About book The Battle For Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (2006)
There once was a young man, deeply convicted in the cause of Internationalism and Marxism, who was riding a city tram. A gorgeous, stunning, beautiful young middle class woman walks by him to exit the tram on her stop. The young man, eyes filled with hatred, glares at her until she disappears in the crowds. The tram operator sighs and turns to a friend who recorded the scene.'We are really in trouble as a country when Marx wins over hormones.'This is the opening scene in Antony Beevor's excellent work on the Spanish Civil War. Throughout the reading of this book I felt a sense of disquiet and unease, as so much of the narrative describing the build up to the revolt of the Generals described so much of what has been happening in the United States the last decade and a half. If for no other reason, I recommend this book as a warning to idealists of the consequences of their youthful crusades. Spain, formally the most powerful nation on Earth, was a seeming backwater in Western Europe. Simply put, not much of importance happened there. Spain was neutral during WWI, making a considerable amount of money by selling food and medical supplies and industrial goods to the warring powers. However, once that flow of capital ceased, Spain went back to its slow decay through ennui.Spain was a land, a culture, a people torn apart by opposing ideologies.Communism, Anarchism, Socialism, Fascism, Libertarianism, Monarchism, Catholicism...all of these mixed together to create a powerful mix that, combined with the right politics, blew the country to tatters. Following the deposition of the Monarchy by a coalition of Socialists, Libertarians and Communists following unsatisfactory election results, Spain became a Republic. Among those who suffered under the Republics crusade to 'modernize' and 'progressiveness' the culture of Spain was the Catholic Church. While church attendance for Mass was at a historic lowpoint during this period, the more conservative elements of the nation used the persecution of the Church by the political left as a rallying cry for their own street gangs who engaged in brawls with those of the Left. All of this was, obviously, causing chaos and disorder.And it was also infuriating the armed forces. The High Command of the Spanish Army and Navy revolted, and with German and Italian assistance, the Spanish Army which was largely posted in Morocco, was transported in the first major military airlift in history to mainland Spain. The Spanish Civil War had begun. This is indeed a great book. As always, Beevor writes clearly, and intersperses his narrative with a plethora of human interest and first person accounts, while never losing site of the broader picture. He also manages to showcase the war itself, never losing site of the importance of the military operations, and his analysis of why the war itself went the way it did is quite astute. He also does something that few writers can do in such an emotionally charged event as a civil war: he maintains objectivity. The Republican side (to be really imprecise, simply call it either the Left or the Socialist-Communists) was never fully able to unite into a cohesive force. The Socialists were mistrusted by the Communists (who thanks to Soviet advisers, were infected with Russian style paranoia) and vice versa. The Anarchists hated both, fearing the hierarchy established in Barcelona (the Republican Capital) as well as the Communist enforced discipline within the militias which became the Republican Army. And several regions, most notably the Basque, simply wanted their own autonomy, and weren't afraid to speak their minds. Although the Republican side received a tremendous amount of foreign assistance with direct military and industrial aid from the Soviet Union and clandestine financial assistance from friendly forces (not to mention the presence of the International Brigades-men from all over the world who joined up to fight in what they saw as the main front in the Marxist/Internationalist cause), they were unable to properly utilize their resources to achieve victory. Infighting, mistrust, and utter military incompetence ensured a Republican defeat. The Nationalists (with another imprecise attempt at labeling, simply call them the Right), fared far better militarily as well as with foreign aid. Although the Spanish navy mutinied against their officers and joined the Republic, it was misused, and largely negated by the aid offered from Germany and Italy as well as enough ships either returned to Nationalist loyalty or remained to offer enough of a Nationalist presence on the waters to ensure a slight parity on the waters. The Nationalists were far more unified in effort, as long as they were sent to fight the forces of the Republic, they suffered no fraying of loyalties. Also the Republic relied too much on urban gangs which became armed militias. They were good street fighters, but utterly hopeless in rural areas where they had no natural sense of terrain. As such, the farming areas (staunchly conservative) largely relegated Republican control to the cities, a blow that would be felt later in the war when the Republic would began to starve to death quite literally. On the battlefront itself, to be fair, neither side did all that well. The Spanish Army was not a first rate power, its main combat experience was against Muslim insurgents in North Africa, not against conventional powers. As such, even the Nationalists had to learn to make war as they went. And Francisco Franco was not a military genius by any means. His habit of directly counter-attacking, head on, any Republican penetration of his lines (when the Germans and Italian advisers would advise him to flank the enemy or allow them to be lured into a trap, for emotional and political reasons, Franco would insist upon a direct confrontation) only contributed to heavy losses. Even though the Nationalists would win the majority of the battles in the war, their losses would have been far lower had Franco listened more often to his own General Staff (which contained several excellent young officers) or the Germans and Italians. The Republican commanders, the best of whom were either Anarchist or Communist, never understood modern warfare. Armor was a mystery to them beyond the knowledge that a tanks was really scary up close and personal. And in the air the Republic was hopelessly outclassed by the Germans Condor Legion and the Italians CTV, both of which contained far better pilots, and machines, than the Russian counterparts who flew for the Republicans. The most egregious example of Republican military incompetence was the massive, yet hopeless, offensive along the Ebro River in the summer of 1938. Not only should the offensive never have been conducted, but armor was never concentrated properly, air support was nonexistent, and they risked running into a trap designed by the Nationalists. Only Franco's own determined bungling ensured the battle would last nearly into the winter. The Republic would collapse when the Socialists would launch a military coup against the Communist leadership, and seek peace with Franco. What transpired after was, essentially, a terrorized police state that would remain a place of fear until the middle of the 1970's, when Franco died. Beevor showcases that both sides committed atrocities, pulling no punches in their descriptions either. While the Nationalists committed far more (they did win after all, and the victors in a civil war always kill more than the losers) Beevor points out that a Communist victory might have been worse given the history of the system. For that, however, we'll never know. All in all this is an excellent book. One I highly recommend. And yes, it does stand as an excellent warning to those who take an idea, one they don't fully understand, and decide to form a crusade around it. Such things have consequences. Spain learned the cost of that, the hard way.
