The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War
Revolutionary Violence in Madrid

This study challenges the common view that extrajudicial executions in Republican Spain in July 1936 were the work of criminal or anarchist 'uncontrollables'.

Julius Ruiz (Author)

9781107682931, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 March 2015

398 pages, 3 maps
22.7 x 15 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

'His thoroughly researched and clear-eyed analysis of revolutionary terror and politically motivated killings in the city of Madrid goes a long way toward filling a noticeable gap in the historiography of the subject … The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War … provides the fullest and most factually reliable portrait of a particularly murky chapter of the Civil War.' George Esenwein, The Journal of Modern History

This book deals with one of most controversial issues of the Spanish Civil War (1936–9): the 'Red Terror'. Approximately 50,000 Spaniards were extrajudicially executed in Republican Spain following the failure of the military rebellion in July 1936. This mass killing of 'fascists' seriously undermined attempts by the legally constituted Republican government to present itself in foreign quarters as fighting a war for democracy. This study, based on a wealth of scholarship and archival sources, challenges the common view that executions were the work of criminal or anarchist 'uncontrollables'. Its focus is on Madrid, which witnessed at least 8,000 executions in 1936. It shows that the terror was organized and was carried out with the complicity of the police, and argues that terror was seen as integral to the antifascist war effort. Indeed, the elimination of the internal enemy - the 'Fifth Column' - was regarded as important as the war on the front line.

Introduction
1. On the brink
2. The military rebellion
3. Antifascist Madrid
4. Forging the new police
5. The justice of the people
6. If it is the will of the people…
7. Popular tribunals and the Rearguard Vigilance Militias (MVR)
8. A fifth column?
9. The prison problem
10. Paracuellos
11. The dirty war against the fifth column
12. Dealing with the legacy of the terror: forced labor for fascists, 1937–9
Epilogue
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]