El holocausto español

by Paul Preston

La represión durante la guerra y en la inmediata posguerra contada por el más prestigioso hispanista de la actualidad.

Durante la Guerra Civil española, cerca de 200.000 hombres y mujeres fueron asesinados lejos del frente, ejecutados extrajudicialmente o tras precarios procesos legales, y al menos 300.000 personas perdieron la vida en los frentes de batalla. Además, un número desconocido de hombres, mujeres y niños fueron víctimas de los bombardeos y los éxodos que siguieron a la ocupación del territorio por parte de las fuerzas militares de Franco. En el conjunto de España, tras la victoria definitiva de los rebeldes a finales de marzo de 1939, alrededor de 20.000 republicanos fueron ejecutados. Muchos más murieron de hambre y enfermedades en prisiones y campos de concentración, donde se hacinaban en condiciones infrahumanas. Otros sucumbieron a las condiciones de los batallones de trabajo. A más de medio millón de refugiados no les quedó más salida que el exilio, y muchos perecieron en los campos de internamiento franceses. Varios miles acabaron en los campos de exterminio nazis. Todo ello constituye lo que a mi juicio puede llamarse el «holocausto español». El propósito de este libro es mostrar, en la medida de lo posible, lo que aconteció a la población civil y desentrañar los porqués. PAUL PRESTON

«Debiera ser de lectura obligada no solo para los interesados por nuestro pasado sino, y sobre todo, para los educadores de las generaciones futuras.» Ángel Viñas, Babelia, El País

Genres: History, Spain, Nonfiction, Spanish Civil War, European History, Politics, Spanish History

864 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Paul Preston, author of Franco and Juan Carlos, holds the Príncipe de Asturias Chair of Contemporary Spanish History at the London School of Economics. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book, the dubiously named "The Spanish Holocaust," analyzes through a hard Left lens the killings of the Spanish Civil War. Unlike Preston's magnum opus, his 1993 biography of Franco, which while biased is a classic work worth reading, this book is a work of unhinged propaganda, designed to whitewash and excuse all Republican killing, and to magnify the horror of all Nationalist killing. It is pure propaganda, and a pack of lies, by commission and omission.

Words such as “savage” and “vicious” appear with metronomic regularity, never once applied to Republicans. The default mode is the passive voice when, infrequently, Republican killings are described, always in the context of excusing them. Preston makes truly ludicrous claims, such as that during the entire Civil War, there took place (he cannot bring himself to use the word “rape” by Republicans) “the sexual molestation of around one dozen nuns and the deaths of 296,” a low toll he attributes to the “respect for women that was built into the Republic’s reforming programme.” Naturally, he does not mention the roughly 7,000 other clergy executed by the Republicans, except obliquely, without numbers, and to excuse them as unfortunate, but understandable, excesses by zealous heroes.

True, Preston uses the same numbers of total dead as Stanley Payne and other unbiased scholars; his fault is in propagandistic presentation and the use of anecdotes that are mostly almost certainly lies, not statistics (in fact, Payne uses higher numbers for those executed after the war, 30,000 instead of Preston’s 20,000). Naturally, he never acknowledges that had the Republicans won, they would have killed some double-digit multiple of that, perhaps twenty, just like every Left regime that has ever come to power.

There is not much more to say about this book, but if you’re interested, you might try reading Payne’s bloodless evisceration of it in a Wall Street Journal review. “Mr. Preston, rather than presenting a fully objective historical analysis or interpretation of violence against civilians during the Spanish conflict, is recapitulating civil-war-era propaganda. . . . Rather than implementing some radical new Hitlerian or Pol Pot-like scheme, the essentially traditionalist Franco followed the policy of victors in civil wars throughout most of history: slaughtering the leaders and main activists of the other side while permitting the great bulk of the rank and file to go free.”

You may like Franco; you may not. But this book brings dishonor to Preston's name, and reading it will make you far worse informed than before. Despite its offensive title, Preston is the equivalent of David Irving, notorious Holocaust denier--a man driven around the bend by his ideology and living in the resulting fantasy world, inviting us all to join him. No thanks.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miedo de la clase obrera a perder lo poco que se había conseguido durante la República; terror de la burguesía y los terratenientes ante la posibilidad de vivir en una sociedad más igualitaria y tener que compartir parte de su riqueza; pánico de todos ante los juicios sumarísimos, las torturas, las violaciones... Miedo, terror y pánico, eso refleja el libro de Preston y eso vivió la sociedad española, lo que la convirtió en un verdadero infierno desde mediados de los 30 hasta los años 80.
La tesis de Preston está clara: ante las reformas de la República (burguesa y socialdemócrata, implantada con calzador en un país que vivía todavía en condiciones semifeudales), unos quieren más y pretenden la revolución obrera y otros se alarman y se refugian en los militares (africanistas ofendidos por la pérdida de privilegios de su casta) y paramilitares (falangistas y demás fascistas) para dejarlo todo como estaba. Así las cosas, el levantamiento militar hiere de muerte a un sistema que no puede contener ni sus luchas internas ni sus enemigos externos, abandonado a su suerte por las democracias occidentales.
Preston recoge su propio trabajo y la tarea ingente de millares de historiadores locales, sin prejuicios pero intentando poner las cosas en su sitio, llamando a cada cosa por su nombre. Ofenderá a unos "por remover el pasado" y a otros "por manchar el nombre de la causa republicana", pero unos y otros deberían leerle y quizás empezar a limpiar esa herida tan mal cerrada durante la Transición, aunque duela, y ciertamente la lectura duele...

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain, by Paul Preston, is a blow by blow account of the atrocities commuted by both rebel and Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War in the mid-1930's. The book starts off chronicling early unrest pre-Civil War, where fascist/monarchist elements on one hand, and anarcho-communists on the other, assassinated journalists, politicians and others that were opposed to their cause. Fascist elements in the Spanish Army and the paramilitary Civil Guard and Assault Guard units had their beginnings in the Moroccan colonial conflict in the 1920's, where Spanish troops violently and bloodily murdered Moroccan tribes-people in a colonial conflict. Big regime players like Mola and Franco had their start in this conflict. Fascist elements were heavily supported by military and police officials, landowners and aristocrats and the rural middle class. These groups were often worried about Republican laws targeting their business interests and jobs. Indeed in the lead up to the Civil War, Republican politicians sought to redistribute land to the rural poor, shake up the military institutions, and heavily tax the wealthy and middle class to better distribute income. Republican politicians were often influenced by Socialist ideals, and looked closely at the USSR and other Socialist/Communist nations as influences. Republican interests were best supported by the urban working class, and local politicians, trade unions and intelligentsia.

