Review: The Spanish Civil War (Cambridge Essential Histories)

Image: Fascismo

The Spanish Civil War (Cambridge Essential Histories)
Stanley G. Payne
286 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 7/14/12 edition (August 13, 2012)
$27.99

This book is probably one of the best introductions to the Spanish Civil War (or, as the author says: revolutionary/counterrevolutionary struggle).

In short, the political left started the whole thing by excluding the right and instituting an all leftist government, even though half the population of Spain at the time was conservative. Add to this the left's hatred of all things traditional and religious and you have a recipe for disaster.

The left in Spain had a bad habit of calling anyone on the right—even right-of-center—"fascists!" when in fact, as the author points out, this was not at all true.

The left also created a mythology that remains to this day: that their democratic government was unjustly attacked by "fascists!" when in fact their election rigging, exclusion of conservatives from government, murder of political opponents, church burnings, and murders of clergy eventually resulted in their humiliating defeat on the battlefield at the hands of righteously angered (and mostly religious) conservatives (they also got forty years of right-wing dictatorship).


It's no wonder the academy, media, and Hollywood ignores the Spanish Civil War. Their side lost. Badly.

If you want to know the truth about the Spanish Civil War read this book. I was hoping this book would be a good one, in that the truth would finally be told, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. Kudos to the author and the publisher for telling the unpopular truth.

Everyone in the USA should read this book, because the left is using the same tricks now that they were using then. They want to silence all conservatives and have them removed from government, despite the fact that half the country is conservative and deserves a voice in government.

The USA now, resembling the Spain of 1936, has no place for center-moderate politics, compromise, or tolerance.

We live in a time where the other side is considered evil, and you don't compromise with or tolerate evil; you destroy it.

This is what happened in Spain, and also during the US Civil War. Two different civilizations competed for total political and cultural dominance. There was no room for compromise. Total victory was all that could be imagined.

God help us if we don't change our ways.

This book has a happy ending: the center-moderates eventually formed a democratic government wherein everyone had a say and all peoples were enabled to compromise and tolerate one another. 

It's a shame they couldn't have done that sooner, and avoided the war.