Book Review- The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor

 The Battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor

London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006                                 ISBN 0297848321

Those few of you who regularly read my reviews will know that I have a lot of good things to say about Antony Beevor's writing. Pithily concise, his narratives take the reader into the heart of the history he is portraying, condensing and analyzing some of the Twentieth Century's worst battles and conflicts. The Battle for Spain is a complete re-working of a book published by Beevor in 1982 entitled The Spanish Civil War, which I vaguely remember reading.

The Spanish Civil War can be a very confusing conflict and, in terms of its historical treatment, one in which much more has been written about the Republican side than the Nationalists. This no doubt has occurred because much more of interest happened on the Republican side than on the other side, which was pretty much a military junta (of one) from early on in the War.

Beevor is no different - much of the book is concerned with the political movements of the various factions that made up the Republican side: Anarchists, Communists, Socialists, and more moderate Republicans. He begins his narrative with a quick look at the rule of Primo de Rivera and the fall of the monarchy. He explains how the electoral system, favouring coalitions above individual parties, meant that the government could (and did) swing from one extreme to the other. When the Popular Front won in 1936, their rhetoric frightened many in conservative Spain - especially the Army - and this was the immediate cause of Franco's uprising.

As is well-known, both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany came to Franco's aid: what is perhaps less well-known, and which Beevor points out, is that many businessmen in England and the USA also supported Franco with money and materials, and the Catholic lobby in the US ensured that Roosevelt maintained the embargoes on the Republican government that meant they could not get the military equipment they so desperately needed.

The Soviet Union was really the only source of material that the Republic could rely on, and Beevor documents how Stalin extracted his "pound of flesh"; first by sequestering much of Spain's gold reserves, and then by infiltrating the Republican Army and Government with Communist functionaries. It got to the stage by the end of the war that only units commanded by and containing communists were getting ammunition and sometimes even food. Paranoia about "fifth-columnists" and the other political movements crippled any effective action that the Republic tried to take. Often there was fighting in the towns and cities of the Republic between anarchist and communist militias - even to the extent that units might leave the front lines to go and fight their political enemies. The military strategy of the Republic was corrupted by the communist influence as well, where the propaganda value of victory in large set-piece battles was more important than devising a strategy that would use the Republic's limited resources more wisely while keeping the Nationalists at bay until the wider European conflagration began, when the Republican leaders hoped that the democracies would finally support them against the proto-fascism of Franco.

The Nationalist side had far fewer open political sores - once Franco had deftly beheaded the Falange and the Carlists, he focussed on the complete annihilation of the Republic. He was not interested in a negotiated truce or cease-fire: only complete liquidation of anyone even remotely suspected of support for democracy was satisfactory. After failing to take Madrid in 1936, he used his army to reduce the Republic's hold on industrial and agricultural areas, and to destroy the military capacity of the Government forces. His allies were far less inclined to interfere in the politics of the Nationalist side, but Germany took her "payment" in natural resources from Spain's mines, and in using Spain as a test-bed for their new weaponry and tactics. Italy, under the erratic Mussolini, spent much blood and treasure for little return - in fact his excursion into Spain left him dangerously under-resourced to fight the war that was to come.

The Battle for Spain covers this ground well, and gives good descriptions of the main battles and campaigns of the war, which were mostly disasters for the Republic, and costly for both sides. The outrages of both sides are documented here as well, using material that has come to light since Beevor wrote his first book in the early 80s.

The confusion of the War, where the Republican side was simultaneously fighting a war and a communist/anarchist revolution for much of the time, makes any narrative history difficult to write. Beevor has done his usual good job in trying to untangle the horrible mess that befell Spain in the late 1930s, and The Battle for Spain is a recommended book if you want to know more about this conflict. 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell