In July 1936, Spanish army troops in Morocco, led by General Francisco Franco, staged an insurrection against the recently elected left-wing "popular front" government. (Popular front was a term for an international communist policy advocating communist participation in coalition governments threatened by the rising tide of fascism in Europe.) The Nationalists, or Falangists, as Franco's supporters came to be known, were backed by large landowners, the clergy, and eventually by increasing numbers of the middle class. The Loyalists, defenders of the elected republican government, drew their support from urban areas and the peasant class. Both sides looked to foreign governments for external support. Franco received military aid from the two reigning fascist governments, Italy and Germany, while the Loyalists, or Republicans, were supplied with arms by the Soviet Union. In addition, more than 40,000 men and women from around the world formed Loyalist "international brigades" to fight "the good fight," as the war was known in leftist circles. Among these groups was the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a force of 2,800, approximately one-third of whom were killed in action.

Initially Franco's forces made rapid advances, reaching the suburbs of Madrid in early November, but the Republicans held the city, despite continued aerial attacks, and followed it up with a victory at the battle of Guadalajara. In February 1937, a sustained battle on the Jarama River, southeast of the capital, resulted in severe losses for the Republicans. By June, Franco's army had captured the important city of Bilbao in the Basque region. Its victory in the Basque country had been preceded by the notorious attack by German bombers and fighter planes on the civilian population in Guernica, the old Basque capital. As the subject of Pablo Picasso's magnificent mural, the bombing of Guernica has come to stand as the symbol of the inhumanity of modern warfare.

In 1938, the failure of the Loyalist attempt to capture and hold the city of Teruel in the Aragon province left the loyalists in a desperate position. They attempted a last-ditch counterattack at the battle of the Ebro River in November 1938 but were beaten back. Shortly after, in January 1939, Barcelona was captured, and in March of that year Madrid fell to the Nationalists. On April 1, 1939, General Franco declared victory. His dictatorial regime would rule Spain until his death in 1975.

The retrospective significance of the Spanish civil war is that it proved to be a prelude to WW2. At the beginning of the war, all of the other European nations agreed not to intervene in this internal struggle, but within a very short time, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union became active participants. The Italians supplied as many as 50,000 troops; the Germans bomber pilots fought on the Nationalist side. The Soviets contributed to the Republicans arms, men, and mischief--the latter in the form of their treacherous attempt to eliminate anarchist and other left-wing factions on the Republican side. The betrayal of these groups is memorably recorded in the classic memoir Homage to Catalonia (1938), by George Orwell.

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