Antony Beevor covers the Iberian tragedy in The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

(C) 2006 Penguin Books

In 1976, only a few months after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, a young ex-British Army officer named Antony Beevor began working on a book titled The Spanish Civil War, the very conflict which had ended with Franco's Nationalist faction as the victors after nearly three years of vicious fighting with the vanquished "reds" of the Spanish Republic.

Beevor's book was published in 1982, but because it was written before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many important aspects of the Soviets' "internationalist" support of the Spanish Republic were not covered in depth, making The Spanish Civil War's first edition worthy of the term "a work in progress" even if the author didn't realize it at the time.

By the turn of the 21st Century, however, the Russians began granting access to the vast archives to scholars, researchers and authors from the once-feared West, and Beevor is one of those authors whose works (includingStalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943, The Fall of Berlin) have benefited greatly from the vast treasure trove of heretofore secret records kept by all branches of the Soviet government and the Communist Party.

Because the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Army's revolt was imminent, Beevor's Spanish-language publisher convinced the author to update The Spanish Civil War with new material based on the information contained in both the Soviet and German archives that reveal the extent of Stalin's and Hitler's support for the opposing factions in Spain.

Now bearing the title The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, Beevor's account of one of the 20th Century's cruelest conflicts gives readers a more complete view of both the military and political aspects of the highly ideological struggle on the Iberian peninsula.

Divided into seven parts and 38 chapters, The Battle for Spain focuses, of course, on the civil war as both a political struggle and a series of military campaigns; because of its highly ideological nature, Spain's internecine clash needs to be studied from both angles to be fully grasped by the reader.

Thus, Beevor gives readers a somewhat complicated but necessary introduction which delves into how and why Spanish society split into two diametrically-opposed camps: the highly-conservative trinity of Church, army and nobility that wanted to hold on to age-old traditions and power, while on the opposite side of the fence stood the modernizing liberals, republicans, anarchists and - in the late 19th Century - Marxists.

Beevor also points out how these two forces found themselves in a collision course after World War One as fascism began to compete with the Communists for power in Europe and democracy lost its luster in the bleak political and economic environments of the 1920s and 1930s.

This struggle between the extreme right and left was accentuated by Spain's particular cultural aloofness from the rest of the Continent, and the political instability of the late 1920s resulted in King Alfonso XIII's abdication and the formation of the second Spanish Republic.

Though it was democratically elected, the Republic was unmistakably leftist in nature and its policies - such as confiscating Church properties and attempting agrarian reforms that benefitted landless peasants at the expense of wealthy landowners - were feared and loathed by traditionalist and rich Spaniards who saw the Republic as a Western bastion of Soviet Communism.

And even though many army officers were eager to support the new liberalism which they thought would kick Spain into the 20th Century and bring positive change to the people, many, like Franco, Sanjurjo and Queipo de Llano feared that the "reds" would allow Spain to break apart into autonomous nations and usher in a new Dark Age of atheism, bolshevism and anarchism.

In mid-July 1936, the Nationalists attempted a lightning-fast coup intended to take all of Spain's large cities - including Madrid - under the control of conservative elements of the army.   However, the accidental death of the junta's nominal leader in a plane crash and other setbacks prevented a swift takeover, and the rebels, who would eventually be led by Franco - had to settle for a slow and drawn out war of attrition....a war which would be marked by German and Italian assistance for the Nationalists, Soviet advisors and logistical support for the Republicans, and cynical maneuvering by Britain, France and even the United States.

Though Beevor sometimes annoys the reader by repeating salient points within a chapter several times, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 is a fine example of modern historical writing at its best.

Though it's not as intricately detailed as Hugh Thomas' The Spanish Civil War and does not get too deep into the details of specific battles, Beevor's work nevertheless is rich in descriptive narratives and personality sketches.  

For instance, I found it hard to not flinch when I read about the ultra-religiously motivated Carlists' cruel habit of making their prisoners yell "Viva Cristo Rey!" while their limbs were being hacked off, or how Franco's Moroccan soldiers of his Army of Africa drove wounded Republican prisoners out into the countryside and bayoneted them to death in their stretchers.

Readers should also read the various reference sections at the beginning of the book which list all the Nationalist and Republican political parties and associations, as well as the list of abbreviations used in the book to denote them.

As in Stalingrad and 2009's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, Beevor manages to strike a fine balance for the "big picture" of high-stakes politics and strategy and the more detailed look at the human experience of the men, women and children caught in the maelstrom of Spain's cataclysmic civil war and its aftermath.