Stanley G. Payne

Stanley George Payne (born September 9, 1934) is an American historian of modern Spain and European fascism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He retired from full-time teaching in 2004 and is currently Professor Emeritus at its Department of History.

Early Life
Stanley Payne was born on September 9th, 1934 in Denton, Texas. His father and mother were living in Colorado before moving to Texas. His father found work as a carpenter after losing his job to the Great Depression, and eventually became the foreman of a planing mill. His mother completed two years of nurse's training at a sanitarium in Chicago, but was forced to drop out due to lack of support from her family. She was a Seventh Day Adventist. The family moved to Sacramento, California when Stanley was twelve and Stanley's parents divorced soon after.

Work
Known for his typological description of fascism, Payne is a specialist in the Spanish fascist movement and has also produced comparative analyses of Western European fascism. He asserts that there were some specific ways in which Nazism paralleled Russian communism to a much greater degree than Fascism was capable of doing. Payne does not propound the theory of "red fascism" or the notion that Communism and Nazism are essentially the same. He states that Nazism more nearly paralleled Russian communism than any other noncommunist system has.

In the 1960s, his books were published in Spanish by Éditions Ruedo ibérico (ERi), a publishing company set up by Spanish Republican exiles in Paris, France, to publish works forbidden in Spain by the Francoist regime ruling the country at the time. He has been referred to by some historians as a revisionist due to his views. One of his more famous books is Spanish Civil War, The Soviet Union and Communism, which analyzes Joseph Stalin and the Soviet government's intervention in Spain. He also wrote The Franco Regime, The Spanish Civil War and A History of Fascism 1914–1945.

Payne uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism, and anti-conservatism. He sees elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, complete existence of large-scale capitalism as the common aim of all fascist movements.

After a long shift towards Neo-Francoism, in 2014 he published ''Franco. A Personal and Political Biography'' with Jesús Palacios, who during his youth had been a member of the now-banned group CEDADE. Since then, he has been considered an iconic figure in Francoist revisionism.

Education
Payne received his bachelor's degree from Pacific Union College in 1955. He went on to earn a masters from Claremont Graduate School and University Center in 1957 and a doctorate (Ph.D.) from Columbia University in 1960.

Books

 * Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism, 1961
 * Politics and the Military in Modern Spain, 1967
 * Franco's Spain, 1967
 * The Spanish Revolution, 1970
 * A History of Spain and Portugal (2 vol 1973) full text online free vol 1 before 1700; full text online free vol 2 after 1700; standard scholarly history
 * Basque Nationalism, 1975
 * La revolución y la guerra civil española, 1976
 * Fascism: Comparison and Definition, 1980
 * Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview, 1984
 * The Franco Regime 1936–1975, 1988
 * Franco: El perfil de la historia, 1992
 * Spain's First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936, 1993
 * A History of Fascism 1914–1945, 1996
 * El primer franquismo, 1939–1959: Los años de la autarquía, 1998
 * Fascism in Spain 1923–1977, 2000
 * The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism 1931–1939, 2004


 * El colapso de la República: Los orígenes de la Guerra Civil 1933-1936, 2005
 * The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933–1936, 2006
 * 40 preguntas fundamentales sobre la Guerra Civil, 2006
 * Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II, 2008
 * ¿Por qué la República perdió la guerra?, 2010
 * Spain: A Unique History, 2011
 * Civil War in Europe, 1905-1949, 2011
 * La Europa revolucionaria: Las guerras civiles que marcaron el siglo XX, 2011
 * The Spanish Civil War, 2012
 * Franco: A Personal and Political Biography, 2014, with Jesús Palacios
 * Franco: Una biografía personal y política, 2014, with Jesús Palacios
 * El fascismo, 2014
 * La Guerra Civil Española, 2014
 * El camino al 18 de julio: La erosión de la democracia en España, diciembre de 1935 - julio de 1936, 2016
 * 365 momentos clave de la historia de España, 2016
 * En defensa de España : desmontando mitos y leyendas negras, 2017
 * La revolución española, 1936-1939: Un estudio sobre la singularidad de la Guerra Civil, 2019