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Reviewed by:
  • La División Azul. Sangre Española en Rusia, 1941–1945
  • Klaus Schmider
La División Azul. Sangre Española en Rusia, 1941–1945. By Xavier Moreno Julia. Barcelona: Critica, 2005. ISBN 84-8432-574-1. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xx, 553. €90.00.

Researching and writing a unit history constitutes a task which is equally challenging and frustrating. For one thing, the author has to acquire a degree of familiarity with the nuts and bolts of fighting units and the way they operate which someone—even a military historian—without a professional military background will often find alien, tiresome, and difficult to translate into captivating reading material. At the same time, the danger of this effort going by unappreciated and the author finding himself labelled as a mere "buff" is often enough to put serious scholars off the idea altogether.

Xavier Moreno Julia has taken up this challenge together with another one: that of trumping numerous previous publications on his subject of choice—a political and military history of the two formations (250. Infanteriedivision, the so-called "Blue Division" as well as its successor formation, the "Blue Legion") of Spanish volunteers that fought on the Eastern Front between September 1941 and January 1944. Suffice it to say that he has succeeded triumphantly.

Even though the author does follow a chronological structure, the main chapters are arranged in such a way that it is possible for the reader to focus on the political events which preceded the division's creation (pp. 1–55), its recruiting process (pp. 57–115), the military deployment in northern Russia (pp. 117–209), the political repercussions both in Spain and abroad (pp. 211–309), and finally, the fate suffered by those of its members who were wounded or taken prisoner (pp. 311–69). This extremely user-friendly structure is maintained right through the conclusion (pp. 372–96) which is sub-divided into six sections. The source material is nothing short of staggering and includes many Spanish archives (public and private ones) rarely—if ever—used by historians from the English-speaking world. Even though I am prejudiced by virtue of being a military historian with a clear (or rather, idiosyncratic) focus on the operational level of war, I was struck by the near-perfect balance which Moreno managed to strike between the different component parts of his work; each was allotted enough space to do justice to its subject area without dwarfing the others. Just about the only conceivable [End Page 864] flaw that comes to mind is the huge number of episodes of a human nature which the author touches on only briefly because to do otherwise surely would have doubled the size of his book. The encounter of Blue Division POWs with ex-Loyalist airmen and sailors held captive in the U.S.S.R. on account of their refusal to accept Soviet citizenship after 1939 alone surely would have been worth another book. Overall, the author, unlike many of his predecessors, manages to empathise with the plight of his countrymen while simultaneously documenting the cynical machinations of "Generalissimo" Francisco Franco in Madrid, who used them as pawns in a game of domestic (the rivalry between Falange and army) as well as international (to stay on good terms with Germany) politics.

Dr. Moreno has written what undoubtedly will remain the definitive treatment of a difficult and multi-layered subject for the foreseeable future. Both as a unit history and as an analysis of a small, but critically important, segment of Francoist Spain's wartime foreign policy it has no peer. A translation would appear to be a highly desirable undertaking.

Klaus Schmider
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Camberley, United Kingdom
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