Hell and Good Company, The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made by Richard Rhodes, Simon & Schuster, 2016
Eighty years after the tragic and shockingly destructive Spanish Civil War, this sharp and disturbing work by Richard Rhodes, the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, gives us more than the expected powerful photos and commentary. The Spanish Civil War, a preamble to WWII and a practice event for the Luftwaffe, drew hundreds of volunteers, writers and reporters from around the world - somehow they all knew that the fight between the Spanish government's Republican forces, the Nationalists under Franco, and the beleaguered civilians, was a battle that they had to witness. And many of them did bear witness for the rest of the world, but among them were other less well known attendees - doctors and nurses who did what they could to help.
Despite the ugly photographic history of Spain's Civil War terrors, this war got less press, overshadowed by the bigger cataclysms to come. Sure, we all know of Hemingway's work there, as well as Picasso and Miro, all of whom recorded the horror of bombed cities. But the other professionals who made strong contributions to the anti-war, anti-terror efforts are well covered in Rhodes' book - J.B.S. Haldane, a British biologist who investigated the effectiveness of gas warfare versus explosive bombs, Edward Barsky, an American surgeon raised money at public rallies, pulled together hospitals in Spanish, and attempted to treat as many wounded as he could. Among the "volunteers" as they were known - and Rhodes counts over 40,000 - there was a spirit of idealism that positioned the hope of democracy against monstrous Fascist incursions.
Time magazine called the Spanish Civil War the "Little World War," stretching over 3 years from 1936 - 1939, just ahead of World War II's 1939 beginnings. As a smaller stage on which the later, large scale warfare strategies and technologies would play out, Spain suffered greatly. Rhodes believes that Spain was a "proving ground" for new approaches to warfare that imposed casualties on civilians beyond what soldiers had been trained for, witness the classic film "To Die in Madrid." The Spanish Civil War saw firebombing, as well as significant advances in blood collection, preservation and storage, field surgery, new approaches to plaster casting, transfusions, triage.
George Orwell, author of the 1984 and Animal Farm, recounts his bleak experience of the war in his memoir Homage to Catalonia. "This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil," he wrote, "and yet I do not wish that I had missed it."