The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain - Softcover

‘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

Selected as the Sunday Times History Book of the Year for 2012, this is a meticulous work of scholarship from the foremost historian of 20th-century Spain.

The culmination of more than a decade of research, ‘The Spanish Holocaust’ seeks to reflect the intense horrors visited upon Spain during its ferocious civil war, the consequences of which still reverberate bitterly today.

The brutal, murderous persecution of Spaniards between 1936 and 1945 is a truth that should have been told long ago. Paul Preston here offers the first comprehensive picture of what he terms “the Spanish Holocaust”: mass extra-judicial murder of some 200,000 victims, cursory military trials, torture, the systematic abuse of women and children, sweeping imprisonment, the horrors of exile. Those culpable for crimes committed on both sides of the Civil War are named; their victims identified.

‘The Spanish Holocaust’ illuminates one of the darkest, least-known eras of modern European history.