This split in society led to a growing movement in the right wing to overthrow the Republican government and establish a dictatorship. Right Wing elements began to organize early in the 1930's, and attempted to cause unrest in the countryside. They were often successful in infiltrating the local Civil Guard, and so when the time came for rebellion, right wing elements could simply walk into town in some areas and be welcomed without a fight. This was especially true in Granada, Old Castile and other rural regions, where right wing elements commanded the most support. Republican institutions were heavily supported in urbanized areas, as well as autonomous Catalonia. The 1936 war began when rebellious troops on the mainland and in Morocco began seizing towns in the south of Spain. This quickly spread north through the country side, and Republican forces were easily thrown aside in Castile, the North and in Galicia. Republican forces put up fierce resistance in Catalonia and around Madrid.

This war was characterized by extra-judicial killings, executions and torture on both sides. Extremist forces both on the right in the form of Fascist paramilitary groups, and on the left as Anarchists, both saw immediate extermination of the enemy as a way to radically change the make-up of Spanish society. Assassinations and executions of journalist, politicians and notable figures was rife. Groups taking control of regions from the enemy often took revenge on the local populace, raping women and killing men without any consideration for fair trial. Right Wing groups took this as policy, and Preston shows documentation where higher ups in the Rebel forces encouraged their commanders to spread terror throughout the regions they controlled, and to stamp out any resistance harshly. Republican forces, on the other hand, were much more rag-tag, and although edicts were passed condemning mass murder and violent reprisals, these were often ignored. Even so, the number of atrocities committed was much higher on the Rebel side, as these groups had institutionalized violence. Rebel forces had a heavy respect for Nazi German and Fascist Italian ideologies, and received support from these nations in their war, with German pilots infamously destroying the town of Guernica in a bombing raid. The Republican side received support from the USSR, and individuals trained by Soviet agents, grouped as the Checa, would stamp out political enemies in extra-judicial killings.

In many regions of Spain, reprisals and killings wiped out thousands of people. The final count for those murdered during the war is not known fully, but estimates suggest at least tens of thousands were killed outside combat in acts of violence and terror. The Spanish Civil War was a bloody affair, and both sides committed unspeakable atrocities against those considered to be enemies. Preston plays up the Holocaust comparison in this text, noting that those killed were considered sub-human. Landowner elements, for example, saw the rural poor as beasts of burden, and cared very little for their lives. This made it easy for rural poor supporting left-wing elements to be killed en-masse without any consideration. Similarly, extremist left wing elements saw clergy and landowners as agents of repression, and had no qualms about killing entire families in cold blood. Obviously, these stereotypes were largely false on both sides. Preston also touches on the support right wing elements had from Catholic clergy. Many firebrand Fascists were clergy, and Catholic doctrine mixed well with Fascism in Spain.

Preston has written an interesting blow-by-blow account of atrocities and reprisals from both sides during the Spanish Civil War. This brutal and grueling war saw a society tear itself apart ideologically, and the resulting blood bath was a precursor for the coming war in Europe. The book is well written, and extremely well sourced. Even so, the nature of the book - its detailed listings of massacres in this village by the so-and-so brigade and so on, make it a difficult read. It is hard to remember all of the events in this book, there is just so much listed in this exhaustive text. That aside, this is a worthy read for history buffs, offering a more realistic side to the conflict outside American volunteers and German Condor units. This was the real, gritty, on the ground look at the Spanish Civil War and the many atrocities committed by both the victorious right wing rebels, and the overthrown Republican forces.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In meticulous detail Preston compiles the horrific record of the Spanish Holocaust, where an elected leftist government was overthrown and its supporters exterminated community by community across the nation. The self-righteous murderers sound partly like modern Christian moralists, and partly like medieval inquisitors. Their conspiracy theories involve accusations of a Jewish plot to destroy Christian civilization, to bastardize the white race, and to sexually abuse children and take their blood for Satanic rites. These vicious rumors are basically identical to those that have repeatedly swept through Europe since medieval times, drove the Nazi movement, and animated the QAnon conspiracy theorists of recent years. The lack of novelty in this endlessly repeating rumor mill is stunning.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too often, I think, the histories of wars are written as if they were enormous games of chess: troop movements, strategies, logistical problems, technological advantages, and so on. My eyes usually glaze over when presented with such information, as I think why one side won rather than another is one of the least interesting questions that can be asked about a conflict. This book, however, avoids this pitfall completely, as it is focused on violence, not as a tactic, but as a weapon of terror—inflicted, not on combatants, but on the defenseless.

I found the beginning of the book to be perhaps the most valuable. Here, Preston charts the breakdown of the fragile political norms during the years of the Second Republic. As the new democracy struggled to deliver on its promises of reform, it managed to disappoint the left while still enraging the right. Within a short time, both sides turned to using explicitly violent rhetoric, and outbreaks of actual violence—street brawls, assassinations, and even armed uprising—grew increasingly common. Though the left certainly does not appear blameless during this phase, Preston gives the impression that the Republic failed because of the intransigent opposition of the right, particularly wealthy landowners.

I was greatly surprised to learn what a large role antisemitism played in the propaganda of the right before, during, and after the conflict. This seems quite bizarre to me, as the number of Jews living in Spain was and remains extremely low—at present, less than one tenth of one percent of the population. As often happens in the cockamamy world of conspiracy theories, all of the supposed “enemies” of society were lumped together, the Jews being linked with Freemasonry and Communism. The Spanish fascists were very much of a piece with their German and Italian allies.

When the military coup begins in earnest, the book becomes an endless list of executions and atrocities. It is an absolutely depressing spectacle: bosses killing workers, workers killing bosses, anarchists killing priests, and even priests killing anarchists, and on and on—the result of all of the restraints on a dysfunctional society cut loose, leaving only fear and anger. That a community of fellow citizens could devolve into such a bloodbath is difficult to understand. Most depressing of all, aside from the few cases of high-minded and heroic individuals—which Preston takes care to mention—there is little to alleviate this sensation of moral collapse. According to the estimates in this book, about 50,000 people were murdered or executed on the Republic side, while 150,000 suffered the same fate on the rebel side.

Now, it must be said that Preston presents this catastrophe with a notable bias. While describing the rebel side, he goes out of his way to emphasize the horror and inhumanity, while his tone is noticeably understated while he presents similar occurrences on the Republican side. To be fair, I agree that there is an important moral difference between the two. After all, the greater part of this bloodshed would have been avoided if the rebels had not staged a coup in the first place. And, as Preston strives to show, much of the killing on the Republican side was carried out against the wishes of the governing authority, rather than—as with the rebels—at their behest. In his words, much Republican violence was “spontaneous,” while rebel violence was “institutionalized.”

These are certainly fair points. And it is true that the rebel cause was fought to uphold reprehensible principles—for the sake of the monied class against everything that threatened the traditional order. Still, all of this is not enough to justify the sharp difference in tone he employs while narrating the warring parties. To pick just one example, he notes the “adolescent” behavior of captured rebel officers aboard a prison ship before telling of their execution—something he would, of course, find irrelevant when discussing the execution of leftist prisoners. And in general the executed rightists are never given a heart-wringing story, which abound in the material on rebel atrocities. His section on the Paracuellos massacre, for example—in which around 3,000 right-wing prisoners were killed on the outskirts of Madrid—is, somehow, extremely dry, as he carefully investigates who was responsible. No such scholarly stuffiness clouds the sections on massacres in rebel territory.

