire Literary Awards The Spanish Civil War was a call to arms for 2,300 British volunteers, of which over 500 were from Scotland. The first book of its kind, Homage to Caledonia examines Scotland's role in the conflict, detailing exactly why Scottish involvement was so profound. The book moves chronologically through events and places, firstly surveying the landscape in contemporary Scotland before describing volunteers' journeys to Spain, and then tracing their every involvement from arrival to homecoming (or not). There is also an account of the non-combative role, from fundraising for Spain and medical aid, to political manoeuvrings within the volatile Scottish left. Using a wealth of previously-unpublished letters sent back from the front as well as other archival items, Daniel Gray is able to tell little known stories of courage in conflict, and to call into question accepted versions of events such as the 'murder' of Bob Smillie, or the heroism of 'The Scots Scarlet Pimpernel'. Homage to Caledonia offers a very human take on events in Spain: for every tale of abject distress in a time of war, there is a tale of a Scottish volunteer urinating in his general's boots, knocking back a dram with Errol Flynn or appalling Spanish comrades with his pipe playing. For the first time, read the fascinating story of Caledonia's role in this seminal conflict.

The compelling story of a trek across an exotic land– and the sinister consequences

It was an SS mission led by two complex individuals– one who was using the Nazis to pursue his own ends, and one so committed to Nazism that afterward he conducted racial experiments using the skulls of prisoners at Auschwitz. Himmler’ s Crusade relates the 1938 Nazi expedition through British India to the sacred mountains of Tibet in search of the remnants of the Aryan people, the lost master race. Based on a wide range of previously unused sources, this intriguing book reveals the mission– a pet project of Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler– to be the result of both a bizarre historical fantasy and a strategy to provoke insurgency in British India. Providing rare glimpses into Himmler’ s SS stronghold, this riveting tale sheds new light on the occult component of the racial theories that obsessed Himmler and his fellow Nazis.

Christopher Hale (London, UK, and New York, NY) is an award-winning writer and producer who has worked for the BBC, Discovery, WGBH, and National Geographic.

This detailed study of the naval Spanish Civil War describes how the Spanish Navy, torn in two and comprising a Republican and Nationalist part, fought a civil war at sea involving both Hitler's and Mussolini's navies. In July 1936, a pro-fascist coup orchestrated by General Franco tore Spain apart and plunged the country into a bitter civil war. Like Spain itself, the Spanish Navy was torn in two: crews and most ships remained loyal to the Republican government but many of the Navy's officers joined Franco's rebels, and warships under repair or 'mothballed' in southern ports soon fell to the rebel advance. These formed the basis of Franco's 'Nationalist fleet,' and with both Italian and German help, the rebels were able to contest the Republic's control of Spanish waters. Overall the Republican Navy held its own, despite mounting losses, until the collapse of the Republican Army led to the fleet seeking internment in French North Africa. Packed with contemporary photographs and full colour illustrations, this study examines the composition and organization of the two rival fleets, the capabilities of their ships and submarines, and the performance of their crews. It also covers the warships of the Basque Auxiliary Navy - an offshoot of the Republican Fleet - and other navies who played a part in the conflict, most notably the Italian Regia Marina.

The International Bestseller of the Spanish Civil War - Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize In the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, fifty prominent Nationalist prisoners are executed by firing squad. Among them is the writer and fascist Rafael Sanchez Mazas. As the guns fire, he escapes into the forest, and can hear a search party and their dogs hunting him down. The branches move and he finds himself looking into the eyes of a militiaman, and faces death for the second time that day. But the unknown soldier simply turns and walks away. Sanchez Mazas becomes a national hero and the soldier disappears into history. As Cercas sifts the evidence to establish what happened, he realises that the true hero may not be Sanchez Mazas at all, but the soldier who chose not to shoot him. Who was he? Why did he spare him? And might he still be alive? Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Spain has for too long been considered peripheral to the human catastrophes of World War II and the Holocaust. This volume is the first broadly interdisciplinary, scholarly collection to situate Spain in a position of influence in the history and culture of the Second World War. Featuring essays by international experts in the fields of history, literary studies, cultural studies, political science, sociology, and film studies, this book clarifies historical issues within Spain while also demonstrating the impact of Spain's involvement in the Second World War on historical memory of the Holocaust. Many of the contributors have done extensive archival research, bringing new information and perspectives to the table, and in many cases the essays published here analyze primary and secondary material previously unavailable in English. Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust reaches beyond discipline, genre, nation, and time period to offer previously unknown evidence of Spain's continued relevance to the Holocaust and the Second World War.

In this distinctive new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War, James Simpson and Juan Carmona tackle the highly-debated issue of why it was that Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. They explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility and the creation of mass competitive political parties, and how these limited the effectiveness of the new republican governments, and especially their attempts to tackle economic and social problems within the agricultural sector. They show how political change during the Republic had a major economic impact on the different groups in village society, leading to social conflicts that turned to polarization and finally, with the civil war, to violence and brutality. The democratic Republic failed not so much because of the opposition from the landed elites, but rather because small farmers had been unable to exploit more effectively their newly found political voice.

