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Books > History > European history > From 1900 > General
Nick Miller argues in this provacative study that to comprehend
Yugoslavia's collapse, we must examine the development and nature
of Serbian nationalism, and the typical approaches will not
suffice.
The memoir of Sam Russell (1915-2010), a communist journalist and a
British volunteer with the anti-fascist Republican forces in the
Spanish Civil War. First-hand accounts of significant historical
events, from the formerly occupied Channel Islands at the end of
World War II to the show trials of communists in Eastern Europe in
the 1950s. Fascinating insight into the Spanish Civil War, the
history of communism, and British radical history.
Right-Wing Spain in the Civil War Era explores the lives of the
leading Spanish conservatives in the turbulent period 1914-1945.
The volume is a collection of biographies of the most important
figures of the Spanish Right during the last years of the
Restoration (1914-1923), the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera
(1923-1930), the Second Republic (1931-1936), the Civil War
(1936-39) and the early years of the Franco regime (1939-45). This
book brings together a number of leading historians of
twentieth-century Spain. By adopting a biographical approach, the
volume aims at providing a new insight of the origins, development
and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Contrary to the traditional
view, Right-Wing Spain in the Civil War Era shows a diverse and
fragmented Spanish right which, far from being isolated, was
profoundly influenced by German Nazism, Italian Fascism and French
Traditionalism. This remarkable and innovative collection of essays
will be welcomed by students and lecturers of Spanish history
alike.
Incorporating local, national and international dimensions of the
conflict, Gibraltar and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 provides the
first detailed account of the British enclave Gibraltar's role
during and after the Spanish Civil War. The neutral stance adopted
by democratic powers upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War is
well-known. The Non-Intervention Committee played a key role in
this strategy, with Great Britain a key player in what became known
as the "London Committee". British interests in the Iberian
Peninsula, however, meant that events in Spain were of crucial
importance to the Foreign Office and the victory of the Popular
Front in February, 1936 was deemed a potential threat that could
drive the country towards instability. This book explores how
British authorities in Gibraltar ostensibly initiated a formal
policy of neutrality when the uprising took place, only for the
Gibraltarian authorities to provide real support for the
Nationalists under the surface. The book draws on a wealth of
primary source material,some of it little-known before now, to
deliver a significant contribution to our knowledge of the part
played by democratic powers in the 1930s' confrontation between
Communism and Fascism. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a
complete understanding of the Spanish Civil War.
Pitting fascists and communists in a showdown for supremacy, the
Spanish Civil War has long been seen as a grim dress rehearsal for
World War II. Francisco Franco's Nationalists prevailed with German
and Italian military assistance-a clear instance, it seemed, of
like-minded regimes joining forces in the fight against global
Bolshevism. In Hitler's Shadow Empire Pierpaolo Barbieri revises
this standard account of Axis intervention in the Spanish Civil
War, arguing that economic ambitions-not ideology-drove Hitler's
Iberian intervention. The Nazis hoped to establish an economic
empire in Europe, and in Spain they tested the tactics intended for
future subject territories. "The Spanish Civil War is among the
20th-century military conflicts about which the most continues to
be published...Hitler's Shadow Empire is one of few recent studies
offering fresh information, specifically describing German trade in
the Franco-controlled zone. While it is typically assumed that Nazi
Germany, like Stalinist Russia, became involved in the Spanish
Civil War for ideological reasons, Pierpaolo Barbieri, an economic
analyst, shows that the motives of the two main powers were quite
different. -Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard
This interdisciplinary edited collection establishes a new dialogue
between translation, conflict and memory studies focusing on
fictional texts, reports from war zones and audiovisual
representations of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco
Dictatorship. It explores the significant role of translation in
transmitting a recent past that continues to resonate within
current debates on how to memorialize this inconclusive historical
episode. The volume combines a detailed analysis of well-known
authors such as Langston Hughes and John Dos Passos, with an
investigation into the challenges found in translating novels such
as The Group by Mary McCarthy (considered a threat to the policies
established by the dictatorial regime), and includes more recent
works such as El tiempo entre costuras by Maria Duenas. Further, it
examines the reception of the translations and whether the
narratives cross over effectively in various contexts. In doing so
it provides an analysis of the landscape of the Spanish conflict
and dictatorship in translation that allows for an
intergenerational and transcultural dialogue. It will appeal to
students and scholars of translation, history, literature and
cultural studies.
