Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton (21 October 1931 – 7 May 2017), was an English historian and writer known best for his book The Spanish Civil War.

Quotes

London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

A Nationalist victory in the Civil War in Spain would mean that France would be surrounded on three sides by potentially hostile countries. This would make it easier for Germany to attack Russia without being afraid of French attacks in her rear. For this torturous reason, the Soviet Government had a strong interest in the prevention of a Nationalist victory. The Spanish War also afforded the Communist Party, with its discipline, its skill at propaganda, and its prestige deriving from its connection with Russia, a great chance to secure in Spain the establishment of the second Communist State. But such a Communist victory wold have alarmed Britain and France, the two powers to whom, for diplomatic reasons, Russia wished to draw closer. It might even make a general war more likely. It might waste Russian war material. For these reasons, Stalin probably did not send orders to the Spanish Communist party, and his chief agents there, Cordovilla and Stepanov, to make full use of the opportunity to gain control of the Spanish Republic. Nor did he send arms to Spain.
- Ch. 25, p. 215

Unamuno died broken-hearted on the last day of 1936. The tragedy of his last months was a natural expression of a society in which, by a law of September, all books of ‘Socialist or Communist tendencies had been ordered to be destroyed as a matter of public health’. In December all such books (or any ‘generally disruptive’ matter) were ordered to be handed in within forty-eight hours.
- Ch. 42, p. 355

The Spanish Civil War exceeded in ferocity most wars between nations. Yet the losses were less than had been generally feared. The total number of deaths caused by the war appears to have been approximately 600,000. Of these about 100,000 may be supposed to have died by murder or summary execution. Perhaps as many as 220,000 died of disease or malnutrition directly attributable to the war. About 320,000 probably died in action. The cost of the war, including both internal and external expenditures, was named later by the Nationalists at 30,000 million pesetas (£3,000 million in 1938 money). The chief cost was in labour, due on the one hand to the deaths and permanent disabilities caused, and on the other to the exile of 340,000 persons at the end of the war. Nationalist authorities estimated that approximately 4,250 million pesetas' worth of damage had been done to real property during the course of the war. Since this was supposed to be damage caused only by the Republicans, it is probably an under-estimation. 150 churches were totally destroyed and 4,850 damaged, of which 1,850 were more than half destroyed. 183 towns were so badly damaged that General Franco 'adopted' them- his Government, that is, undertook to pay the cost of restoration. This probably does not take into account another 250,000 which were partially damaged.
- Ch. 76, p. 606

New York: Simon & Schuster

One friend, on reading an early draft of this book, suggested that to give Cortés the benefit of the doubt on several occasions was to allow oneself tolerance towards the memory of Himmler in 1942. We can all see what he generously meant. Yet two of the best scholars of modern Mexico, Miguel León-Portilla, the great Mexican historian, and Rudolph van Zantwijk, the Dutch anthropologist, talking of the military life which the ancient Mexicans extolled, have dared to compare them with the Nazis. All such comparisons are interesting. Yet to read into the past the morality of our time (or the lack of it) may not make the historian's task any easier.
- Preface, p. xiv

The philosophy of the discoveries, the emigration, and the colonisation was Christianity. Ferdinand and Isabel, King and Queen of a new, if precariously united, Spain, had conquered Granada in 1492. They had been hailed by the Pope not only as the “Catholic kings” but as “athletes of Christ’’. The primate of Spain, Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, likened himself, not wholly inappropriately, given his fighting spirit, to a new Joshua.
- Pt. 2, ch. 5, p. 59

The experience of the Mayas is one more reminder that any interpretation of human evolution based on the idea of unilineal progress forwards (or upwards) is an illusion. Peoples decline as well as rise.
- Pt. 2, ch. 7, p. 91