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The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain Paperback – August 26, 2013

by Paul Preston (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 435 ratings
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Long neglected by European historians, the unspeakable atrocities of Franco’s Spain are finally brought to tragic light in this definitive work.

Evoking such classics as Anne Applebaum’s Gulag and Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, The Spanish Holocaust sheds light on one of the darkest and most unexamined eras of modern European history. As Spain finally reclaims its historical memory, a full picture can now be drawn of the atrocities of Franco’s Spain―from torture and judicial murders to the abuse of women and children. Paul Preston provides an unforgettable account of the systematic terror carried out by Spain’s fascist government. 16 pages of illustrations
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  1. Print length
    736 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    August 26, 2013
  5. Dimensions
    6.2 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0393345912
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393345919
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Magisterial account... it is bound to be an essential reference for anything written on the subject for years to come."
― Adam Hochschild, New York Times Book Review

"What Preston knows about the years of civil war, 1936-1939, is astounding… Preston’s work is a powerful intervention in a Spanish discussion. It’s significance transcends the events it brings to light, and suggests some basic re-evaluations of recent European history."
― Thomas Snyder, The New Republic

"Paul Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust, is the most illuminating study I have seen of the complex, modern conflict that observers of Spain today still find difficult to understand. Anyone wanting to know modern Spain will read with great interest, this brilliant, well-informed analysis."
― John Brademas, author of Anarcosindicalismo y revolución en Espana, 1930-37

"Fascinating... Unflinchingly, Preston sifts through the pillage, torture, and mass executions of this bleak chapter in Spanish history."
― New Yorker

"Monumental study... [The Spanish Holocaust] directly links Spain’s Nationalists to the Nazi regime, stressing that Franco’s reign of terror, like that of Hitler and Goebbels, was carefully planned and systematically executed.... The Spanish Holocaust draws on Preston’s vast research, as well as scores of recent historical studies, to establish the most accurate possible estimates of numbers of Spanish victims―statistics that, ever since the outbreak of the war, have been notoriously subject to manipulation and distortion.... [Preston] has produced an indispensable, important book."
― Sebastiaan Faber, The Volunteer

About the Author

Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Civil War, Franco, Juan Carlos, and The Spanish Holocaust, is the world’s foremost historian on twentieth-century Spain. A professor at the London School of Economics, he lives in London.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (August 26, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 736 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393345912
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393345919
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 435 ratings

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Paul Preston

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4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
435 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dr. Ronald Schwartz
5.0 out of 5 stars A huge (500 pages plus another 100 or so for notes) historical read about Franco's ruthlessness in THE SPANISH HOLOCAUST
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2013
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Having lived and worked in Spain during the seventies and returning in the 80's & 90's, as a careful American student of Spanish Literature and Film who was not able to speak out against the Franco regime, I wrote several books on Spanish literature, interviewed many authors, interviewed many film stars and directors and wrote a definitive work called THE GREAT SPANISH FILMS published by Scarecrow Press (a division of Rowan & Littleton) which won the Library Journal Prize for Beat Reference Work of 2008.

Living and travelling throughout Spain all those years, I was always aware of the atrocities committed by General Franco and especially so when visiting the VALLE DE LOS CAIDOS. Preston's book gives a full account of those atrocities and the resistance of the good people of Spain caught in a civil war. It is truly a worthwhile work, especially so when you are a student, teacher and researcher living in Spain under a dictator and a corrupt Civil Guard. Hitler had his holocaust, and Franco had his own, "in search of the "red" gene. He even met with Himmler, the exterminator of Jews and Spain certainly had its own "holocaust."

