Spanish Civil War 1936-1939: Causes and International Impact
**Item 20. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939**
1. Introduction
1.1 Conspiracy
The Spanish Civil War was the form taken in Spain during the crisis sweeping the world and Europe. Three trends tried to resolve the crisis of capitalism and social demands:
- Communism
- Bourgeois democracy
- Fascism
The reforms of the Republic governments had failed to halt the two trends:
- A workers’ revolution
- An authoritarian state
In Spain, the war was also an armed clash between the old dominant groups of the Spanish Restoration and labor groups, and the bourgeoisie, who wanted to establish a democratic political system and social order. Spain was divided into two areas: the National and the Republican. It was a long, hard war that ended with the victory of General Franco, who established a military dictatorship.
After the Popular Front victory in the February 1936 elections, living conditions in Spain had become so difficult that groups of the right and left were willing to end the Republican institutions by an act of violence. At the far-right, monarchists, who had won the support of Benito Mussolini, joined some military sectors, even Republicans, who took the main direction of the uprising. The most important organizers of the conspiracy were General Emilio Mola in Pamplona, General Manuel Goded, General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, and General Guillermo Cabanellas. Franco’s participation in the uprising was not clear until the end. Also collaborating in the preparation of the rising were a number of members of CEDA, such as Ramón Serrano Súñer and the Count of Mayalde. The main leader of the group, José María Gil-Robles, was not consulted by the leaders of the uprising, although financial support was provided with their party’s electoral funds.
Not for a moment did they think of the possibility of civil war. A violent and decisive action was expected very quickly to get the victory in Madrid, the capital of the state and central to political decisions, and the establishment of a dictatorial regime that, in principle, should not be permanent or necessarily lead to the monarchy. Contrary to what is generally accepted, the reality is that the government did take action. Senior military commanders had been given to persons who did not expect a conspiracy against the Republic. In Africa, whose army gave the rebels one of the most important assets for their victory, the senior military commanders were also loyal to the military regime. Various suspects had been transferred to positions from which their actions would be far less dangerous: Goded to the Balearic Islands and Franco to the Canary Islands, for example. Other generals such as Varela and García Escámez were sanctioned. Mola was suspected, but they trusted him not to be able to agree with the Carlists in Pamplona. The enforcement agencies in large cities were put under the command of loyal authorities. The government’s mistake was perhaps not to foresee the magnitude of the uprising and to manifest an inability to control their own bodies, not daring to break with the far-left. Political leaders, Azaña and Casares Quiroga, erred in the assessment of their own forces. Of course, as in the case of the conspirators, the government did not consider anywhere near the possibility of civil war.
After the Popular Front victory, the country’s political polarization intensified, and on the eve of the civil war, two major political blocs were facing each other:
The National Front: Included conservative Catholics, monarchists of different tendencies, Carlists, right-wing Republicans, far-right groups like the Falange, and major lobby groups such as landowners.
The Popular Front: Grouped Socialists, Communists, Republican Left, regionalist and nationalist forces, and limited support from anarchists.
However, the trigger for the war was extra-political. The army, since the triumph of the Popular Front, had gone straight to the conspiracy of what would be the attempted military coup of July 18, 1936. The conspirators’ plans, almost certainly, were moved forward following a series of events, such as the removal of Alcalá-Zamora on April 7 as President of the Republic, which represented a serious breach of institutional legitimacy, and, above all, the assassination of the monarchist right leader José Calvo Sotelo, on July 13, 1936. The draft coup d’état was primarily a military initiative in which civilians barely participated.
1.2 The Revolt and its Impact on July 18, 1936
The revolt began in Morocco on July 17, anticipating the planned date. Two days later, General Franco took command. He had revolted without difficulty in the Canary Islands and was transferred to Morocco on an English plane (Dragon Rapide) rented by monarchist conspirators. From July 18, the uprising extended to the peninsula. The military uprising of July 18 triumphed in the Protectorate of Morocco (July 17), Navarre (General Mola), Seville (Queipo de Llano), Galicia, Castile, Majorca (Goded), the Canary Islands (Franco), part of Andalusia, Oviedo, and Zaragoza (Cabanellas). In Madrid, the plot was very poorly organized, and the rebels were blocked by forces loyal to the government and militias. In Barcelona, the rebels took to the streets, but law enforcement agencies barred their way. In the north, the Basque Country was divided before the rebellion: Alava was for it, and Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya against it, due to the position of the Basque nationalist government and the promise of the impending grant of autonomous status. In the Balearic Islands, Majorca and Ibiza rose, but Menorca did not. In Valencia, the rebels hesitated a lot and, in the end, were defeated. Occasionally, pockets of resistance rebels—Alcázar de Toledo, Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza in Jaén—maintained resistance against the Republicans.
The Immediate Consequences: Spain was divided in two. The pronouncement was imagined by Mola, but it failed because the army did not adopt a unanimous position. In reality, the forces of one side and the other were fairly balanced. If the rebels had the Army of Africa, the government had the fleet and aviation. In addition, the Popular Front had the most important capital, industry, and the gold reserves of the Bank of Spain.
