(19369) The conflict between supporters and opponents of the Spanish Republic (19316). The Republicans included moderates, socialists, communists, Catalan and Basque regionalists, and anarchists. The Nationalist insurgents included monarchists, Carlists, conservative Catholics, and fascist Falangists. The armed forces were divided. Both sides attracted foreign assistance: the Republic from the USSR and the International Brigades; the Nationalists from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Nationalist victory was due to the balance of foreign aid; to non-intervention on the part of the Western democracies; and to greater internal unity, achieved under the leadership of General Franco.
The war took the course of a slow Nationalist advance. The Nationalists initially (Jul 1936) seized much of NW Spain and part of the SW, then (autumn 1936) advanced upon but failed to capture Madrid. They captured Málaga (Mar 1937) and the N coast (MarOct 1937); advanced to the Mediterranean, cutting Republican Spain in two (Apr 1938); overran Catalonia (Dec 1938Feb 1939); and finally occupied Madrid and SE Spain (Mar 1939). Some 400 000 were killed in the war, and there were a further 100 000 executions of Republicans from 1939 to 1943. Many towns (such as Guernica) were destroyed.
| Spanish Civil War | |||||||
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A Republican soldier seeks cover on the Plaza de Toros in Teruel. |
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Spanish Republic CNT-FAI UGT POUM Soviet Union International Brigades |
Spanish State Falangists Carlists Fascist Italy Nazi Germany |
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Manuel Azaña Francisco Largo Caballero Juan Negrín |
Francisco Franco | ||||||
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| Civilians killed/wounded = hundreds of thousands | |||||||
| Spanish Civil War |
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Alcázar – Gijón – Mérida – Mallorca – Badajoz – Sierra Guadalupe – Monte Pelato – Talavera – Cape Espartel – Madrid – Corunna Road – Málaga – Jarama – Guadalajara – Guernica – Brunete –
Santander – Belchite – El Mazuco – Cape Cherchell – Teruel – Cape Palos – Ebro Chronology: 1936 1937 1938-9 |
The Spanish Civil War, which lasted from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, was a conflict in which the Francoists or Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, defeated the Republicans of the Second Spanish Republic.
The combatants
The Republicans received weapons and volunteers from the Soviet Union, Mexico, the international Communist movement, and the International Brigades, while the Francoists received weapons and soldiers from Italy and Germany and logistical support from Portugal.
The Republicans ranged from centrists who supported a moderately capitalist liberal democracy to revolutionary anarchists and socialists; The conservative, strongly Catholic Basque Country also sided with the Republic, despite its religious affiliation, largely because it, along with Catalonia and Galicia, sought autonomy or even independence from the central government of Madrid, an option left open by the Republican government (Galicia, however, did not side with the Republicans).
The Nationalists on the contrary opposed these separatist movements.
Some of both sides' atrocities of the war - including the use of terror tactics against civilians - foreshadowed World War II, as did some of the military tactics, although both the Nationalists and the Republicans relied overwhelmingly on infantry rather than modern tanks and aircraft.
While the war lasted only about three years, the political situation had already been violent for several years before. The war started with military uprisings throughout Spain and its colonies.
Republican sympathizers, soldiers and volunteers, formally acting independently of the state massacred Catholic clergy and burned down churches, monasteries and convents and other symbols of the Spanish Catholic Church, Republicans (especially the Stalinists) viewed as an oppressive institution supportive of the old order.
During and after the war, the Nationalists carried out a program of killing opponents: unwanted Republican prisoners of war were often jailed or, in many cases, killed by a firing squad.
The impact of the war was massive: The Spanish economy took decades to recover. The political and emotional repercussions of the war reverberated far beyond the boundaries of Spain and sparked passion among international intellectual and political communities, passions that still are present in Spanish politics today.
Republican sympathizers proclaimed it as a struggle between "tyranny and democracy", or "fascism and liberty", and many non-Spanish young, committed reformers and revolutionaries joined the International Brigades, which thought saving the Spanish Republic was the front line of the war against fascism.
