Thanks Wolf, for your list, of the works you cited I have read Orwell, and Matatute, as well as Gironella, these last two while fictional, tend to give the flavor of the time very well. Of the others, I already have a few of these in my shelves. I do want to recommend a new title that will interest all scholars of Spain
Quote:
Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevastianov, eds. 2001 Yale University Press.
This is a compilation of historical Comiterm documents. All 81 documents are verified genuine documents from the onset of the war in 1936 to 1939. This is truly fascinating reading because you do not have the historian's bias, which is always there, even in the most balanced compilations.

The review in Library Journal quotes:
Quote:
For historians, this correspondence offers detailed and multiple reports for the duration of the war. Soviet agents such as Dimitrov, Andre Marty, Ernest Gero and Palmiro Togliati anticipated Stalinist tactics in postwar Europe.
What a ruthless read! In the very first document, a MASK intercept{ENCRYPTED TELEGRAMS} dated 22nd July 1936 from Moscow To Spain, the writer known as DIOS MAYOR This document underscores both the tone and main policies that the Soviets and Comiterm took in dealing with the Spanish Communist Party leaders:
Quote:
no.2. Demand the immediate arrest of all parliamentary leaders of the Republican government and have this carried out immediately without further hesitation. Rid the army, the police and the organizations of authority from top to bottom, from the enemies of the people. Deprive the aristrocacy who are behind the conspirators, of all rights of citizenship and confiscate all their goods. Expel them from the country and prohibit their press. It is necessary to set up a special court for adventurers, terrorists, conspirators, and Fascists rebels and to apply the maximum penalty on these including confiscating their goods.
(p.8).

I am still in 1938 and am sickened by what I have read, and it certainly explains a great deal of the chaos that I have read in other historian's works. I agree with Wolf that a quick intervention by the U.S., France and Britain and France could have saved the Republic from Joseph Stalin, and to the same extent Franco.

Yes this is a great thread!
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The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
--St. Augustine (354-430)