FOR MANY YEARS, THE defence of the Spanish Republic was “the last great cause”. This was not just because it involved the selfless struggle of Spaniards and international volunteers against fascism but also because the Republic was an attempt to drag Spain into the 20th century.

In a Europe disillusioned with capitalism, Republican Spain seemed an exciting experiment, the first step towards an egalitarian world.

The anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti told a reporter: “We are not afraid of ruins, we are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin their world before they leave the stage of history. But we carry a new world in our hearts.”

In recent years, a Cold War historiography, emanating from the US and using Soviet documents, has endeavoured to portray the Republic in sinister terms. Antony Beevor is altogether more balanced, but also sets out to take some of the shine off the idealisation of the Republic. In this updating of his 1982 work The Spanish Civil War, his two big contributions are to rethink the military conflict and his judicious use of the Russian material. As might be expected of any book by Beevor, the job is done in clear prose, peppered with fresh perceptions, especially where strategy, tactics, and soldiers are concerned.

Given the complexity of the subject, however, occasional judgements are questionable. There can be no doubt that Beevor is right that the Republic tried to do too much too quickly. Given the situation in 1931, however, it is harsh to blame the Socialist Party and its urban middle-class allies for trying.

The Republican-Socialist coalition wanted to create a modern Spain, destroying the influence of the Church, eradicating militarism and helping millions of starving labourers through agrarian reform. This inevitably raised the expectations of the urban and rural proletariats while provoking the bitter enmity of clerics, soldiers and the landowning and industrial oligarchies. Within hours of the Republic being declared, monarchist plotters had begun planning a military coup, which took place on July 18, 1936.

The plotters were unhindered in the spring of 1936 largely because, as Beevor points out, the Prime Minister, Santíago Casares Quiroga, viewed General Emilio Mola, the leading conspirator, as Chamberlain did Hitler. This is typical of the insights that glitter throughout.

The coup provoked the collapse of the state infrastructure, since functionaries — from diplomats to policemen — tended to favour the rebels. The vacuum was occupied by unions and leftist organisations. Essential services were organised with astonishing speed although difficulties of food distribution were provoked by the fact that the militias had commandeered all available transport.

But Beevor suggests that the disappearance of bourgeois attire that so pleased George Orwell had as much to do with hot weather as with the hunting down of the middle classes for wearing hats.

Beevor is most thought-provoking on military detail. The problems of ordinary soldiers are brought vividly alive: anarchists regarded comrades who stayed awake on sentry duty as fools; International Brigaders had to sort through boxes of cartridges to find something that might fit their rifles; Russian “advisers” were often as inexperienced as those that they were supposed to advise. Senior Soviet offices were apoplectic about the anarchic behaviour of the Spaniards but their dispatches were often as redolent of impotence as of iron control. They had no prior experience of people who disagreed. Beevor describes one commissar nonplussed to find that not only were those he dealt with not Communists but in a variety of parties.

Most original are the criticisms of Vicente Rojo, seen by most commentators as the outstanding strategist of the war.

Beevor sees him as rigidly adhering to French First World War notions and overly influenced by Stalinist advisers. There are devastating critiques of his diversionary attacks at Brunete, Belchite, Teruel and the Ebro, as “prestige operations” imposed by the Russians. Teruel is seen as a damagingly futile attack on a strategically useless area.

Certainly all of these operations assisted Franco’s ambition of annihilating the Republic’s forces. In contrast, the defence of Valencia is described as the Republic’s greatest victory.

The involvement of Hitler and Mussolini meant that, from July 27, 1936, the war was a battle of a wider European civil war. Stalin decided to assist the Republic and foreign help rendered the politics of both zones horrendously complex. This was particularly true in the Republican zone, where bewildering political rivalries were bedevilled by the interference of Soviet advisers.

It is here that the Russian documents produce both fascinating and distorting insights. To fight Franco, Hitler and Mussolini while various leftwing factions wanted a revolution was daunting. Communist calls for discipline were music to the ears of liberal Republicans and moderate Socialists. The role of the Russians has to be seen in terms of the time, not with hindsight about the horrors of Stalinism.

Beevor produces much disturbing material on the vicious discipline imposed on the International Brigades by the Frenchman André Marty, something rarely mentioned in memoirs by volunteers.

Marty was a murderous thug but it is not true that he admitted shooting 500 brigaders. He was alleged to have said this to the central committee of the French Communist Party on October 15, 1937. He actually said, totally untruthfully: “During all the time that I participated in the work there, checking everything personally, I can say that there were only two cases of executions.”

However, a Francoist propaganda pamphlet changed this to: “The executions that I ordered did not amount to more than 500.” There can be no doubt that Marty was violent, paranoid and abusive but he was guilty only of between 10 and 20 deaths.

Beevor may not believe that fighting for the Spanish Republic constituted the last great cause, but anyone who reads this intriguing book will understand Albert Camus’s words: “It was in Spain that men learnt that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward. It is this, without doubt, which explains why so many men throughout the world regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.”

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