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. Un llibre, en resum, que hauria de llegir molta gent. Jun 28, Kevin Tole rated it liked it Shelves: I'm afraid I gave up on this. Its 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. But its just not written in a reader friendly way. Its just one after one after one incident - its pages till you get up to the coup. I thought the style might change after that but it doesn't - if anything it gets e I'm afraid I gave up on this. 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 So for now I'm going to put it aside and come back to it later.
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Well I tried again. And after another 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 despoilation. 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 wishjed to discover what happened in their village, their town, their province. That Preston feels he has something to say. It's just like a gazeteer 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. Oct 06, Wanda rated it liked it. 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 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.
The Spanish Holocaust
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.
The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston – review
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. 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 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.
Nov 23, Jake rated it it was amazing. 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 out "If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 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 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. Oct 25, Eduardo Hinton rated it it was amazing. 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 , but also during the 40 years later and what means to Spain right today.
Mallo 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. 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. Jul 11, David rated it it was amazing.
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. 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.
The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston – review | Books | The Guardian
Hay que ser imparcial, pero no ser un ciego. No lo dice, Paul Preston, con un sentido revanchista, sino apoyado en toda una serie de datos y fuentes. 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. 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.
Related reviews
This history needs to be revised because of the war crimes committed in the Spanish Civil War that need to be identified. Es bastante pesado, duro, leerlo, con 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. 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 not to ever forget the atrocities planned and carried out by a confederacy of landowne A terrible reading, but one which is due for any decent Spaniard. Difficult to read for any sensitive person, but a well needed exercise not to 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.
A second driving force was the brutalisation of Spain's colonial army in Africa, where Franco had made his name. This army was used to fighting north African Muslims it viewed as sub-human. It was no great leap to see Spain's own politicised landless labourers as "Berbers and savages". That made it easy for Franco and generals such as Emilio Mola or Gonzalo Queipo de Llano to pursue not just victory, but annihilation.
Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain
An early taste came in Badajoz. Hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners were machine-gunned to death in the city's bullring. Rightists came to watch and cheer. The brutality drove one Portuguese witness to madness. People far from the frontline were treated just as savagely. Anarchist excesses on the Republican side — perpetrated by murderous outfits such as the Lynxes, the Death Brigade and the Dawn Squad — completed the vicious cycle. The horrors of Badajoz fed the "red terror" of Madrid including the notorious killing of more than 2, prisoners at Paracuellos del Jarama , which then encouraged greater Francoist brutality.
Life became a cheap commodity. Franco's obsession with freemasons saw people killed for belonging to a masonic lodge in Huesca which had only five members. Rape, humiliation and sexual abuse of women was common. By the end of the war more than , prisoners were being held. In Franco's upside-down world, defenders of the legitimate, elected government could be executed for "military rebellion". Laws were passed allowing for the trial of those who had held positions of responsibility in the two years before the uprising — for breaking laws that did not exist at the time. Was the word holocaust used in other ways to describe events that did not include Nazi victims?
Yes, but in the second half of the 20th century, and until today, it has been used historically in the context of the Nazi Holocaust. Surely he understood that many would take umbrage with it. Anyway, conflating the two men and their regimes remains difficult, as it is factually incorrect to suggest this, and although Preston does not do so general readers could be left with this impression.
The wide-spread use of anti-Semitism was one such argument that Preston made for considering his thesis. The Nazis had an explicit intent: The Nazis, for total annihilation, specifically targeted the Jews, and this was not what happened in Spain. Can what happened in Spain be classified as genocide?
Preston argues that yes it must, but clearly stated that he did not mean to equate the Nazi Holocaust and Spanish genocide. However, although the text implies that the goal of the perpetrators was to exterminate the entire left — of which the targets included various groups, from feminists to vegetarians p. More is needed on other civil wars of the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as a clearer analysis as to if these events had, in any way, shaped or influenced what happened in Spain.
Additionally, analysis on European fascism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism as well would have helped contextualizing the Spanish events with Europe as a whole. Nonetheless, a debate over nomenclatures aside, what happened to Spanish citizens was genocidal, and deserves to be analyzed as such. There are eight stages of genocide currently recognized classification, symbolization, dehumanization organization, preparation, extermination, and denial , and while not all have to be present in order for an event to be declared genocide, Preston makes an argument that what happened in Spain during this period under investigation should be considered in this context.
Did the events meet some or most of those genocidal categories? The enemies of the state were classified and symbolized as a threat; the rural proletariat were depicted as subhuman, and in some cases, denied their Spanish identity. Denial abounded, and one aspect of the Amnesty Act of forbade any punishment for perpetrators of crimes against humanity, effectively denying the victims justice. One important aspect of the book is its ongoing analysis of crimes against women during this period, a topic seldom discussed in other works.
Throughout the narrative, Preston exposes horrific crimes against women and girls. Women had their breasts branded like animals, typically because of the activities of their husbands such as if he was a writer who critiqued the Francoists, or belonged to another group classified as the enemy such as teachers or unionists leading them to be damned by association. Even women who did not marry in civil ceremonies were targeted. Feminists were also a target, and were identified as unnatural and classified as such. The abuses knew no bounds.
Pregnant women were abused, raped, shot. Women with children were tortured in freezing prison cells with little to no food, water, medicine or even proper bedding p. One woman who had just given birth was forced to climb stairs repeatedly, causing life-threatening injuries. Preston refers specifically to numerous rapes, yet the word rape is not found in the index. Problematic of course, and the entry in the index for women only covers an association, and women prisoners and prisons. Mass rapes by Republican perpetrators were commonplace rather than not, with one example of a young girl raped by 50 men p.
Wives were tortured and shot if their husbands could not be found. Enslavement of women and girls occurred, and gang rape was promoted; thus, rape was entirely systematic.