Arms for Spain

When military officers rebelled against the left-wing Spanish Republic in 1936, the leaders of Europe called for an international arms embargo against Spain, in the hopes of preventing escalation. Yet this embargo was regularly flouted for Franco's rebels, giving them an enormous advantage.

Arms for Spain tells the story, for the first time, of how the Republic was thus obliged to buy illegal arms from foreign officials who extorted huge bribes for arms they never delivered. Banks and arms traffickers also swindled the Spanish government, often sending arms that were entirely unusable. Howson shows that Russia, long believed to be the Republic's strongest supporter, was in fact the worst offender of all.

A major contribution to our understanding of both European politics of the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War, this is a powerful account of one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.