Introduction: Fascist Italy and the Spanish Civil War 1
1 Fascist intervention in the coup d’état of 1936 15
Blind faith 16
No turning back 37
2 Fascist Italy at war, 1937 59
From guerra celere to ‘Guadalahara’ 60
A war in the North 81
3 Italy, the CTV, and politics on the National side 102
Fascistisation 103
Evangelise by deed 120
4 Identity, combat, rearguard 133
He wrote, Viva il Duce! , and then he died 135
The clean and the dirty 149
5 A European war in Spain, 1938–1939 169
Without inhibitions 171
Sacred testament 186
Conclusion 202
Biography
Javier Rodrigo is ICREA-Acadèmia Researcher and Professor of History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and currently coordinates a H2020 European Project on forced displacements in Europe.
"In terms of boots on the ground, Italian soldiers constituted the largest non-Spanish military presence during a civil war noted for foreign interventionism. Readers looking for a new and nuanced view of Italian participation (military, political, diplomatic, and propagandist) in this conflict will not be disappointed. The author’s familiarity with the primary and secondary literature, nicely presented in a rich bibliography, is clear, and he is unafraid to challenge long-held suppositions about the conflict. Specifically, Rodrigo (Autonomous Univ. of Barcelona, Spain) argues that the historiography of Benito Mussolini’s intervention in Spain is grounded too much in geopolitical considerations (e.g., controlling the Mediterranean), which, although not denied, obfuscates a more variegated and changing set of motives and discounts Fascist ideological reasoning. He also questions negative historical judgments of Italian military performance predicated on its role in the lost Battle of Guadalajara and the scholarly failure to understand the motivations of those volunteering for the expeditionary CVT (Corpo Truppe Volontarie), rightly asking why being unemployed is incompatible with being Fascist. Regrettably, there is no discussion of Fascist propaganda efforts to shape average citizens' view of the war, in Italy and abroad" - R. T. Ingoglia, St.Thomas Aquinas College, CHOICE magazine