Prelude
In the 1933 Spanish elections, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas) (CEDA) won the most seats in the Cortes. The Lerroux/CEDA government attempted to annul the social legislation that had been passed by the previous Manuel Azaña government, provoking general strikes in Valencia and Zaragoza, street conflicts in Madrid and Barcelona, and, on October 6, an armed miners' rebellion in Asturias and an autonomist rebellion in Catalonia, Both rebellions were suppressed, and were followed by mass political arrests and trials.
Lerroux's alliance with the right, his harsh repression of the revolt in 1934, and the Stra-Perlo scandal combined to leave him and his party with little support going into the 1936 election. (Lerroux himself lost his seat in parliament.)
As internal disagreements mounted in the coalition, strikes were frequent, and there were pistol attacks on unionists and clergy. The coalition, which included the Socialist Party (PSOE), two liberal parties (the Republican Left Party of Manuel Azaña and the Republican Union Party), and Communist Party of Spain, as well as Galician and Catalan nationalists, received 34.3 percent of the popular vote, compared to 33.2 percent for the National Front parties led by CEDA. The Spanish generals particularly disliked Azaña because he had cut the army's budget and closed the military academy when he was war minister (1931).
This was a period of rising tensions. Calvo Sotelo
On 12 July 1936, José Castillo, a member of the Socialist Party and lieutenant in the Assault Guards, a special police corps created to deal with urban violence, was murdered by a 'far right' group in Madrid. The following day José Calvo Sotelo, the leader of the conservative opposition in the Cortes (Spanish parliament), was killed in revenge by Luis Cuenca who was operating in a commando unit of the Civil Guard led by Captain Fernando Condés Romero.
He also declared that Spanish soldiers would be mad to not rise for Spain against Anarchy.
Nationalist military uprising
On July 17, 1936, the nationalist-traditionalist rebellion long feared by some in the Popular Front government began. Casares Quiroga, who had succeeded Azaña as prime minister, had in the previous weeks exiled the military officers suspected of conspiracy against the Republic, including General Manuel Goded y Llopis and General Francisco Franco, sent to the Balearic Islands and to the Canary Islands, respectively. Franco then flew to Spanish Morocco -see Juan March Ordinas, where the Nationalist Army of Africa were almost unopposed in assuming control. The Republicans held on to Valencia and controlled almost all of the Eastern Spanish coast and central area around Madrid.
Factions in the war
The active participants in the war covered the entire gamut of the political positions and ideologies of the time. The Nationalist (nacionales) side included the Carlists and Legitimist monarchists, Spanish nationalists, fascists of the Falange, Catholics, and most conservatives and monarchist liberals.
To view the political alignments from another perspective, the Nationalists included the majority of the Catholic clergy and of practising Catholics (outside of the Basque region), important elements of the army, most of the large landowners, and many businessmen.
One of the Nationalists' principal claimed motives was to confront the anticlericalism of the Republican regime and to defend the Roman Catholic Church, which was censured for its support for the monarchy, which many on the Republican side blamed for the ills of the country. In the opening days of the war religious buildings were burnt without action on the part of the Republican authorities to prevent it. After the beginning of the Nationalist coup, anger flared anew at the Church and its role in Spanish politics.
Foreign involvement
Wikisource has original text related to this article: Relations of Members of the United Nations with Spain Wikisource has original text related to this article: Condecoraciones otorgadas por Francisco Franco a Benito Mussolini y a Adolf HitlerThe rebellion was opposed by the government (with the troops that remained loyal to the Republic), as well as by the vast majority of urban workers, who were often members of Socialist, Communist and anarchist groups.
The British government proclaimed itself neutral; British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden publicly maintained the official policy of non-intervention but privately expressed his desire that the Republicans win the war. The last Republican prime minister, Juan Negrín, hoped that a general outbreak of war in Europe would compel the European powers (mainly Britain and France) to finally help the republic, but World War II would not commence until months after the Spanish conflict had ended.
Both Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler violated the embargo and sent troops (Corpo Truppe Volontarie and Condor Legion), aircraft, and weapons to support Franco. The Italian contribution amounted to over 60,000 troops at the height of the war, and the involvement helped to increase Mussolini's popularity among Italian Catholics, as the latter had remained highly critical of their ex-Socialist fascist Duce. Italian military help to Nationalists against the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic atrocities committed by the Republican side, worked well in Italian propaganda targeting on Catholics. It has been speculated that Hitler used the Spanish Civil War issue to distract Mussolini from Hitler's own designs on and plans for Austria (Anschluss), as the authoritarian Catholic, anti-Nazi Väterländische Front government of autonomous Austria had been in alliance with Mussolini, and in 1934 during the assassinnation of Austria's authoritarian president Engelbert Dollfuss had already successfully invoked Italian military assistance in case of a Nazi German invasion.
