Spanish Civil War

Introduction

It is well known that, like the Catholic Church, the military in Spain has long played a key role in public affairs. This was particularly evident during the second half of the 20th century, when a bloody civil war (1936–1939) resulted in a military dictatorship under General Francisco Franco, who would rule Spain for the next thirty-six years. Throughout his reign, Franco sought to legitimate the military intervention which had brought him to power by using history as an ideological tool of the state. The result was that the majority of Spanish historians fell into the role of a conservative and decidedly official establishment. The one-sided political partisanship of Francoist historiography was amply demonstrated in the early years of his rule, when official histories written from the victors’ point of view became the standard sources on the subject. Over time, the ideological tone of the military-centered official histories became less strident but was nonetheless still distinctly colored by the passions and deeply rooted political biases of the regime. Outside of Spain, the tendency to interpret the Civil War in political terms also dominated writings about the conflict. But in contrast to Spanish historiography, Western scholarship was not focused on the military side of the war. Apart from books about the International Brigades, articles and monographs relating to the military assistance provided by foreign powers, or studies which dealt with celebrated engagements of the war, no full-scale military histories of the Civil War were ever produced by non-Spanish historians during the Franco era, 1939–1975. On the other hand, reliable and detailed accounts of key military campaigns could be found in general works, such as Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War (Thomas 2001, cited under General Overviews). The demise of Franco’s dictatorship in the mid- and late 1970s saw an explosion of new publications on the Civil War. Yet, partly because of their ideological associations with the past and partly because they represented an outdated mode of historical investigation, traditional military histories did not prove as popular as studies devoted to local or regional affairs or to the international aspects of the war. Recently, there has been a resurgence of publications dealing with the military side of the Civil War. Most of the newer works differ from those produced by Francoist historians in that their overall interpretations are not being filtered through an ideological lens. Nor are they as narrowly focused on the purely technical aspects of military operations, as many previous studies have been. The greatest attention has been paid to struggles at the regional level and the impact that bombings and wartime conditions in general had on both combatants and noncombatants alike. Without making any claims of being exhaustive, this bibliographical article seeks to give the reader a sense of the broad range of sources which have been published on the subject since the outbreak of the Civil War and which can be used as a point of departure for future investigations. It is also hoped that, by being exposed to such a diverse and varied group of publications, the reader will gain a greater sense of how much historical trends and patterns of interpretation of a particularly complex and contentious subject have evolved over a seventy-year period.

General Overviews

This section lists general studies about the Civil War or Civil War period which contain significant glimpses into not only the conduct of military policy of both the Republican and Nationalist camps but also the extent of involvement of foreign powers. One group of works, including Adamthwaite 1990 and United States Department of State 1950, comprises edited government documents issued by foreign governments. These include special reports and correspondence relating to the types of military equipment being supplied by Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. The surveys Bolloten 1991, Beevor 2006, and Thomas 2001 offer highly readable narrative accounts which pay close attention to the military dimension of the conflict. Cortada 1982, a wide-ranging historical dictionary, contains numerous entries on key military figures and major military campaigns. Two background studies, Boyd 1979, an examination of civil-military affairs in the 20th century, and Payne 1967, an acute analysis of the relation between the military and modern Spanish politics, help to explain both how and why Spain’s military played a “praetorian” role in the 1936–1939 period. A balanced attempt to document the personal experiences of both Nationalist and Republican soldiers may be found in Fraser 1979, the groundbreaking oral history Blood of Spain. Blázquez Miguel 2003–2007, the fullest and most up-to-date history of military campaigns, by Juan Blázquez Miguel, has not been translated into English.