The Spanish Civil War: A Military History takes a new, military approach to the conflict that tore Spain apart from 1936 to 1939. In many histories, the war has been treated as a primarily political event with the military narrative subsumed into a much broader picture of the Spain of 1936-9 in which the chief themes are revolution and counter-revolution. While remaining conscious of the politics of the struggle, this book looks at the war as above all a military event, and as one in whose outbreak specifically military issues - particularly the split in the armed forces produced by the long struggle in Morocco (1909-27) - were fundamental. Across nine chapters that consider the war from beginning to endgame, Charles J. Esdaile revisits traditional themes from a new perspective, deconstructs many epics and puts received ideas to the test, as well as introducing readers to foreign-language historiography that has previously been largely inaccessible to an anglophone audience. In taking this new approach, The Spanish Civil War: A Military History is essential reading for all students of twentieth-century Spain.

From the moment it began in 1936, the Spanish Civil War became the political question of the age. Hitler and Mussolini quickly sent aircraft, troops and supplies to the right-wing generals bent on overthrowing Spain's elected government. Millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; if not there, where? More than 35,000 volunteers from dozens of other countries went to help defend the Spanish Republic. Adam Hochschild, the acclaimed author of King Leopold's Ghost, evokes this tumultuous period mainly through the lives of Americans involved in the war. A few are famous, such as Ernest Hemingway, but others are less familiar. They include a nineteen-year-old Kentucky woman, a fiery leftist who came to wartime Spain on her honeymoon; a young man who ran away from his Pennsylvania college and became the first American casualty in the battle for Madrid; and a swashbuckling Texas oilman who covertly violated US law and sold Generalissimo Francisco Franco most of the fuel for his army. Two New York Times reporters, fierce rivals, covered the war from opposite sides, with opposite sympathies. There are Britons in Hochschild's cast of characters as well: one, a London sculptor, fought with the American battalion; another, who had just gone down from Cambridge, joined Franco's army and found himself fighting against the Americans; and a third is someone whose experience of combat in Spain had a profound effect on his life, George Orwell.

This book examines the most polemical atrocity of the Spanish civil war: The massacre of 2,500 political prisoners by Republican security forces in the villages of Paracuellos and Torrejon de Ardoz near Madrid in November/December 1936. The atrocity took place while Santiago Carrillo -- later Communist Party leader in the 1970s -- was responsible for public order. Although Carrillo played a key role in the transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975, he passed away at the age of 97 in 2012 still denying any involvement in 'Paracuellos' (the generic term for the massacres). The issue of Carrillo's responsibility has been the focus of much historical research. Julius Ruiz places Paracuellos in the wider context of the 'Red Terror' in Madrid, where a minimum of 8,000 'fascists' were murdered after the failure of military rebellion in July 1936. He rejects both 'revisionist' right-wing writers such as Cesar Vidal who cite Paracuellos as evidence that the Republic committed Soviet-style genocide and left-wing historians such as Paul Preston, who in his Spanish Holocaust argues that the massacres were primarily the responsibility of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. The book argues that Republican actions influenced the Soviets, not the other way round: Paracuellos intensified Stalin's fears of a 'Fifth Column' within the USSR that facilitated the Great Terror of 193738. It concludes that the perpetrators were primarily members of the Provincial Committee of Public Investigation (CPIP), a murderous all-leftist revolutionary tribunal created in August 1936, and that its work of eliminating the 'Fifth Column' (an imaginary clandestine Francoist organisation) was supported not just by Carrillo, but also by the Republican government. In Autumn 2015 the book was serialised in El Mundo, Spain's second largest selling daily, to great acclaim.

The bombing of Guernica has become a symbol of Nazi involvement in the Spanish Civil War, but the extent of the German commitment is often underestimated. The Luftwaffe sent 20,000 officers and men to Spain from 1936 to 1939, and the Condor Legion carried out many missions in support of the Spanish Nationalist forces and played a lead role in many key campaigns of the war. Aircraft that would play a significant role in the combat operations of World War II (the Heinkel 11 bomber, the Me 109 fighter, and others) saw their first action in Spain, fighting against the modern Soviet fighters and bombers that equipped the Republican Air Force. Condor Legion bombers attacked Republican logistics and transport behind the lines as well as bombing strategic targets, German bombers and fighters provided highly effective close air support for the front-line troops, and German fighters and anti-aircraft units ensured Nationalist control of the air. The experience garnered in Spain was very important to the development of the Luftwaffe. The war allowed them to hone and develop their tactics, train their officers, and to become the most practised air force in the world at conducting close support of ground troops. In effect, the Spanish Civil War proved to be the training ground for the Blitzkrieg which would be unleashed across Europe in the years that followed. In this rigorous new analysis, Legion Condor expert James Corum explores both the history and impact of the Luftwaffe's engagement during the Spanish Civil War and the role that engagement played in the development of the Luftwaffe strategy which would be used to such devastating effect in the years that followed.

