Last Crusade: Spain 1936 [Paperback]

Warren H. Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004

Why be satisfied with leftist propaganda on the Spanish Civil War? Carroll's treatment of the events of 1936 is singular in Anglo-American scholarship for seeing the conflict for what is truly was: a death struggle against the Christian faith and a war against Christian civilization in Europe. This outstanding work of scholarship illustrates the phenomenon of the traditionalist as revisionist: the distortions of decades of Marxist historiography are overturned in Carroll's narration of the bloody struggle to preserve Western civilization in the heart of 20th century Europe.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Christendom Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0931888670
• ISBN-13: 978-0931888670
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the true story, February 8, 2000

By 

ramon masllorens (Pamplona, Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Crusade: Spain 1936 (Paperback)

Living in Spain, I learned more from this book than from any other book written about the Spanish Civil War. Simple and direct, this book tells the real story. Anyone trying to feel and understand the mood of those times in Spain will simply have to read it. Gripping and enlightning.

57 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Against the Conventional Wisdom, May 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Crusade: Spain 1936 (Paperback)

Dr. Carroll's book is particularly enlightening on the zeitgeist of Spanish culture that led to Franco Nationalism. This is quite in contrast to the conventional wisdom about Franco and the Catholic Church during this period. As recently as The New York Times A.P. report on the Pope's recent visit to Spain (related to the beatification of some of the 1936 martyrs), the revolution is ideologically rewritten to suit leftist revisionism. The order of events is, for instance, characteristically jumbled to suggest the Church was attacked BECAUSE of Franco; while Dr. Carroll's scrupulous work shows that, without question, the pogrom against the Catholic Church by a coalition of anarchists, socialists, communists and other indifferent leftists began long before the Carlists and other traditionalists struck back in defense of their faith. And, in Times fashion, Franco's "fascism" is questioned, without any mention of the Communist puppet regime Spain was becoming, even though the Spanish national treasury was looted and sent directly to Moscow, where Stalin bragged that the Spanish would have as much chance of seeing their gold again as a man has of seeing his own ears. This information is a fascinating rejoinder to histories that insist that on a simplistic view of a complex revolution.

49 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, despite some unnecessary simplifications, June 21, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Crusade: Spain 1936 (Paperback)

Initially, I must alert that this book is not a detailed analisys of the spanish civil war, but a sum of the main events occured during the first half year of that same war - July to December 1936 - from the traditionalist roman catholic point of view shared by the author - Warren Carroll. Telling no falsities, the book sometimes falls in excessive simplifications like overemphasizing the role of the Carlist Militia, a traditionalist catholic guerrilla group that roots his origins in the 19th century, or ridiculously presenting José António's Falange almost as a group of modern hooligans. Really, Falange was an antimarxist, antiliberal and antiparty system political association, deeply influenced by Catholic Church's Social Doctrine, but not possessing the old fashioned "patine" typical of the Carlist Militia.

Nevertheless, Warren Carroll's book has two great and essential points:

1º) Remembers that the second Spanish Republic drove Spain to the chaos, leaving the real political power fall in the streets to be exercised, summarily, by communist and anarchist mobs (by the end of 1936, communists took complete control over the republic, now totally dependent on Stalin's U.S.S.R. economic and military aid, President Manuel Azaña being no more than a Moscow's puppet;

2º) Very especially, relates the brutal religious persecution moved in that same period by those communists and anarchists against the Catholic Church, one of the major causes to understand the 18th July 1936 nationalist sublevation (13 bishops and 10.000 priests were cold bloodly murdered in one of the worst 20th century's religious persecutions).