In this episode, we welcome Dr. Stanley G. Payne to discuss his book The Spanish Civil War. What is the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), and why does it matter? In a war often still wrongly characterized as liberal/republican vs. nationalist/fascist – how do we understand the incredibly violent and extensive worker revolution and the murder of nearly 7,000 clergy on one side, and the Roman Catholic identity of the Nationalists while uniting with the Falange (Fascists) and being supported by Muslim troops on the other? When most international attention was on a defunct Republican state, how has “the grand camouflage” led to a prominent narrative which overlooks and sanitizes one half of a bloody revolutionary civil war? How does communism and fascism fit into the story? General Francisco Franco was the youngest general in Europe in 1926. How did he end up being the central figure in a national dynamic of revolution and counter-revolution, bathed in religious rhetoric (on both sides) – and his eventual reaffirmation of Spanish Roman Catholic identity. Dr. Payne identifies the Spanish Civil War as War of Religion with many paradoxes – including Franco’s international relations, his relationship with the Vatican, and what would slowly lead to a decline of his counter-revolution following the war. How did Franco view Protestants? Indeed, how should Protestants view Franco? That last question is more engaged than answered as we have the opportunity to learn from one of the great historians of Spain.

Book: The Spanish Civil War

Other resources by Dr. Payne:

• Franco: A Personal and Political Biography

• Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II

• The Franco Regime, 1936-1975

• The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933-1936: Origins of the Civil War

• Fascism: Comparison and Definition

• Fascism in Spain, 1923-1977

• A History of Fascism, 1914-1945

• En Defensa De Espana: Desmontando Mitos y Leyendas Negras

• Spain: A Unique History

• Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview

See also the article: “The Road to Revolution”

Other resources:

Granada (Documentary); BBC In Our Time

The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas

Fascism: The Career of a Concept by Paul Gottfried

Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror by Victor Sebestyen