To reiterate, I am not arguing that both sides were on an equal moral footing. But every human life is equally irreplaceable; and it seems only fair that the innocent dead on both sides be treated with equal pathos.

Aside from this issue of bias, however, this book has few shortcomings. Preston is obviously immensely knowledgeable, and strives to cover the topic in all its depth and breadth. Indeed, if this book has any stylistic flaw, it is just that the narration is too relentless—never pausing to recapitulate, analyze, or summarize, but plunging on with story after story. With such upsetting contents, this does make the book a bit of a slog to get through. However, I think books like this are extremely valuable for revealing the inevitable ugliness of war—in which daily brutality makes human life cheap.

[Eduardo Hinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my entire life I've been hearing so many things about the Civil War in my country, until I reached a point where people of extremely opposite social positions were saying the same stupidities.

Then I realised I had to find out myself what really happened not only in the years 1936-1939, but also during the 40 years later and what means to Spain right today.

I started with Hugh Thomas's Civil War, watched "Memòria i Oblit d'Una Guerra" (series of documentaries focused on the place I live: Mallorca, Balearic Islands)

And then I found this book, and I saw the Horror. And yes, Conrad, your Heart of Darkness can't be compared at all to the real horror you find in these pages.

I thought I had to read to know what happened, now I know what really happened is so dark, so apocalyptic, so unfair, I feel shame of being Spanish, and at the same time I feel responsible to fight the ignorance and the voluntary blindness this country is experiencing.

Not only almost every single problem in this country can be explained through this book, it is also perceivable that the unsolved holocaust is an open wound, suppurating over and over.

Until this karmic unbalance isn't solved, I do know deep inside of me there is no hope for Spain.
And it hurts me deeply.

Brace yourself if you are going to read this book.

You have been warned.

[Natxo Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnífic assaig sobre el genocidi i la barbàrie perpetrada sobre tot pel bàndol rebel de la guerra civil (els que la història dels vencedors anomenava "nacionals"). L'autor fa una distinció molt clara entre l'abast, la motivació i l'origen de les matances d'ambdós bàndols. Els rebels tenien el genocidi planificat des de molt abans del "levantamiento" i el van executar d'una forma que recorda els pitjors holocausts de la història moderna (Alemanya, els Balcans, Àfrica...), sota els auspicis dels (probablement) primers terroristes espanyols del segle XX (Franco, Yagüe, Mota, Queipo de Llano, etc.). Per contra. els assassinats en territori republicà ho foren en un context molt determinat i provocat per l'acció del bàndol rebel durant la guerra, cosa que va permetre l'extrema esquerra controlar els instruments de l'estat. A més, el caldo creat el període 1934-1935 havia posat milions d'afamats en contra de l'esglèsia (que va triar descaradament un bàndol), els latifundistes o la guàrdia civil, determinats a continuar preservant l'ordre social quasi medieval que la República intentava revertir. Les ànsies de revenja es van posar de manifest quan un conflicte que podia haver-se resolt en sis mesos va durar tres anys per donar a temps a l'anihilació dels "rojos".

A banda, el rol de les institucions legítimes (generalitat, governs civils, ajuntaments), procurant preservar vides i patrimonis, contrasta amb el paper repressor, venjatiu i sanguinari de l'estat franquista i la seva Llei de responsabilitats polítiques.

Un llibre, en resum, que hauria de llegir molta gent.

[Julie Thomason · Rating 5 out of 5]

As soon as I saw this book, I knew I had to read it; I lived in Spain for over 20 years. I knew it was going to be a harrowing read; it was distressing and horrific in places. At times you were reading a list of assassinations and atrocities making it difficult to follow. Perhaps a list of important people on both sides at the beginning could have made it easier to refer back too. Man’s inhumanity to man is a terrible indictment on the human race; especially when done in the name of a peace and love promoting religion.
Being familiar with surnames, now realising where some of the street names originated - Franco’s generals, place names, some of which I knew well brought it home to me. His mentioning of the collective memory brainwashed by Franco’s regime rang very true, even now many Spanish people will churn out trite phrases that have no depth to them. This book was painful to read due to my own relationship and connection with Spain but it also made me realise how anaesthetised we have become to suffering because of how much we see on our TV screen. The Syrian people today are suffering in the same way in the civil war, the constant bombing not just the physical horror but also the psychological horror that destroys spirits. Worth reading as it shows the mentality of people who slaughter others because of a misplaced sense of superiority. This history needs to be revised because of the war crimes committed in the Spanish Civil War that need to be identified.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency." ~ George Orwell

I've read one other book on the Spanish Civil War, aptly named Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas. I found that book to be heavily favoured toward the centrist point of view, almost to a fault. Paul Preston seems to be very clearly anti-fascist but I couldn't read where his perspective was outside of that which I preferred to Thomas's approach. What Thomas failed on that I think Preston picked up on that being a reactionary is not about believing in a particular solution, but a realization by some of the complexity of their problem. This book attempts to explore that but does not offer solutions.

What did I learn from this book?

Fascism, at least in Spain, arose out of a lot of factors. Greed is an evil that drove the Spanish Civil War is what seems to permeate into what we know about it today. The greed of the "latifundia" is what many people, who know anything about the Spanish Civil War, but this does not explain everything. If this book is anything its an long, sad discussion on all their other evils.

Their racism, classism, xenophobia, outright fear which drove them to commit some of the most evil injustices in our time. I'm of Spanish heritage, my grandfather came to America due to the events laid out in this book. Our family were Catalan socialists, who fearing for their lives looked for a better life in America, and they found it.

One parallel I see in my country of America today and Spain then, is that Spain in the 20's was an Empire in decay. The latifundia saw their importance swaying, they saw their culture as they knew it dying, Spain's economy was moving on, the world was moving on from their way of life. Their reaction was that of fear. Of reprisal. Of racism and xenophobia. I cannot, in good conscience, read the events in this book and not see parallels to today. We do not read texts like these to feel better about how far we've come, but to remind ourselves how easy it is to fall into disarray. To fall for evil.

“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.” ~ Michel Foucault

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

You couldn’t seriously investigate facts about the Spanish Civil War until Franco died in 1975. Most deaths by fascist were executions of “those who resisted military takeover.” The Franco fascist regime was a single party, and it was called Falange. Records of repression were intentionally destroyed or sold to recyclers as bureaucratic paper by the ton. Targeted by the fascists were the Jew, the Moor, anyone with a remote connection to Communism or Socialism, or caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Here’s a lovely fascist poem by Salazar Alonso: “Get your weapons ready. Learn to love the metallic clunk of the pistol. Caress your dagger. Never be parted from your vengeful cudgel! The young should be trained in physical struggle, and must love violence as a way of life…” Enough of that, I’m sure you get the gist.

