Blue Division: Spanish Blood in Russia, 1941-1945 (LSE Studies in Spanish History) - Hardcover

Julia, Xavier Moreno

 
9781845197377: Blue Division: Spanish Blood in Russia, 1941-1945 (LSE Studies in Spanish History)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1845197372 ISBN 13: 9781845197377
Verlag: Liverpool University Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

This book, translated from the original Spanish, is the primary academic and historical study of the Blue Division -- a Falangist initiative involving the dispatch of some forty-thousand Spanish combatants (over a half of whom paid with their lives, health, or liberty) to the Russian Front during the Second World War. Xavier Moreno Julia does not limit himself to relating their deeds under arms, but also analyses -- for the first time -- the political background in detail: the complex relations between the Spanish government and Hitler's Germany; the internal conflicts between the Falangists and the Army; the rise and fall of Franco's brother-in-law, Minister Ramon Serrano Suner, who inspired the Blue Division and became the second most powerful person in Spain; and the attitude of General Agustin Munoz Grandes, commander of the Blue Division, who was encouraged by Berlin to seriously consider the possibility of taking over the reins of Spanish power. In the end, there were 45,500 reasons that led to joining the Blue Division -- one for each young man who decided to enlist. To understand all of the complex reasons behind their military service under German command is impossible at this juncture. It is an irrecoverable past that lies in Spanish cemeteries and on the Russian steppes. This book, based on massive documentation in German, British and Spanish archives, is an essential source of information to understand Spain in the 1940s -- an epoch when the Caudillo's power and the regime's good fortune were less secure than is often believed. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Xavier Moreno Julia is professor of Contemporary History in Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain). This book is the first volume of his trilogy about Spain and the Second World War.

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The Blue Division

Spanish Blood in Russia, 1941-1945

By Juliá Xavier Moreno, Iain Stewart with collaboratio Stewart

Sussex Academic Press

Copyright © 2015 Xavier Moreno Juliá
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84519-737-7

Contents

The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, 
Series Editor's Preface, 
List of Illustations, Maps and Tables, 
Acknowledgements, 
Acronyms and Abbreviations, 
Note on Vocabulary, 
Introduction, 
1 The Third Reich, Franco, the Falange, and the Army: The Months before the Formation of the Blue Division, 
2 Creation of the Blue Division, 
3 The Military Campaign of the Blue Division, 
4 The Rearguard of the Blue Division, 
5 The Costs and Consequences of the Blue Division, 
Conclusion: The Historic Significance of the Blue Division, 
Appendices (pages 384–415), 
Notes, 
Primary Sources, 
Bibliography, 
Index,


CHAPTER 1

The Third Reich, Franco, the Falange, and the Army: The Months before the Formation of the Blue Division


REFLECTIONS AND MEMORIES

"It grew dark sadly. An ominous silence, only disturbed by the prophetic horns of the automobiles of death, spread through the city ..."

(José María Fontana, Falangist)

"One time I was in bed and I said to my wife, 'Carmen, is that a car passing?' In a few moments, a little way from the house, I heard the 'Bang! Bang! Bang!' They had liquidated someone."

(Salvador Rubio, worker)

Traditionally, in all civil wars, the dominant group in each zone of conflict has terrorized people considered to be disaffected. Men and women have been subjected to imprisonment, held in concentration camps, tortured, and killed. To determine why indiscriminate violence is carried out away from the front is not a simple task. Perhaps it is a consequence of fear and impotence against an enemy that advances daily, frustration and insecurity generating violence, or simply a manifestation of a desire for revenge born out of hatred. In any case, such an attitude is clear evidence of the human degradation inherent in war.

Similar violence also occurred in our Spanish Civil War; likewise, it soaked the former Yugoslavia in blood, and even today, continues to do so in other parts of the world. Massacres at the hands of the mutinous army in Andalucía and Estremadura, together with the assassinations in Republican Spain, were examples of a similar reality: the merciless repression of an enemy within easy reach. Savage repression meant few concessions on both sides. For this reason, when the Blue Division was formed in 1941, thousands of Spaniards still had the traumatic events of July 1936 etched in fire in their minds, bodies, and hearts. A violent, unquantifiable explosion of accumulated social tensions, hatred, and suffering followed. Due to the circumstances, only one of the bands survived: namely, the victors (the others – the vanquished – agonized between exile and internment in jails and concentration camps, as a prelude to death in many cases). It was mainly the victors who nourished the Division in men and support. For this reason, we focus our analysis of repressive action on those attached to the Nationalists, who were the only Spaniards then able to "return the favor" to those who had antagonized them. The remainder, although they made up most of those murdered behind the lines during the war, suffered in the silence imposed by defeat.

In the middle of 1941, the hostile action of the so-called "Red Spain" remained a latent memory for many, especially

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Verlag
Liverpool University Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1845197372
ISBN 13 
9781845197377
Einband
Tapa dura
Anzahl der Seiten
446
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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