Dr. Ron Schwartz, Manhattan
7 people found this helpful
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J. Lapham
5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable contribution... and a little sick-making.
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2015
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I'm about half way through this after three weeks or so. Truth to tell, it's not easy to read. Oh, it's well written, shows immense research, and is a must-read for those who are interested in the Spanish Civil War, which I have been since reading Orwell and Hugh Thomas in college back in the 60's. But the steady, relentless, accumulation of descriptions of killing makes me put the book down after 20 or 30 minutes. Preston doesn't hide his preference for the Republican side (which I share), but it doesn't really matter since there are 123 pages of notes (plus an index) included which back him up, most of which seem to be from contemporary sources. Lots of fascinating detail. Who knew that Franco and his military colleagues were firm believers in "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion" and the international Jewish-Semitic-Masonic conspiracy? If you have space on a shelf reserved for books about the Civil War in Spain this should be there. It has photographs, too. It was interesting to compare the photo of Franco and Hitler with the one of Franco and Eisenhower which I saw on a Spanish tv documentary. Eisenhower must have known how many murders Franco was responsible for. Realpolitik.
16 people found this helpful
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T. V. Archer
4.0 out of 5 stars That would be a true tragedy for such a beautiful country.
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2014
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WOW very thorough, very confronting and quiet scary. It looks as if history may repeat it's self. That would be a true tragedy for such a beautiful country.
2 people found this helpful
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Kara
5.0 out of 5 stars Great and Meticulously Researched Book
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2017
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This is a very meticulously reaearched book on a very interesting and seldom explored subject which he notes is partially due to reluctance of Spanish government to allow researchers much access to governmental files regarding the Francoist regime. My grandpa was a young chuld survivor of the Spanish civil war and I showed him both the illustrations and the subject of the book and he cried - in a good way because he had not found much literature on the array of atrocities committed particularly by Franco's Legion on the citizens of northern and all together civilians of Spain. He does a good job at explaining the various factions and takes time to have a glossary exploring and explaining at the beginning.
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James Guinnessey
3.0 out of 5 stars The Spanish Holocaust
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2013
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There can be no doubt that the various political movements in Spain during the 1930's and culminating in the great bloody disaster called the Spanish Civil War mirrored the ragtag movements of other European nations after World War One. Russia, Germany and Italy were all beset by myriad power struggles, pseudo revolutions and eventually hateful dictatorships. But the thuggery that prevailed as it did in Spain proved one strategic point: the opposition that is bent on singular power and focuses on the unity of that struggle will always prevail. Franco's fascists were united as one but their opponents were not. Those for fought for a more democratic Spain against Franco and his ultra- conservative backers were not united except in their anti-clericalism and even opposed each other. Had the opposition forces been united the outcome of this terrible conflict might have been very different. Spanish Fascists, Nazi Brownshirts, Italian Blackshirts, Russian Bolsheviks-not always the majority but singleminded prevailed through united force. I think this strategy is underplayed in "The Spanish Holocaust."
6 people found this helpful
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Geraldtonjjeeper
5.0 out of 5 stars Another genocide of the 20th century!
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2014
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The Spanish civil war has been part of the literature I have read during my life, but through skilful manipulation and political amnesia, the scale of the killing in 1930's Spain was something I had not learned.

This large heavy book, was an exercise in horror for me. I could not fathom the hatred generated by the deposed "ruling" classes after they lost a democratic election in early 1930's Spain with the subsequent liberalisation of employment laws and land ownership.

Using the political opposition to Marxism, Freemasonry and anti-Judaism the rich estate owners, their political representatives, the Catholic Church and the military rebelled against the new Republican government, hence the Civil War.

Behind the front lines, the Falange (Franco), the Fascists and many murderers and criminals let loose a maelstrom of killing and violence, rape and illegal judicial courts.

As the war turned against them the Republicans too turned in revenge on the right, also killing, massacring thousands. The final death toll is about 1,000,000 dead, but the exact figure will never be known as Franco, after winning the war continued the fatal repression until the 1960s. On his death, documents and archives from the civil war and Franco era were destroyed, thereby destroying evidence and records of who and how many were exterminated.

Eugenics, greed and politics all collide to produce a horror story!