Adamthwaite, Anthony, ed. British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office. Confidential Report, Part 2: From the First to the Second World War, Series F. Europe, 1919–1939, Vol. 27: Spain, July 1936–January 1940. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1990.
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Intelligence reports and diplomatic correspondence—many of which detail the types of foreign military equipment being tried and tested on the battlefield—about military affairs on both sides is provided by the fact-gathering diplomatic officials stationed in Spain during the Civil War.
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Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006.
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A highly accessible narrative history of the Civil War. Though based primarily on scholarly secondary sources, this work provides the clearest and most comprehensive picture of military operations on both sides of the conflict.
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Blázquez Miguel, Juan. Historia militar de la Guerra Civil Española. 5 vols. Edited by María Dolores Tomás. Madrid, 2003–2007.
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A detailed and objective overview of the military campaigns during the war.
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Bolloten, Burnett. The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
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A penetrating and provocative analysis of the role the Communists played in Republican political and military affairs. In the course of conducting his extensive and groundbreaking researches into the subject, the author interviewed and/or corresponded with a number of leading Republican military leaders, including General José Ascensio, General Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, and General Sebastián Pozas.
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Boyd, Carolyn P. Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
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A discerning study of civil-military relations in Spain during the 20th century. A revised and expanded version—La política pretoriana en el reinado de Alfonso XIII—appeared in Spanish in 1990.
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Cortada, James W. Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood, 1982.
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Among the many entries are profiles of leading military figures and brief summaries of the principal battles. A useful survey of the general course of military events of the conflict can be found in Appendix B.
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Fraser, Ronald. Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War. London: Allen Lane, 1979.
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Based on the author’s taped conversations with hundreds of eyewitness participants, this oral history offers a direct window onto the personal experiences of soldiers from both sides of the conflict.
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Payne, Stanley G. Politics and the Military in Modern Spain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967.
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Important narrative survey of civil military relations in the modern period, with chapters devoted to the background and events of the Civil War.
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Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. New York: Random House, 2001.
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The most objective descriptive account of the war, paying close attention to the details of military operations on both sides. Originally published in 1961.
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United States Department of State. Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945: From the archives of the German Foreign Ministry. Ser. D. Vol. III, Germany and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. Publications of the Department of State, vol. 3838. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1950.
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Though these documents do not contain a great deal of precise information relating to German military involvement in Spain—such as the scope and role of the Condor Legion—they do spell out the economic arrangements between Germany and Nationalist Spain which were used to secure military aid for Franco’s troops.
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Primary Sources

Given the various ways in which factional rivalries shaped the fighting on both sides, it is hardly surprising that there are multiple narratives relating to military events during the conflict. On the Republican side this was true because the different political parties on the left did not share a common strategy for conducting the war effort. Many of the items in this section are also eyewitness accounts written by military leaders and battlefield participants. In varying degrees they provide a direct window onto various theaters of the war. Other works cited—such as Harold Cardoza’s published diary (Cardoza 1937, cited under Nationalist and Pro-Nationalist Personal Testimonies)—are personal testimonies of journalists and writers who, because of their political outlook, were granted access by military authorities to war zones on either the Nationalist or Republican side.

Republican and Pro-Republican First-Hand Testimonies

The following section lists the works of both foreigners and Spaniards, some of whom—such as José Martín Blázquez (in Blázquez 1939—had a direct hand in organizing and/or planning Republican military affairs during the Civil War. The prospective reader should be aware of the extent to which politics colored the perspective of these writers. For example, Bates 1937 emphasizes the strengths and successes of the military model being promoted by the Communists, while the personal reflections of Segismundo Casado (in Casado 1939) attempt to show how Communist interference in the military was detrimental to the Republican war effort. Communists and pro-Communists such as the authors of Líster 1966 and Modesto 1978 advocated a unified, disciplined, and hierarchical command structure under central government control, while revolutionary groups like the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo-Federación Anarquista Ibérica (CNT-FAI) (here represented by the memoir Mera 1976) were generally opposed to fighting the war along conventional military lines. Recollections of the war period in Rojo 2010 are mostly positive about the relationship between Communist advisors and Spanish officers in the Republican army. By contrast, the eyewitness testimonies of former Communists Valentín González (“El Campesino”) (in González 1952) and Manuel Tagüeña (in Tagüeña 1973) are highly critical of the Soviets’ predominance in the command structures of the Popular Army.

