The Battle for Spain: The Spanish
Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony
Beevor
Making Sense Of A Confusing Part Of History
A fresh and acclaimed account of the Spanish Civil War by the bestselling
author of Stalingrad and The Fall Of Berlin 1945
To mark the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War’s outbreak, Antony
Beevor has written a completely updated and revised account of one of
the most bitter and hard-fought wars of the twentieth century. With new
material gleaned from the Russian archives and numerous other sources,
this brisk and accessible book (Spain’s #1 bestseller for twelve weeks),
provides a balanced and penetrating perspective, explaining the tensions
that led to this terrible overture to World War II and affording new insights
into the war—its causes, course, and consequences.

Personal Review: The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War
1936-1939 by Antony Beevor
"The Spanish Civil War is one of the comparatively few cases when the
most widely accepted version of events has been written more
persuasively by the losers of the conflict than by the winners."
With that comment in "The Battle for Spain," a revised update of his 1982
history of that war, Antony Beevor ("Stalingrad"; "The Fall of Berlin, 1945"),
effectively describes the state of its English-language documentation. This
has been, essentially since Franco's victory in 1939, largely the preserve of
Hugh Thomas and Paul Preston, both thoroughly competent historians, but
each (particularly in the case of Thomas) a strong partisan of the
Republican cause.
Thomas' encyclopedic "The Spanish Civil War" (1961, with revisions) is the
benchmark English-language history of the War. However, in a comparison
between the two works, Beevor's account scores highly. Thomas was--and
even after three up¬dates of his history remains--an unabashed apologist
for the Republic and (particularly) the International Brigades. His accounts
are formidable if for no reason other than the numerous footnotes that
begin with the words, "conversation with...." Thomas writes as a confidant
of many--if not most--of the leading figures of the Spanish Republic. Too
often, however, it appears to a reader that his acceptance of their
assertions was uncritical.
Beevor does not rely on Thomas' extensive network of firsthand witnesses,
but this does not seem to be a disadvantage. (As a practical matter, the
lack of such personal contacts reduces the incentive to write with one hand
while holding an axe to a grindstone with the other.) While he examines in
detail the political history and development of each of the warring factions--
and subfactions, of which there were many, particularly on the Left--his is
not a portrait in black and white. Rather, it compels the conclusion that
neither Franco and the Spanish Foreign Legion nor Negrín and the
International Brigaders were paragons of virtue. He addresses a clash of
fundamental values and equally fundamental hatreds, demonstrating, to
the extent that it is possible to draw a balance at all, that the quantum of
evil on each side was approximately equal.
His accounts of the battles, from the initial skirmishes to the fall of
Barcelona and the final defeat of the Republic by the Nationalists at the
Ebro, are refreshingly lucid because they generally avoid extensive
descriptions of small-unit attacks and defenses in favor of broader
overviews of the individual campaigns and their outcomes. (Of course, as
a military historian, Beevor knows what air and ground combat forces
actually do.)
Particularly worthwhile are the detailed analyses of the successes and
failures of the foreign participants: Hitler's "Legion Condor," Mussolini's

varied blackshirt and army elements, and Stalin's tankers and fliers.
(Beevor is at one with Thomas and Preston in providing an annihilating
assessment of Mussolini's wasteful and inept involvement.)
In addressing the uneven performance of the International Brigades (and
the dictatorial controls exercised by their political commissars), Beevor's
account is more realistic--and less romantic--than those of such famous-
but-dilettantish bit-players as Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, and
Stephen Spender.
He examines in some detail the internal left-right conflicts within the
Falange, a party generally--and erroneously--viewed as both monolithic
and a slavish imitation of the Nazis. In this connection, however, it would
have been helpful had he explored more extensively the Falange as José
Antonio Primo de Rivera, the original party chief, had envisioned it: as the
true "nationalist-socialist" party that the Nazis never truly succeeded in
becoming.
(The word "Nazi,"--pronounced "natzi" in both German and American
English--is the German spoken shorthand for "Nationalsozialist." The
"national" in that context is best translated in most contexts as
"nationalist.")
Put another way, José Antonio was no fascist. (Nor, for that matter, was
Franco.)
Beevor also rehabilitates to some extent Manuel Hedilla, the "left-wing"
Falangista who assumed control over the party after the November 1936
murder of José Antonio by the Republicans in the prison of Alicante. He
describes Hedilla's condemnation in a speech on Christmas Eve of 1936 of
indiscriminate attacks on citizens who had voted for the Republic,
explaining that many had done so merely out of "hunger and despair," and
noting that there were "right-wingers worse than the `Reds.'" (That, of
course, earned him the implacable--and permanent--enmity of Franco.)
Particularly valuable is his painstaking disentanglement of the fragmented
and complicated components--PCE, FAI, POUM, PSOE, UGT, and
others--that at various times and with varying degrees of competence
influenced the internal politics of the Republic. He goes into considerable
detail in describing the steadily increasing control of the PCE, the Partido
Comunista de España, over the government and politics of the Republic.
He comple¬ments that with a concise summary of the (far less
complicated) Nationalist structure: Conservatives allied with the monarchist
Carlists, an alliance championed by generals Franco, Quiepo de Llano,
Mola, and the enigmatic Juan Yagüe, a left-wing [i.e., more-or-less
moderate-socialist] Falangist whom few would, then or now, associate with
any degree of moderation. (At the end of the war, instead of naming Yagüe
Minister of War, a position for which he was uniquely qualified, Franco,

who never forgot anything he perceived as evidence of political
unreliability, shunted him off to the meaningless job of Minister of Aviation.)
"The Battle for Spain" is not an evening's reading, and is probably
not for beginners. It nonetheless provides a new and valuable perspective
on a conflict that was in so many grim ways a rehearsal for World War II.
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