Tartan Angels sheds light on the work of the Scottish Ambulance
Unit (SAU) and the crucial part it played in British medical and
humanitarian aid to Spain. In the eighty-five years since the
outbreak of the civil war an immense historiography has developed.
A steady widening of focus has seen the inclusion of studies that
address the intense and prolonged suffering of a civilian
population affected by political repression, relentless military
bombardment, deprivation, and disease. Likewise, focus has shifted
to those who provided assistance to victims during and after the
conflict. To date, academic emphasis has been on the left-wing
politics behind such endeavours, with too little attention given to
the humanitarian responses themselves. Tartan Angels embraces this
argument in its focus on the Scottish Ambulance Unit, an enterprise
that was arguably apolitical in nature and comprised of individuals
inspired, above all, by compassionate and unselfish motives.
However, the reputation of the Unit suffered irreparable damage as
a result of a series of incidents and events that still remain not
fully explained or understood. Furthermore, there were those who
used controversy and rumour to deliberately undermine the
fundraising efforts of the Units patron and supporters. There is
much still to be learned about the creation and the functioning of
the SAU an outstanding but largely overlooked humanitarian gesture
on behalf of the people of Scotland to those suffering the effects
of a brutal civil war in Spain.
'A real treasure that we can't stop exploring' - La Republica
Felicia Browne decided it was time to put down her paintbrushes and
pick up a rifle. Jimmy Yates left Chicago with three books in his
bindle, sacrificing them all on the gruelling trek across the
Pyrenees. Salaria Kea worked at the front as a nurse, judged by her
skill rather than her skin colour... In 1936 something
extraordinary happened. As the threat of fascism swept across the
Iberian peninsula, thousands of people from all over the world left
their families and jobs to heed the call - No Pasaran! History has
never seen a wave of solidarity like it. The Spanish Civil War
ended in 1939 with the Republic crushed, but the revolutionary
dream of the International Brigades has never burnt out. Through
these 60 illustrated profiles, Brigadistes embroiders an epic story
of political struggle with the everyday bravery, sorrow and love of
those who lived it.
This work covers the international importance of the War in Spain
through the two organizations that marked the multilateral action
towards the conflict: The League of Nations and the
Non-Intervention Committee. France and the United Kingdom diverted
both deliberations as well as decision-making processes and
mechanisms from Geneva. Non-intervention was appeasement's specific
variable applied to Spain. Despite its name, it meant an
intervention, depriving the Spanish government from its own defense
while the fascist governments provided massive and regular support
to the rebels. The League was damaged in its authority through the
violation of its Covenant in Manchuria and Abyssinia. Once the War
in Spain began, non-intervention was articulated with the main
objective to confine the conflict to the Spanish borders. To this
end, the designation of the conflict as a civil war (not a mere
nominal nor anecdotal issue) in both London and Geneva was
essential. By abandoning the Spanish democracy and foreclosing the
collective security system, European democracies were also removing
all that stood between their own societies and another world war.
The failure of the collective security system that the League was
supposed to safeguard, prompted by the impossibility of reconciling
the British-led policy of appeasement with active anti-fascism, led
to a climate of collective insecurity, during which arose a Second
World War. This was precisely the main objective to avoid in the
international order established in 1919 after the major collective
catastrophe on a worldwide scale - soon to be overcome as that. The
scholarship herein will prove essential for scholars of the
interwar years' crisis, twentieth-century Spanish history and
international relations.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government
instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to
the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned
for political crimes, including thousands of women who were charged
with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting
their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published
texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard
and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the
right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The
memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Dona,
have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for
women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have
largely been ignored. Narratives of Resistance and Survival offers
a comparative study of the life writing of female political
prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two
volumes of Carcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la
niebla by Juana Dona; Requiem por la libertad by Angeles Garcia
Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello
sucedio asi by Angeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes,
such as the hunger and repression that political prisoners
suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist
women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense
of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival
that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the
war. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as
individuals and as a collective, analysing how they sought
recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship.