Bates, Ralph. “Castilian Drama: An Army Is Born.” New Republic, 20 October 1937, 286–290.
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A lucid overview of the Communists’ official strategy for creating a Republican army under a unified command structure. The British author, who was assistant commissar of the Fifteenth International Brigade, was instrumental in guiding early Communist efforts to gain a commanding position in the military structures of the Republic during the war.
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Blázquez, José Martín. I Helped to Build an Army: Civil Memoirs of a Spanish Staff Officer. London: Secker & Warburg, 1939.
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Offers a good description of the organizational problems faced by the Republicans in the early days of the conflict.
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Casado, Segismundo. The Last Days of Madrid. London: Peter Davies, 1939.
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A vivid recreation of events which unfolded during the final weeks of the war on the Republican side. At one time operations chief on the general staff of the war ministry, Casado was especially critical of Soviet and Communist efforts to dominate the apparatuses of the military. His book outlines the extent of their involvement from his point of view, culminating with the rebellion he led in March 1939 against the pro-Communist government of Juan Negrín.
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González, Valentín (“El Campesino”). Listen Comrades. Melbourne, Australia: William Heinemann, 1952.
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A Communist military leader who fought in all the major battles around Madrid. He also played leading roles in the Republican offenses in Aragon (1937) and Teruel (1937–1938). He later broke with communism and gained notoriety in leftist circles for his anti-Communist diatribes during the height of the Cold War in the early 1950s.
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Líster, Enrique. Nuestra guerra. Paris: Editions de la Librairie du Globe, 1966.
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A high-ranking Communist officer’s perspective on the defense of Madrid and other important Republican military actions.
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Mera, Cipriano. Guerra, exilio y carcel de un anarcosindicalista. Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1976.
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Eyewitness account of the organizational and ideological problems associated with the libertarian approach to military matters. By rejecting the “purist” principles of his comrades in favor of a more disciplined, conventional style of fighting, Mera earned the high regard of other Republican military figures.
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Modesto, Juan. Soy el Quinto Regimiento. Barcelona: Editorial LAIA, 1978.
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A personal record of the famous Fifth Regiment by one of its commanding officers. Modesto was also a key figure in the Popular Army, becoming head of the Central Army just before the war ended in 1939.
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Rojo, Vicente. Historia de la Guerra Civil Espanola. Estudio introductorio y edición de Jorge M. Reverte. Archivo Histórico Nacional: Madrid, 2010.
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Manuscript about the Civil War written from the perspective of a key military figure in the Republican army. Among other things, it sheds light on the conflicts between pro- and anti-Communist tendencies in Republican Spain. Though it was for many years held in the Archivo Histórico Nacional (National Historical Archives) in Madrid, Rojo’s unedited manuscript has been brought to light by one of Spain’s leading journalists, Jorge M. Reverte.
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Tagüeña, Manuel. Testimonio de dos guerras. Mexico: Ediciones Oasis, 1973.
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Recollections of the Communist commander of the Fifteenth Army Corps.
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Nationalist and Pro-Nationalist Personal Testimonies

Representing the kind of ideological unity which was absent from their Republican counterparts, nationalist military leaders like Alfredo Kindelán (in Kindelán 1945), Luis Maria Mezquida y Gené (in Mezquida y Gené 1973), Lt. General Carlos Martínez de Campos (in Martínez de Campos 1962), and José Varela (in Varela 2004) have tended to recall their wartime experiences in mostly positive terms. However, this has not always translated into fulsome praise for Francisco Franco. Writings by a select few of his former high-ranking officers, such as Carlos Blanco Escolá (in Blanco Escolá 2000) and General Vigón Suerodiaz (in Vigón Suerodiaz 1970), have turned a critical eye towards the caudillo’s conduct of the war effort, pointing out his shortcomings as a battlefield strategist.

Blanco Escolá, Carlos. La incompetencia militar de Franco. Madrid: Alianza, 2000.
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Contrasting his performance with his Republican counterparts, the author offers a highly critical and detailed examination of Franco’s military strategies during the Civil War.
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Cardoza, Harold G. The March of a Nation: My Year of Spain’s Civil War. London: Right Book Club, 1937.
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Admiring portrait of Nationalist military forces by a right-wing British journalist.
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Kindelán, General Alfredo. Mis cuardernos de guerra. Madrid: Planeta, 1945.
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A useful analysis of various Nationalist military operations written by the head of Franco’s air force during the Civil War. A high-ranking figure on the Nationalist side, Kindelán’s notebooks are remarkable for the critical approach they take in assessing Franco’s overall military strategy.
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Martínez de Campos, Lt. General Carlos. Dos batallas de la Guerra de España. Madrid: Ediciones de Conferencias y Ensayos, 1962.
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A personal assessment of the last battles of the Civil War from the point of view of a leading general on the Nationalist side.
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Mezquida y Gené, Luis Maria. La batalla del Ebro. 3 vols. Tarragona, Spain: Diputación Provincial de Tarragona, 1963–1973.
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Nationalist interpretation of the last major battle of the Civil War.
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Varela, General José Enrique. Diario de operaciones, 1936–1939. Edited by Jesús N. Núñez Calvo. Madrid: Almena, 2004.
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A day-to-day record of both civilian and military activities of one of Franco’s leading generals. Varela’s personal journal is supplemented by the scholarly notes of the editor.
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Vigón Suerodiaz, José. Cuadernos de guerra y notas de paz. Oviedo, Spain: Buenavista, 1970.
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Pro-monarchist general who served as chief of staff under Franco. His uncensored personal notebooks—2nd edition of Cuadernos de guerra published in 1982—reveal his reservations about the caudillo’s abilities as a military strategist.
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Secondary Sources

Works cited in this section are representative of the historiographical trends in Spain, Europe, and the Americas over the past seventy-five years. They range from the “official” histories produced under Franco’s dictatorship—Manuel Aznar’s triumphalist narrative of Nationalist campaigns, for example (Aznar 1940, cited below under Nationalist and Pro-Nationalist)—to nonpartisan studies like the ones produced by the British historian Michael Alpert, which provide a scholarly analysis of military affairs (Alpert 1977 and Alpert 1987, cited below under Republican and Pro-Republican).

