A comparative study of Nationalist Army and Republican Popular Army conscripts during the Spanish Civil War. Draws extensively on unpublished archival material to analyse the conflict from the perspective of those who were involved against their will.

• Introduction


• 1: Militarisation and Wartime Conscription


• 2: Mechanisms of Conscription


• 3: Mobilising Myths and Conscript Soldiers


• 4: Daily Life in the Trenches: Morale and Mundane Needs


• 5: Discipline and Loss of Morale


• 6: Escaping the Front: Desertion, Dissembling, and Defection


• Conclusion


• Bibliography


• Index

James Matthews is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA, and received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2008. His research interests lie at the intersection of social and military history in twentieth-century Europe. He was born in Lisbon and grew up between Spain and Portugal. His next research project is a study of military volunteerism during the militia period of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.