Blue Division

This book, translated from the original Spanish, is the primary academic and historical study of the Blue Division—a Falangist initiative involving the dispatch of some 40,000 Spanish combatants (more than a half of whom paid with their lives, health, or liberty) to the Russian Front during the Second World War. Xavier Moreno Juliá does not limit himself to relating their deeds under arms, but also analyzes the political background in detail: the complex relations between the Spanish government and Hitler's Germany; the internal conflicts between the Falangists and the Army; the rise and fall of Franco's brother-in-law, Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer, who inspired the Blue Division and became the second most powerful person in Spain; and the attitude of General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, commander of the Blue Division, who was encouraged by Berlin to seriously consider the possibility of taking over the reins of Spanish power. This book, based on massive documentation in German, British, and Spanish archives, is an essential source of information to understand Spain in the 1940s—an epoch when the Caudillo's power and the regime's good fortune were less secure than is often believed.