Republican and Pro-Republican

Drawing upon state-controlled archival sources not opened to the public during the dictatorship, the pro-Nationalist historian Ramón Salas Larrazábal produced the first full-length account of Republican military affairs in Salas Larrazábal 1973. The unashamedly partisan study in Comín Colomer 1973 is typical of the Civil War studies sponsored by the Francoist regime. Works published in the post-Franco era, like Cerezo Martínez 1984, a concise survey of wartime naval engagements, and Engel 1999, a study of the Mixed Brigades, tend to be less ideologically blinkered and more thoroughly grounded in an objective empirical base. However, the politicization of Civil War historiography persists, as can be seen in Aróstegui and Martínez 1984, a pro-leftist interpretation of wartime events in Madrid, and Martínez Reverte 2004, pro-Republican studies of key battles. Outside of Spain, very few histories about Republican Spain have been focused on military affairs. Apart from Michael Alpert’s important surveys of the Popular Army (Alpert 1977) and naval engagements (Alpert 1987) during the war, most of the works about the Republican war effort are concerned with epic struggles like the sieges of Madrid—which is the subject of Hills 1976, a pro-Franco study—and Toledo, which is objectively recounted in Eby 1966.

Alpert, Michael. El ejército Republicano en la Guerra Civil. Paris: Libros de Ruedo Ibérico, 1977.
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The fullest objective account of the Republican army.
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Alpert, Michael. La Guerra Civil en el mar. Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1987.
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A clear and useful survey of a much-neglected dimension of the Civil War.
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Aróstegui, Julio, and Jesus A. Martínez. La Junta de Defensa de Madrid. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid, 1984.
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Up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the siege of Madrid which places it in its political context.
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Cerezo Martínez, Ricardo. “La estrategia naval en la Guerra Civil Española.” Revista de Historia Naval 2.6 (1984): 5–24.
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The author provides a clear summary of the different phases of the Nationalists’ naval strategy.
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Comín Colomer, Eduardo. El comisariado político en la Guerra Española. Madrid: San Martín, 1973.
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Classic Francoist study of the Mixed Brigades, which is marred by its narrowly Nationalist interpretation.
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Eby, Cecil. The Siege of the El Alcázar. London: Bodley Head, 1966.
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Objective recreation of the drama which unfolded at a crucial point of the first stage of the war.
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Engel, Carlos. Historia de las Brigadas Mixtas del Ejército Popular de la República. Madrid: Almena, 1999.
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Straightforward account of the Mixed Brigades of the Republican army.
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Hills, George. The Battle for Madrid. London: Vantage, 1976.
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A conservative interpretation of events which emphasizes the military side of this epic siege.
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Martínez Reverte, Jorge. La batalla de Madrid. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 2004.
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Vivid reconstruction of the battle based in part on archives only recently made available to the public. Despite its critical acceptance by some historians, the author has been accused of reflecting a pro-Republican bias.
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Salas Larrazábal, Ramón. Historia del Ejército Popular de la República. 4 vols. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1973.
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A Nationalist historian’s encyclopedic examination of Republican military affairs. Individual volumes contain useful documents—including maps—relating to the Republican war effort.
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Nationalist and Pro-Nationalist

Given the dominance of the armed forces in their zone, it is not surprising that most of the studies written about the Nationalists have been focused on the military side of the war. Military histories produced during Franco’s dictatorship—such as Aznar 1940, an official history—dwell on the achievements of the Nationalist army and present the caudillo’s conduct of the war in a favorable light. The individual operational studies in Martínez Bande 1978, produced under the direction of the Francoist military historian José Manuel Martínez Bande, provide a technical and therefore more ideologically neutral account of key campaigns. Reliable and mostly impartial assessments of Franco’s role during the Civil War may be found in the works of post-Francoist historians like Juan Blázquez Miguel (in Blázquez Miguel 2009) and César Vidal (in Vidal 1996). Outside of Spain, historians have paid far greater attention to the broader cultural and political context within which the army operated. The extent to which Nationalist military practices were rooted in both foreign and domestic cultural influences has been studied by Geoffrey Jensen (in Jensen 2002). Based on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Preston 1994, a massive biographical study of Franco, goes a long way towards demythologizing his role as a military commander. Seidman 2011 attempts to explain Franco’s victory in terms of the social and economic policies pursued by the Nationalists during war. The chapter on the Nationalist army in A Military History of Modern Spain: From the Napoleonic Era to the International War on Terror (Esenwein 2007) provides a concise summary of major military campaigns which emphasizes the impact of Franco’s decision to conduct a war of pacification and attrition. Blinkhorn 1975, a highly informative history of Carlism, covers the Carlist contribution to the Nationalist war effort.

