What was the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, architect of America’s rise to global power, and the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, which inspired passion and sacrifice, and shaped the road to world war? While many historians have portrayed the Spanish Civil War as one of Roosevelt’s most isolationist episodes, Dominic Tierney argues that it marked the president’s first attempt to challenge fascist aggression in Europe. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents, Tierney describes the evolution of Roosevelt’s thinking about the Spanish Civil War in relation to America’s broader geopolitical interests, as well as the fierce controversy in the United States over Spanish policy. Between 1936 and 1939, Roosevelt’s perceptions of the Spanish Civil War were transformed. Initially indifferent toward which side won, FDR became an increasingly committed supporter of the leftist government. He believed that German and Italian intervention in Spain was part of a broader program of fascist aggression, and he worried that the Spanish Civil War would inspire fascist revolutions in Latin America. In response, Roosevelt tried to send food to Spain as well as illegal covert aid to the Spanish government, and to mediate a compromise solution to the civil war. However unsuccessful these initiatives proved in the end, they represented an important stage in Roosevelt’s emerging strategy to aid democracy in Europe.

This book examines the internal controversies of the Roosevelt administration in connection with Spain during World War II, the role of the President in these controversies, and the foundations of the policy that was followed from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War until the launching of Operation Torch in 1942.

DIVProvides new understanding of Franklin Roosevelt's involvement in the Spanish Civil War, claiming that he was activist and pro-Loyalist./div

Based on a pocket diary from the Spanish-American War, this tough-as-nails 1899 memoir abounds in patriotic valor and launched the future President into the American consciousness.

Franco and the Spanish Civil War is a wide-ranging and insightful analysis of the origins, course, and consequences of the conflict and of Franco's role within it. It offers a broad view of the war through a survey of the social and cultural dimensions, as well as the military and political ones. In particular, it traces Franco's meteoric rise to power, his conduct in the war, and his long subsequent rule. This authoritative introduction illuminates the many different interpretations of the conflict by examining a variety of perspectives. Franco and the Spanish Civil War places the war in its national and global contexts, exploring both nationalist and republican points of view, and giving attention to foreign participation in the conflict.

This book is a study of the relations between the US and Spain, particularly during the period from 1943 to 1945, when the Roosevelt Administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to challenge the Pro-Franco Regime, culminating in the Battle of Wolfram and the embargo of petroleum products.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War, told through a dozen characters, including Hemingway and George Orwell: A tale of idealism, heartbreaking suffering, and a noble cause that failed. For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world, as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa’s photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war: a fiery nineteen-year-old Kentucky woman who went to wartime Spain on her honeymoon, a Swarthmore College senior who was the first American casualty in the battle for Madrid, a pair of fiercely partisan, rivalrous New York Times reporters who covered the war from opposites sides, and a swashbuckling Texas oilman with Nazi sympathies who sold Franco almost all his oil — at reduced prices, and on credit. It was in many ways the opening battle of World War II, and we still have much to learn from it. Spain in Our Hearts is Adam Hochschild at his very best. “With all due respect to Orwell, Spain in Our Hearts should supplant Homage to Catalonia as the best introduction to the conflict written in English. A humane and moving book."—New Republic “Excellent and involving . . . What makes [Hochschild’s] book so intimate and moving is its human scale.” — Dwight Garner, New York Times