France Divided: The French and the Civil War in Spain

ISBN-13: 9781845194901 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 433 str.

Professor David Wingeate Pike

Opis

This book sets out to analyze the schism in French public opinion during the Spanish Civil War that was to end in the tragic collapse of French national unity. It examines how the French people viewed their position in the international imbroglio swirling around the Spanish question, and how news was manipulated as never before. Mainstream historical fact is presented as the skeleton on which French press reportage is grafted and included in the historical material is the author s research in the archives of all five of the French departements bordering on Spain. The work is divided into two parts, the chronological hiatus coming in December 1936. This division is explained by the policy formulated by the democracies that went through no appreciable change; a policy sufficiently strong, perhaps, to deter the Axis powers from all-out intervention in Spain, but weak enough to allow them to pursue with impunity a victory by attrition. The periodic opening and closing of the French frontier played no decisive part in the outcome, since French aid to the Spanish Republic never came close to what the Axis provided the Nationalists. The book ends with the agony of the Republican exodus."