It also explores their response to the spirit of convivencia during
the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence
them. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies
The memoir of Sam Russell (1915-2010), a communist journalist and a
British volunteer with the anti-fascist Republican forces in the
Spanish Civil War. First-hand accounts of significant historical
events, from the formerly occupied Channel Islands at the end of
World War II to the show trials of communists in Eastern Europe in
the 1950s. Fascinating insight into the Spanish Civil War, the
history of communism, and British radical history.
The July 1936 coup detat against the Spanish Second Republic
brought together a diversity of anti-Republican political and
social groups under the leadership of rebel Africanista military
officers. In the ensuing Civil War this coalition gradually came
under the rule of Generalissimo Franco. This volume explores the
hypothesis that the violence and combat experiences of the war were
the fundamental ideological crucible for the Francoist regime. The
rebels were a group of reactionary and anti-liberal forces with
little ideological or political coherence, but they emerged from
the conflict not only victorious but ideologically united under the
dictators power. Key to understanding this transition are the
different political cultures of the rebel army, how the combatants
war experiences contributed to the transformation of diverse rebel
groups, and the role of foreign armed intervention. The
contributors examine not only the endogenous Spanish political and
military cultures of the Francoist coalition, but also the
transnational influence of foreign groups. The roots of Francoist
political culture are found in the Falangist and Carlist militias,
and Civil Guard units, that lent their support to the military
rebellion. The war experiences of conscripts, colonial troops, and
junior officers forged the Francoist ideology. It was reinforced by
fascist influences and assistance from Germany and Italy, and the
lesser-known contributions of Swiss and White Russian volunteers.
At the beginning of the conflict the rebel side was not
homogeneous. But it weaved together a complex, transnational web of
political and military interests in the midst of a bloody and
destructive war, transforming itself in the process to a political
and dictatorial platform that was to rule Spain for many years.
The Spanish Civil War has been the most important, decisive and
traumatic event in contemporary Spain, but also one of the most
iconic events in the recent history of the Western world. However,
musicology has not devoted a great deal of attention to the war of
1936-1939 until very recently. This volume is the first collective
book dedicated to music and the Spanish Civil War. The
contributions, drawn from musicologists, historians and
anthropologists from Spain, Mexico, Australia, and the United
States, explore the songs at the front, war soundscapes, propaganda
and music policies, censorship, music in prisons, different music
genres, exiled composers and critics, musical diplomacy, memory,
and Spanish Civil War as a topic in contemporary music.
For two decades after the civil war the Franco regime applied
systematic historical propaganda and imposed relentless repression
of history professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the
balance shifted from all-pervading propaganda to structural but
flexible censorship. Gradually and reluctantly, the regime had to
give back the initiative for explaining the recent past to where it
belonged: to the professional historians, but not without oversee
and livelihood threat. In its efforts to keep control, the regime
could count on historians who were willing to censor their more
adventurous colleagues. But the outcome of this process was biased
and uncertain. The main issue was always whether an author could be
considered a friend of the regime. Personal interventions by Franco
himself regularly played a decisive role. Historians fully loyal to
the regime and its aims were published without difficulty; others
took a reformist path, albeit without endangering the dominant
interpretation that favoured the tropes of inevitability and
positive consequences of Francos rebellion. Reformist historians
avoided criticism of the personal integrity of the dictator and the
army, and did not address the issue of systematically planned
terror in Francos National Zone during the Civil War. Historians
who dared to embrace these topics were condemned to write from
abroad. Historical works dealing with the Spanish Civil War
(19361939) have been regularly studied in-depth. Dutch historian
Jan van Muilekom provides a wider perspective by viewing the Franco
historiography from the time of the preceding Second Republic
(1931-1936). His analysis recognizes the crucial 1939-1952 period
where Franco consolidated his seizure of power. The research is
based on a wealth of published censored books, unpublished
manuscripts, censorship archives and historical propaganda
material. The book is an important complement to earlier studies
that mainly dealt with the regimes dealing with the press, the film
industry and literature. Over a span of four decades, Franco never
lost his grip on how recent Spanish history should be read.