The (non-fascist) Republic gave Catalonia regional autonomy in 1932, but the fascists deeply resented it. “Terror was the chosen method for the annihilation of everything the republic signified.” “It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples of hesitation all those who do not think as we do.” “To be able to visit a grave, leave flowers or meditate …was denied to almost all the families of those killed in the repression” by Franco’s forces. Fascists didn’t want mourners in black because it might be taken as “living protest”. If your husband was tortured and killed, you couldn’t remarry since you weren’t legally a widow, and you no longer could administer your dead husband’s property.

Death squads “would recount with relish how prisoners had begged for water or how fear made them lose control of their bowels.” You could be taken away for wearing a red tie (how sad that didn’t happen when Trump was President), reading a Republican newspaper or even being an atheist (who knew ANY God liked fascism?). The Catholic Church and priests were known as being sympathetic to the fascists, and legitimatizing military rebellion (as if Jesus would) and were treated as the enemy in Republican Spain. 6,832 members of the clergy were killed during the Spanish Civil War. Anarchists outside Barcelona would execute anyone they thought was fascist, clergy, “practicing Catholics, landowners and merchants.” What a joy to be a civilian where (according to this book) both sides engaged in terror and extra-judicial killings.

Fascist terror techniques were first honed by Africanistas against “the subject population of Morocco.” Italians and Nazis flew planes above to help the Spanish fascists take over towns. After these African columns went through a town, “the streets were left littered with the bayoneted corpses of those unfortunate enough to be in their way.” “In all these towns, the occupying troops raped working-class women and looted the houses of leftists. Francoist officers admitted that Moroccan mercenaries were recruited with the promises of pillage and that when a town was captured, they were given free rein for two hours.” Commit any crime and simply lie about it to the British Press and you were home free. During the fascist takeover, “the screams of the dying could be heard many streets away.” These were “streets strewn with corpses and running with blood.”

Franco demanded strict control of photographers, even those on his fascist side. Finally a disclaimer from author Preston: “Leftist authorities did not have a program of extermination like that of the military rebels (fascists)”. Fascists would broadcast “edicts of pardon” for all those who gave themselves up freely, but those who turned themselves in were tortured and killed. Some Republicans were “tied back-to-back with wire, covered in gasoline and burned alive.” Exactly which Catholic Bible thinks this is ok? Some fascist atrocities were photographed and peddled as done by Republicans. “Gang rape was a frequent occurrence.” When the fascists took over Toledo, they went to the Republican Hospital where “they boasted of how grenades were thrown in among the two hundred screaming and helpless men.” Many men and women committed suicide rather than be taken. One sympathetic fascist (who knew one existed?) wrote, “we are turning into a people of murderers and informers.” In response, he was (not surprisingly) murdered by other fascists.

Catalonia falls to the fascists in 1939 which starts a huge exodus of Republicans heading towards France for safety. One officer said Guernica was bombed for the perceived crimes of Catalonia and Vizcaya. Others say it was a Candy Gram intended for those Basques for showing resistance. In 1937, Franco gets promoted to head of state as “el Dia del Caudillo”. In a speech, Yague charmed his audience by saying, “Do we need you for anything? No, there will never again be any elections, so why would we need your vote?”

The Catalan language was banned although it was clear “that many of the inhabitants knew no other.” One priest during a Salamanca sermon shouted, “Catalan dogs! You are not worthy of the sun that shines on you.” 20,000 wounded republicans were left in Barcelona Hospitals to certain death at the hands of fascists, as 450,000 “terrified women, children, old men and defeated soldiers made their way “through bitterly cold sleet and snow, on roads bombed and staffed by rebel (fascist) aircraft. towards France.” Babies died of the cold, children were trampled to death.” “Rural parish priests were particularly active in denouncing their parishioners” - so much for their Christian commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation. Franco’s forces enter Madrid, and the War is over; this was April 1939.

Martial law begins July 1936 and ends in 1948. Franco says his role models Ferdinand and Isabel in Fifteen Century Spain had shown the Nazis the correct path by their hardcore persecution of the Jews. Ex-Republicans and those in prison found themselves living in bleak poverty. “After all, all of Spain had been converted into one gigantic prison” or “cemeteries for the living.”
Here’s the diet at a maternity hospital in Madrid at the time: “The principal food they received was a thin gruel containing bugs and maggots. If the children regurgitated it, Maria Topete made them eat their vomit.”

For three and a half decades, Spain was reduced to just one story in its school textbooks, churches and media. Defeated Spanish lived in “internal exile” with “no public right to historical memory.” After Franco’s death quite a few were hysterical about empathic people “raking up the ashes” [in a parallel with how American Fascists hate the idea of Critical Race Theory wakening our true past].

This was a good book but not what I expected. I never learned how many non-fascists died in the Spanish Civil (who cares about fascists since violence is Viagra for them). The book is more about lots of violence on both sides, and little about the “Holocaust” I thought was in the title. I learned nothing about why Franco was such a douchebag except that he picked up this behavior early in North Africa when fighting. I hoped for a lengthy explanation about the Catalan resistance, or briefly discussing George Orwell, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and Pablo Picasso but that didn’t happen. Instead of a Macro view, this book is a Micro view. Dozens of little stories of violence from across Spain without offering the spine that connects them together. I thought anarchists in this war did some good stuff, but in this book they are reduced to monsters. There’s little in this book about solidarity in times of crisis and yet I thought that was Catalonia’s story during the Civil War.

Instead of this book, I’d recommend “Forgotten Places: Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War” by Nick Lloyd, “The Spanish Civil War” by Hugh Thomas, “The Spanish Civil War” by Paul Preston, and “The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War” by Giles Tremlett.

[Pep Bonet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrible reading, but one which is due for any decent Spaniard. Preston tells with a lot of precision and a readable style all the atrocities committed during and after the civil war. The distinction between the killings in the loyalist or Republican zone and the systematic war of extermination on the rebel, Fascist side is crystal clear. Difficult to read for any sensitive person, but a well needed exercise to not ever forget the atrocities planned and carried out by a confederacy of landowners, churchmen and military men who destroyed a country and guaranteed the survival of their ideas through 35 years of indoctrination.

Excellent book.

[Moira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely painful book to read. However, it is a book that needs to be read in order to understand the scale of the cruelty that occurred during the war and for many years after. It is a chilling read for anyone who has ever been a member of a trade union, a freethinker, a democrat or married to one. It helps explain the years of silence and indeed the fragility of democracy in the post Franco era. It will leave a mark on you as I am sure the recording and the writing of it must have done to Paul Preston. A harrowing testament to the victims of the Spanish holocaust.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm afraid I gave up on this. The reason? It’s just the writing style. It is so dense and hard to get around and get a good bite at it. And believe me I really wanted to read this book. Having read 'Blood of Spain' and Beevor's book on the Spanish Civil War I felt ready for this. But it’s just not written in a reader friendly way. It’s just one after one after one incident - its 120 pages till you get up to the coup. I thought the style might change after that but it doesn't - if anything it gets even harder to read as the atrocity level and torture mounts up.

