Customer Reviews

Death in Malaga: An American Eyewitness Account of the Spanish Civil War

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Edward Norton was an American diplomat who retired to Malaga, Spain in the 1930s. One of the very few Westerners to stay and observe the entire seven months' rule by the Spanish Anarchists and Communists, his diaries document the disastrous results of government by mob.
After Norton's death, his great nephew, William Harmon, inherited the diaries, and has used them and other family documents to tell the story of the starvation, arson, mass executions and destruction which ended only when General Franco's forces reached the city to re-establish order.
I think this is an excellent account of an eye witness to the Spanish Civil War.
In my own youth, American news reports pictured Franco as the villain. He was indeed a dictator, but he appears to have saved Malaga from the final total destruction of the city and from the execution of its remaining citizens planned by the anarchists.