Excellent short survey

Graham has done a fabulous job of pulling together the political, cultural and social history of a very complicated, heroic and tragic era in Spanish history. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for an introduction to the topic. I’m going to
Spain on a short trip and wanted a background. This is it.

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The Spanish Civil War

In short, I was required to read this for one of my Spanish Civil War course in college. At first, I didn’t really know what to expect because the book itself wasn’t very big, so I assumed it wouldn’t contain a lot of useful information. However, I was wrong! All 7 chapters of the book specifically highlight a certain part of the war, whether it was pre, during, or post wartime. Altogether, I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in history and to who wants to learn more about the war itself!

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An unbalanced history

Franco’s Spain clearly grew out of horror. It must have been a terrible place for the Republicans, and seems an impossible anachronistic dictatorship in the mid 20th century. This book is happy to point all of this out, as its sympathies clearly lie on the left. It does a poor job of showing the brutality of the left and the Republic in all its various schisms during this time.

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Facism won

If you enjoy European history this is a book for you. I’m old enough to know that the Nazis helped Franco become dictator and that he ruled until the mid 1970’s.
Mussolini was also involved committing 75000 troops to help Franco. This was another case of France and England being so adverse to war they ignored what was going on in their own backyard. Having read about how terrible the Great War was I understand the reluctance of entering another country’s conflict. However that fear is exactly what dictators count on. Entering into war is not always correct as we experienced in Iraq , Afghanistan and Vietnam however sometimes it is the correct course as we can see now re the Korean War.
Franco was a facist who overthrew a democratic government and ruled for 35 years. It was an oppressive and ruthless regime which we along with the Europeans allowed to continue. Those who oppose helping Ukraine should read this book. It takes a long time to correct your mistakes once democracy disappears.
The author did a great job being concise and avoiding lengthy language to explain how events happened and why. It’s also a good example of how democratic bureaucracy sometimes gets in its own way.
Really good read, short and to the point.

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Not the Communists you’re looking for

Title says enough, but basically a very one-sided and simplistic approach. Particularly unfair to the Catholic Church. Presumes liberal-democracy productive of socialism and secularism as the exclusively, eternally, and universally valid form of polity. Agenda-driven, one-sided and bitter.

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As exciting as a Communist Party meeting...

Despite what decades of Communist propaganda (both popular and academic) have to say, the Spanish Civil War had no “good guys”. Every atrocity performed by Franco and his Fascist supporters was equaled or exceeded by the Republicans, the Leftist Militias, and the “International Brigades” on the other side. The “White Terror” may have been ultimately more effective than the “Red Terror” that proceeded and provoked it; but both were equally brutal, equally random, and equally evil. For every Guernica there is a Paracuellos. For every Lorca there is a Maetzu. The Republicans were NOT doomed romantic idealists, they were murderous Stalinists, Trotskyites and Anarchists; and they had as much (or more) innocent blood on their hands as the Francoists and Fascists that murdered them did. This was clear at the time, but the new materials that became accessible after the fall of the USSR removed any and all doubt about the issue. To state otherwise is simply factually inaccurate.

Given the above, you learn everything you need to know about this book when the author refers to “the mass political democracy” set in motion by “the Russian Revolution”.

Anyone who can claim with a straight face that the Russian Revolution was in any way, shape, or form, “democratic’ needs to go back to wherever they attended college and demand a refund. The author going on to describe the Spanish Civil War a “Authoritarian against Liberal Political Cultures” reveals a profound ignorance of the war, (and most likely an over exposure to Hemmingway). The Popular Front Government was a creature of the Third International. It executed Catholics simply for being Catholic, relied on the NKVD to provide internal stability, desecrated churches and monasteries, banned religious services, murdered its' political opponents (real and suspected), received Soviet political and military aid, and shipped the Spanish national gold reserves to the USSR. The Republicans were many things, but “Liberal” is not one of them.

Nonetheless, this book proclaims Stalin’s minions to be liberal democrats, and then descends into the sort of dull, dry, and predictable academic condescension normally seen only in a third-rate doctoral thesis. That this white wash of the Marxist Republicans also includes a healthy dose of academically required anti-Catholicism is hardly surprising. In fact, as far as I can tell, nothing about this book is surprising, or original, or even vaguely interesting. (That goes double if you’ve ever seen a pre 1990 issue of PRAVDA.)

The narrator has a wonderful voice, and does his heroic best; but the writing here is solidly in the “look how big my vocabulary is” school. ( I’m in MENSA and even I have never witnessed “disarticulation” being used in actual conversation.) This book has all the literary style of a high school term paper, albeit with less excitement and more “buzzwords”. Given such turgid prose there is only so much the poor man can do, but he does his best and goes down fighting.

If you want to learn about the Spanish Civil War, avoid this book and get Homage To Catalonia instead. Not only is it far better written; but Orwell, HAVING ACTUALLY BEEN THERE, had firsthand knowledge about the subject on which he writing. Despite Orwell’s first hand knowledge, Ms. Graham has no reluctance in condescendingly explaining how Orwell is wrong, misunderstood what he actually saw, “overestimated’ the Communist involvement, and that Orwell simply doesn’t know as much about this as she does. If nothing else, Ms. Graham certainly has chutzpah.

This book adheres so closely to the old Marxist Party Line, (with all the inherent falsehoods and intellectual shoddiness that requires), I had to repeatedly check to see that it actually was written after the collapse of the USSR, and was not just a regurgitation of old Pravda articles.

My advice is to avoid this book at all costs. I’ve already returned my copy.

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