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Franco a Biography, by Paul Preston
PDF Download Franco a Biography, by Paul Preston
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- Sales Rank: #1926003 in Books
- Published on: 1996-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 6.25" w x 2.00" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 1024 pages
From the Publisher
The critically acclaimed, definitive biography of the complex, elusive man credited with saving Spain from both the communists and Hitler as well as orchestrating the Spanish economic miracle of the 1960s.
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Flawed by relentless anti-Franco bias
By P. Warren
Francisco Franco was no hero of democracy and human rights. He was a classic reactionary whose Nationalist coalition won the Spanish Civil War with key backing from Hitler and Mussolini. Then for the remaining 36 years of his life he ran a repressive "estado totalitario" (Franco's own words). No objective story of this man's life will arouse great sympathy. However, author Paul Preston was not content to let the sad facts speak for themselves. Preston chose to lard his account with constant, gratuitous anti-Franco bias. Every move by Franco is portrayed as inspired by malicious egomania. Every controversial aspect of the Civil War is given a purely anti-Franco spin. In truth, the war was marked by widespread cruelty and lawlessness, with Terror seen as a legitimate weapon, by both Franco's Nationalists and their Republican opponents.
Typical of the overall problem is Preston's account of siege of Toledo. At this historic old town, where the young Franco had attended military school, Republican forces soon had the Nationalist garrison, commanded by Colonel Jose Moscardo, besieged in the ancient Alcazar fortress. The Republicans also captured Moscardo's 16-year-old son. A leader of the Republican force called Moscardo on the telephone and told him that unless he surrendered the Alcazar, his son would be shot. Moscardo reportedly asked to speak to his son and told him, "Commend your soul to God and die like a patriot, shouting 'Long live Christ King' and 'Long live Spain.'" "That," reportedly answered his son, "I can do." By some accounts the son was shot immediately, but it seems in truth he was murdered (in reprisal for an air raid) a month into the siege. After 70 days, Franco's army relieved the Alcazar on 27 September 1936.
Preston (p. 173) gives this famous story short shrift. He calls it "almost certainly apocryphal" and cites a report from a 3 October 1936 newspaper ("before the myth-makers began") that the phone line to the Alcazar had been cut throughout the siege. This is astonishingly cavalier and one-sided scholarship on Preston's part. As Hugh Thomas detailed in an earlier, more balanced and generally superior book The Spanish Civil War: Revised Edition (Modern Library Paperbacks), the Alcazar phone line was probably only "cut" in the sense that the Republicans controlled it. The story of the telephoned murder threat was told in the New York Times already on 30 September 1936. Preston makes no mention of Thomas' book in this connection.
Preston also elaborately condemns Franco's decision not to bypass Toledo on the way to Madrid (where the Republicans were fast organizing; the Nationalists never took Madrid until the end of the war three years later). As told by Preston, there is only one conceivable explanation: Franco's insatiable ego craved the glory of liberating the Alcazar. A more balanced treatment would acknowledge that the Nationalists, and Franco personally, had solemnly pledged to relieve the besieged garrison; that the relief was a great morale boost for the Nationalists; and that winning personal glory for Franco was arguably an important and worthwhile goal. Franco very soon became undisputed leader of the Nationalist side. Franco was at the time nebulously Monarchist, and his remarkable accomplishment was to unite, and keep united, the Falange (fascist), CEDA (conservative), Carlist and Monarchist factions for the rest of the war. In contrast, the fatal weakness of the Republican war effort was disunity among its Anarchist, Socialist, and Communist factions.
As another example, Franco's foreign policy during World War II is covered with monotonous bias. Is it not deplorable enough that Franco repeatedly signaled that he supported, and wished to eventually join in war, Hitler and Mussolini? But who knows (albeit Preston never for one second doubts) how really earnest those signals were? In the aftermath of the Civil War and the fall of neighboring France, Spain was practically defenseless and was literally starving, desperate for aid wherever it could be found. Franco was meanwhile trying to arm-twist Britain and the US into sending support, especially grain, protesting friendship but warning that the alternative might be a closer accommodation with Germany. In those dire circumstances, was this a wholly reprehensible policy? The one salient fact is, in the end, Franco left Hitler very sadly disappointed.
Readers who seek an objective assessment of Francisco Franco's role in history should not expect it find it in the pages of this detailed but relentlessly biased book.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Well researched but little to make it interesting.
By Orchard593@aol.com
For someone who wishes to know every detail of the Franco's life this will be an excellent book. Very well written and painstakingly researched this book explores every major event during the dictator's reign including listings of the names of cabinet members, each tactical decision during the civil warm, details of all meetings, and an account of every hunting expedition. The book does answer important questions about how Franco came into and remained in power, and how his decisions unwittingly helped pave the way for democracy. The stories surrounding the years of the civil war, and Franco's dealings with Hitler are fairly engrossing, but most of this book is filled with dry facts and figures with little to make it interesting to the average reader. In fact, most of Franco's life after WWII is uneventful, being tied up in political and economic concerns. This is a good example of the way most historians fail to create a picture of the past to which a person in the present can relate. More personal moments and period detail would have made this book far more enjoyable. In short, if you are using this book for research, it will prove a valuable resource, otherwise I do not recommend it.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
One of the best, non-fiction or fiction, books I've read.
By A Customer
Preston is obviously an incredible historian and writer. I almost exclusively read history and international affairs books, and this is without a doubt the BEST I've ever read. This book is long, but not because the author must defend his ego with a huge tome as many do today. You almost are sad that the book ends because Preston's prose and great skill at telling the story of Francisco Franco is not surpassed. Every professional historian should read this book, if a Spanish historian or not, to see how great historical writing is done.
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