The Spanish Civil War
By: Stanley G. Payne
Series: Cambridge essential histories
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9781107002265
Subjects: HISTORY / Europe / General; History
Description: "This book presents a new history of the most important conflict in European affairs during the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War. It describes the complex origins of the conflict, the collapse of the Spanish Republic and the outbreak of the only mass worker revolution in the history of Western Europe. Stanley Payne explains the character of the Spanish revolution and the complex web of republican politics, while also examining the development of Franco's counter-revolutionary dictatorship. Payne gives attention to the multiple meanings and interpretations of war and examines why the conflict provoked such strong reactions at the time, and long after. The book also explains the military history of the war and its place in the history of military development, the non-intervention policy of the democracies and the role of German, Italian and Soviet intervention, concluding with an analysis of the place of the war in European affairs, in the context of twentieth-century revolutionary civil wars"--

"The Spanish Civil War was the most important political and military struggle in Europe during the decade prior to World War II. It not only polarized Spain, but produced an intense reaction among millions all over Europe and the Americas. The war was given many names. Leftists, as well as many liberals, termed it varyingly "fascism versus democracy," "the people versus the oligarchy" (or "against the army"), "revolution versus counterrevolution," and even "the future versus the past." Rightists and conservatives at different times called it a struggle of "Christianity versus atheism," "Western civilization against communism," "Spain versus anti-Spain," and "law and order against subversion." These labels were antithetical, but nonetheless not always mutually exclusive, for the war was extremely complicated and contradictory, and there were greater or lesser amounts of truth in most of these appellations, though some were more accurate than others. The war began over internal issues in Spain, but once all three major European dictatorships initiated limited intervention, many people began to see it as an international conflict by proxy. In other countries, attitudes were sometimes colored more by opinion about the intervening states than about the Spanish conflict itself, for the outcome was perceived by many as potentially changing the balance of power in Western Europe"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. Modernization and conflict in Spain; 2. From revolutionary insurrection to popular front; 3. The breakdown of democracy; 4. The military insurrection of the eighteenth of July; 5. The Battle of Madrid - the first turning point; 6. Revolution; 7. Terror; 8. A war of religion; 9. Franco's counter-revolution; 10. Foreign intervention and non-intervention; 11. Soviet policy in Spain, 1936-9; 12. The propaganda and culture war; 13. A second counter-revolution?: the power struggle in the republican zone; 14. The decisive northern campaigns of 1937-8; 15. The war at sea and in the air; 16. Civil wars within a civil war; 17. The war in perspective; 18. Costs and consequences: the long dictatorship.