I'm sure it is a superbly researched book.... but I'm afraid I just don't have the stamina for this right now .... and I've been reading it since it was published in the UK.

So for now I'm going to put it aside and come back to it later.

Well I tried again. And after another 100 pages I felt little change in the constant laying out of one further murder after another, of more villages desecrated, more innocents murdered, another rape and despoliation. It reads like a doctoral thesis with its depth of research and its lack of any sense of wanting to take a reader through a journey of knowledge or enlightenment. And it reads, certainly for me as low on analysis. The fact that it was published in English leads me to believe that there was a belief that there was a greater audience for this book than just academics and those that wished to discover what happened in their village, their town, their province. That Preston feels he has something to say. It's just like a gazetteer of atrocities with little attempt at understanding or explanation or analysis of what happened thereafter.

It is the most disappointing book on the Spanish Civil War I have ever read, and I really came to it hoping to find more explanation and analysis than this.

Perhaps I am doing this a grave injustice because I have failed to slog through to the bitter end. But I gave it a decent try and I am afraid that for me, this book is unreadable.

[Gabriel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a chef d'oeuvre, biut it is not a book one sits down and reads from beginning to end. It is rather as complete an anthology of fascist crimes in Spain as we may ever have, and should be dipped into or used as a reference work. Perhaps it should be used as a travel accessory. For example, as I prepare to visit the Basque country below San Sebastien, I learn of a Francist prison near the beach where a Spanish eugenist obsessed with "purisma del sangre" conducted "experiments" on Republican women meant to isolate "the red gene", and also studied, no doubt to his heart's delight, the "sexual depravity of communist women". This degree of obscenity doesn't wash out in a few showers of europolitics and of course it has been insufficiently addressed by modern Spain.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly depressing tale of the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. Worth reading for a reminder of 'man's inhumanity to man'as well as the tragedy of those courageous enough to stand up to blind class hatred and warped beliefs.

[David Canford · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first visited Spain with my parents as a child, it raised eyebrows within the wider family given that Franco, still in power then, was seen in the UK as a fascist dictator and someone who had worked closely with Hitler. However, it was the advent of mass tourism to Spain by Northern Europeans that helped lift the country out of poverty and played a part in opening it to liberal influences once more. I was also on vacation there when Franco was dying and remember that the hotel staff were pleased that his regime was coming to an end. In today’s prosperous and democratic Spain, it is hard to imagine what the country endured in the 1930s and the repression following the end of the Spanish Civil War.
The author catalogues the horrors of the war, resulting from those who opposed the democratically elected government's attempts to reform the country and lift the landless peasants out of dire poverty. Franco and his supporters claimed Spain was being ruined by Jews, communists and free masons. The same narrative as Hitler employed in Nazi Germany. Given that Franco allied himself with the fascists, if the war had happened a little later the ambivalence of the UK and France to the outcome is likely to have been very different, but it ended six months before WW2 began.
The war was a useful practice run for Hitler, whose Condor Legion perfected the ‘Blitzkrieg’, bombing innocent people. Mussolini sent Italian troops to help.
There were atrocities on both sides but by far the greater number were committed by Franco and the Nationalists. The book at times is just an endless account of rape, torture and summary execution, and probably not something you would want to read every page of - I certainly skipped through many pages.
Records of executions by Franco’s side were destroyed and bodies dumped in mass graves. He would also publicise photos of massacres and claim they were by the other side. Only relatively recently has the evidence come to light. The amnesty granted in the 1970s to get the army to relinquish control means virtually no one on the Nationalist side has been held to account for their crimes, although Franco’s body was finally removed from the Civil War memorial, the Valley of the Fallen recently, and Spain’s present government is pushing for a thorough investigation of all that happened, which won’t result in any justice as the perpetrators will now be dead.
After the war, Spaniards only got to hear Franco’s version of events - that he saved Spain from Communism, even though the government he rebelled against was not communist. Once in power he removed women’s right to vote - albeit there was only one party that you could vote for in any event - and restored the Catholic Church's complete power over education and moral matters.
The author's use of the word ‘holocaust’ is seen by some as controversial. It is thought a quarter of a million Spaniards were murdered in cold blood, as opposed to dying in battle, which is small compared to Hitler’s holocaust. Still, Franco’s troops summarily shooting anyone with even the vaguest connections to his opponents was brutal, and he gave free rein to his Moroccan troops to rape and pillage. It was ironic that he and his supporters, who so demonised the Moors and Spain’s Islamic past, relied on them to win the war.
When Germany invaded France many Republicans, who after the end of the Civil War had fled to France, found themselves returned to Spain for execution or were sent to Nazi concentration camps to die. Even after the war ended Franco continued his slaughter for several years.
The book is certainly not light reading but helps us remember what can happen if hatred is allowed to win.

[Wanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author of this 700+ page history of the Spanish civil war is the foremost scholar of Spanish history in the U.K. This book is not easy reading, in more than one sense. First, the writing is dense and chapters go on and on forever in unrelieved narrative for 40-50 pages. My eyes simply got tired reading more than 15 pages in a sitting. The editors at Harper should have advised him to make his text a bit more readable. Second, the book presumes that the reader knows as much about Spanish history as Preston, so he fails to explain many contextual matters and issues (e.g. difference between the various guards), while at the same time peppering us with a blizzard of names and places that begin to blur.
Third, the horrific circumstances in which many people, mostly civilians, died at the hands of Franco supporters, after suffering humiliation and torture, is so unrelieved that readers may feel overwhelmed by the cruelty of the events portrayed.
Fourth, I think that it is misnamed. One cannot call everything a genocide or a holocaust. And the Spanish civil war was neither. Cruel though events were that shattered this country, there was no actual plan to exterminate any one single group - except those "who do not think as we do."
Preston describes the absolute loathing that Franco and his friends (landowners, the army) had for the "lower classes" and he roundly calls to task the Catholic Church which had a near racist hatred for anyone " who do not think as we do" and whose leaders were hell bent on destroying them. Anti-Semitism abounds. And like so many fundamentalist, religious, fascist movements, women were subjected to humiliations, rapes, and torture that just made me cringe when considering the creativity of the cruelty that the Fascists, Falangists and Catholics inflicted.
One criticism that I have is that I think that Preston downplays the acts of cruelty perpetuated by the left. To be sure, they were not lily white and innocent of cruelty themselves, although the sheer magnitude of the efforts to suppress them has to be acknowledged. They didn't stand a chance against the right.
The book is meticulously researched and documented. There are 120 pages of endnotes.
All in all, I am glad that I read this book. I would like to sometime read one that tells me the history in a much more lively way. Tim Snyder's Bloodlands comes to mind. A history can be written well and engage the reader, or it can be a scholarly endeavor that speaks to other historians. While Preston's history will undoubtedly stand as the definitive one concerning the Spanish Civil War, its denseness and style will not invite the general public to learn more about this fascinating time in world history.

