The Spanish Civil War
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Updated: 28 Jan 2018
Made for iGCSE history cambridge
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France and Britain do not involve themeselves.Stalin and Russia sided with the Popular Front to show
support for communism.Hitler and Germany side with Franco.
Mussolini and Italy sided with Franco.
This is because they all shared the same fascist idealogy.Thousands of volunteers (like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the USA)
came to Spain to stop the spread of fascism.General Franco - leader of a right-wing + nationalist alliance which
includes Spain's fascist party the Falange (made 1933).
They started the war by assaulting the democratically elected government.The government: a republican group called the Popular Front
- a mix of socialists, communists, anarchists,and syndicalists with no clear leader.The war was more about rival idealogies.The German and Franco governments vehemently denied that the atrocity had taken place, claiming that fog
had grounded their planes at the time of the attack.This is an example of terror bombing - civilians were deliberately targeted in order to break the will or aid the
collapse of an enemy - the Luftwaffe did this a few times in the bombing of Wieluń and Warsaw in 1939, and
Rotterdam in 1940.The Condor Legion (adjunct of the Luftwaffe) developed and perfected tactics of aerial warfare that would be
used later in the Blitzkreig through Europe (1939-1940) in Guernica like a training exercise.Only a church, a sacred tree, and a small munitions factory outisde
of the town remained after the bombing.Estimated 1,650 people died that day (little less than
2/5 the population).It would have been market day so there was actually an estimated
10,000 people in the town.Guernica had an estimated population of 5,000 at the time of the attack.Guernica is in the Basque region in Northern Spain.26 April 1937: The Bombing of GuernicaWhy Did Hitler join the Spanish Civil War?AIM: Germany's armed forces, especially the Luftwaffe could be tested in a
'dress rehearsal' for a full-scale European war.
WHAT HAPPENED: the Luftwaffe was able to practise and perfect dive-bombing
techniques in the assault on Guernica in the Basque region of Northern Spain.AIM: Drawing Mussolini away from the association of GB + FR (Stresa Front) and
making Italy a German ally, since Mussolini was also assisting Franco.
WHAT HAPPENED: Hitler persuaded Mussolini to abandon BR + FR, and though he
was never a formal ally he made it clear in a speech in November 1936 that
the two countries were getting closer as he referred to the German-Italian
relationship as the "Rome-Berlin Axis".AIM: To distract western diplomats from central European affairs with a long Spanish
civil war ('a smokescreen').
WHAT HAPPENED: The Spanish civil war did last for three years and during this
time HItler was able to successfully invade Czechoslovakia and have Anschluss.AIM: Spain would become a German ally - providing a hostile presence on France's
south-western border to corner them and hopefully Spanish naval bases
for the German navy.
WHAT HAPPENED: Spain did not become an ally of their fellow fasict powers but was
neutral in WW2 to help them focus on domestic issues.Periods
July 1936 - April 1939: the Spanish Civil War
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