In 1936, the Spanish Foreign Legion was the most well equipped, thoroughly trained, and battle-tested unit in the Spanish Army, and with its fearsome reputation for brutality and savagery, the Legion was not only critical to the eventual victory of Franco and the Nationalists, but was also a powerful propaganda tool the Nationalists used to intimidate and terrorize its enemies. Drawing upon Spanish military archival sources, the Legion’s own diary of operations and relevant secondary sources, Alvarez recounts the pivotal role played by the Spanish Foreign Legion in the initial months of the Spanish Civil War, a war that was not only between Spaniards, but that pitted the political ideology of Communism and Socialism against that of Fascism and Nazism.

José E. Álvarez is Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston–Downtown. He is the author of The Betrothed of Death: The Spanish Foreign Legion During the Rif Rebellion and co-editor of A Military History of Modern Spain: From the Napoleonic Era to the International War on Terror.