The Passionate War: The Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War

by Peter Wyden

s/t: The Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War 1936-39
Oral reports, records, diaries, histories, autobiographies & letters contribute to a narrative reconstruction of the chronology, politics, military strategies & legacies of the Spanish Civil War.

Genres: History, Spain, Spanish Civil War, Nonfiction, War

608 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Peter H. Wyden, born Peter Weidenreich, in Berlin to a Jewish family, was an American journalist and writer.

He left Nazi Germany and went to the United States in 1937. After studying at City University of New York, he served with the U.S. Army's Psychological Warfare Division in Europe during World War II. After the war, he began a career in journalism, during which he worked as a reporter for The Wichita Eagle, a feature writer for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington correspondent for Newsweek magazine, a contributing editor for The Saturday Evening Post in Chicago and San Francisco, articles editor for McCall's, and executive editor for Ladies' Home Journal. He authored or coauthored nine books, and numerous articles that appeared in major magazines. In 1970, he became a book publisher in New York City and Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Source: wikipedia.com

Reviews

[Lance Charnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle "The Narrative History" tells you most of what you need to know about this book: it recounts the bloody, twisted saga of the Spanish Civil War -- the most destructive 20th Century war that nobody knows about -- through the viewpoints of dozens of people great and small on all sides of the conflict.

"Wait," you say, "isn't that what Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made was about?" Well, yes, it was. But unlike that blinkered and one-sided view of the war, The Passionate War makes an effort to include the experiences of Spaniards and foreigners, Republicans and Nationalists, commanders and foot soldiers alike. As such, it's a richer and fuller account.

This isn't a textbook history. It doesn't dwell on the big men and grand strategies. It opens on a midnight march west across the Pyrenees by a group of volunteers heading to fight for the Republican (loyalist) cause, and ends after a shambolic trudge thirty-six months later by refugees and survivors fleeing in the other direction. In between we get battles, massacres, aerial dogfights, political intrigue and infighting, hope, romance, heartbreak, privation, and so much death, told through the experiences of the people in the middle of it all. The author combed through hundreds of reference works, diaries, and interviews (the "selected bibliography" is ten pages of small type) to corroborate the accounts he used to tell these stories. At its best, it reads like an epic novel.

The shortfalls that knocked 3/4 of a star off my rating are each petty in themselves but add up over 500 pages. For a history, there's a shortage of dates; the author might tell us a date at the beginning of a chapter, but it's hard to tell if hours, days, or weeks have passed ten or twelve pages later. There are maps, but not enough of them, and the ones there are often don't show locations mentioned in the text. Many pages are given to the internecine wars between the welter of leftist factions that propelled the Republican cause, but not enough of those pages help clarify which factions were allied, which were at daggers-drawn, and when they changed sides. This latter knowledge would help the reader understand how internal rivalries and doctrinal hairsplitting undermined the loyalists and guaranteed the Spanish government would lose the war.

