Volume 41, Number 19 · November 17, 1994
A Seemingly Ordinary Man
By Raymond Carr
Franco
by Paul Preston
Basic Books, 1,056 pp., $37.50
On July 18, 1936, a group of right-wing officers of the Spanish army rose in rebellion against the legal government of the democratic Second Republic. The conspirators hoped for a sharp, short, military takeover. The resistance of working-class organizations and of some of the government security forces, particularly in Madrid and Barcelona, meant, however, that the attempted coup became a civil war. By the autumn of 1937 the war was going badly and on September 21 the leading military conspirators met in a hut on an airfield near Salamanca to consider the situation. As experienced soldiers they agreed that if the war was to be won, there must be a single command—a military necessity which the leaders of the Republic refused to recognize to their cost—and that General Francisco Franco must be made generalísimo, commander in chief of the rebel forces, which called themselves Nationalists. Franco enjoyed unparalleled prestige in the army; he was commander of the army in Africa, the best fighting unit in the Nationalist army which he had brought over from Morocco at great risk and against professional advice. He was backed by Germany and Italy, which supplied the Nationalists with the sinews of war.
Review, 4550 words
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