The Spanish Civil War

I went into this wanting to get a broad overview of the Spanish Civil War, and account of the military strategy and tactics used by each side in the form of a timeline. I was hoping for frequent use of maps that clearly show borders and areas occupied by each side. Unfortunately, this documentary is fairly light on these aspects.

It does use lots of maps, but most aren't presented in a clear way until closer to the end. Initially the maps just show flags in general areas without borders filled in with colors. Although the last part shows this. They are shown for too short of a time for my taste, so I needed to pause a lot to fully digest the changes to the borders.

The vast vast majority of this documentary talks about the awful way each side killed and tortured innocent people. This is important information. However, it became too much after awhile. I didn't need to be told over and over again so many times how awful each side was. The point was already made much earlier. This made a lot of the documentary rather boring.

All in all I'm on the fence about whether to recommend it. It could be a good documentary if someone made a cut down version, as there are huge portions that are repetitive and and no useful detail.

I was very excited about finding this documentary, and it's well done and probably the definitive work on the war. However, as has been said if you want breakdowns of battles, equipment and weapons your going to be bored after part one. I know how horrible people are to each other, but I want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of how it works on a technical level too. They cover the political details with great skill but that's it. Also it lacks continuity. I kept thinking I'd accidentally just started it over again.

Having trouble finding the score or soundtrack to this.

Overall, very interesting topic. I can understand why another reviewer thought it was heavy on personalities and light on tactics. However, this particular war was heavy on personalities and light on tactics. I got a similar vibe after reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and Peter Wyden's The Passionate War.