The Passionate War turns the ghastly epic of the Spanish Civil War into a story of humans in extremis in a beautiful, impoverished land. Despite its minor shortcomings, it's an indispensable tool to help the reader see beyond the numbers and ideologies into the lived experience of what became the dress rehearsal for World War Two.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historians have a tough gig. Writing a story that requires accuracy means thousands of hours of research for a limited return. Wyden has done an excellent job here. The extended title mentions this is a 'Narrative History,' which means it's readable, relatable, on a par with Barbara Tuchman's books, but maybe not quite up to the level of Rick Atkinson (who is other-worldly.) If somebody had told Wyden we were ready for another WW II history, he probably would have done that. (Atkinson's Pulitzer-winning 'An Army at Dawn' was published a decade after this book.)
But Wyden picked the Spanish Civil War, probably because nobody else had covered it adequately. I'm glad he did; this is the definitive work. He captures all the players: Franco with his fascists, monarchists, and Catholics, supported by Mussolini and Hitler, versus the Republicans, a loose amalgamation of socialists, communists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, anarchists, and people who hate fascists but also hate every other 'ist.' The Republicans could have won, could have crushed the military revolt, if only they could have stopped murdering each other for ten minutes. No, Franco's opponents acted as though they could deal with Franco, the Nazi Legion, and the Italian army as soon as they finished murdering everybody on their side who did not 100% agree with them. They had not heard the saying, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'
Wyden captures the political scene too, German and Italian Nazis supplying the weapons and material of modern war to Franco, while Britain, France, and the U.S. craft strongly-worded diplomatic protests. Stalin sent material, paid for with Spain's gold reserve, and advisors, who were regularly recalled to Moscow to be shot. That was Stalin's shtick in the thirties: anybody in the Soviet military or diplomatic corps who had been exposed to other ideas or cultures would be killed, just in case. Hemingway, George Orwell, Eric Severeid, Edward R. Murrow, and others developed the narratives and attitudes they would exploit later in their careers. The slaughter in Spain informed the World War that came next, shaping Nazi tactics that would prove highly effective against Poland and France, two countries who were not paying attention.
This is a fascinating and thorough retelling of the conflict, overshadowed but not diminished by what came next.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an ok read. My first one on the Spanish Civil War. This book dealt more with personal history accounts which is good, but I was looking for an overall history of the war vice personal accounts. Just my preference.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is history that reads like a novel. It is biased towards giving more “air time” to the internationals and celebrities like Hemingway. Nevertheless, it paints a thorough picture of the events.

And even though we know decades of repression and stagnation will follow, we know that democracy will prevail in the end.

It is well to remember and take solace from this in dark times.

[Natalia Galiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quizá uno de los libros más entretenidos y amenos sobre la Guerra Civil española.
Un clásico para enganchar incluso a la persona más reacia a lecturas de historia.
Imprescindible.

[Alex Stern · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of heroic and unfathomable stories beautifully assembled into a compelling narrative that showcases the true nature of the Spanish Civil War.

[John Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Want The Good War but for Spain? Of course you do. That's this book, in essence. It follows a few narrators throughout the conflict to their various ends, but gives, as promised, a solid narrative history of the Spanish Civil War, largely sympathetic to the Republican cause because the author has a good head on his shoulders.

[Jorge Aranda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this book in order to learn a topic that is mostly forgotten in European History today. I gave up halfway though the book, being such an awful piece of work. This book is ok for those who want a detailed summary of certain foreigners involvement in the war, such Hemmingway and Orwell but almost nothing on the Spaniards themselves outside a few selected characters like Dolores Ibárruri who interestingly enough wrote an autobiography a few years before this was published. But otherwise the book is uninformative, absolutely nothing on what led to the Spanish Civil War, including the abdication of Alfonso XIII of Spain and very minimal on the turmoil surrounding Spain at the time of Calvo Sotelo, or why the Nationalists/Republicans were disgruntled in the first place. In other areas of the book it was hard to defer between who were Republicans and who were Nationalists, or who were none, including some coverage on the anarchists, which Wyden defers them in a positive light until the assassination of Durruti. If you want a more detailed picture of the causes of Spanish Civil War, avoid The Passionate War.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mother moved back to Norway after a failed second marriage, becoming involved with, then married to, a Norwegian bank president (in Norway that's a Civil Service position) who had a second home in Spanish Andalusia. Consequently, I had the opportunity to visit Spain a few times before her death, staying near the town of Mijas Costas in sight, on a clear day, of the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. In order to prepare for these trips I read up on Spain and developed an interest in Spanish history, particularly in their civil war, so significant a prefigurement of World War Two.

This book is another of Wyden's popular studies, all of which I've enjoyed thus far contrary to the negative reports of Kirkus Reviews.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much a product of it's time. As a diary of the conflict as it happened it's quite good but most of the text is centered on the political machinations of each group to an almost microscopic level. As such, some of the emotion is sucked out of the text.

[Cibernetes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Por favor, no dejen de leer este libro. Es esencial.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read half of this (how does the war end again?), I was expecting more literal first-hand accounts than the told-through-personal-vignettes approach here, which wasn't bad but an odd level.

[Nikowise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro 100% recomendado, uno comienza y no puede parar hasta que lo termina

[Who · Rating 4 out of 5]

not to be mistaken for anything greater than documentary fiction but nevertheless worth the read