Antony Beevor is probably best-known today for his lengthy histories of the battles of Stalingrad and Berlin, but this earlier narrative history of the Spanish Civil War matches both of these later works for grim and gripping detail. One might expect a historian of the Second World War to treat the Spanish conflict as a prologue to that larger and deadlier global struggle, but Beevor sees that the civil war had great significance in its own right. It was a struggle between ideologies, in which both the left-wing Spanish government and the right-wing insurgents committed atrocities on behalf of their opposing visions; a struggle between politicos and propagandists abroad, who invested the civil war with ideological meaning and cast it as (alternatively) a last-ditch defense of Christian civilization or a first stand against Fascism; and finally a bloody struggle between armies and civilians, which killed 600,000 people and ravaged Spain's landscape and economy. Foreign ideologues of the left and right still argue about the meaning of the Spanish Civil War, but Spaniards themselves have only just begun to confront its bitterly-divisive history. Beevor, to his credit, provides a balanced account of the conflict, which damns both sides for their excesses while carefully chronicling the enormous costs of Francisco Franco's victory. After briefly chronicling the fall of Spain's reactionary monarchy and the turbulent, anarchic history of its Second Republic, Beevor turns to the Army's attempted coup of July 1936, a right-wing response to the election of a socialist-communist government earlier that year. While the plotters succeeded in capturing western Andalusia and driving north to the suburbs of Madrid, the Spanish government retained the loyalty of its navy, which made it difficult for Franco and his colleagues to bring in their troops from North Africa. Spanish workers and anarchists also quickly organized pro-government militias, which allowed the loyalists to retain control of the capital and most of Spain's outlying provinces. By the end of 1936 the country had settled into a civil war between Franco's Nationalists and the Republicans.The term “civil war” is something of a misnomer, since the conflict served as a proxy war and military proving-ground for several of Europe's totalitarian dictatorships: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union. The first two of these provided substantial assistance to the Nationalists. Germany airlifted Franco's troops from Africa to Spain in 1936, and later provided the insurgents with combat aircraft, artillery, and light tanks. Italy provided additional planes, pilots, and about 80,000 soldiers. The Nationalists' air superiority ultimately proved decisive: it helped them capture the Basque region in 1937 (after a campaign in which German planes fire-bombed Guernica, killing 1,600 people), overrun Aragon by mid-1938, and crush a Republican army at the Battle of the Ebro in August 1938. Surprisingly, the Nationalists also enjoyed ample support from Anglo-American politicians and businessmen, who were opposed to the Spanish Republic's left-wing government and alarmed by Spanish anarchists' collectivization of farms and factories. Britain's press generally supported Franco, and its government tried to prevent British ships from delivering aid to the Republicans. American businesses like Texaco and Dupont, meanwhile, supplied the Nationalists with 12,000 trucks, 3.5 million tons of oil, and 40,000 bombs. George Orwell, who fought for the Republic, characterized Franco's victory as one he shared with big business. He wasn't entirely wrong.The Republic, for its part, received a small amount of aid from Mexico, and about 35,000 foreign volunteers for its International Brigades. Most of its foreign support, however, came from the Soviet Union, and came with a great deal of political baggage. Both Soviet advisers and Spanish communists pressured the government to suppress its own left-wing allies, which the Republic, dependent on the Soviet Union for tanks and aircraft, duly did in 1937. The Republicans disbanded the left-wing POUM militia, arrested thousands of anarchists, and with Soviet aid set up their own secret police, torture centers, and labor camps (“re-education centers”). They may have made their government and its armed forces more united and efficient, but they also cost themselves the support of those who wanted to fight a revolutionary war, and whose high morale would have been invaluable. Orwell argued that the communist counter-revolution essentially turned the civil war into a conventional war, which the more poorly-supplied Republic could not win.The Spanish Civil War still inspires considerable passion because of the popular foreign support that both sides garnered, and the volume of propaganda that they put out. Foreign artists and writers like Picasso, Orwell, and Hemingway lent their talents to the Republican cause, and tens of thousands of leftists came to Spain to fight Franco. The Nationalists, for their part, enjoyed the support of the Western European establishment, including much of the intelligentsia – as late as the 1960s, some British dons still publicly celebrated Franco's birthday – and of conservative Catholics, who recoiled from some Republicans' sacking of churches and killing of priests. Both sides accused one another of lurid atrocities, and it is clear that by 1937 both the government and the Nationalists had adopted policies of political terror, including mass arrests and large-scale executions of their political opponents. Beevor notes, however, that the Nationalists adopted a systematic terror policy from the very beginning of the war, and that they enjoyed far more success at liquidating their opponents, of whom they executed 100-200,000 during the war and another 200,000 between the fall of Madrid and 1943. At least one Nationalist boasted that his side killed ten leftists for every Nationalist killed by the Republicans (p. 74), and the author believes this is a fair estimate. While I think Beevor would like to say “a plague on both your houses” to the Republicans and Nationalists, one must instead conclude from his narrative of the Spanish war, as Timothy Snyder concluded in his study of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and '40s, “Better Stalin than Hitler.” What a terrible century it was, though, to have presented so many people with that choice!
