Spanish Civil War Histories: Guides for the Perplexed

Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings continues his look at the Spanish Civil War:

Building upon the review of Mine Were of Trouble, I would like to offer a list of books to help cradle English speakers get a grip on the War in Spain.

I am compelled to offer three framing comments at the beginning.

1. First, works about the War–even in English–are inevitably politicized. The War inspires strong passions in the Western world to this very day, and the historians who write about it are no exception. Even the act of toning down one’s reactions and trying to assess the facts objectively, in a comparative framework with other ideological conflicts, is subject to accusations of bias. One is accused of (or lauded for) being pro-Republican or pro-Nationalist, pushing a narrative. And readers can be sucked in as well.

Raises hand.

The necessity for the reader is to recognize the historian’s biases and his own and to engage in periodic reality checks.

For example: is the author presenting one side’s atrocities in a different light than the other’s? Pro-Republic authors frequently have a tic in this respect. This is best seen in what I call “the church caught fire and the priest died” pro-Republic depictions of the Loyalist pogroms of 1936.

Thousands of Catholics–laity, clergy and religious–were targeted and slaughtered by Republican forces in the wake of the rising of the generals.

In a grand irony, this butchery turned the officer corps’ rising into a Catholic crusade. The initial proclamations of the Generals explicitly spoke of restoring order to the Republic and respecting its institutions, including the separation of church and state. And there really is no evidence that such were insincere. 

The massacre of the Faithful changed all of that, with Catholics of every class and region under Nationalist control becoming fiercely pro-Nationalist and swelling the ranks and resources of the Generals’ forces. This forced the Generals to change their tone fairly quickly: by autumn of 1936 the Crusade for Catholic Spain was on.

The slaughter is acknowledged by Republic-favoring historians, but it is often described in the passive voice, occurring as opposed to directed, spasmodic, spontaneous and unforeseeable–definitely not the systematic killing of Nationalist firing squads. 

Um…no. The Republic threw open the arsenals to anti-religious fanatics and what followed was entirely foreseeable. Anti-religious rages had been blazing, albeit at a much lower level, for months before the War. What did they expect when they handed the militias military weaponry and the color of law? 

It is true that members of the Republican leadership tried–sometimes successfully–to intervene to save people, and eventually the pogrom wound down. But this was due as much to the flight of Catholics to Nationalist territory and the sending of the fanatical militias to the front lines to do some actual fighting against people who could shoot back as to policy. 

Bottom line: watch how each side is depicted for similar actions. Because pro-Nationalists get their passive voice on as well.

2. Secondly, have a note pad handy. It is taken me years to get the names of the various personages straight. When you first run across someone who appears to be a major personage, write down his or her name and political affiliation. Gil Robles was not Calvo Sotelo–that took me a while, for some reason. 

And do the same for the major factions. Because, you see, there is usually a very unhelpful Spanish acronym, or a puzzling adjective before an otherwise understandable noun, which describes the welter of contending organizations.

Trust me: you do not want to confuse the CEDA with the CNT, the PSOE for the PCE or POUM, or the Alphonsine monarchists with the Carlist ones, etc.

3. Learn Spanish.

At least the pronunciation–you are much less likely to sound like an idiota. Canada and Cañada are…different places after all.  But getting at least a tentative grip on the language will help you see the mindsets better, too.

With those advisories in hand, on to the recommendations:

1. Hugh Thomas’ one volume history. Still the gold standard. First published in 1961, and considered fair enough by the censors to be published and sold in Franco’s Spain. Genuinely even-handed, even if it focuses more on the Republic. Which is actually fair enough in and of itself: the dysfunction of that half of Spain necessitates more words.

2. The Victorious Counterrevolution by Michael Seidman. Absolutely essential. It could also be entitled “How the Nationalists Won.” A searching evaluation of the factors that led the Spanish “Right” to win their civil war when similar forces in Russia and China lost theirs. 

Bottom line: no bleed-out from a previous war (World Wars I and II, respectively), better logistics, better use of resources, much less corruption and infighting. Nationalist soldiers ate well and civilians had a functional currency which meant they managed to do the same. Foreign assistance was not as decisive as pro-Republic historiography suggests–the Nationalists just did better with theirs than the Republic did. Alas for Spain, the regime would founder economically after the War and only start to get its legs underneath it with American aid and the abandoning of quasi-fascist demands for autarky.

3. Martin Blinkhorn’s history of the Carlists in the Second Republic and the War. At least you will understand how one of the major members of the Nationalist coalition thought and fought.

Go here to read the rest.  I agree with Dale’s choices and his general advice.  There is a great deal of drek in English language accounts of the Spanish Civil War, with quite a few authors demonstrating a very shallow knowledge of Spanish history and obviously recycling anecdotes from prior bad histories.  The Spanish Civil War had a very long fuse, extending well into the Nineteenth Century.  Indeed, a good argument could be made that the Spanish Civil War was the ending of the long Spanish Nineteenth Century.  Unless that period of Spanish history is mastered any history of the Spanish Civil War reads like a review of a play which is confined to the last act of the play.  It also does not help that the war was massively complicated with numerous factions, many of which are quite obscure outside of Spain.  Here are some additions to Dale’s list:

The go to man on the Spanish Civil War is Stanley Payne.  He has been writing on the conflict since the Fifties.  He interviewed many of the leaders of the various factions in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.  Originally a man of the Left, I think it would be fair now to call him a conservative, but what he is above all is a first class historian.

I would recommend his The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Communism, and for background his Spain a Unique History, which is not only an overview of controversies in Spanish History, but also a memoir of his life spent studying Spanish History.  His look at how the present Spanish Socialist government is using the Civil War for political purposes is biting and  incisive.

Here is a link to his books on Amazon.  Everything he has written is worth reading, and I read most of his work.

Anthony Beevor, although somewhat sympathetic to the Anarchists, did an excellent one volume history a few years ago which is superb about showing the military mistakes of the Republic.

The best memoir of a participant that I have read is Combat Over Spain by the Duke of Lerma.  He served as a nationalist pilot during the war.  Growing up in a bi-lingual family, he wrote his memoir in both English and Spanish.  His descriptions of life in Spain prior to the Civil War and during it give the reader a feel for the conflict lacking in other works.

Spain in Arms:  A Military History of the Spanish Civil War by E. R. Hooton is one of the better military histories of the struggle that I have read, but it is cursed by bad maps.