Exploring the historiography of the regime provides multiple
insights into the links between authoritarianism and censorship.
The British governments policy of non-intervention in response to
the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War sought primarily to prevent
the conflict escalating into a wider European war but also to
ensure that it could maintain or establish cordial relations with
whichever side emerged victorious. Due to General Francos military
successes, the support he received from Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany, and the geostrategic importance of the Iberian Peninsula
in Britains Mediterranean strategy, non-intervention evolved into a
policy of appeasing Franco. This sustained strategic programme
remained in place beyond the Civil War and throughout the Second
World War. It aimed to drive a wedge between Franco and the Axis
Powers to prevent Spains incorporation into the Rome-Berlin Axis
and thereby ensure the neutrality of the Iberian Peninsula. The
British governments diplomatic recognition of Franco and
simultaneous abandonment of the Spanish Republic in February 1939
formed a concession comparable to British policy towards Abyssinia
and Czechoslovakia. Negotiating Neutrality uses appeasement as an
analytical framework to show how appeasement policies alter power
dynamics in diplomatic relationships. As a beneficiary of
appeasement, Franco, like Hitler and Mussolini, intuitively
understood how to use this policy to his regimes advantage and it
formed an important part of his development as a statesman
alongside his German and Italian counterparts. For its part, the
British government increasingly encountered difficulties when
trying to re-assert itself as the dominant power in Anglo-Spanish
relations. In this sense, the author challenges the dominant view
within the existing historiography that British policy makers
harboured ideological prejudices towards the Spanish Republic, or
sympathy for the military rebels, and allowed these to cloud their
judgement when formulating a policy towards the Civil War to show
that Francos victory was far from the preferred outcome for the
British government. Published in association with the Canada Blanch
Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE
This book explores the attitudes of the Spanish army officer corps
towards the evolution of warfare during the early decades of the
twentieth century, and their influence on the armies of the Spanish
Civil War. It examines how the Spanish military coped with
technological innovations such as the machine gun and the tank, how
it adapted the armys battlefield doctrine to changes in warfare
before the Civil War, and the influence of this doctrine on the
outcome of the conflict. Of the different armed forces that fought
in the Spanish Civil War, it is paradoxically the Spanish army that
remains most forgotten - especially its military doctrine.
Scholarship on the Spanish military in this period focuses on its
politics, ideology and institutional reforms, touching upon 'hard'
professional issues only superficially, if at all. Based on
original research and using largely unstudied Spanish primary
sources, this book fills a major scholarly gap in the history of
the Spanish army and the Spanish Civil War.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government
instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to
the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned
for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April
1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences
ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved
ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about
their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to
counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing
victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of
Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Dona, have heavily
influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under
franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been
ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life
writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six
texts in particular: the two volumes of Carcel de mujeres by Tomasa
Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Dona; Requiem por la
libertad by Angeles Garcia Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa
Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedio asi by Angeles Malonda. All the
texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and
repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the
ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground
representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the
emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women
political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil
War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as
individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political
prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a
vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the womens response to
the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which
once again threatened to silence them.
