Raymond Carr
How Stalin Ruined the Spanish Republic
Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War
By Gerald Howson
John Murray 400pp £25 order from our bookshop
I have long admired Gerald Howson for his dogged determination to get to the truth, whatever the cost in hard labour. No episode in recent history is covered with more acres of ignorance than that of arms deliveries to the Spanish Republic in its struggle with Franco and the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. For the left, the defeat of the Republic was decided by the arms with which Germany and Italy supplied Franco; the right laid more emphasis on the political and military shortcomings of the Republic at war. Howson supplies the facts on which to base our judgements. For him, the true picture only emerges once the details are right.
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