[José Ramón · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es un gran libro de historia, para iniciados y no iniciados.
El libro es muy bueno, por no decir excelente. Sinceramente me ha encantado, aunque me ha llevado tiempo leerlo.
Una de las cosas que más me gusto, es que considero al autor bastante imparcial, aunque si bien se nota quienes son las fuerzas legitimas y las que intentan imponer por la fuerza una dictadura militar. Hay que ser imparcial, pero no ser un ciego.
Debo reconocer que es una gran síntesis de los acontecimientos dentro de una gran carnicería, que fue la Guerra Civil española. Lo que me ha gustado más es que se ha demostrado que fue una Guerra Civil con todas las de la ley, donde los dos bandos sufrieron una historia negra dentro y detrás de los campos de batalla. Aunque como el propio autor demuestra el Bando Franquista fue el más sangriento de los dos.
No lo dice, Paul Preston, con un sentido revanchista, sino apoyado en toda una serie de datos y fuentes.
En ocasiones, el libro es un poco más cansino, por las grandes descripciones de los movimientos de represión-asesinatos que se dieron durante el conflicto. Pero pese a ese pequeño defecto, que puede causar que algún lector el libro le parezca más pesado, el resto del libro es magnifico. Analiza las causas previas al alzamiento y los motivos del odio, que generaron esa onda de violencia, que asolo España durante más de una década.
Además analiza como muchos de los episodios de violencia son consecuencia de actos de venganza personales, el interés económico por parte de muchas personas de enriquecerse en momentos donde las fuerzas del Estado no pueden garantizar el cumplimiento de la paz, el orden y la justicia.
Yo soy historiador, y veo este libro con unos ojos especiales, pero considero que es un libro que puede ser leído por cualquier persona que le interese el tema, y quiera aprender más de historia de España.

[Ian Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book while watching for the nth time Granada TV's documentary series on the Spanish Civil War, which was first broadcast in 1983 and can still be found on YouTube. I've been interested in the Spanish Civil War since that Granada series was first broadcast, and I went through a period in the 90s and 00s when I read a mass of books about the civil war and other aspects of Spanish history. In 2004 my wife and I bought a house in Andalusia and for several years we spent a lot of time in Spain and we were often surprised that even then, 30 years after Franco's death, no one wanted to talk about the civil war. There were no museums, no exhibitions, only a few scholars like Paul Preston keeping the flame alive.
The Granada series ends with an interview with an elderly Franco supporter. Throughout the series she was interviewed several times claiming that Franco stood for the Church, the family and traditional values and was a great man, but at the end she says her daughters had persuaded her to look at things from the other side and she had to admit that there was fault on both sides. That is Paul Preston’s basic premise. Some reviewers moan about left wing bias, but Preston does not do what some left wing historians do, which is to portray Republican atrocities as “spontaneous” and therefore less culpable than Franco’s more deliberate and organised use of terror. Instead Preston shows that many of the atrocities committed by the Left were not only well planned, they were also brutal and merciless and completely unjustified. One important point that Preston does make, however, is that Franco could get away with mass murder and still be described by the Daily Mail as “a gallant, Christian gentleman”; whereas the Republicans, despite being the legitimate, democratically elected government, were desperate to stop the atrocities on their side because of the bad press it gave their cause. And of course, the Left being the Left, some of the worst atrocities were committed by Leftists against other Leftists as in the Communist purge of the POUM in Barcelona in May 1937.
You do need a strong stomach to read this book. The accounts of the murders of women, children and elderly non-combatants are particularly harrowing. But so too are the accounts of the murders of ordinary men who were either doing their duty as town mayors or civil servants or army officers, or were trying to get a bit of land or better pay so they could support their families and their communities. It has often been said that Franco, with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, could have won the war in a few months rather than three years, but he deliberately prolonged the agony so he could grind the Republicans into the dust. Preston shows how and why he did that, with clinical detail in order to root out the poison of Marxism and other foreign ideologies. But he also shows that Franco was not just fighting “Reds”, he was fighting regionalism, especially in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The British right wing press had real problems trying to justify Franco’s use of bombing and terror against the deeply Catholic and conservative Basques! And the terror didn’t end when peace was declared, it went on for years in labour camps around the country where hundreds of thousands were locked up awaiting trial and execution. This included not just communists and anarchists, but vaguely centrist people who happened to have been civil servants or town councillors for moderate parties. When the Francoists couldn’t get their hands on political activists – because they had gone into hiding or fled abroad – they would take vengeance on their families.
It seems amazing now that the Francoists really thought that their brand of authoritarian conservatism, a kind of modern feudalism, had any place in the 20th century. Franco’s supporters claim that he did eventually make Spain a more prosperous nation, but in reality much of that prosperity was based on mass tourism in the 60s and generous handouts from the US when Franco was seen as bulwark against Communism. In other words, Spain benefited from the liberal/democratic world’s habit of doing business with dictators when it suits.
One interesting area that Preston focuses on, which is played down in other accounts of the war, is the maniacal anti-semitism of Franco and his mates. Weird, given that there were very few Jews in Spain at the time. Yet Franco and other senior military men swallowed all the rubbishy conspiracy theories of the day about a Jewish plot to take over the world, aided by Freemasons and Marxists. No surprise that Franco got on well with Heinrich Himmler and other leading Nazis.
If you are looking for a general history of the civil war, don’t read this book. Look at other books by Paul Preston, or Antony Beevor, or Ronald Fraser’s Blood of Spain, which is a general history presented as interviews with politicians, combatants and civilians on both sides. However, if you want to know what really happened behind the lines in the Spanish Civil War, and you want to understand how it fits with the tyrannies of Stalinism and Nazism, I recommend that you read this book.

[TIRANT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catálogo de atrocidades de uno y otro bando durante la guerra civil. Con una diferencia. Las del bando sublevado fueron alentadas, organizadas y ejecutadas por las autoridades.

[Petter Nordal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si tiene algúna pregunta sobre la violencia durante la guerra civil, es el libro que te puede satisfacer. Es bastante pesado, duro, leerlo, con 678 paginas, pero vale la pena para saber la verdad. Y la verdad de la guerra es horrorifico. Si, habia violencia por todos lados, pero al fin y al fondo, los facistas fueron los peores, alcanzando hasta 7 asasinatos para cada uno de los asesinatos del lado opuesto (varios lados entre si: Republicanos burgeses, democratas, comunistas independientes, comunistas de izquierda, comunistas bolqueviques, comunistas trotsquistas, socialistas, socialdemocratas, anarquistas y mas). Si los juezes de Garzon tuvieran interes en entender la situacion en vez de acabar la discusion, leyerian este libro.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unremittingly brutal no holds barred account of atrocities of this dark and morbidly compelling conflict.