Hard work but worth reading!
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james carberry
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in Spain on June 24, 2023
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What happened in Spain from the 1930s till Franco died (and even a week after) is very sad and so very inhumane to so many families. It is good that this story is told
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I. Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly researched and balanced account of atrocities committed by both sides
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2020
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I read this book while watching for the nth time Granada TV's documentary series on the Spanish Civil War, which was first broadcast in 1983 and can still be found on YouTube. I've been interested in the Spanish Civil War since that Granada series was first broadcast, and I went through a period in the 90s and 00s when I read a mass of books about the civil war and other aspects of Spanish history. In 2004 my wife and I bought a house in Andalusia and for several years we spent a lot of time in Spain and we were often surprised that even then, 30 years after Franco's death, no one wanted to talk about the civil war. There were no museums, no exhibitions, only a few scholars like Paul Preston keeping the flame alive.
The Granada series ends with an interview with an elderly Franco supporter. Throughout the series she was interviewed several times claiming that Franco stood for the Church, the family and traditional values and was a great man, but at the end she says her daughters had persuaded her to look at things from the other side and she had to admit that there was fault on both sides. That is Paul Preston’s basic premise. Some reviewers moan about left wing bias, but Preston does not do what some left wing historians do, which is to portray Republican atrocities as “spontaneous” and therefore less culpable than Franco’s more deliberate and organised use of terror. Instead Preston shows that many of the atrocities committed by the Left were not only well planned, they were also brutal and merciless and completely unjustified. One important point that Preston does make, however, is that Franco could get away with mass murder and still be described by the Daily Mail as “a gallant, Christian gentleman”; whereas the Republicans, despite being the legitimate, democratically elected government, were desperate to stop the atrocities on their side because of the bad press it gave their cause. And of course, the Left being the Left, some of the worst atrocities were committed by Leftists against other Leftists as in the Communist purge of the POUM in Barcelona in May 1937.
You do need a strong stomach to read this book. The accounts of the murders of women, children and elderly non-combatants are particularly harrowing. But so too are the accounts of the murders of ordinary men who were either doing their duty as town mayors or civil servants or army officers, or were trying to get a bit of land or better pay so they could support their families and their communities. It has often been said that Franco, with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, could have won the war in a few months rather than three years, but he deliberately prolonged the agony so he could grind the Republicans into the dust. Preston shows how and why he did that, with clinical detail in order to root out the poison of Marxism and other foreign ideologies. But he also shows that Franco was not just fighting “Reds”, he was fighting regionalism, especially in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The British right wing press had real problems trying to justify Franco’s use of bombing and terror against the deeply Catholic and conservative Basques! And the terror didn’t end when peace was declared, it went on for years in labour camps around the country where hundreds of thousands were locked up awaiting trial and execution. This included not just communists and anarchists, but vaguely centrist people who happened to have been civil servants or town councillors for moderate parties. When the Francoists couldn’t get their hands on political activists – because they had gone into hiding or fled abroad – they would take vengeance on their families.
It seems amazing now that the Francoists really thought that their brand of authoritarian conservatism, a kind of modern feudalism, had any place in the 20th century. Franco’s supporters claim that he did eventually make Spain a more prosperous nation, but in reality much of that prosperity was based on mass tourism in the 60s and generous handouts from the US when Franco was seen as bulwark against Communism. In other words, Spain benefited from the liberal/democratic world’s habit of doing business with dictators when it suits.
One interesting area that Preston focuses on, which is played down in other accounts of the war, is the maniacal anti-semitism of Franco and his mates. Weird, given that there were very few Jews in Spain at the time. Yet Franco and other senior military men swallowed all the rubbishy conspiracy theories of the day about a Jewish plot to take over the world, aided by Freemasons and Marxists. No surprise that Franco got on well with Heinrich Himmler and other leading Nazis.
If you are looking for a general history of the civil war, don’t read this book. Look at other books by Paul Preston, or Antony Beevor, or Ronald Fraser’s Blood of Spain, which is a general history presented as interviews with politicians, combatants and civilians on both sides. However, if you want to know what really happened behind the lines in the Spanish Civil War, and you want to understand how it fits with the tyrannies of Stalinism and Nazism, I recommend that you read this book.
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Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Franco's crimes exposed
Reviewed in France on December 8, 2016
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A pionneering piece of work. Never before had the horrendous crimes of Franco's rebellion been exposed içn such a detailed fashion. The excesses of the anarchists are also analysed, but do not amount to much.
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peter ferris
5.0 out of 5 stars The past recovered
Reviewed in Canada on January 9, 2013
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Many history books illuminate the past, some shed light on the present, but very few may be described as vital to a country's efforts to come to terms with its past. "The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain", by Paul Preston is such a book.
What Preston has done, with the contribution of a number of Spanish historians, is to detail the terrible events of the Spanish Civil War and the repression that followed under Franco's dictatorship. This is important given that after Franco's death, and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1970, no effort was made in Spain to address the horrors that had taken place. A policy of collective amnesia was agreed upon as it was thought that revisiting those events might tear the country apart.
It was not until 2000 that a serious effort began to recover historical memory. In towns and villages across Spain survivors of the civil war and its aftermath knew where the bodies were buried, who had shot whom, who had been denounced, which children had been torn away from their mothers. Over the last few years the silence has been broken.
Preston's point of view is that the psychological, sociological, and political effects of determined resistance to uncovering the past have to be addressed, that the historical truth has to be faced. He is meticulously fair in enumerating the crimes that were committed on both sides of the civil war, but he makes clear that Franco's coalition of right wing parties and interests, the Church, the big landowners, The Carlists, the Falange [the fascist militia], the Civil Guards [Spain's national police force], and the Army, killed, tortured, and imprisoned on a much greater scale than the Republicans, democrats, Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists they faced.
The intention of the right, which in an inversion of the truth and the law, described the legitimate Republican government as rebels, was to expunge any vestige of left wing support in Spain. The Republican government was branded as being controlled by a Jewish, Freemason, Marxist conspiracy, even though there were few Jews or Freemasons in Spain, and the Marxists were but one group in a broad left-wing coalition. Thus, as the Army occupied territory during the war, anyone who had held even a minor post in government was executed. No one could be neutral. Anyone who was not demonstrably for the rebels faced denunciation, followed by execution or imprisonment, humiliation and slave labour.
Franco's pursuit of his opponents was intractable. In 1940, after the civil war was over, Himmler visited Franco and an agreement was reached whereby Spain identified Germans who had fought for the Republic in the International Brigades, and the Gestapo identified Republicans who had fled to France, now of course under German occupation, so that Franco's government could extradite them and kill them.
This is a masterful book, although the horrors depicted are difficult to read. It is a rare case where a non-native historian ca achieve what a native historian cannot. But this book, following Preton's history of the Spanish Civil War, and his biography of Franco, surely makes Preston the pre-eminent historian of modern Spain
5 people found this helpful
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Ms. M. Edwards
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in Spain on November 27, 2017
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An excellent book that gives a very wide insight into the civil war in Spain. Also answers some questions regarding present day Spanish politics. I found it difficult to read about some of the barbaric behaviour on both sides, a lot of which was gratuitous and very shocking.
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