Antony Beevor for Cassell Write a best seller and you'll see your older works released, and so it was for Beevor after Stalingrad. This is a good "quick" summary of the war. This is not to say that (at 300 pages) it is short but by comparison to Hugh Thomas' monster work it verges on the swift. Beevor has a great contempt for the Nationalist brutality but has to admire the way that Franco dealt with the potential for discord in the ranks of his allies (the Falange and the Carlists). The Republicans by contrast are weak bunglers. Their best leaders are militarily hidebound and unable to grasp the concept of the finessed attack. The internal hatreds especially those of Stalin's Communist stooges often leave the Nationalists a poor third in the Mortal Enemy stakes. Beevor demonstrates just what the reality of life under the old Republic was like, so that one can see why the Left fought, but not whom it fought! At times one can barely belief the Communist line was credible never mind effective, but was it only 25 years ago these frauds still had academic credibility? A terribly sad story told well. More Old Duffer's Book Corner (book reviews) Dervish St Bartholomew's Eve The Vietnam War El Alamein 1943 The Victory That Never Was Crete: The Battle and the Resistance The Imperial War Museum Book of The Somme The Spanish Civil War Armies of The 19th Century Asia: China The Russian Civil War Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier & Tyrant The Battle for Normandy The Siege of Vienna Vimy! The Great Boer War Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King Pallas Armata Back to Perfidious Albion #102 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com