'One of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century' New Republic

'Moving and dramatic' New York Review of Books

The Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history and society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events of the Spanish Civil War.

Arturo Barea's masterpiece charts the author's coming-of-age in a bruised and starkly unequal Spain. These three volumes recount in lively detail Barea's daily experience of his country as it pitched towards disaster: we are taken from his youthful play and rebellion on the streets of Madrid, to his apprenticeship in the business world and to the horrors he witnessed as part of the Spanish army in Morocco during the Rif War. The trilogy culminates in an indelible portrait of the Republican fight against Fascist forces, in which the Madrid of Barea's childhood becomes a shell and bullet-strewn warzone.

Combining historical sweep and authority with poignant characterization and novelistic detail, The Forging of a Rebel is a towering literary and historical achievement.

This book brings together different and interdisciplinary perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, its victims, its contentious ending, and its aftermath. In exploring the slow demise of republican ideals, contributors range over many diverse historical and cultural topics - discussing, for instance, the attitudes of both Left and Right to the poet Federico Garcia Lorca and to his assassination, examining the documentary evidence offered in surviving memoirs of the Civil War, and assessing the major characteristics of the new order in Spain under Franco. Cinematic and literary depictions of the Civil War and its consequences are also studied. Other topics investigated include: contemporary French reactions to the Spanish conflict, Stalinist policies towards Spain, the activities and motives of the anarcho-syndicalists and the role of the International Brigades. This collection of essays published on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, not only places the events and experiences studied within the context of the 'new state' of Franco's Spain, but also offers timely fresh insights into wider European and international issues during what was a period of seismic change in world history. This book was originally published as a special issue of Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

A detailed history of the commemorations of US activist involvement in the Spanish Civil War, based on a combination of archival and ethnographic evidence. Nostalgia can serve as a vital tool in the emotional reconstitution and preservation of suppressed histories, rather than sentimentally privileging the past at the expense of present concerns and limiting a culture's progressive potential. Between 1936 and 1938, responding to a military coup in Spain led by Francisco Franco with the support of both Hitler and Mussolini, over 2700 US anti-fascists joined 30,000 volunteers from around the world to form the International Brigade. They came together to defend the democratically elected Spanish government against this early manifestation of the fascist Axis. After three bloody years, Franco's rebellion succeeded, and his dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. From the moment the first American volunteers returned home, and to this day, they have been holding commemorative events recalling the struggle. For nearly seventy years, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade have cited and re-cited their activist past in theatrically eclectic, highly emotional commemorative performances, a site for both nostalgia and progressive politics. Literary recitations, scripted dramatic pieces, songs, films, photographs, and celebrity appearances have been juxtaposed with speeches, fundraising, and a rigorous attention to pressing political and social concerns of the day. The history and content of these events isdetailed and analyzed here based on a combination of archival and ethnographic evidence. The exemplary role of songs from the war, as both nostalgic triggers and historical artifacts, is also examined. Commemorations of theSpanish Civil War have provided necessary anchors for a period in U.S. history when views now thought extreme were an accepted part of mass political discourse. Through this rich, inter-generational performance practice, a marginalized, vernacular political minority has deployed radical nostalgia as a necessary corrective to an official culture disinterested in America's leftist past, and threatened by its implications. Peter Glazer is Associate Professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

What do you do when a beloved foreign country plunges into civil war? And how do you square your political views on that war with the demands of scholarly objectivity? In this book, Sebastiaan Faber assesses the long-term impact of the Spanish Civil War on Hispanic Studies as an academic field in the United States and Great Britain. Combining institutional history with biography, the book gives a compelling account of the dilemmas that the war posed for four Hispanists who turned their love of Spain into their life's work.

Using hitherto unavailable material from the Italian foreign ministry, Franco's headquarters, and Mussolini's secretariat, John F. Coverdale traces the development of Italo-Spanish relations from the beginning of the Fascist regime. His analysis reveals that traditional foreign policy outweighed ideological and internal political considerations in Mussolini's decision making. John F. Coverdale finds that while Italy's support was essential to Franco's victory, Rome exercised very little influence on his decisions. The author concludes that participation in the Spanish Civil War was less important than is generally believed in determining Italy's entrance into World War II on Hitler's side, and that it did not significantly weaken her armed forces. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book analyses the processes of revolution and state reconstruction that took place in the Republican zone during the Spanish civil war. It focuses on the radical anarchists who sought to advance the revolutionary agenda. Their activity came into conflict with the leaders of the libertarian organisations committed to the reconstruction of the Republican state following its near collapse in July 1936. This process implied participation not only in the organs of governance but also in the ideological reconstitution of the Republic as a patriarchal and national entity. Using original sources, the book shows that the opposition to this process was both broader and more ideologically consistent than has hitherto been assumed, and that, in spite of its heterogeneity, it united around a common revolutionary programme. This resistance to state reconstruction was informed by the essential insight of anarchism: that the function and purpose of the modern state cannot be transformed from within. By situating the struggles of the radical anarchists within the contested process of state reconstruction, the book affirms the continued relevance of this insight to the study of the Spanish revolution.