Bücher von Stanley G. (University of Wisconsin Payne

This book presents a new history of the most important conflict in European affairs during the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War. It describes the complex origins of the conflict, the collapse of the Spanish Republic and the outbreak of the only mass worker revolution in the history of Western Europe. Stanley Payne explains the character of the Spanish revolution and the complex web of republican politics, while also examining the development of Franco's counter-revolutionary dictatorship. Payne gives attention to the multiple meanings and interpretations of war and examines why the conflict provoked such strong reactions at the time, and long after. The book also explains the military history of the war and its place in the history of military development, the non-intervention policy of the democracies and the role of German, Italian and Soviet intervention, concluding with an analysis of the place of the war in European affairs, in the context of twentieth-century revolutionary civil wars.

This is the first account in any language of the civil wars in Europe during the era of the world wars, from 1905 to 1949. It treats the initial confrontations in the decade before World War I, the confusing concept of 'European civil war,' the impact of the world wars, the relation between revolution and civil war and all the individual cases of civil war, with special attention to Russia and Spain. The civil wars of this era are compared and contrasted with earlier internal conflicts, with particular attention to the factors that made this era a time of unusually violent domestic contests, as well as those that brought it to an end. The major political, ideological and social influences are all treated, with a special focus on violence against civilians.