Review excerpts from the Spanish edition
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 Spains wartime foreign policy it has no peer.
Dr. Klaus Schmider (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst), in The Journal of Military History, Lexington (Virginia, USA), 70.3, July 2006
The great merit of this work by Moreno Juli is that it is first to be free from much of the rhetoric of the trenches, and to address the phenomenon of the Blue Division in a spirit of objectivity and completeness. The first-hand research in national and foreign archives is a first, and a delightful novelty.
Dr. Eduardo Gonzlez Calleja (CSIC, Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas), in Mlanges de la Casa de Velzquez, 36.1, 2006
A fine testament to the best historical writing, about the recent past, from our country It goes beyond the precise object of his study, making a more global approach. It results, in the end, to be an investigation with definitive conclusions.
Dr. Javier Tusell Gmez (Universidad Nacional de Educacin a Distancia), in Babelia; El Pas, 11 November 2004
Such an exhaustive history subtle, profound, and free from bitterness emerges only occasionally in some books. Xavier Moreno Julis study of the Blue Division is, without doubt, one of those books.
Dr. Ricardo Garca Crcel (Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona) in ABC Cultural; ABC, 8 January 2005
In line with the great works by English-speaking historians on a similar theme, here is a total history of the events, without leaving anything out, no matter how insignificant.
Rafael Nez Florencio, critic and historian, in El Cultural; El Mundo, 9 December 2004
Far from the hundreds of hagiographies and memoirs on the Spaniards who fought for Hitler against the USSR, The Blue Division by Xavier Moreno is the result of an investigation of Spanish, British and German archives and from the oral testimonies of, among others, the minister and brother-in-law of Franco, Ramn Serrano Suer.
Dr. Andreu Mayayo Artal (Barcelona University), in El Peridico, 25 November 2004
Xavier Moreno is a solid investigator and a good writer who has based his book on unpublished Spanish and German documents The book is entertaining, and its quality sources and solid investigation combine to make it a fascinating and definitive work.
Dr. Gabriel Cardona Escanero (Barcelona University), in Clo History Review, 4.39; January 2005
Xavier Moreno Juli has gone into the history of the Blue Division as never before: with rigorous and detailed investigation, avoiding ideological obsessions Like a jigsaw puzzle, where one piece leads to another and yet another, Moreno Juli has brought together eleven years of study.
La Razn, 30 November 2004
An up-to-date, profound and detailed reconsideration of one of the saddest episodes of the Second World War forgotten and characteristic of Francos Spain.
Revista, in La Vanguardia, 31 October 2004
The Blue Division returns from the past in a study of its history by Xavier Moreno In over 500 pages, Moreno analyses the political context in which the Division developed, and the later clash of interests between Falangism and the Spanish Army. The international reactions that the initiative generated occupies a good part of the book, as does a detailed description of the military operations in which the Spanish combatants were engaged.
El Pas, 31 November 2004
Doctor of contemporary history Xavier Moreno has proved with his book on the Blue Division that the study of detail illuminates much more. In this case he reveals the politics of this early step in Francoism.
El Sbado, in El Faro de Vigo, 5 March 2005
Letras. The Best of the Year Non Fiction . Xavier Moreno thoroughly re-examines the history from Serrano Suers first call to arms until the devastating return. It is an overwhelming portrait of a wretched adventure.
El Cultural, in El Mundo, 30 December 2004
Spanish history writing congratulates the appearance of this study with its unmistakeable title which reveals in depth what happened to the 40,000 Spaniards sent to fight with the Germans on the Russian front Xavier Moreno Juli has searched through and poked his nose into Spanish and German archives, and has obtained live testimony from old combatants.
Mercurio, cultural review, 67; January 2005,
This book, translated from the original Spanish, is the primary academic and historical study of the Blue Division, a Falangist initiative involving the dispatch of some forty-thousand Spanish combatants (more than a half of whom paid with their lives, health, or liberty) to the Russian Front during the Second World War.
Xavier Moreno Juli does not limit himself to relating their deeds under arms, but also analyses for the first time the political background in detail: the complex relations between the Spanish government and Hitlers Germany; the internal conflicts between the Falangists and the Army; the rise and fall of Francos brother-in-law, Minister Ramn Serrano Suer, who inspired the Blue Division and became the second most powerful person in Spain; and the attitude of General Agustn Muoz Grandes, commander of the Blue Division, who was encouraged by Berlin to seriously consider the possibility of taking over the reins of Spanish power.
In the end, there were 45,500 reasons that led to joining the Blue Division, one for each young man who decided to enlist. To understand all of the complex reasons behind their military service under German command is impossible at this juncture. It is an irrecoverable past that lies in Spanish cemeteries and on the Russian steppes.
Based on massive documentation in German, British and Spanish archives, this outstanding work is an essential source of information to understand Spain in the 1940s an epoch when the Caudillos power and the regimes good fortune were less secure than is often believed.
The author, Xavier Moreno Juli, is professor of Contemporary History at Rovira i Virgili University, the University of Tarragona (Spain). He has published widely in Great Britain, Germany, Hungary and Poland. Blue Division, originally published in 2004, now revised and expanded, was the first book of an informal trilogy; the other two volumes, published in Spain, are Hitler and Franco: Diplomacy in the Time of War, 19361945 (2007) and The Blue Legion and Second World War: The SpanishGerman Collapse on the Eastern Front, 19431944 (2014).
The Caada Blanch / Sussex Academic Studies on Contemporary Spain
General Editor: Professor Paul Preston, London School of Economics
Margaret Joan Anstee, JB An Unlikely Spanish Don: The Life and Times of Professor John Brande Trend.
Richard Barker, Skeletons in the Closet, Skeletons in the Ground: Repression, Victimization and Humiliation in a Small Andalusian Town The Human Consequences of the Spanish Civil War.
Germ Bel, Infrastructure and the Political Economy of Nation Building in Spain, 17202010.
Germ Bel, Disdain, Distrust, and Dissolution: The Surge of Support for Independence in Catalonia.
