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mburnamfink 's review for:
Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
by Adam Hochschild
After King Leopold's Ghost, I'm willing to give anything by Hochschild a spin. Spain in Our Hearts is not quite worth it. The Spanish Civil War, and in particular the involvement of the International Brigades, is a subject where the moral issues seem to overwhelm historical objectivity. This was the first fight against fascism! And yet the Republicans were abandoned by the Western Democracies. The USSR was the Republic's most reliable supporter, and Stalinist commissars held key positions, enacting their own purges against Republican fighters deemed insufficiently loyal to the party line. The war was gloriously fought, gloriously doomed, and gloriously recorded by Frank Capa and Ernest Hemingway.
Hochschild knew several veterans of the Lincoln Brigades as a young reporter in San Francisco, and a kind of sappy nostalgia suffuses the whole book. When General Franco and a handful of officers attempted a coup in 1936, they captured roughly a third of the Republic. But Franco got key strategic support, high-tech airplanes and tanks from Nazi Germany, thousands of soldiers from Fascist Italy, and oil on credit from Texaco.
The Republic got the sweepings of international leftists, men with ideals but little training or discipline. The Republic's gold reserves were sent to Russia, where they were spent by Stalin on Soviet arms for the Republic, starting with the dregs of Tsarist arms warehouses. Other equipment was blockaded by France or sunk at sea by Nationalist submarines. The International Brigades fought like shock troops, suffering three times the casualty rate of Republican Spanish units, but they were forced back repeatedly, as Franco's arms isolated and blockaded various regions, before finally crushing the Republic. Deemed 'premature anti-fascists' by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, veterans faced lifelong suspicion.
Hoschchild blends together recently published diaries from soldiers, but most readers would be better served by either the primary sources, Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, or from a military history angle, possible Beevor's The Battle for Spain
Hochschild knew several veterans of the Lincoln Brigades as a young reporter in San Francisco, and a kind of sappy nostalgia suffuses the whole book. When General Franco and a handful of officers attempted a coup in 1936, they captured roughly a third of the Republic. But Franco got key strategic support, high-tech airplanes and tanks from Nazi Germany, thousands of soldiers from Fascist Italy, and oil on credit from Texaco.
The Republic got the sweepings of international leftists, men with ideals but little training or discipline. The Republic's gold reserves were sent to Russia, where they were spent by Stalin on Soviet arms for the Republic, starting with the dregs of Tsarist arms warehouses. Other equipment was blockaded by France or sunk at sea by Nationalist submarines. The International Brigades fought like shock troops, suffering three times the casualty rate of Republican Spanish units, but they were forced back repeatedly, as Franco's arms isolated and blockaded various regions, before finally crushing the Republic. Deemed 'premature anti-fascists' by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, veterans faced lifelong suspicion.
Hoschchild blends together recently published diaries from soldiers, but most readers would be better served by either the primary sources, Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, or from a military history angle, possible Beevor's The Battle for Spain