This is an excellently written book about the role the Spanish Civil War in general and the Spanienkampfer (German veterans of the war) in particular played in promoting and maintaining the mythology and raison d'etre of the GDR as a bulwark against fascism, imperialism and capitalism. The reality of the International Brigades was that they were ideologues fighting in an ideological conflict; messy realities that did not jibe with the ideology were suppressed in official histories of the War, just as all nonconformities that deviated from the SED's socialist ideal were intimidated and harrassed out of existence.
