2017/05/15 by Michael Alpert · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Spanish History and Politics #Spanish Culture and Identity
paper · doi:10.4324/9781315234335-14
openalex publication_date 2017/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Spanish Civil War historiography evolved in a more scholarly direction in the 1970s, when the crumbling Franco regime had to respond to scholarly writing about the Civil War by, among others, Hugh Thomas and Raymond Carr, whose work showed rather different pictures from those of the approved historians of the regime. Francoist military historians hardly consider broader issues of warfare. The 1930s saw rapid innovation, particularly in two fields: military aviation and armoured warfare. Though wise observers realized that they had to consider the inexperience of both sides in Spain, the war allowed Germany, Italy and the USSR to evaluate new weapons, particularly aircraft, and, in the German case, to experiment with new ways of war. The Russian fighters prevented daytime raids on Madrid in the autumn, winter and spring of 1936-7 because the German Junkers-52 bombers could not be safely escorted.