Recommended reading on the Spanish Civil War

[Ironmachine]

If you are looking for detailed maps in Atlas de la Guerra Civil Española, you are going to be somewhat dissappointed. The maps in that book are enough to understand the general flow of the operations, but there is little geographical detail in them.

[Jazzeum]

If you are looking for detailed maps in Atlas de la Guerra Civil Española, you are going to be somewhat dissappointed. The maps in that book are enough to understand the general flow of the operations, but there is little geographical detail in them.

Do you have a recommendation then? Thanks.

As I said, it's better than nothing, I suppose.

[Ironmachine]

It may be better than nothing, but you can obtain maps almost equal to most of those included in that book for free in the web.

[Jazzeum]

Ay recommendations as to sites or is it basically just a site by site search depending upon battle?

[Ironmachine]

Googling about any particular battle (at least the major ones) will provide maps similar to those in Atlas de la Guerra Civil Española.

[Jazzeum]

Thanks.

[Jazzeum]

Here is a comprehensive bibliography of Spanish history posted by Captain Will, who is studying under Professor Graham, in the Shoot Hostages thread. Many thanks to him for posting it.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1 ... y=CP7gnN8F

[CaptainWill]

Cheers. Helen Graham is one of the English-language authorities on the SCW. There's not a great deal in her work for the military historians out there, however (and I know sites like these attract that kind of person like no other). She is a bona fide academic historian though - unlike people like Beevor, who I know she is not a fan of.

Her introduction to the civil war in the Oxford VSI series is a good, broad intro to the war itself and its immediate context and aftermath. It is also very short.

Other readable, general books on the subject include:

F. Romero, Twentieth-Century Spain 1898-1998 (very broad and has some of the late 19th century history required to understand the reasons behind the war.)

G. Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain. Travels through a Country's Hidden Past (Faber & Faber,
2006) [A journalistic book that attempts to look at the civil war through the eyes of Spaniards today, and investigate the long-term the war had on people]

A more specialised yet nonetheless wide-ranging book is:
H. Graham & J. Labanyi (eds) Spanish Cultural Studies. The Struggle for Modernity (Oxford University Press, 1995)

It is split up into parts, covering Spain from 1898-1992. Various topics are approached from different angles and treated in detail; the topics for the war period specifically are:
- Sexual Politics [e.g. how did the war change conceptions of gender?]
- Intellectuals and Power [ideological basis of the Republic, and its attempts to reform through education]
- Monolithicity versus Pluralism: Political Debates [the role of Catholicism in the Right, and Catalan regionalism]
- The Cultural Politics of the Civil War [propaganda, art etc.]

There are other interesting sections too, like on guerrilla resistance in the 1940s, and how those repressed by the regime dealt with their dire situation in that same decade through changing forms of popular culture.

[von thoma]

Legion Condor.jpg

Soldiers of Von Thoma: Legion Condor Ground Forces in the Spanish Civil War by Lucas Molina Franco (Author) and
Jose María Arias Ramos (Author).

Editorial:Schiffer Publishing Ltd; illustrated,First edition (1 Mar 2008).

Language:English

ISBN-10: 076432926X

ISBN-13: 978-0764329265

[von thoma]

Correction:Authors Lucas Molina Franco and José María Manrique García,with the collaboration of Raúl Arias Ramos.

[Sid Guttridge]

Just an observation:

My impression of almost all SCW books is that they are massively frontloaded. You can often get over half way through before breaking into 1937, let alone 1938, or 1939.

As a result, the military campaign is usually distorted, with the war seeming to end in a rush that leaves the bulk of the heavy combat under reported compared with the preliminary sparring of 1936.

I also get the impression that the Italian contribution is invariably underestimated. The CTV suffered only one set back (at Guadalajara), but this has overshadowed its wider contribution. The CTV and its mixed Italian-Spanish successors were near the centre of every major Nationalist advance to the end of the war.

If I knew a book that rectified these issues (and some others) I would recommend it., but I am yet to see it. Can anybody recommend a corrective volume?

[rob in cal]

Jose Maria Gironella wrote an awesome trilogy, The Cypresses Believe in God, One Million Dead, and Peace after War. One Million Dead is about the war. A very readable novel of the SCW.
Arturo Barea's biography, I believe called the Anvil and The Forging of a Rebel, covers the Civil War as well. I read it a long time ago, but remember that he was in Madrid, in the censorship department I think. I don't remember alot of details, just that it was very riveting.

[Ironmachine]

Arturo Barea's biography, I believe called the Anvil and The Forging of a Rebel, covers the Civil War as well.

Actually, it is a trilogy, of which only the last novel, called "La llama" ("The Clash"), is about the Civil War. The trilogy itself is what is named "The Forging of a Rebel".

[heimwehr danzig]

Hi,

For an interesting look at the foreign volunteers serving the Nationalist cause, try Franco's International Brigades by Christopher Othen.

As well as looking at the German and Italian contributions of large units, this book tells the stories of individuals who joined the Nationalist forces from various nations.

Also worth a look is The Real Band of Brothers by Max Arthur. This tells the story of the last British survivors of the International Brigades. It was accompanied by a documentary on the History channel entitled The Brits who fought for Spain.

For a general overview of the war as well as the political aspects and causes, The Spanish Civil War: A very short introduction by Helen Graham fits a lot of information into a small book, and is quite in depth.

I like the look of that book on the Condor Legion ground forces - one for my shopping list!

[Alex (F)]

I can recommend a book by Juan Eslava Galán: "Una historia de la Guerra Civil que no va a gustar a nadie" - the English translation would be "A story of the Civil War no one is going to like" or in more free translation: "An inconvenient story of the Spanish Civil War". The book is focused on stories of individual people and is mainly showing crimes committed by both sides as well as many absurds.

Here is the link (in Spanish)

http://www.juaneslavagalan.com/ficha.php?id=2