“In a world grown weary of revolutions and wars, the Spanish civil conflict remains green in memory as the ‘last Romantic war' - a war which engaged the imaginations and ideals of a whole generation. It was a conflict unmatched in ferocity by any since the American Civil War; a testing ground.... The Spanish Civil War was Act I of World War II, with super-powers and would-be super-powers testing their weapons, their resolve, and their margin of risk on the land and with the blood of Spain. Spain was where World War II could have been averted.
“Francisco Franco was to rule Spain for 40 years.... Only now, after 40 years of press censorship, can we begin to ask some of the basic questions: What was the purpose of the war? What did it solve? What really happened?
“During the last years of the Franco regime, a Spanish filmmaker named Basilio Martin Patino set out to find the answers for himself and for his generation. Working underground, at great personal risk, Patino uncovered Spanish film footage that had been hidden since the Civil War...tracked down and interviewed combatants and survivors on both sides...revisited the battlegrounds which had marked the bloody course of the war.... Caudillo is a film, not about war, but about how heroes die and dictators are made....” --Films for the Humanities.
“One of the best historical documentaries of all time.” --Herschel B. Chipp, Professor of Art History, UC Berkeley