In addition, there were a few volunteer troops from other nations who fought with the Nationalists, such as the Irish Blueshirts under Eoin O'Duffy, and including such romantic Catholic intellectuals as the poet Roy Campbell. Although these volunteers, primarily Catholics, came from around the world (including Ireland, Brazil, and the USA), they are not as famous as those fighting on the Republican side, and were generally less organized and hence embedded in Nationalist units whereas many Republican units were comprised entirely of foreigners.
Due to the Franco-British arms embargo, the Government of the Republic could receive material aid and could purchase arms only from the Soviet Union. At the start of the war the Bank of Spain had the world's fourth largest reserve of gold, about US$750 million, although some assets were frozen by the French and British governments. They have also been accused of prolonging the war because Stalin knew that Britain and France would never accept a communist government. Throughout the war, the efforts of the elected government of the Republic to resist the rebel army were hampered by Franco-British 'non-intervention', long supply lines and intermittent availability of weapons of widely variable quality.
Volunteers from many countries fought in Spain, most of them on the Republican side. 60,000 men and women fought in the International Brigades, including the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade and Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, organised in close conjunction with the Comintern to aid the Spanish Republicans.
'Spain' became the cause célèbre for the left-leaning intelligentsia across the Western world, and many prominent artists and writers entered the Republic's service. As well, it attracted a large number of foreign left-wing working class men, for whom the war offered not only idealistic adventure but also an escape from post-Depression unemployment. The third part of Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy ('A Moment of War') is also based on his Civil War experiences, (though the accuracy of some of his recollections has been disputed).
Despite the predominantly leftist attitude of the artistic community, several prominent writers such as Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Evelyn Waugh sided with Franco. The Republicans received no aid from any major world power other than the Soviet Union, from whom they could purchase arms, thanks to their control of the Spanish gold reserves located in Madrid at the beginning of the war.
The United States was isolationist, neutralist, and was little concerned with what it largely saw as an internal matter in a European country. The American-owned Vacuum Oil Company in Tangier, for example, refused to sell to Republican ships and the Texas Oil Company supplied gasoline on credit to Franco until the war's end. Many in these countries were also shocked by the violence practiced by anarchist and POUM militias - and reported by a relatively free press in the Republican zone - and feared Stalinist influence over the Republican government.
Germany and the USSR used the war as a testing ground for faster tanks and aircraft that were just becoming available at the time. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and Junkers Ju 52 transport/bomber were both used in the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War was also an example of total war, where the killing of civilians such as the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the Legión Cóndor, as depicted by Pablo Picasso in the painting "Guernica," foreshadowed episodes of World War II such as the bombing campaign on Britain by the Nazis and the bombing of Dresden or Hamburg by the Allies.
The extent of foreign involvement in the conflict has led some commentators (most notably Paul Preston) to view it as part of a wider integrated European Civil War.
As war proceeded in the Northern front, the Republican authorities arranged the evacuation of children. These Spanish War children were shipped to Britain, Belgium, the Soviet Union and other European countries. Those in Western European countries returned to their families after the war, but many of those in the Soviet Union, from Communist families, remained and experienced the Second World War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Like the Republican side, the Nationalist side of Franco also arranged evacuations of children, women and elderly from war zones.
Pacifism in Spain
In the 1930s Spain also became a focus for pacifist organisations including the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters' International whose president was the British labour leader and MP George Lansbury. Prominent Spanish pacifists such as Amparo Poch y Gascón and José Brocca supported the Republicans. He put this stand into practice through humanitarian work with war refugees.
The war: 1936
In the early days of the war, over 50,000 people who were caught on the "wrong" side of the lines were assassinated or summarily executed. The outbreak of the war provided an excuse for settling accounts and resolving long-standing feuds. Thus, this practice became widespread during the war in areas conquered.
