Spanish Republicans and the Second World War
The Spanish Civil War ended in March 1939, but this was not the end of the struggle for the 500,000 Republican refugees who escaped to France. They were herded into internment camps, and half of them were still there when they were caught up in WW2. The collaborationist Vichy government handed many of them to the Germans as forced labour to work on the Atlantic Wall and elsewhere. Others managed to join the British and Free French forces and fought on every front from Norway to East Africa. More still found their way into the French Resistance and played an important role in liberating SW France. Not content with this they then made an incursion into Spain in 1944 to overthrow Franco but met with no support from a war-weary population.
Whitehead also includes a chapter on the Blue Division which Franco sent to Russia to support Hitler. An interesting account of one of the least explored aspects of WW2.
