Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 137

BOOK REVIEWS

columns converged on Madrid, the embattled government was forced to cobble together its defenses from
a rag-tag array of paramilitary units, workers’ militias,
and the handful of regular officers and conscripts who
remained loyal to the republic.
The motley Republican array stopped the
Nationalists at the gates of the capital, and as the war
dragged into 1937, the army of the republic would
eventually evolve into a formidable force of 70 divisions
and 17 corps equipped with tanks, aircraft, and artillery.
In The Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War, 19361939, historian Michael Alpert describes this remarkable evolution.
It is a story of building an army in the middle of a
bitter conflict and, for this reason, it is story of desperate
expedients; some were successful, others failed. It is the
story of overcoming party rivalries, as the Republican
general staff sought to militarize the undisciplined militias raised by the anarchists, Communists, Socialists,
Trotskyites, and others who made up the coalition
opposing Franco.
Finally, it is a tragedy. The Republican army was
never able to overcome its shortcomings in modern
weapons, leadership, training, and political unity. By
early 1939, facing the better-equipped (thanks to Hitler
and Mussolini) and more effectively led Nationalist
armies, the Republican army would collapse. For many
of those Republican officers unable to escape into exile,
defeat meant a firing squad.
Alpert’s book is not an account of battles and command decisions. It is an institutional history that examines the way the Republican army was built, how its
leaders were found, and how it was staffed by commissars charged with ensuring the reliability of its officers
and the maintaining the morale of the conscripts who
eventually made up the bulk of its manpower.
It is a detailed and well-researched story with an
inherent interest for military professionals. However,
the author assumes the reader has a basic understanding of causes, course, and outcomes of the Spanish Civil
War. Those without such a foundation ar