Any hope of a quick ending to the war was dashed on July 21, the fifth day of the rebellion, when the Nationalists captured the main Spanish naval base at Ferrol in northwestern Spain.
A Nationalist garrison under Colonel Moscardo had held the Alcázar in the center of the city since the beginning of the rebellion, resisting for months against thousands of Republican troops who completely surrounded the isolated building. (See also Siege of Madrid (1936-39))
On November 18, Germany and Italy officially recognized the Franco regime, and on December 23, Italy sent "volunteers" of its own to fight for the Nationalists.
The war: 1937
With his ranks being swelled by Italian troops and Spanish colonial soldiers from Morocco, Franco made another attempt to capture Madrid in January and February of 1937, but failed again.
On February 21 the League of Nations Non-Intervention Committee ban on foreign national "volunteers" went into effect.
After the fall of Guernica, the Republican government began to fight back with increasing effectiveness. Mola, Franco's second-in-command, was killed on June 3, and in early July, despite the fall of Bilbao in June, the government actually launched a strong counter-offensive in the Madrid area, which the Nationalists repulsed with some difficulty.
After that, Franco regained the initiative, invading Aragon in August and then taking the city of Santander (now in Cantabria). Two months of bitter fighting followed and, despite determined Asturian resistance, Gijón (in Asturias) fell in late October, which effectively ended the war in the North.
Meanwhile, on August 28, the Vatican recognized Franco (possibly under pressure from Mussolini) , and at the end of November, with the Nationalists closing in on Valencia, the government moved again, to Barcelona.
The war: 1938
The battle of Teruel was an important confrontation between Nationalists and Republicans. The government tried to sue for peace in May, but Franco demanded unconditional surrender, and the war raged on.
The government now launched an all-out campaign to reconnect their territory in the Battle of the Ebro, beginning on July 24 and lasting until November 26. The retreat from the Ebro all but determined the final outcome of the war.
The war: 1939
The Nationalists conquered Catalonia in a whirlwind campaign during the first two months of 1939.
On February 27, the governments of the United Kingdom and France recognized the Franco regime.
Only Madrid and a few other strongholds remained for the government forces.
After the end of the War, there were harsh reprisals against Franco's former enemies on the left, when thousands of Republicans were imprisoned and between 10,000 and 28,000 executed.
Social revolution
In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragon and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and the peasants collectivised land and industry, and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government.
As the war progressed, the government and the communists were able to leverage their access to Soviet arms to restore government control over the war effort, both through diplomacy and force.
People
Important figures in the Spanish Civil WarPolitical parties and organizations
Political parties and organizations in the Spanish Civil WarFurther reading
Alpert, Michael (2004). A New International History of the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War. Peter Taaffe reviews Battle for Spain - The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 by Anthony Beevor (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £25). The Spanish labyrinth: an account of the social and political background of the Civil War. no editor named), Images of the Spanish Civil War, London (Allen & The Spanish republic at war, 1936-1939. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. Preston, Paul, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War, London (Fontana Press) 1996. Spain betrayed: the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War. Irish and Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Anti-Fascist War Pamphlet by Manus O'Riordan O'Duffy's Bandera in SpainRelated films
Raza (Jose Luis Saenz de Heredia, 1942) For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943, from the Ernest Hemingway novel) The Heifer (La vaquilla) (Luis García Berlanga, 1985) ¡Ay, Carmela! (Directed by Carlos Saura, Spain/Italy 1990) The title is a reference to the song "Quinta Brigada", which boasts of the valor of the Republican troops and laments their lack of supplies and air support Land and Freedom (Ken Loach, 1995) Libertarias (Vicente Aranda, 1996) "Vivir la Utopia" (Living Utopia) by Juan Gamero, Arte-TVE, Catalunya 1997 La Lengua de las Mariposas (The Tongue of the Butterflies), José Luis Cuerda, 1999) Soldados de Salamina (David Trueba, 2002) Website streaming a number of CNT-produced filmsRelated literature
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940) The Living and the Dead by Patrick White (1941) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2001) L'espoir by Andre Malraux Les Grands cimetieres sous la Lune by Georges BernanosOn the immediate Post-Civil War:
La Colmena by Camilo Jose Cela
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