Excellent book on Spanish Civil War and little known foreign volunteers (or better said volunteers outside Condor Legion, Italian Fascists and Spanish Foreign Legion), their motivation and finally how they ended up in life (post civil war and post WW2). It shows Franco enjoyed great popularity in the west (that was feared by rise of the Red's) and that many were willing to give their lives fighting for Franco's cause - or walk over their compatriots bodies to achieve their own goals of personal glory.
Book gives a great insight into behind-the-scenes manipulations of Franco's volunteers and how he used them to forward his goals and discard them at the first opportunity when they were of no further use.

1917 October revolution and events after it, rise of Stalin's despotism and oppression in the Europe's east gave rise to equally terrifying fascism and nazism on Europe's west but with one big difference - for majority of Western Hemisphere in the beginning nazism/fascism was publicly ignored at worst [heavy resistance to it will come later]. These ideologies were seen as defenders of everything that Bolsheviks were against (and what was held dear by wealthy in all countries endangered by Stalin's encroachment). Impoverished on the other hand sought refuge in Stalin's ideas and enrolled into fighting fascism/nazism but soon figured out that they were just used by Stalin's regime - nevertheless they continued fighting for the very ideal until finally betrayed by Stalin at the end of Spanish civil war. Very same thing Franco did to his volunteers.

It took WW2 to push all the tyrants into same basket - Stalin and his henchmen, Franco, Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis and all the other oppression regimes. But still hysteria of menace-from-the-east (or menace-from-the-west for the Russians) remains alive and this provides means for revival and consolidation of very dangerous ideologies even today.

Clash of ideas started in 1917, sent tremors in 1936 and finally shook the world from 1939-1945 but still remains in hearts and minds of millions. And unfortunately tensions are still very much alive and used by politicians to stir the hearts of those that will pay for the politicians mistakes. Hope remains that people will get smart [although history does not back this with many examples].

Highly recommended. ( )

Of late, I've been conducting a purge of various TBR lists, as the books keep on coming and anything that's been hanging fire for more than five years is arguably not that relevant. I'm glad that I made an exception for this book, as it answered questions that I didn't realize I had, such as that many Moroccans fought for Franco out of the sense that they might be fighting for independence. Besides that, apart from the German Legion Condor and the Italian CTV, the "meta" issue that Othen winds up tracing is how the foreign anti-communist volunteers had their own journey of disillusionment that is comparable to the experiences of those who fought in the International Brigades, as the parallel revolutions consumed their young. Ultimately, though they couldn't have realized it at the time, many of those who thought they were involved in a crusade against International Communism came to bad ends in Hitler's great war of conquest. ( )