Scullion, Séan F. Churchill's Spaniards

Continuing the Fight in the British Army 1939-46

Very little is known, if anything, about the service of over a thousand Spanish Republicans who volunteered for the British Army during World War II. Churchill's Spaniards remedies this and tells the story of these men who continued the fight against fascism from 1939 to 1946. Churchill's Spaniards is neither the story of the Spanish Civil War nor the equally well-known story of the International Brigades. It is the storyagainst the backdrop of Churchill's efforts to keep Spain out of the warof the recruitment, training, and deployment of often battle-hardened Spanish Republicans in the service of the United Kingdom. These fighters served in a wide variety of areas within the British armed forces: as members of the elite SAS and commando units, in the ranks of the infantry and the engineer corps, and as members of the Special Operations Executive. Other Spaniards fought in almost all the battles and campaigns in the West, from the fall of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 to the campaigns in North Africa and Italy and those in northwestern Europe. Drawing on extensive material from Britain, France, and Spain, as well as previously unpublished eyewitness and official accounts and groundbreaking new research, Séan Scullion finally tells the story of these previously overlooked men.