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I am giving this four stars because it is a very accessible history of a very, very, complicated war. The author was a real sense of narration that gives you a sense of momentum of events. However he is clearly a military historian with extended passages on battles ("the IV corps led by Modesto made a flanking movement with the 13th battalion over the river, etc. etc.") but he interposes this nicely with more humanist anecdotes describing the hellish circumstances the men, women, and children of Spain suffered during this three year conflict.I was described this war to my sister as the "hipster" war and I think this is because of the preponderance of foreign intellectuals, artists, and journalists who descended on Spain mostly in support of the Republic (the most famous being Hemmingway).The fight of Republic, of the Left, against the Facist right was a clarion call for liberal sympathisers across Europe and even America. However this author makes the point that the coalition of anarchists and Soviet-directed communists that comprised the Left in Spain weren't even at peace amongst themselves, against a strongly united Facist Franco-Germany-Italy axis.Worthy reading of an immensely important and tragic conflict in 20th history.
—Neal
An excellent analysis of a conflict in which the Spanish people are the filling in a sandwich, the slices comprising a fight between the extreme right and extreme left. To make matters worse, as is well known, the conflict became the testing ground for Hitler and Stalin to play with their toys of war. The book is well constructed, and very readable, suffering only from the author's mild tendency to repeat the lessons he wishes the reader to retain, in a schoolmasterish fashion. Although the book is harrowing, given the human tragedy, the fact that Juan Carlos, hand-picked by Franco to rule as a royal dictator, moved the country rapidly towards full democracy, provides a profoundly satisfying conclusion. Today Spain is a great success, and to this I can only say Viva Espana!
—Marius van Blerck
This is a definitive history of the Spanish Civil War. The book has been regarded by the Spanish themselves as one of the best-researched volumes on this dark period of turmoil in their country's history. The breakdown of democracy saw the split of the nation and a leftist democratically elected government was forced to deal with the rise of a militaristic fascist rising headed by Franco. The precursor to World War 2, this civil war attracted the interests of the rising Fascist movement across Europe with the Caudillo's forces being supplemented and supported by Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. They got to test out their modern weaponry in the field of action and a lack of international support for the actual government left them with little alternative but to rely on the Soviet Union for their support. This led to the republicans being over-reliant on the Spanish communists who struggled to take over and erode democracy from their own angle, constantly infighting and vying for strength with the other elements of the Spanish left; the Anarchists and the POUM. This history details how all the events unfolded and describes how each of the key battles was won and lost. There was a ferociousness during this conflict which only civil wars attract. The horrors of modern war truly unfolded disasters such as Guernica only emphasised how critical air support had become. The German Condor Legion and their Meschersmitts, backed up by Italian Fiats, consistently demolished the Republican resistance and paved the way for an overall Nationalist victory. Poor military judgement, combined with Stalinist purges of even the more successful Russian generals, left the Republicans constantly making errors in their military tactics. The lack of proper international support (with the exception of the volunteer International Brigades), in particular from Britain led to the inevitable crushing of the elected government and their forces. Appeasement was in the air as Western politicians tried to avoid the inevitable European conflict that was brewing and the Spanish were sacrificed. It was a war of experimentation which left the Spanish people at the mercy of the violent forces which dominated the time. Franco consolidated his own power well and was relentless and unforgiving, not accepting any olive branch of peace when offered and pursuing an ultimate military victory so he could proceed to rebuild his country in his own image. The book is highly detailed and covers every angle well, though I would have perhaps wanted a more lengthy conclusion to discuss more of what happened in the post-conflict period. I look forward to tracking down some of the author's other work, in particular, his account of the battle of Stalingrad which was often mentioned in this most excellent history of the Spanish Civil War.
—Wesley Gerrard
