Original sentence: "  As Payne concludes, "The toll taken by the respective terrors may never be known exactly."  Describing specifically the "Red" terror, Payne goes on to report that this "began with the murder of some of the rebels as they attempted to surrender after their revolt had failed in several of the key cities." Hence the "White" terror was "much more effective.As Stanley Payne notes, "during the first months of the fighting most of the deaths did not come from combat on the battlefield but from political executions in the rear--the 'Red' and 'White' terrors.The Franco government now gives the names of 61,000 victims of the Red terror, but this is not subject to objective verification.The White terror may have slain 50,000, perhaps fewer, during the war.The left slaughtered more in the first months, but the Nationalist repression probably reached its height only after the war had ended, when punishment was exacted and vengeance wreaked on the vanquished left.The number of victims of the Nationalist repression, during and after the war, was undoubtedly greater than that
Edited sentence: In the Spanish Civil War's first months, most of the killing did not come from combat on the battlefield but from executions.Stanley Payne reports that "the Red terror began with the murder of some of the rebels as they attempted to surrender after their revolt had failed in several of the key cities