Overview

In this Samuel Johnson Prize short-listed work of meticulous scholarship, Paul Preston, the world’s foremost historian of 20th-century Spain, charts how and why Franco and his supporters set out to eliminate all ‘those who do not think as we do’ – some 200,000 innocent men, women and children across Spain. The remains of General Franco lie in an immense mausoleum near Madrid, built with the blood and sweat of 20,000 slave labourers. His enemies, however, met less exalted fates. In addition to those killed on the battlefield, tens of thousands of Spaniards were officially executed between 1936 and 1945, and as many again became ‘non-persons’, their fates as obscure as the nation’s collective memory of this terrible period. As the country slowly reclaims its historical memory after a long period of wilful amnesia, for the first time a full picture can be given of the escalation and aftermath of the Spanish Holocaust in all its dimensions – ranging from systematic killings and judicial murders to the abuse of women and children, imprisonment, torture and the grisly fate of Spaniards in the hands of the Gestapo. The story of the victims of Franco’s reign of terror is framed by the activities of four key men whose dogma of eugenics, terrorisation, domination and mind control horrifyingly mirror the fascism of 1930s Italy and Germany. General Mola organised the military coup of 1936 and dictated its ferocity in the north of Spain; Queipo de Llano, the deranged ‘radio general’, ran a virtually independent fiefdom in the south; Major Vallejo Najera was a military psychiatrist who provided ‘scientific’ justifications for the annihilation of thousands; and Captain Aguilera, the Nationalist press officer, blamed the war on do-gooders’ interference with the divine process of decimating the working classes. Reflecting more than a decade of research, and telling many stories of individuals from both sides, The Spanish Holocaust seeks to reflect the intense horrors visited upon Spain by the arrogance and brutality of the officers who rose up on 17 July 1936, provoking a civil war that was unnecessary and whose consequences still reverberate bitterly in Spain today.

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9780006386957

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Reviews

‘A book of extraordinary moral and emotional power, a classic of historical scholarship and a deeply affecting record of man’s inhumanity to man.’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A harrowing and moving account of the immense terror and enormous atrocities, especially perpetrated by General Franco's followers, during and after the Spanish Civil War, meticulously researched and superbly written by an outstanding historian.' Ian Kershaw ‘Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Spain and its recent history…. Preston’s excellent, spine-chilling narrative explains just how deep Franco’s early investment in terror was….this is an invaluable book that does not shrink from even the harshest of truths’ Guardian ‘Preston’s staggeringly detailed powerful and affecting chronicle of the savagery unleashed during the Spanish civil war….is a history of rare moral and emotional power, which alters forever our view of one of the most symbolic conflicts of the last century’ Sunday Times, History Book of the Year

'A book of extraordinary moral and emotional power, a classic of historical scholarship and a deeply affecting record of man's inhumanity to man.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A harrowing and moving account of the immense terror and enormous atrocities, especially perpetrated by General Franco's followers, during and after the Spanish Civil War, meticulously researched and superbly written by an outstanding historian.' Ian Kershaw 'Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Spain and its recent history... Preston's excellent, spine-chilling narrative explains just how deep Franco's early investment in terror was...this is an invaluable book that does not shrink from even the harshest of truths' Guardian 'Preston's staggeringly detailed powerful and affecting chronicle of the savagery unleashed during the Spanish civil war...is a history of rare moral and emotional power, which alters forever our view of one of the most symbolic conflicts of the last century' Sunday Times, History Book of the Year

'The Spanish civil war is, of course, one of the best-chronicled events in modern European history. But Preston goes well beyond previous historians in his magisterial but chillingly meticulous record of slaughter systematically tearing down the self-serving left-wing and (especially) right-wing myths about the conflict... Exhaustively researched and masterfully written... the result is a book of extraordinary moral and emotional power, a classic of historical scholarship and a deeply affecting record of man's inhumanity to man.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A harrowing and moving account of the immense terror and enormous atrocities, especially perpetrated by General Franco's followers, during and after the Spanish Civil War, meticulously researched and superbly written by an outstanding historian.' Ian Kershaw essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Spain and its recent history... Preston's excellent, spine-chilling narrative explains just how deep Franco's early investment in terror was...this is an invaluable book that does not shrink from even the harshest of truths Guardian No one can doubt the scholarship that underpins Preston's account of the extra-judicial murders executions and torture that General Franco and his forces carried out...a formidable book by Britain's pre-eminent historian of Spain Financial Times

Author Information

Paul Preston is Príncipe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish History and Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE. He was lecturer at the University of Reading then successively lecturer in, reader in and Professor of History at Queen Mary College, University of London. In 2006 he was awarded the International Ramon Llull Prize by the Catalan Government. Among his many works are The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (1986), Franco: A Biography (1993), A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (1996), Comrades (1999), Doves of War: Four Women in Spain (2002), Juan Carlos (2004) and The Spanish Civil War (2006). He was decorated by Spanish King Juan Carlos a ‘Comendador de la Orden de Mérito Civil’ and in 2007, the ‘Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica’. In 2000 he was awarded a CBE.

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