Aznar, Manuel. Historia militar de la Guerra de España. Madrid: Idea, 1940.
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Official and therefore ideologically blinkered history which glorifies the Nationalists’ military achievements during the Civil War.
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Blázquez Miguel, Juan. Auténtico Franco: trayectoria militar, 1907–1939. Madrid: Almena, 2009.
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Judicious treatment of Franco’s military career from its beginnings to the end of the Civil War period.
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Blinkhorn, Martin. Carlism and Crisis in Spain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
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One of the best overall assessments of the military dimension of Carlism both before and during the Civil War.
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Esenwein, George. “Spanish Civil War: Franco’s Nationalist Army.” In A Military History of Modern Spain: From the Napoleonic Era to the International War on Terror. Edited by Wayne H. Bowen and José E. Alvarez, 68–92. New York: Praeger Security International, 2007.
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A concise survey of the Nationalists’ principal campaigns during the war, emphasizing the ways in which politics, ideology, and other nonmilitary factors shaped Franco’s strategy to defeat the Republicans.
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Jensen, Geoffrey. Irrational Triumph: Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and the Ideological Origins of Franco’s Spain. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2002.
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Provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural dimension of Spain’s military before the Civil War. Among other things, the author makes clear that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the nationalist component of Spain’s military culture was shaped by both left- and right-wing influences.
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Martínez Bande, Jose Manuel. La batalla del Ebro. Monografías de la Guerra de España, vol. 13. Madrid: San Martín, 1978.
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This is one volume in a series of operational histories authored by a former officer in Franco’s army. Each of these provides a detailed and highly technical account of a specific military engagement—the battle of Teruel, for example—or campaign—the theater of fighting in Catalonia, for example. Individual monographs contain useful maps and some reproduce field reports filed by officers on both sides.
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Preston, Paul. Franco: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row, 1994.
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Comprehensive but exceedingly critical account of Franco’s role as leader of the Nationalist army during the Civil War.
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Seidman, Michael. The Victorious Counterrevolution: The Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
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A balanced explanation of how the Nationalists’ strict management of food production, monetary policy, and social issues allowed them to win on the battlefield.
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Vidal, César. La guerra de Franco: historia militar de la Guerra Civil Española. Barcelona: Planeta, 1996.
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Based on a variety of archival sources, this monograph offers a critical assessment of the reasons for Franco’s military victory.
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Air Power and Bombing Campaigns

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War offered the Great Powers the first real opportunity since the First World War to test and further develop aerial warfare doctrine. This was especially true of Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union, the only major European countries which actively intervened in the conflict. Of the three, Germany’s Condor Legion made the most extensive use of their combat experiences to refine their views on the use of air power in tactical and strategic operations. The degree to which the Spanish war became a testing ground for the Legion (and by extension the Luftwaffe) has been the subject of a number of scholarly studies, the most representative of which can be found in the books and articles listed in this section (e.g., Proctor 1983, Corum 1995). Personal testimonies of volunteer German pilots who flew missions during the war form the evidential basis of The Legion Condor (Ries and Ring 1992), written by two well-known Luftwaffe historians. The impact that bombings had on military campaigns in general and on civilian populations in particular has also attracted scholarly attention. Though the boundary separating wartime military actions from civilian affairs had been transgressed long before July 1936, it was during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) that the moral and humanitarian issues relating to aerial bombardments were thrown into sharper relief. Of the many examples of modern war techniques which emerged during the conflict, the destruction of the tiny Basque town of Guernica in April 1937 struck most foreign observers as the first deliberate strategy of conducting “total warfare” by targeting civilian populations. Representative studies from the large literature which has grown up around this and similar wartime events are listed in this section (Cava Mesa 1996, Patterson 2007, Solé i Sabaté and Villarroya 2003, Southworth 1977).

