Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War. In 1931 King Alfonso XIII of Spain (1886–1941) was deposed. The resulting republic seemed to right-wingers to be drifting further and further to the left; particularly after the Popular Front's victory in the elections of February 1936. In July that year the regular army revolted against the Republican government; brisk fighting at once began, and did not officially end until 1 April 1939. Tens of thousands of soldiers from the defeated Republican army had by then fled across the Pyrenees and were interned in France, and many later escaped to join various maquis. Others fled to North Africa (see Zouaves).

In November 1936 the Nationalist regime of the head of the army, General Franco, was recognized as the government of Spain by Germany and Italy which provided armed support for the Nationalists. The Republicans received fighter aircraft (but no spares), and a great deal of advice, from the USSR; but as the war coincided with the depths of Stalin's great purge, he was ill-placed to provide substantial help. France also provided fighters, and a number of communist-inspired International Brigades fighting on the Republican side included volunteers from France, the UK, and the USA among others.

Communist civilian leaders in Spain learnt a great deal which was put to good use when it came to waging partisan warfare in their occupied countries. But militarily the USSR was adversely influenced by the war. Stalin was told that the fighting showed that tank formations were unsuited to playing an independent operational role, and in 1939 the Red Army's armoured formations were broken up and used for supporting infantry. After the Polish campaign and the fall of France Stalin reversed this decision, but it came too late for the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA). The apparent ineffectualness of strategic bombing also induced the Soviets to stop production of a new heavy bomber (the TB7), dismantle the strategic arm of their air force, and concentrate on producing aircraft that were subordinated to supporting the infantry.

The French, too, drew wrong conclusions, preferring to see the fighting in Spain as evidence that the defensive battle was still the stronger form of warfare and that the fear of a swift, highly mechanized form of warfare (see blitzkrieg) was exaggerated. ‘They even believed a German émigré writer, Helmuth Klotz, who, after a few weeks in Spain, wrote in his Leçons militaires de la guerre d'Espagne that the tank had been mastered by the anti-tank gun’ (see H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, new edn., London, 1986, p. 770). The Italians learned valuable lessons, particularly in the air, but then failed to implement them.

The Germans benefited most from their experience in Spain, and put it to the best use at the start of the Second World War. General von Thoma, who commanded the German troops there, regarded the war as ‘the European Aldershot’ (quoted in A. Millett and W. Murray, Military Effectiveness, Vol. 2, New York, p. 261). The Luftwaffe's Kondor Legion perfected the fighter tactics Luftwaffe pilots employed during the battle of Britain. dogfights, thought to be a thing of the past once fighters reached speeds in excess of 320 kph (200 mph), were found to be still practicable. The RAF was slow to realize this. The Germans also drew from the Kondor Legion's operation the conclusion that the Luftwaffe should be used for close tactical air support not strategic bombing.

Apart from being a testing-ground for several of the major combatants of the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War produced some important advances in surgical techniques and blood transfusion (see also medicine).

I. C. B. Dear/ and M. R. D. Foot