Spain: history 1936–45

For the earlier history of Spain see Spain: history to 1492 and Spain: history 1492–1936.

Under the Second Republic, which had been established in Spain in 1931, there was increasing disorder, and a polarization between left and right. While left-wing paramilitaries organized in the open, those on the far right, members of the fascist Falange, organized in secret. The Popular Front government, a centre-left alliance elected in 1936, introduced agrarian and other reforms, and these aroused the opposition of the landlords and the Catholic Church.

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War began with a right-wing military rebellion in Spanish Morocco, which broke out on 18 July 1936, immediately after the murders of Lt Castillo, one of the trainers of the left-wing paramilitary groups, and then of the right-wing monarchist leader, Calvo Sotelo. The president, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, had to invoke the very powers of repression for which public opinion had condemned the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–30).

The history of the early days of the military revolt is obscure; but so carefully prepared was the plan of the insurgents under Gen Francisco Franco that the revolt was almost simultaneous in the garrisons of Spanish Morocco, Madrid, Seville, Málaga, Burgos, and Zaragoza. The moderate-left leaders in the government were impotent to meet imminent trouble threatening from right and left, but the left wing under Largo Caballero, the socialist leader, expected a struggle and prepared for it, while socialist and communist youth bodies continued to organize themselves on paramilitary lines, as did the young Falangists.

Franco aimed at securing an authoritarian, or, as his political opponents saw it, a fascist regime. He and his right-wing followers are generally referred to as the ‘Nationalists’, while the centre and left-wing supporters of the government are broadly referred to as the ‘Republicans’.

The fighting spreads Following the revolt in Morocco, fighting soon spread to mainland cities. The Spanish Foreign Legion held Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco for the Nationalists. Ill-armed government forces in the first two days stormed the Montana barracks in Madrid. A few days later Franco set up a provisional government and sent Gen Mola southward to attack the capital. On the heights of the Guadarrama mountains, which encircle the city to the north, the Republican militia held Mola's army, and indeed Madrid. The insurgents, however, soon took Pamplona, Valladolid, Burgos, and Zaragoza. Franco brought Moorish troops into southern Spain in German troop-carrying planes and swept up to Badajoz.

After two weeks of fighting the Republicans held southeast Spain, much of northeast Spain, and Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Córdoba, while Franco's forces held the rest of the country, including Seville, the area around Gibraltar, and Spanish Morocco.

Foreign responses to the war Soon planes and troops from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were sent to aid Franco. The French Popular Front government under León Blum tended to favour the Republican government but advised neutrality. The USSR favoured the Republicans, and later sent war material and other not very effective aid. It demanded payment in gold for every tank and plane, but without Soviet aid the Republic might not have survived as long as it did.

The UK government on 4 August 1936 proposed a five-power pact or declaration of neutrality, to which the USSR assented; in effect, however, while Britain and France held strictly to the agreement, Germany and Italy sent every material aid to the insurgents, which the policy of ‘non-intervention’ denied to the legal government.

However, under the auspices of the Comintern (the Communist International), bands of foreign volunteers were organized into the International Brigades to help fight for the Republican cause. The majority of the volunteers were communists, probably totalling not more than 20,000 troops in all.

Nationalist advances in 1936 Nationalist forces now advanced towards Madrid in the north and at the same time bombarded Irún in the Basque Country from the air. On 26 August 1936 Nationalist tanks, aircraft, and infantry attacked San Sebastián and Irún. Irún fell on 4 September and San Sebastián on 12 September. Meanwhile in the south and west Nationalist forces were advancing towards the capital and to the relief of the besieged Nationalist garrison in Toledo, south of Madrid. The historic siege of the Alcázar (fortress) in Toledo lasted from 1 August till 27 September, when the Nationalist troops succeeded in recapturing the city.

The struggle for Madrid The Republican government, under Largo Caballero, who had taken over the premiership from Manuel Azaña (who was now president), moved to Valencia, leaving Gen Miaja in command in Madrid. Republican forces laid seige to Oviedo in the north, which lasted three months. But the real centre of gravity was Madrid. In October the Nationalists captured several villages within a few miles of the government's strongest defences. On 2 October Navalcarnero, the key town on the road to the capital, fell to the Nationalists, and a month later they captured the chief airport of Madrid.

There followed a fierce battle for Madrid (November 1936). The Nationalists were repulsed in hand-to-hand fighting, while the Republican forces were strengthened by the arrival of the first International Brigades. Franco sought to bomb Madrid into submission (a prelude to methods used in World War II) with the aid of the German aircraft available to him. However, this also failed, in part due to the counteraction of Soviet aircraft. The Nationalists therefore abandoned the struggle for Madrid.

In November 1936 the German and Italian governments informed the British government that they had recognized Franco's government, though they did not propose to leave the Non-Intervention Committee.

The course of the war in 1937 Early in February 1937 the city of Málaga in the south was bombarded by Nationalist warships and it fell on 8 February. This was a heavy blow for the Republicans and one that reduced their hopes for the outcome of the war. The loss of Málaga and the pressure on Bilbao in the Basque Country led to the fall of Caballero's government. A new socialist government was formed under Juan Negrín, but the effective head was Indalecio Prieto, the defence minister.