Cava Mesa, Jesús. Memoria colectiva del bombardeo de Gernika. Guernica, Spain: Gernika Gogoratuz, 1996.
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Collection of eyewitness testimonies of the bombing of the town in April 1937. This research delves into the reconstruction of events and in the estimation of subjective variables of those who were witnesses.
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Corum, James S., “The Luftwaffe and the Coalition Air War in Spain, 1936–1939.” In Airpower: Theory and Practice. Edited by John Gooch, 68–90. London: Frank Cass, 1995.
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The author argues that the Spanish conflict was the first modern example of limited war insofar as the intervening powers operated under self-imposed restrictions. Corum convincingly demonstrates that this had a direct bearing on their use of air power.
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Howson, Gerald. Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. London: Putnam, 2003.
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Drawn from a variety of primary and secondary sources, this study offers a comprehensive and in-depth examination of the various types of aircraft used by both sides during the war.
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Patterson, Ian. Guernica and Total War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
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A social and cultural analysis of how civilians respond to terror bombing during wartime, with special reference to the highly publicized Guernica affair.
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Proctor, Raymond L. Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983.
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Scholarly summary of Germany’s military contributions to the Nationalists.
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Ries, Karl, and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War. West Chester, PA: Schiffer, 1992.
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A technical military history of the Luftwaffe’s role in Spain which is based in part on the diaries and operational reports of former Legionnaires and in part on key archival sources culled from the Archivo de la Delegación National de Servicio Documentales and the Servicio Histórico Militar in Madrid.
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Salas Larrazábal, Jesus. Air War over Spain. London: Ian Allen, 1969.
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A detailed and thoroughly researched study of the aviation dimension of the Civil War. Despite his pro-Nationalist bias, the author provides a useful evaluation of the role foreign aircraft—German, Italian, and Soviet—played in the military operations of both sides.
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Solé i Sabaté, J. M., and Villarroya, J.. España en llamas: La Guerra Civil desde el aire. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2003.
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A scholarly account of the impact of bombing missions on populations behind the lines.
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Southworth, Herbert H. Guernica! Guernica! A Study of Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda, and History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
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The most comprehensive study of the Guernica incident, emphasizing the difficulty of reconstructing events of the bombing due to the propaganda efforts of the Nationalists and their supporters, who have long sought to cover up their role in the destruction of Guernica.
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Foreign Volunteers and International Brigades

This section identifies works by and about the foreign volunteers who participated in the war on both the Republican and Nationalist sides. Items listed here are concerned with a relatively small group of individuals who played a limited role in the overall course of military operations. As such, the specialized and fairly extensive literature on them constitutes a distinct branch of Civil War military history. It is noteworthy that nearly all the books by and about the foreign volunteers have been written by nonspecialists of modern Spanish history who have tended to emphasize the international aspects of the Civil War.

Primary Sources

Because nearly all foreigners who fought in Spain were political activists, their personal narratives have been constructed around an ideological understanding of events. In addition, very few of the incoming volunteers spoke Spanish or were allowed to freely mingle with the local populations. As a result, the eyewitness testimonies found in most anthologies such as From the Spanish Trenches and Our Fight offer a highly subjective and ideologically committed view of individual campaigns in which the authors were engaged. Though no less partisan, Robert Colodny has written an engaging account of the siege of Madrid based in part on his own experiences (in Colodny 1958). Gurney 1974, the absorbing Crusade in Spain, provides a vivid narrative of what it was like to be a foot soldier in the International Brigades. In addition to being a collection of foreigners hailing from dozens of different countries, the International Brigade units became a melting pot of ethnic nationalities. An example of the latter can be found in the collection of personal testimonies in African Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Not everyone who volunteered to fight in Spain retained a positive view of the International Brigades. Accounts of the Communists’ heavy-handed control over the operations of the brigades can be gleaned from the memoirs of the former German Communist Gustav Regler (in Regler 1959) and the Hungarian-American and ex-Comintern official Sandor Voros (in Voros 1961). George Orwell’s sharp-eyed observations of the fighting from a dissident socialist’s perspective are recorded in Orwell 1962. Thomas 1998, the diaries of the author’s experiences as a volunteer on the Nationalist side, offers a rare glimpse of how right-wing foreigners viewed their participation in the war.

