This is the second in a series of three reviews about the Spanish Civil War. The author of the first book sympathized with the Republican (mostly Communist) side that lost to Franco’s Nationalists. This book emphasizes the betrayals of the Republicans by the Soviet Union. The book was edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, and was “…prepared with the cooperation of the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) and the Russian Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.” There was significant research for the book, and translated Russian, French, and Italian documents are presented in full. The Abbreviations and Acronyms is an indication of the complexity of the political affiliations of the various parties involved in the war. There are a dozen listings for Anarchists, Communist, and Socialist organizations.

The Nationalists were initially led by generals Mola and Sanjurjo, but their failure to gain immediate success gave an opening to General Francisco Franco. He sent emissaries to Hitler and Mussolini to ask for help, the Republicans turned to Stalin, and the internationalization of the conflict assured that the war would be longer, more costly, and more brutal. President Franklin Roosevelt’s covert policy of providing military equipment to the Republicans in violation of the Neutrality Act and against the will of Congress allowed the Soviets to supply the Spanish Republican forces with American aircraft.

Stalin’s paranoia about Trotsky influenced the outcome of the war. Stalin believed anyone accepting Trotsky’s beliefs was an enemy, and a large number of the Communists fighting with the Republicans belonged to Trotsky’s “Worker’s Party of Marxist Unity” (POUM in Spanish initials). The fact that Trotsky eventually repudiated his support for the POUM didn’t stop the Stalinist Communists from imprisoning or executing members of that group. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) devoted at least as much energy to murdering people they decided were POUM members as they did to fighting the Nationalists. The Anarchists also fell out of favor, and thousands of them were killed. The impact of Stalin’s paranoia didn’t end with the POUM and the Anarchists. Early in the war he had sent 700 military advisors to serve the dual role of taking over command of the Republican army and providing intelligence to the Soviets while being paid by Spain. Few of those advisors had survived Stalin’s purges by the end of the war in 1939. The only consolation for Soviet military personnel sent to Spain might have been that it wouldn’t have been safe for them in Russia either. The Soviet high command lost 90 percent of its leaders and 70 percent of the total officer corps to Stalin’s purges. There was a quote in Pravda that “…cleaning up Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist elements (in Spain) will be carried out with the same energy as in the USSR.”

Despite their assaults on their former allies, the Soviets had taken command of all aspects of Republican military decision-making and execution of the war after Soviet commanders told Stalin “…”the Spanish were incapable of large-scale military action on their own.” They also began to use the international brigades, including the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade, as shock troops to lead suicidal assaults on the Nationalists. That is why most of the Americans had left Spain well before the end of the war. Of course comments such as the one made by one Soviet commander that they were “…unbelievably dirty and (with) filthy weapons,” probably didn’t inspire loyalty to the Stalinist cause. All of the international brigades had been disbanded by 1938.

The Stalinists didn’t end their interference with the Republicans with the military. They also concluded the Spanish also were incapable of managing a wartime economy, and began to establish Stalinist planning and centralization of military industry. None of the aid was free, and two thirds of the gold in the Spanish treasury, much of it rare coins, had been transferred to Moscow within months after the war began. The disastrous impact of Stalin’s policies has led some to speculate he did not intend to help the Republicans win, but rather his strategy was merely to deny quick victory by the Nationalists. However, the Nationalists had cut off Catalonia from Madrid and central Spain by late 1938. Barcelona collapsed quickly in January 1939, although the rest of the province held out a few months before the end of the Spanish Republic.

There are some interesting discussions about famous Americans in the book. There is a photo of Ernest Hemmingway at the battle of Guadalajara. Hemmingway wrote “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which had its setting in the Spanish Civil War. He was serving as a reporter, and is widely believed to have trained Republican soldiers in marksmanship. Humphrey Bogart played the role of a disillusioned Republican soldier in “Casablanca.” George Orwell wrote “Homage to Catalonia,” which is about his experiences, including being badly wounded, while serving as a soldier with the POUM. A review of that book will be the third in the series.