In truth it is remarkable that Spain is the country it is today in spite of all this.

Prestons account as many others have said is very detailed , painstakingly researched and referenced one of the side effects of this however is that is on occasion somewhat turgid as a result. In spite of this I could not stop till I got to the end. Although the narrative is to a degree sacrificed for accuracy and a fair comparison of the two sides on balance this was a good call.

It is undoubtedly hard to read but serves a very important purpose, if you are not moved by this work I don't want to know you.

[Cristóbal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro genial que explica la verdad de España antes, durante y después de la guerra civil española. Con los motivos y los objetivos de la represión franquista y con las descripciones de las txecas.

Es un libro indispensable de nuestra historia para evitar caer en los mismos errores .

Gracias a Paul Preston conocemos nuestra historia más próxima

[Summerfire · Rating 1 out of 5]

First off, this is not a book for the sort-of interested. This is more for someone who is, I don't know, maybe writing a thesis or dissertation. There are a million place names and people that you will see once and never again. Furthermore, this is not a history in the classic sense. It's more a list. Important historical events are mentioned as a mere blip because there aren't numbers or murders associated with them. The death of Mola, for example. One line. I feel that that's a fairly important event in the overall scheme of the war, especially as he was one of the main drivers of the war and the repression, but he gets one line. Because he died in an accident, I assume, and was not part of this extensive list of murders and torture. The surrender in Madrid. Blink and you'll miss that it even happened as it was dropped in the middle of a discussion about something else entirely.

Also, Paul. My good dude. The sentence transitions here are abysmal. The writing is at times juvenile. "One example of...In an example of....Perhaps the worst example of..." Thank God it took me so long to read this because the problems really became noticeable when I sat and read large chunks at a time. If you take long breaks, you forget some of the egregious stylistic issues.

Also, he spelled one dude's name three different ways. Uuuummmm....that's kind of a problem. He was an important dude. He left out "war" in "Second World War." This could have been solved with better editing. I presume his editors found it as torturous as I did and fully spaced out at times.

The epilogue - just, what the hell. It's called "Reverberations" and while he does address the lingering memory issues of the Spanish people and the effects of forced indoctrination and brainwashing during Franco's reign and after, those issues take a back seat to discussing the /possible/ remorse of the rebel perpetrators. The wrap up was about a landowner murdering his family because he lost his mind near the end of his life. Which...ok. That's not the subject to wrap up this book. It was such a weird and jarring ending. Ultimately, I felt that I didn't learn a ton about the causes and effects of the war so much as a catalogue of horrors. I guess I should have taken the title seriously and not expected more.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5. Clearly well researched and very detailed but it just wasn't that enjoyable to read for me, I felt like I was forcing myself through it. It has very good reviews by the people writing for newspapers but maybe the writing style just isn't for me. It is very grim with lots of rape, torture and murder but the way Preston writes makes these almost repetitive and not that interesting to read about. I would not recommend this as your first book on the subject because it doesn't really cover the progress of the Spanish Civil War well and is just focused on atrocities. Preston covers atrocities by both sides but you can tell he favours the Republic (fair enough really), and in those chapters he focuses more on people who tried to stop the atrocities while in the chapters about the right he goes into more detail on the atrocities themselves. Preston clearly knows more than me, someone who is just reading a few books on the subject to clear out all my Spanish based books, about the subject but I'm not sure I agree with all the arguements he puts foward. In particular he says that decisions Franco made like focusing on Toledo first instead of Madrid in Autumn 1936 or not finishing off Catalonia in 1938 after the big advance there were deliberate attempts to prolong the war in order to kill more leftwingers and purge Spain but other historians (Beevor, Thomas) give (imo) more reasonable explanations like Franco wanting political gains (Toledo) or fearing a French military intervention (Catalonia).

[Clinton Sweet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looong read, very detailed. I was hoping to understand the Spanish Civil War at a high level from reading this. But found most of it written on the assumption the reader would already know it. Regardless, it definitely left me with the understanding the period was a terrible time to be alive for any person on any side of the many fences in Spain. And it now makes so much sense why Spain wasn't in WWII as they were clearly picking up the pieces post this mess

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Usually once I've finished a book I write a review shortly after, but I've been mulling over this one for a week or so and I'm still not sure what I think of it on many levels. It's certainly a tour-de-force of scholarship, and a harrowing catalogue of the atrocities committed by both sides of what was a terrible civil war.

Paul Preston is a long-standing Spanish Civil War historian, and in The Spanish Holocaust, he has collected together information about the many atrocities perpetrated by both the Nationalist and Republican sides. Most of the crimes Preston chronicles occurred during the war itself, with a short chapter on post-war retribution by Franco.

The revelations of what happened are truly shocking, and go to the hatred that was endemic within the Spanish polity by 1936, exacerbated by a history of repression that had existed in the country for decades before. The Spanish Holocaust assumes a knowledge not only of broader Spanish history, but also of the progress of the War itself, and the depth of Preston's research means that many of the incidents he describes can turn into a parade of names, times, and places that become confusing.

There is also a strange bias in Preston's book - for this reader anyway. While there is no doubt that the Nationalist side committed more barbarities than the Republican side, Preston continually excuses the Republican crimes, while excoriating the Nationalists every time. This obvious bias - which extends to Preston writing that anti-Republicans should have known that Largo Caballero's threat of revolution was an empty one, and therefore not have staged the coup (why they should have known that is never explained) - colours what is otherwise an excellent book.

From the detailed descriptions of the crimes of both sides, the reader can draw some conclusions about the wider war. The Nationalists, under Mola and Franco, were absolutely ruthless. They let nothing stand in the way of their conquest of Spain, gathering any forces that might be useful to them, which meant the landowners, the Church, business and of course the army. What did they want? They wanted to go back to a time before democracy and the republic, when their groups had total sway over society - so they effectively sold their souls to Franco, who not only destroyed any opposition, perceived or real, but double-crossed most of these allies by taking control himself.

The Church in particular played a murky role in the putsch and war that followed: while there were some religious who tried to minimize the violence and suffering, much of the Church hierarchy encouraged and enabled the Nationalists in their rampage across the country. Some priests even took part in the murders and fighting.

In contrast to the single-mindedness of the Nationalist forces, the Republican side was doomed from the start owing to the fractiousness of the varied groups that comprised the Popular Front. The main protagonists, the forces of the Anarchists and Communists, were at odds with each other, and often literally at each other's throats. The more moderate Republicans were squeezed in the middle. While the Nationalists had one aim - to crush the forces of the Republic, and the Republic itself, the Republican forces were not only resisting Franco, but trying to bring a social revolution to the country at the same time. This led to a dispersal of effort that was fatal to their cause. The only reason the war lasted as long as it did was that the Nationalist side not only wanted to win a military victory, but also crush the Republican spirit for generations to come.