On the day in 1936 that Franco invaded Spain, a fifteen-year-old
girl from Madrid was on vacation in the Sierra de Gredos, a
mountain range popular for hikers. Isa (Conchita) Reyes fled Spain
for Paris with her mother and sister, taking only what they could
carry in their suitcases. Her father stayed behind to fight on the
Loyalist side. It was not long before the last piece of jewelry had
been sold, and ways had to be found to make a living. Working as a
model, she was discovered and given the stage name Isa. A renowned
Flamenco dancer, she performed in Paris and in the capitals and
resorts of Europe. In 1938 she was crowned Miss Spain in Exile. In
Venice, she was courted by Count Ciano, Mussolinis son-in-law, and
used an imaginative lie to avoid his affections. In Berlin, in
1939, she performed (unwillingly) at Hitlers fiftieth birthday
celebrations organized by Joseph Goebbels. Later in the year,
whilst on a dancing tour in Athens, she met the man she would marry
my father. Together, they escaped Europe for the New World. This is
Isas story, from the nightclubs and ateliers of Paris, to the
performance halls of Europe, to the harrowing inspections by the
Gestapo while transiting Germany. This is a story of a young girl
who had to grow up quickly when war turned her world upside down.
Isa fulfilled her dream of becoming a dancer, albeit in ways she
could not have imagined when growing up. Her story is told against
the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and Europes inexorable march
to conflict. Isa never lost her optimism or her sense of humor. Her
dream came true, but the circumstances were tragic and tumultuous.
The tragedy that devastated Spain for 33 months from July 1936 to
April 1939, was, first and foremost, a brutal fratricidal conflict,
the product of the fatal clash between diametrically opposed views
of Spain and an attempt to settle crucial issues which had divided
Spaniards for generations: agrarian reform, recognition of the
identity of the historical regions (Catalonia, the Basque Country),
and the roles of the Catholic Church and the armed forces in a
modern state. Being a war between Spaniards, it was particularly
brutal, but it was also part of the broader move toward war in
Europe and thus sucked in many "volunteers" from abroad. And it
left a deep imprint since General Francisco Franco remained at the
helm of the country until his death in 1975. The Historical
Dictionary of the Spanish Civil war covers the history of the war,
first through a long chronology, which highlights the major steps
from the incubation to the conclusion. The overall situation is
summed up in the introduction. Then the dictionary section fleshes
it out, with over 600 entries on persons, places, events,
institutions, battles, and campaigns. More reading can be found in
an extensive bibliography. This book is an excellent access point
for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about
the Spanish Civil War.
This book focuses on an important but neglected aspect of the
Spanish Civil War, the evolution of medical and surgical care of
the wounded during the conflict. Importantly, the focus is from a
mainly Spanish perspective - as the Spanish are given a voice in
their own story, which has not always been the case. Central to the
book is General Franco's treatment of Muslim combatants, the
anarchist contribution to health, and the medicalisation of
propaganda - themes that come together in a medico-cultural study
of the Spanish Civil War. Suffusing the narrative and the analysis
is the traumatic legacy of conflict, an untreated wound that a new
generation of Spaniards are struggling to heal.
As they trudged over the Pyrenees, the Spanish republicans became
one of the most iconoclastic groups of refugees to have sought
refuge in twentieth-century France. This book explores the array of
opportunities, constraints, choices and motivations that
characterised their lives. Using a wide range of empirical
material, it presents a compelling case for rethinking exile in
relation to refugees' lived experiences and memory activities. The
major historical events of the period are covered: the development
of refugees' rights and the 'concentration' camps of the Third
Republic, the para-military labour formations of the Second World
War, the dynamics shaping resistance activities, and the role of
memory in the campaign to return to Spain. This study additionally
analyses how these experiences have shaped homes and France's
memorial landscape, thereby offering an unparalleled exploration of
the long-term effects of exile from the mass exodus of 1939 through
to the seventieth-anniversary commemorations in 2009. -- .
Through case studies of prominent cultural products, this book
takes a longitudinal approach to the influence and
conceptualization of the Civil War in democratic Spain. Stafford
explores the stories told about the war during the transition to
democracy and how these narratives have morphed in light of the
polemics about historical memory.
The history of the Moroccan troops in the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939) is the story of an encounter between two culturally and
ethnically different people, and the attempts by both sides,
Moroccan and Spanish, to take control of this contact. This book
shows to what extent colonials could participate in negotiating
limits and taboos rather than being only on the receiving end of
them. The examination of this encounter, in its military,
religious, as well as sexual aspects, sheds new light on colonial
relations, and on how unique or typical the Spanish colonial case
is in comparison to other European ones.
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