European History Quarterly

The entry of General Franco's `liberating' Nationalist army into the city of Barcelona in January 1939 was the prelude to a wave of violent repression across the Principality of Catalonia. In addition to the New State's persecution of the language, culture and national personality of Catalonia, fascist zealots also clamoured for the dismantling of the region's factories and mills. Whilst it was often asserted that the Franco dictatorship systematically discriminated against Catalonia for its treachery in supporting the defeated Second Republic (1931—39), the aim of this article is to present new arguments in defence of the revisionist case that the resulting economic paralysis of Catalonia during the period 1939—51 was not so much the result of the bloody-mindedness of the victors in the Spanish Civil War as the New State's obsession with autarky and interventionism.

The article looks at Sweden as an example of how popular memory of the International Brigades in Western Europe has been shaped more frequently by the Left's postwar political needs than by historical realities. Like elsewhere in Western Europe, the International Brigades' legacy in Sweden was principally informed by the Left's eagerness to embrace an anti-fascist identity after the Second World War. In the Swedish case, this has led to a sanitized historical account of the Swedish Brigadistas ' experiences in Spain that ultimately does the former volunteers' memory a considerable disservice.

In summer 1943 politicians representing the four main political parties of Latvia's democratic years came together to establish a movement which would both resist the German occupation and prevent the return of the Red Army. They considered the key to re-establishing Latvia as an independent democratic state was to make contact with Britain, and they hoped to do this by a combination of military and diplomatic activity. Once contact with Sweden had been established this Latvian Central Council planned to combine a diplomatic offensive abroad with an insurrection within Latvia. The diplomatic offensive was partly obstructed by the Foreign Office, but that did not prevent the Latvian Central Council working closely with the British Secret Service as it first brought out of Latvia potential members of a Government in Exile, and then began to prepare for an insurrection. Planned to coincide with the arrival of the Red Army and the withdrawal of the Germans, the military wing of the Latvian Central Council intended to seize part of the Courland coast and hold it until British or Swedish forces intervened to prevent them being crushed by the Red Army, thus forcing the Soviets to negotiate about the future status of Latvia. The plans of the Latvian Central Council relied heavily on stories circulating in Sweden that the British were indeed about to intervene in the Baltic, and it is argued here that there was more to this than mere loose talk. The dilemma of whether or not to stage an insurrection was resolved by the Germans, who arrested General Kurelis, the leader of the insurrection and the man designated the interim leader of independent Latvia. The surviving forces of the Latvian Central Council established themselves as an underground army and waited for news from Britain that the time had come to rise. When no such message had come by summer 1945, many underground groups started moves towards a national uprising; to prevent this the Latvian Central Council used its surviving organization to instruct its underground fighters not to take up arms against the Soviets but to wait on diplomacy.

Thirty years after its publication, Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen still occupies a central place in European historiography on identity construction and the nationalization of the masses. This article reviews a number of studies that have been critical of Weber's theoretical and methodological design, and contrasts his approach with research in various European countries. Finally, it underscores the importance of comparative analysis when examining nationalization processes, and suggests some future lines of research.