This book is very hard to read, a grueling trawl through horrors that can be hard to credit, and that emphasize the hatred that existed between sections of Spanish society at that time. Preston has used much recent scholarship to show us in great detail the machinations of the terror that descended from 1936 up until the early 1950s. This book will be a resource for many years to come for those with an interest in the Spanish Civil War, despite the curious bias that comes no doubt from Preston's anguish at the horrors inflicted on all by the decision to overthrow a government.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense and harrowing book about the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. Whilst not excusing atrocities on the Republican side they are dwarfed by those perpetrated by Franco and his fascist henchmen. Franco’s brutal use of terror by his troops against the civilian population was huge in scale and severity. Murder, torture, rape and slave camps were the tools of oppression to ensure the ‘left’ would never have the temerity to rise again and challenge the power of the nobility and the Church.
Preston painstakingly catalogues the excesses and doesn’t spare the reader from the awful truth that western democracies stood by whilst a whole sector of society was exterminated.
Britain played a shameful part by transporting Franco back to Spain illegally and the Luftwaffe aided Franco by extensive bombing of civilian targets, thereby fine tuning a tactic they would use in the upcoming World War.

I have only given the book 4 stars not through any fault of the author but because this unremitting story of barbarism became too horrific to process and left me feeling drained. This book should be read to show how fascistic appeals to patriotism and calls for racial purity actually turn out. It’s a warning to us all

[Hidde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Preston’s "The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain" takes readers through the years leading up to, during, and immediately after the Spanish Civil War, exploring key events of the war and their broader contexts. The book delves into the political and military dynamics that shaped the conflict, describing the ideologies and motivations behind the violence.

Chapter 1 sets the stage, detailing Spain's transition from monarchy to the left-leaning Second Republic in 1931. This shift triggered fierce opposition from right-wing elites and the Catholic Church, who saw the Republic as a threat. Fearing the loss of their power, right-wing groups resorted to violence to suppress the left, which aimed to transform the capitalist economy. They also claimed to defend traditional Christian values, the monarchy, and the interests of landowners, all in opposition to what they called 'Marxism' and 'los Rojos' (the Reds).
Chapter 2 explores right-wing propaganda, including the belief in a 'Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik plot’ to destroy Spain. The antisemitic text ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ was widely read among Spanish fascists, 'justifying' the extermination of leftists, who they believed were linked to the plot. Additionally, the propaganda depicted the leftist working class as a ‘colonial race,’ equating them with the colonized peoples of the Moroccan Rif, who had been treated with brutality by the Spanish African Army in the years prior. Eventually, this same army would apply the same tactics to Spanish leftists, as "the cruelty and savagery of the Moroccan wars was imported into Spain and used against the working class" (p. 23).
Chapter 4 describes the 1936 election of the leftist Popular Front, which sought to break up wealth concentration. In response, the military and right-wing groups – who called themselves ‘Nationalists’ – launched a coup to overthrow the government and establish a fascist dictatorship.
Chapters 5-7 focus on the campaign of ‘social cleansing’ that followed. Preston details how up to 50,000 Republicans and anarchists, the vast majority of them civilians, were systematically murdered by Nationalist forces. The Nationalists justified this violence as retaliation for the executions of right-wing supporters and priests, but Preston argues that their response was extremely disproportionate to the Republican violence they claimed to be retaliating against.
Chapters 8 and 9 provide examples of such Republican violence in Madrid, where leftist factions executed suspected Nationalist sympathizers – ‘fifth-columnists’ – during the three-year-long Nationalist siege of the city. Atrocities like these violated the 'rules of war,' as the atrocities committed by the Nationalists also did. In the town Badajoz, for example, Franco’s forces executed around 1,000 unarmed prisoners and civilians, as described in Chapter 10.
Chapter 11 explores infighting among leftist factions, particularly between anarchists and other groups who feared infiltration into anarchist factions by covert Nationalists and criminals. Tensions also arose over the anarchists’ rejection of state organization, clashing with the state-centered social-democrats and communists.
Chapters 12 and 13 describe how the Nationalists treated defeated Republicans after the war. They divided Republicans into those deemed ‘beyond redemption’ and those ‘capable of repentance’. The former were executed as part of a purge intended to 'eradicate communism,' leading to the deaths of many innocents.

Franco's emphasis on revenge over reconciliation stood in contrast to the Christian values that Nationalists claimed to uphold. It would have been informative if Preston had also explored the possible inner contradictions of Nationalists who committed atrocities in the name of God. While they claimed to defend Christianity, they failed to uphold its principles of forgiveness and non-killing. Preston does not explore to what extent the Nationalists' claim to protect religion was simply a narrative aimed at preserving their economic power. Franco stated, “this war is a frontier war, and its fronts are socialism, communism, and whatever attacks civilization in order to replace it with barbarism” (p. 83). But did he see ‘barbarism’ as a threat primarily because of its anti-clericalism, or was the real danger its potential to disrupt the existing economic order?

Preston's narrative effectively portrays the Nationalists as the ‘bad guys’ by presenting well-supported evidence of the war's actual events. Nationalists clearly were the primary perpetrators of violence – not only in terms of the number of people they killed, but also in the methods they used. They sought to systematically annihilate the working-class left, whom they regarded as a ‘subhuman race.’ This ideology, coupled with the actual killing of up to 150,000 by the Nationalists, justifies the title of the book, ‘The Spanish Holocaust’. The Nationalist leaders aimed to ‘cleanse’ society of both ideological and 'racial' impurities, while also embracing the belief that the working-class revolution was part of a ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’ plot to disrupt the traditional social order. For them, as for the Nazis who committed genocide against Jews and others, the ‘solution’ was the physical extermination of that perceived threat.

Unfortunately, Preston largely ignores the international and geopolitical dimensions of the war, such as the actual involvement of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union. These international actors are mentioned only briefly, without an in-depth exploration of their motivations or impact. Additionally, despite being published in 2011, the book does not address the long-term effects of the war on Spanish historical memory culture. Preston does not mention whether or how the events of the Civil War continue to shape Spanish politics and discourse today. However, given his focus on the immediate situation on the ground at the time, these omissions are forgivable.

[Liam Ostermann]

This is only the beginning of review of this five star plus book but I can't help commenting on how both this Paul Preston book and his History Spanish Civil War both have leading reviews by people determined to defend Franco and denigrate the losers in the Spanish Civil War. As a result I am going to like as many reviews which award this book five stars and I strongly suggest everyone else does the same. Because the reviewers like the one I mention, I have no intention of giving him any publicity, are like those reviewers who latch onto books about Hitler to remind everyone that Hitler lead the Nazis and they were National 'Socialists' so were really left wingers, like Communists, so the holocaust is a left wing crime, if it happened, and nothing to do with patriots, wearing sheets, burning crosses or lynching people.