Events rushed in the days that followed the uprising. The government of Casares Quiroga tried to keep the law with its own forces and weapons, but did not divide the masses. After his resignation, Azaña attempted to form a government under the presidency of Martínez-Barrio, who was located more to the political center and tried to avoid civil war (some garrisons still wavered between one side or another). However, neither General Mola nor Largo accepted this solution because they considered war desirable and even hopeless. On July 19, a new government was formed, chaired by Giral, which proceeded to distribute weapons.
The Internationalization of the Civil War
The war was primarily a confrontation between the Spanish, whose consequences have been felt among us all for decades, but it also burst into a very special international situation, and this immediately provoked the internationalization of the Spanish conflict. Who participated in this internationalization?
The Insurgents: Received direct help from Hitler’s Germany, which was the most important and decisive for Franco. It was channeled through commercial cover companies and the intervention of the Condor Legion (the bombing of Guernica). The intervention of Italy was more active and comprehensive than the German, with direct military intervention (between 50,000 and 100,000 men), ships, and economic aid. Portugal’s speech was based on the following areas: logistical, diplomatic, and economic support. He sent the Viriatos. But they also received indirect support from Britain, whose attitude was, in the beginning, clear: to prevent the Spanish war from becoming a European conflict in 1936. Therefore, it supported the initiatives for non-intervention. The United States government judged the Spanish conflict and the possibility that communism would spread throughout Europe. In response, it adopted an attitude based on non-intervention, prohibiting the sale of arms from the United States. American society became divided in opinion. There were major players in the world of literature, art, and film who supported the Republican government. More than 2,800 Americans were integrated into the International Brigades, and while some companies faced serious difficulties to sell other material to the Republican government, Texaco, Ford, and General Motors provided basic supplies to the National side for the development of the war. The attitude of the Vatican was strongly influenced by the situation of the Catholic Church in Spain, especially since 1931. Therefore, the religious question is a key ideological element of the war and explains the strong support of most of the bishops and religious for the National cause of the Crusade, using their own weapons (words, letters, diplomatic pressure). This contributed to the Vatican and Pope Pius XI himself showing strong support for Franco and his regime, which they recognized de facto in August 1937.
The Republicans: The most important and decisive support was that provided by the USSR. The pressures that Moscow was forced by the Communist International movement led the Kremlin to support the intervention, which began in October 1936, preventing the collapse of the Republic later that year. Since that time, the intervention was continuous, comprehensive, as to the means used, and effective. However, such assistance had to be paid for using the resources of the Bank of Spain (just over 500 million dollars), causing another major debate that emerged in the Spanish war. Foreign intervention evoked strong feelings of solidarity among anti-fascist and left-wing circles almost everywhere. To coordinate and unify these movements, the USSR and some communist leaders, especially the Frenchman Maurice Thorez, created the International Brigades. In November 1936, they intervened directly in the war for the first time in the defense of Madrid. The number of volunteers rose to 60,000, from more than 60 different nationalities. Most of them were members of communist parties. The government of Mexico, with its chairman at the head, Lázaro Cárdenas, immediately decided to lend its assistance to the Republican government. From the first moment, the Mexican government supplied arms, food, and diplomatic support to the Republicans. Indirectly, France would be the first country that decided to intervene in favor of the government in the war, but it had to withdraw because of internal and external—British—pressure. However, it boosted the creation of the Non-Intervention Committee, which was headquartered in London, and produced a document that provided for the banning of exports to Spain and the transit of any material, aircraft, and ships. Other powers’ direct intervention caused the French government to open its borders, allowing the passage of military supplies and thousands of Spanish nationals who fled before the advance of Franco’s troops. In 1938, especially since October, the ineffectiveness of the Committee was already evident, and almost no one remembered its existence. The League of Nations, when the war in Spain began, was immersed in a crisis, and throughout the period of the conflict, only the 1937 Assembly spoke of the Spanish conflict.
The civil war ended with the triumph of Franco’s Spain. Italo-German aid and international commitments to the Rome-Berlin axis or the Anti-Comintern Pact constrained the external action of the new rulers in the next few years.
In terms of armies:
On the Republican side, popular militias were formed, which did not always follow the instructions of the commanders, and from 1936, the so-called People’s Army was created, turning the former militias into regular units. The military organization adopted was the”mixed brigade” a small unit, characterized as a kind of army in miniature. But this militarization of Republican units did not occur at the same time in all the territory controlled by the Popular Front: Catalonia organized an army on its own, the”Iron Colum” in Teruel refused to accept militarization, and in the north, it occurred completely or in difficult times. Another serious drawback it suffered was the lack of commanders, especially intermediate commanders.
On the Francoist side, generals wielded supreme political leadership, and a professional mass maneuver was available. Regarding the commanders,”lieutenant” and”provisional sergeant” were created who, trained by German instructors, framed the new units at their service and showed a great capacity for maneuver.