Spain in Our Hearts

Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

By: Adam Hochschild

Narrated by: Henry Strozier

From acclaimed best-selling author Adam Hochschild, a sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War told through a dozen characters, including Ernest 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 19-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.

©2016 Adam Hochschild (P)2016 Recorded Books

Moving and profound

An excellent rendition of a sad, beautiful moment in human history. Every American should read this book.

When Being Not-Wrong Wasn't Enough

This one is tough to read right now in this Age of Trump and McConnell.

On the one hand, it gives us Franco’s Spanish Nationalists as evident “bad guys,” as characters who are simply wrong. They were barbarous in their methods and execrable in their philosophy. Adam Hochschild says at one point that scholars quibble over whether Franco was an outright fascist, but it’s hard to think the difference matters much. He walked like a fascist, talked like a fascist, and slaughtered his “enemies of the state” like a fascist.

And, most chillingly of all, he won. His death didn’t come until the dawn of my own near adult understanding of politics, and I remember – from when it first appeared as a Saturday Night Live joke – Chevy Chase declaring, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” Yeah, we laughed, and yeah, I didn’t get it. But, still, part of the joke was the uncomfortable notion that, into the 1970s, he was the embodiment of what we thought we’d destroyed in World War II.

On the other hand, it’s hard to know about the Republicans. I am confident I’d have sympathized with them, and even decades later I still wish they’d won. They spoke of equality. They were two generations ahead of most of the world on women’s rights. They had a sense of economic justice. And they had, in Lorca and others, a kind of poetry that the fascists could never have understood.

But, were they good guys or simply less-bad guys opposing the bad guys? Hochschild plays it both ways here. He finds elements of the Republicans – especially the anarchist POUF that attracted, among others the young George Orwell – the kind of idealists whose vision holds up. Other elements, though, were different. I cannot forgive the Republicans for killing an estimated 50,000 of their own “enemies.” (For perspective, the Nationalists are estimated to have killed three times as many during the Spanish Civil War and then many others after they won.) I also can’t forgive the slaughter of so many of the priests who, even if they’d given comfort to the authoritarian tendencies of some Nationalist supporters, were still fundamentally non-violent participants in the conflict.

Hochschild reminds us that the Republicans certainly lost in large part because the U.S. and others insisted on a neutrality that extended to an international arms embargo. The Republicans had the money to buy arms, but no one would sell to them. The Nationalists had no trouble getting things from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, though.

That left only the USSR to outfit the Republicans, and that imbalance gave ever greater power to the worst elements of the Republic, to the would-be Stalinists rather than to the more idealistic POUFs and other groups.

It’s in that midst that Hochschild studies the experiences of some of the Americans who were there. He talks at length about Bob and Marion Merriman. It’s a moving story, and he even implies that Bob is one model for Robert Jordan in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Bob was an academic, an economist, who – after a stint studying Soviet economic models – decided he needed to pick up a gun and defend the Republic.

What’s fascinating is that, at the same time as he experiences a love story with Marion, Bob finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into conflict. And, as he does so, he in particular is ever more beholden to the Soviets.

The result is that Bob, and the handful of others Hochschild explores most fully, were betrayed by the philosophies they most admire. The Soviets imported a cruelty to the experience that hardened it; the Americans, playing an awkward game of international and national politics, refused to enter the fight, which tipped it the wrong way.

So, to end where I began, what makes this hard to read right now is the sense that, faced with a clear wrong, there may not have been a right way to fight it. Franco and his allies were, at the beginning, a minority, and their philosophy was an ugly one that could have won supporters only through violence.

But the Republic, and the brave and admirable Americans who went to fight for it, was flawed as well. Heroic as the subjects of this book are, they lost, and their loss was prelude to the World War that would follow.

All of that is simply too hard to think about right now.

Fantastic portrait

This was recommended to me and I hesitated buying the book thinking to myself, "I don't really want to know about a war". Wrong I was. This was a very engaging reading of an era I had no knowledge of.

Great history lesson

The narrator was excellent. I found this a great history lesson. If you like history, I recommend this book.

Beautiful and Heartbreaking

I wanted to learn more about the Civil War in Spain because my education in America was curiously lacking - Which I suppose isn’t -surprising reaction to how terribly America failed the Spanish citizens in their mission for sovereignty. The narrators voice is so full of emotion in the last chapter I sobbed the entire time and it seemed like he had to take breaks during recording to do the same.

I believe the story of the Spanish Civil War is one of the most important to reflect on, not just reflecting on dangers of expanding fascism and it’s brutality. But more importantly,the hopeful spirit of idealism in a human struggle, fighting for the belief that something greater is possible.

Open your heart for Spain

The best people the communist movement ever had paid the highest price for their naiveté and for your and my freedom.

Good History

This is a really good look at American involvement in the Spanish Civil War; but as a precaution, be sure to bring your logical sieve to strain out the inherent leftist bias of the author. He is clearly on the side of the communists, and he skips lightly over the original seizure of property by "liberals" (he means, violent, murderous communist thieves who stole public and private property, killed and caused the owners to flee, etc., which provoked the violent fascist reaction). As in most commie/fascist wars, there are no good guys, so it's hard to spot an upside for this silly war. But all in all, the book was entertaining, and it's a warning to Americans today who are watching the rise of socialist "liberals" provoking conflict and. Nationalizing industry. The communists must be repelled, but in crushing the scoundrels, the reactive powers must not become rival monsters.

Very compelling

Some background knowledge of the civil war is definitely helpful but the stories and events noted surely add a new dynamic to the conflict that general historical books may leave out. Good place to sight information and sources.

A great story of war

This was a great book about a war I hadn’t known much about. It was very detailed in the actions and thoughts of its American participants. I personally did not know how involved Hemingway was in the war. Truly informative and entertaining.

Best book I've read on this subject

Since reading "For Whom the Bell Tolls"as a boy I've been fascinated by this subject. Reading all the books I could find, all the documentary and fiction films I could see, taking Civil War Tours through modern Barcelona, standing where Orwell might have stood . "In Our Hearts" strategy, to tell the history of the war through the lives of Americans who became involved in it, is remarkably successful. Idealism, folly, greed and heroism - what a collection of stories, woven together with such compassion and insight. I would recommend this anyone who enjoys beautifully written historical narrative. The reader's performance is perfect, subtle and spellbinding, moving me to unexpected tears. What a great experience!