This book, translated from the original Spanish, is the primary academic and historical study of the Blue Division -- a Falangist initiative involving the dispatch of some forty-thousand Spanish combatants (over a half of whom paid with their lives, health, or liberty) to the Russian Front during the Second World War. Xavier Moreno Julia does not limit himself to relating their deeds under arms, but also analyses -- for the first time -- the political background in detail: the complex relations between the Spanish government and Hitler's Germany; the internal conflicts between the Falangists and the Army; the rise and fall of Franco's brother-in-law, Minister Ramon Serrano Suner, who inspired the Blue Division and became the second most powerful person in Spain; and the attitude of General Agustin Munoz Grandes, commander of the Blue Division, who was encouraged by Berlin to seriously consider the possibility of taking over the reins of Spanish power. In the end, there were 45,500 reasons that led t