The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 |
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The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
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by Antony Beevor
Sales Rank: 26388
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List Price: $17.00
$11.56
At Amazon
on 6-2-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 560 pages
Published by: Penguin Non-Classics June 1, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 014303765X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0143037651
Book Dimensions:
8.3 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
Weighs: 1 pounds
Santos Juliá, El País
This book is destined for the first rank of general histories of the [Spanish] Civil War.
Rafael Nuñez Florencio, El Mundo
All in all, perhaps the best general work on the war to be published in the last decades.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Spanish Civil War (Paperback)
More political history than battlefield history, Anthony Beevor's recount of the Spanish Civil War is a complex look at the proxy war that took place in Spain just before the outbreak of the Second World War. A large portion of this book is devoted to the politics inside Spain both before and during the conflict, and the struggles within both "sides," as the political realities of the mid- to late thirties in Spain forced some incompatible ideologies together, eventually leading to the demise of the Republican government. The best thing about this book is that Beevor finds a way to break down the political struggle along three axes of conflict. While he often bounces back and forth from the battlefield to the political arenas while presenting mountains of complex information, he always finds a common thread and manages to pull all the facts presented back into the theme presented in a given chapter. Beevor's sympathies seem to lie with the Anarchists, though it seems that this is more a result of the fact that the Communists and the Fascists had foreign support from governments which history shows were less than benevolent. The Anarchist cause is typically portrayed in a more sypathetic light than the Communists and Fascists, whose aspirations were more totalitarian than the anarchists, who (at least as they are presented in this book) simply wanted the right to govern themselves. To his credit, however, he does not spare any party in the description of the murderous brutality between all participants. He takes extra time to explain the propaganda battle (a very important aspect of the conflict), from the atrocities committed against the Church to the efforts of both sides to win victories based on propaganda, rather than military, goals. Some of the political conundrums of Spain in the '30s are also presented. One of the most interesting is the plight of the Anarchists. They had a massive party capable of wielding immense power, but since they rejected the idea of elections, they were reduced to being bystanders in the political world. The compromises they made once the war started, as a result of the aggressive nature of the Communists (backed by the Stalinist USSR), and the backlash against the Communists near the end of the conflict, are a couple of the major underlying themes of this book. Beevor expalins it best when he says that "The Nationalists defended a common view of the past; the Republican coalition in contrast, had widely differing visions of the future." This is a very infomative book, and the reader will take a lot of understanding away from it. I would, however recommend two things, the first of which is to read and bookark the list of political parties and organizations on pages 285 through 287, before reading the rest of the book. The second is to take the time to write down the names of important individuals. This will significantly ease the reader's efforts to remember the mass of information presented. While this book is roughly 285 pages long, it is a very long 285 pages, as previous reviewers have noted, and is not an easy read.
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The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
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Price: $11.56
Updated on 6-2-2008.
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