The Battle Lost, the War Won: The Enduring Success of the Popular Front Narrative of the Spanish Civil War
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Authors
Sweetser, Ted
Issue Date
2012
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Research for this SIP required primary and secondary material from a number of
distinct fields. In understanding the political situation and issues of Spain in the first half
of the twentieth century, Franz Borkenau's writings are an invaluable primary source of
objective analysis grounded in his personal experience gained in the war. Hugh Thomas
authored what must be considered the definitive overall history of the war. The role of the
Soviet Union and its agents in the conflict is brilliantly analyzed in Stanley Payne's book
on the subject. His tome exploring the under-emphasized social struggles which lay at the
war's heart was also essential in uncoupling the narrative myths from the realities of
Spanish political developments. The history of the American volunteers in the
International Brigades from their roots in American leftist politics to the Spanish
battlefields and beyond the Cold War is thoroughly chronicled by Peter N. Carroll's
work. The task of defining the leftist narrative of the war was simplified greatly by Peter
Monteath's Writing the Good Fight. Stephen Koch's Double Lives was essential to
tracing the role of the Soviet Union in shaping the narrative. Richard Gid Powers has
provided the definitive history of American anticommunism with his work Not Without
Honor. The author feels particularly indebted to the Yale University Press, whose
"Annals of Communism" series has translated and made accessible previously classified
information from former Soviet archives. New York University's Tamiment Library and
Robert R. Wagner Labor Archives were the source of the majority of primary source
documents consulted, and particular thanks are owed for their preservation of the
Cominterns International Brigade records.
Description
83 p.
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