Acier, Marcel, ed. From the Spanish Trenches. New York: Modern Age, 1937.
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A collection of printed letters and other published eyewitness accounts of foreign volunteers who went to Spain to fight for the Republican cause.
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Bessie, Alvah, and Albert Prago, eds. Our Fight: Writings by Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Spain 1936–1939. New York: Monthly Review, 1999.
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A collection of articles by veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade which showcases the contributions of American men and women who went to Spain to support the Republican cause either as fighters or as volunteers in the auxiliary services in the rearguard.
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Collum, Danny Duncan, ed. African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: ‘This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do.’ New York: G.K. Hall, 1992.
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A collection of personal testimonies of African Americans who volunteered to fight for the Republicans.
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Colodny, Robert G. The Struggle for Madrid: The Central Epic of the Spanish Conflict. New York: Paine-Whitman, 1958.
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Written by a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who participated in military engagements in and around Madrid, this book offers a dramatic and sympathetic portrait of the International Brigades’ role in defending the capital during a critical period of the Civil War.
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Gurney, Jason. Crusade in Spain. London: Faber & Faber, 1974.
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A candid eyewitness account of the harrowing and often horrifying conditions volunteers experienced on the battlefield.
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Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1962.
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First-hand observations of the cultural and political obstacles faced by a foreigner fighting in Spain. Because he was attached to one of the militias of the revolutionary Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) that was located on a relatively inactive front, Orwell’s battlefield and behind-the-lines experiences differed significantly from those of the volunteers who belonged to the Communist-controlled International Brigades.
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Regler, Gustav. The Owl of Minerva: The Autobiography of Gustav Regler. London: Rupert-Hart Davis, 1959.
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Candid memoir of a former Communist whose recollections provide keen insight into the organization and military operations of the International Brigades at the Battle of Madrid and other key engagements.
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Thomas, Frank. Brother against Brother: Experiences of a British Volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. Edited by Robert Stradling. London: Sutton, 1998.
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A rare first-hand account of the battle for Madrid from the perspective of a British volunteer who fought on the side of the Nationalists.
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Voros, Sandor. American Commissar. Philadelphia and New York: Chilton, 1961.
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A critical and revealing insider’s view of Communist control over International Brigade units by a former Comintern official who broke with the movement during the early years of the Cold War epoch.
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Secondary Sources

Until very recently, much of the scholarly secondary literature that has grown up around foreign volunteers in general and the International Brigades in particular has tended to reflect the polarized politics of the Civil War and Cold War eras in which they were produced. Foreign volunteers on the Republican side were widely portrayed by Francoist historians as the vanguard troops of a Communist invasion. Landis 1967 and other works by politically committed pro-Republican historians have tended to glorify the exploits of the international volunteers, regarding them as “premature antifascists” who went to Spain to defend democracy. Carroll 1994, a sympathetic history of American volunteers, provides a less tendentious assessment of the experiences of the volunteers than previous studies which have been written from a pro-Republican perspective. The standard Communist interpretation of the role of the International Brigades played in defending Spain’s wartime Republic is presented in the collection of articles and biographical sketches found in Academy of Sciences of the USSR, et al.1976. Though acknowledging the political idealism of many of the volunteers, works like Richardson 1982 have emphasized the controlling influence that the Communists exercised over International Brigade units. The latter view has been reinforced by recent scholarship, such as Jackson 1994 and Hopkins 1998. The latter is a well-researched and in-depth examination of British volunteers. Castells 1973, a comprehensive (but now-dated) survey, was one of the few Spanish-language works produced during the Franco era which attempted to give a balanced assessment of International Brigade participation. More recently, César Vidal has produced a comprehensive examination of the brigades written from a conservative perspective (in Vidal 2006). Very few studies have focused on the contributions of right-wing foreigners and Moroccans who fought for the Nationalist side. The best overall treatment of the small group of politically committed individuals who joined the Nationalists can be found in Keene 2001. The roles Moroccan troops of the regulares and the Foreign Legion played as part of the “Army of Africa” are thoroughly assessed in de Madariaga 2002.

Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of the International Working-Class Movement, and Soviet War Veterans’ Committee, eds. International Solidarity with the Spanish Republic: 1936–1939. Moscow: Progress Publishing, 1976.
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A collection of Soviet-sponsored articles—some dating to the period of the Civil War itself—relating to foreign volunteers who fought in the International Brigades. Individual chapters provide details of the relative contributions of volunteers who came to Spain from across Europe and the Americas to participate in what the Communists saw as a “national-revolutionary war” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia. A Translation of the Third Edition. A.M. Prokhorov, Editor in Chief. Vol. 10. New York: MacMillan, 1970, p. 603).
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Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.
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Based on interviews with former volunteers as well as extensive archival research in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, this study attempts to place the experiences of the American volunteers in the broader political context of the 1930s and beyond.
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Castells Peig, Andreu. Las Brigadas Internacionales de la guerra de España. Barcelona: Ariel D.L., 1973.
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First serious scholarly study inside of Franco’s Spain to provide a comprehensive and relatively objective overview of the role of the brigades on the Republican side.
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de Madariaga, María Rosa. Los moros que trajo Franco: La intervención de tropas coloniales en la Guerra Civil. Barcelona: Martínez Roca, 2002.
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An indispensable source on the role Moroccan troops played during the Civil War.
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Hopkins, James K. Into the Heart of Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
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A valuable overview of the social, political, and military experiences of British volunteers who fought in the International Brigades. Insights into the political control the Communists exercised over recruits are supported by the author’s investigations into a number of archives, including those found in the International Brigade section of the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Recent Historical Documents (Moscow).
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Jackson, Michael. Fallen Sparrows: The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1994.
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An impartial assessment of the International Brigades which seeks to expose the myths and misconceptions regarding their role as politically conscious volunteers.
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Keene, Judith. Fighting for Franco: International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War. London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2001.
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An engaging collective portrait of right-wing foreigners who went to Spain to fight on the side of the Nationalists.
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Landis, Arthur H. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade. New York: Citadel, 1967.
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A comprehensive military history of the American volunteers who fought in Spain, written by a former brigadista who served in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.
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Richardson, R. Dan. Comintern Army. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982.
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A well-argued thesis about the political and ideological dimensions of the International Brigades. The author convincingly debunks the long-held fiction that the International Brigades were mostly comprised of volunteers who were more interested in defending democracy than they were in advancing the political agenda of the Soviet Union and international communism.
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Vidal, César. Las Brigadas Internacionales. Madrid: Editorial Espasa Calpe, 2006.
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Offers from a conservative perspective the most comprehensive military and political history of the International Brigades currently available. Based on primary and secondary sources culled from archives and libraries in Spain, the United States, and the former Soviet Union.
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Foreign Intervention

This section highlights works which examine the impact foreign intervention had on the war effort on both sides. Detailed reports of the types of military equipment foreign powers sent to Spain can be found in Adamthwaite 1990 (cited under General Overviews). The extent to which outside aid determined the outcome of the Civil War has long been a source of historiographical debate. Assessments by pro-Republicans like Enrique Moradiellos (in Moradiellos 2001) and Angel Viñas (in Viñas 1977) are representative of the school which contends that the assistance Franco received from the Axis powers tipped the military balance in his favor. Their studies emphasize the fact that the democratic powers’ inconsistent adherence to a policy of nonintervention posed more obstacles for the Republicans than for the Nationalists in their respective efforts to obtain arms from abroad. Just how difficult it was for the Republicans to secure military aid from foreign sources is documented in Howson 2000, a revealing study of the various illegal channels they resorted to in their quest for arms. Among other things, his research demonstrates that the Soviet Union provided far less aid than has been previously assumed and that many of the weapons they supplied were of an inferior quality. On the other hand, Ronald Radosh (in Radosh, et al. 2001), Stanley Payne (in Payne 2004), and other conservative-minded historians represented here insist that Soviet military equipment was no less forthcoming than that supplied by Germany and Italy and that Stalin’s intervention was more economic and efficient than has been previously thought. The scope and scale of military assistance provided by both Italy and Germany are examined in Coverdale 1975, Sullivan 1995, and Whealey 1989.

Coverdale, John F. Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
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The first full-length scholarly treatment of Italy’s role in the Spanish conflict.
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Howson, Gerald. Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War. London: St. Martin’s, 2000.
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A companion volume to Howson 2003 (cited under Air Power and Bombing Campaigns), this book thoroughly documents the political and financial obstacles the Republic faced in procuring armaments. Howson’s investigations relating to the arms provided by the Soviet Union reveal that much of the military equipment Stalin sent to Spain was not only overpriced but also of poor quality.
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Moradiellos, Enrique. El reñidero de Europa: las dimensiones internacionales de la Guerra Civil Española. Barcelona: Península, 2001.
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A scholarly assessment of the place Spain’s war held in interwar Europe.
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Payne, Stanley G. The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
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An indispensable study of the nature and extent of Soviet involvement in Republican military affairs.
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Radosh, Ronald, Mary Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, eds. Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
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A broad range of internal party documents gathered from former Soviet military archives, which survey the extent to which the Communists sought to control the military, political, and economic affairs of the Republic.
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Sullivan, Brian R. “Fascist Italy’s Military Involvement in the Spanish Civil War.” The Journal of Military History 59 (October 1995): 697–727.
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The author, who is conversant with a broad range of Italian sources relating to the Civil War era, has produced a well-informed review article of recent books relating to Italy’s role during the Spanish Civil War.
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Viñas, Angel. La Alemania nazi y el 18 de julio. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1977.
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Important study of how Franco managed to secure German aid at the outset of the Civil War.
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Whealey, Robert. Hitler and Spain: The Nazi Role in the Spanish Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989.
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Well-researched and judicious overview of Germany’s military, economic, and political involvement in the Civil War.
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