Product Description

The bestselling author of STALINGRAD and BERLIN: THE DOWNFALL on the Spanish Civil War, drawing on masses of newly discovered material from the Spanish, Russian and German archives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9187 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 648 pages

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• New
• Mint Condition
• Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon
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Review
'exhaustive and admirably clear account.' (THE SUNDAY TIMES )

'the definitive book on the subject.' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

Max Hastings, THE SUNDAY TIMES
'Fascination lies in the human drama, superbly captured by Beevor... a vivid chronicle of a dreadful time and place.'

Andrew Roberts, THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'he is also very good on the political manoeuvrings of this most intenseley ideological of conflicts.'

Customer Reviews

Best book on the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War is often poorly understood, indeed misunderstood, firstly because of its complexity (as Antony Beevor makes clear there were multiple conflicts going on at different levels, not least the strife between different Republican groups which weakened the Republican government fatally), secondly because most of us outside Spain know about the war from those who fought on the Republican side and subsequently wrote about it (best known of whom is of course George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia).

Antony Beevor cuts through the confusion with a marvellously clear and concise account of the war, not sparing the reader a taste of how horrific conditions were in Spain for combatant and non-combatant alike. The introductory chapters on the state of Spain and the origins of the Civil War are particularly enlightening.

The book also makes clear and obvious why the Nationalists won - they were better organised, more professional soldiers, better tacticians - and had the support of Hitler and Mussolini, to say nothing of the fatal internecine conflict among the Republican parties.

Perhaps Beevor is a little sniffy about the non-intervention of the western democracies but how realistic this would have been (and whether it would have done anything to help the fatally fissile Republican cause) is to me questionable. But as Beevor points out, as the Spanish proverb has it, history is a common meadow in which everyone can make hay, and there is plenty of raw material for discussion in this excellent book. It should be read by anyone who is interested in European history, 20th century history, politics or simply those interested in how a country can disintigrate into such horror in such a short time.

The Spanish Civil War
Antony Beevor's (AB) book on the Spanish Civil war is excellent background reading on this rather tragic event in Spain's History. AB goes through every single detail of the war.

He starts off with describing the development of Spain right up to the `Rising of the Generals' in 1936 and follows this up by going through the various factions involved. There is also a whole section on the involvement of other countries - most notably that of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - in the civil war. When he covers the intellectuals' reaction to the whole event, I was quite surprised at some of the `nostalgic views' expressed. The section, which made me shudder was the book's section on the internal power struggle between the various Republican factions. A lot of this was a copy-cat event of the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. AB goes into quite a bit of detail.

I must agree that some of the battles can be hard to follow, but it does help if you study the maps quite thoroughly. But then again I think it would also help if these maps weren't all at the beginning of the book but instead put at the spot of the corresponding battles.

AB of course covers the nationalist victory plus the time after and he doesn't exactly mince words on the style of politics under Franco. But he also asks if a republican victory would have been the better solution and he does not give any definite answer except saying that a Stalinist-type communist regime could have been significantly worse.

All told I found this book very good.

Ripping away the romanticism....
This is a serious and scholarly piece of work. People of a certain age and political persuasion tend to view the Spanish Civil War as a passionate but doomed attempt by Republicans to maintain their democratically elected government against fascist forces. All that romanticism is ripped away by Beevor's book. His excellent research reveals all the ambition, violence and thuggery on both sides - as well as the idealism of some of the participants.

Few emerge from the story blameless. Franco's side is shown to be personally ambitious, ruthless and vengeful while the Republicans were too hopelessly divided to take full advantage of the situation and not helped by incompetent and short-sighted leaders who led their men into futile battles. The antipathy of the communists to the anarchists is well-known but Beevor explores this further. The interference and collusion of outside powers is also very well documented here. I hadn't realised that there were German arms manufacturers selling weapons to both sides!

The Battle for Spain does not just concentrate on the progress of the battlefronts. He also discusses frequently how the civilian population was coping and the terrible privations many Spaniards (especially Catalans) for forced to suffer.

The beginnings of the conflict and its awful aftermath are particularly well described. This is a brilliant, but ultimately depressing, read.