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In Spain between 1936-1945, the Franco regime carried out one Europe’s more brutal but less remembered programs of mass repression. Many were murdered by the regime’s death squads, and in some areas Francoists also subjected up to 15% of the population to summary military trials. Here many suffered the death sentence or jail terms up to thirty years. Although historians have recognised the staggering scale of the trials, they have tended to overlook the mass participation that underpinned them. In contrast to the discussion in other European countries, little attention has been paid to the wide scale collusion in the killings and incarcerations in Spain. Exploring mass complicity in the trials of hundreds of thousands of defeated Republicans following the end of the Spanish Civil War, The Francoist Military Trials probes local Francoists’ accusations whereby victims were selected for prosecution in military courts. It also shows how insubstantial and hostile testimony formed the bedrock of ‘investigations’, secured convictions, and shaped the harsh sentencing practices of Franco’s military judges. Using civil court records, it also documents how grassroots Francoists continued harassing Republicans for many years after they emerged from prison. Challenging the popularly prevalent view that the Franco regime imposed a police state upon a passive Spanish society, the evidence Anderson uncovers here illustrates that local state officials and members of the regime’s support base together forged a powerful repressive system that allowed them to wage war on elements of their own society to a greater extent than perhaps even the Nazis managed against their own population.
In Spain between 1936-1945, the Franco regime carried out one Europe’s more brutal but less remembered programs of mass repression. Many were murdered by the regime’s death squads, and in some areas Francoists also subjected up to 15% of the population to summary military trials. Here many suffered the death sentence or jail terms up to thirty years. Although historians have recognised the staggering scale of the trials, they have tended to overlook the mass participation that underpinned them. In contrast to the discussion in other European countries, little attention has been paid to the wide scale collusion in the killings and incarcerations in Spain. Exploring mass complicity in the trials of hundreds of thousands of defeated Republicans following the end of the Spanish Civil War, The Francoist Military Trials probes local Francoists’ accusations whereby victims were selected for prosecution in military courts. It also shows how insubstantial and hostile testimony formed the bedrock of ‘investigations’, secured convictions, and shaped the harsh sentencing practices of Franco’s military judges. Using civil court records, it also documents how grassroots Francoists continued harassing Republicans for many years after they emerged from prison. Challenging the popularly prevalent view that the Franco regime imposed a police state upon a passive Spanish society, the evidence Anderson uncovers here illustrates that local state officials and members of the regime’s support base together forged a powerful repressive system that allowed them to wage war on elements of their own society to a greater extent than perhaps even the Nazis managed against their own population.
In 1936, the Spanish Foreign Legion was the most well equipped, thoroughly trained, and battle-tested unit in the Spanish Army, and with its fearsome reputation for brutality and savagery, the Legion was not only critical to the eventual victory of Franco and the Nationalists, but was also a powerful propaganda tool the Nationalists used to intimidate and terrorize its enemies. Drawing upon Spanish military archival sources, the Legion’s own diary of operations and relevant secondary sources, Alvarez recounts the pivotal role played by the Spanish Foreign Legion in the initial months of the Spanish Civil War, a war that was not only between Spaniards, but that pitted the political ideology of Communism and Socialism against that of Fascism and Nazism.
The Spanish Civil War was fought not only on the streets and battlefields from 1936 to 1939 but also through memory and trauma in the decades that followed. This fascinating book reassesses the eras of war, dictatorship and transition to democracy in light of the memory boom in Spain since the late 1990s. It explores how the civil war and its repressive aftermath have been remembered and represented from 1939 to the present through the interweaving of war memories, political power and changing social relations. Acknowledgement and remembrance were circumscribed during the war's immediate aftermath and only the victors were free to remember collectively during the long Franco era. Michael Richards recasts social memory as a profoundly historical product of migration, political events and evolving forms of collective identity through the 1950s, the transition to democracy in the 1970s, and in the bitterly contested politics of memory since the 1990s.
Publisher Description
Madrid became one of the key symbols of Republican resistance to General Franco during the Spanish Civil War following the Nationalists' failure to take the city in the winter of 1936-7. Yet despite the defiant cries of 'No pasarán', they did eventually pass on 28 March 1939. This book examines the consequences in Madrid of Franco's unconditional victory in the Spanish Civil War. Using recently available archival material, this study shows how the punishment of the vanquished was based on a cruel irony - Republicans, not the military rebels of July 1936, were held responsible for the fratricidal conflict. Military tribunals handed out sentences for the crime of 'military rebellion'; mere passivity towards the Nationalists before 1939 was not only made a civil offence under the Law of Political Responsibilities but could cause dismissal from work; and freemasons and Communists, specifically blamed for the Civil War, were criminalized by decree in March 1940. However, contrary to much that has been written on the subject, the post-war Francoist repression was not exterminatory. Genocide did not take place in post-war Madrid. While a minimum of 3113 judicial executions took place between 1939 and 1944, death sentences were largely based on accusations of participation in 'blood crimes' that occured in Madrid in 1936. Moreover, and unlike most other accounts of the Francoist political violence, this book is concerned with the question of when and why mass repression came to an end. It shows that the sheer numbers of cases opened against Republican 'rebels', and the use of complex pre-war bureaucratic procedures to process them, produced a crisis that was only resolved by decisions taken by the Franco regime in 1940-1 to abandon much of the repressive system. By 1944, mass repression had come to an end.
"Helen Graham highlights the domestic and international context of the Spanish Civil War, and reveals its origins in the political and cultural anxieties provoked by the rapid modernization of Europe. Using personal narratives, she combines a powerfully human account of the war an its aftermath with a disturbing ethical enquiry into its legacy for the 21st century."--BOOK JACKET.
In 25 innovative thematic essays, The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Spanish Civil War sees an interdisciplinary team of scholars examine a conflict that, more than 80 years after its conclusion, continues to generate both scholarly and public controversy. Split into four main sections covering Military and Diplomatic Issues, Society and Culture, Politics, and Debates, the volume offers a number of unique features. It is unprecedented in its comprehensiveness and includes chapters on topics that are rarely, if ever, explored in the literature of the field: humanitarianism, children and families, material conditions, the decimation of elites, archives and sources, archaeological approaches, digital approaches, public history, and cultural studies approaches. Instead of discussing each of the two warring sides, Republicans and Francoists, separately, as is so often the case, the book's thematic structure means that these opposing forces are examined together, facilitating comparison and fresh understanding in numerous areas of study. Contributors from the UK, the USA, Canada, Spain and Denmark also analyse the major controversies and disputes surrounding each topic as part of a detailed exploration of one of the seminal events of the 20th century.
In Spain today the civil war remains 'the past that will not pass away'. The author explores the origins, nature and long-term consequences of this exterminatory war in Spain, charting the resonant forms of political, social and cultural resistance to it and the memory/legacy these have left behind in Europe and beyond.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April 1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Doña, have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García-Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the women's response to the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence them.