Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989. / Typescript (photocopy). Abstract in English. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis starts from the proposition that moral and ideological issues now drive the continuing intense interest in World War II. There has been an increasing challenge to the probity of the response of both opponents and bystanders to the threat raised by Nazism. The thesis views these issues from the viewpoint of the Spanish Catholic Church, an institution involved in yet detached from the war, having morality as its core concern yet itself struggling to reconcile moral principles with political imperatives. Such tensions might illuminate, in particular, the similar struggles of the Western Allies. This study has been set against a background of historiographical development. It has considered the evolution of Catholic teaching on the morality of war and threats posed to the Church in the early twentieth Century political world of conflicting ideologies. In Spain, the Church, quintessentially Spanish yet inspiring extremes of devotion and hatred in Spain's total, ideological Civil War, had been devastated by that struggle. In defending its urgent spiritual priorities during a new European war, it faced many challenges that necessitated reactions involving complex interplay of morality and politics. Not only was its relationship with the victorious Franco regime uncertain but it feared the infiltration into Spain of any of the European war's contending ideologies-Fascism and Nazism, Communism and liberal democracy. The thesis describes the Church's response. This work also takes the view that the intensity of the ideological struggle made World War II a war of unprecedented totality. This study examines the attitudes of the Spanish Church to aspects of total war. It concludes that, although the responses of the Spanish Church reveal interplay of the moral and the political, these reactions shed some light upon questions of war and morality still asked today. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2009

This thesis investigates the Spanish identity crisis through structural, political and representational intersectionality by means of the Law of Historic Memory, also known as LEY 52/2007 del 26 de diciembre. This work, written in Spanish, explores relational aspects of various contemporary themes within four post-Franco novels and four Spanish films: Réquiem por un campesino español by Ramón J. Sender and its corresponding film directed by Francesc Betriu; Soldados de Salamina by Javier Cercas and its corresponding film directed by David Trueba; La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón and its corresponding film directed by Benito Zambrano; and Los girasoles ciegos by Alberto Méndez and its corresponding film directed by José Luis Cuerda. Linked by a variety of human elements that affect the individual as much as the collective, the works explore sacrifice, betrayal, indifference and injustice. Each novel and movie pair offers a glimpse of individual memory that, at the same time, belongs to collective memory. Delving into the effects of LEY, this thesis considers the role of the Catholic Church, the general atrocities of war, the role of women in the Spanish Civil War, and the fractured family unit. Lastly, this thesis delineates how these effects apply to the healing of individual and collective memories so as to recover what it means to be Spanish.