Frontline Madrid: Battlefield Tours of the Spanish Civil War (Battlefield Tours/Spanish Civl)

With a foreword by Jon Snow. In July 1936 insurgent Spanish troops organized a military coup to oust the elected Republican government in Madrid.The rebel generals expected to force a quick, clean regime change but they failed.The botched uprising turned into a bloody civil war.Hundreds of thousands died in a bitter conflict which tore the country apart and rapidly turned into the prelude for an even greater conflict yet to com--the Second World War. The siege of Madrid was the key battle of the war. The world watched and waited for the city to surrender as General Franco's Nationalist army, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, closed in on the Spanish capital.But Madrid did not fall. Madrilenos fought tooth and nail to defend their city.Helped by volunteers from fifty other countries--the International Brigades--they held out against all the odds until the end of the conflict in 1939. Despite its central role in twentieth-century history, the siege of Madrid is an episode largely hidden fr