Krvavá předehra - Španělská občanská válka a zahraniční intervence 1936–1939 – Cílek Roman (2021)

The book by a leading Czech author of non-fiction is a dramatic, reader-attractive narrative enriched with many documents, testimonies, and personal research, offering a perspective not only on wartime events but also on the little-known background of events, which is broadly characterized by the subtitle of the work. The author aims to approach the topic objectively and without one-sided ideological ballast. At the beginning of the events was an armed attempt by a significant part of the officer corps and some opposition political forces to overthrow the government of the People's Front, which emerged from the previous elections. Soon after, however, the internal conflict transcended the borders of its country. The fascist powers of Germany and Italy became involved in the fight on the side of the rebels, not only with weapons and soldiers but also with secret services and coercive diplomacy, while the Republicans were supported by the Soviet Union and the international communist movement. The bloody Spanish prelude, in which both the Francoists and Republicans alternated between defeats and victories, became a power test, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, marked by immense cruelty on both warring sides – and lasted until the spring of 1939. That fateful year, when shortly thereafter another war would begin: the one ominously dubbed the Second World War.