Naval and military activities in the north were now a cause of international concern. Blockade-running of food ships to Bilbao was often successful, and on 30 April the Nationalist battleship España was sunk by a mine. Soon after this the Nationalists sent squadrons of German planes to bomb the old Basque town of Guernica. This notorious attack involved the total destruction of the town, and many civilians were killed.

The fact that foreign warships were carrying out patrols in Spanish territorial waters to enforce ‘non-intervention’ was always liable to lead to incidents. On 29 May 1937 the German battleship Deutschland was bombed off the Balearic Islands by Spanish government aircraft, and 31 of her crew were killed. By way of reprisal, on 31 May German naval forces fired 200 shells into Almería, destroying the harbour fortifications and killing 19 inhabitants.

On 25 August 1937 the northern port of Santander was taken by the Nationalists, and throughout September and thefirst half of October the Nationalist advance through the northern Spanish provinces continued, until on 21 October Gijón fell, and, except for some fighting in the Galician mountains, resistance in the north was at an end. Franco concentrated large forces once more near Guadalajara for a final assault on Madrid. But on 17 December the Republicans stormed and entered Teruel. Two months later, the Nationalists recaptured the town and and made a rapid advance towards the coast.

The course of the war in 1938 The Nationalists now decided to strike from Aragón to overrun the southern part of Catalonia. Meanwhile the Germans and Italians launched air raids against Barcelona. After a month the Nationalist forces drove a wedge between Barcelona and the rest of Republican Spain; and although the Republicans still held their own on the left bank of the River Ebro, they had suffered a serious defeat just at a moment when their chances had seemed to improve.

On 23 April 1938 the Nationalist army launched a major offensive for the capture of Sagunto and the important towns of Castellón and Valencia on the east coast. But Castellón only fell after seven weeks, and the attack on Sagunto was repelled. During May and June the bombing of towns and villages in Catalonia and on the coast of Alicante was intensified. On 25 July the Republican forces relieved the Nationalist pressure on Sagunto and Valencia by a surprise crossing of the Ebro over a 160-km/100 mi front and the recapture of a large area of territory. In September heavy fighting continued in Andalusia and Estremadura as well as in Catalonia and on the borders of Teruel-Valencia, but the position generally appeared to be a stalemate.

The course of the war in 1939 On 23 December 1938, after a great artillery barrage supported by the German Kondor air force and Italian Legionary Aviation, the Nationalist army began its assault in Catalonia. By 21 January 1939 it had reached Tarragona and was well on the way to encircling the Republican eastern army. Republican forces began an offensive on the Estremadura and Andalusia fronts as a diversion, but with no success, and by 25 January the Negrín government decided to leave Barcelona to its fate and try to carry on the war by guerrilla methods in the mountains and valleys of northern Catalonia.

Out of an army of 700,000 in all, only 200,000 Republican troops were engaged in Catalonia, the bulk of the Republican forces being in the central-southern zone pivoting on Valencia. But everything depended on keeping open the sea passage to Valencia against the Italian threat by sea and air. By this time demoralization had set in. The Catalans were tired of the struggle, and gradually the Republican resistance crumpled. Manuel Azaña, president of the Republic, had fled to France and advised surrender. Franco confined his activities to Catalonia, confident of victory, and Barcelona was captured in January 1939.

The Republican surrender In March 1939 Col Casado, commander of the Republican central army, seized power in Madrid and set up a council of defence whose task it was to end a hopeless struggle on the best terms possible and while the Republican forces were still intact. The British and French governments at once recognized the Franco junta in Burgos. On 23 March Casado's emissaries flew to Burgos to seek terms. Franco demanded unconditional surrender and negotiations were suspended. Madrid was occupied by Nationalist forces on 29 March 1939, and this final token of Franco's victory coincided with the arrival in Cádiz of a further contingent of Italian troops.

The effects of the war The material damage caused by the Civil War, though severe, was not as heavy as might have been expected. The official inventory listed nearly 700 blown bridges and 11 cathedrals partly or totally destroyed, including the late-Romanesque cathedrals of Siguenza and Lleida, the Gothic cathedrals of Oviedo and Huesca, and the 14th-century church of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona. At Toledo the damage was restricted to the Alcázar and its immediate vicinity.

However, the war had cost some 750,000 Spanish lives, including many civilians, and had been marked by atrocities on both sides. The normal rules of international war regarding the treatment of prisoners were not observed, and prisoners and other political opponents were often executed. Despite the defeat of the Republican cause, the war did much to alert liberal opinion in Europe to the dangers of fascism.

Franco establishes authoritarian rule The new regime showed no mercy for its defeated enemies. Decrees were issued suppressing regional liberties in Catalonia and the Basque provinces. The private property of ex-King Alfonso XIII (who had abdicated in 1931) and his family was restored, and the agrarian reforms of the Republican government were reversed. The freedom of worship won in the 19th century was now replaced by the establishment of a state church (Roman Catholic), and there was a tendency to make religion subservient to the political purpose of the state.

Franco's efforts to shake off the now unwelcome grip of the Axis powers (Germany and Italy) were unsuccessful, and on 8 May he subscribed to the Anti-Comintern Pact. However, he rejected a proposal made by Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, for a formal Spanish–Italian alliance.

In most respects, however, Franco's Spain was modelled on fascist Italy. Spain was remoulded as a national syndicalist or corporative state. Franco became El Caudillo (‘leader’, the Spanish equivalent of Duce and Führer), responsible ‘only to God and to history’, with power to rule by presidential decree if necessary, but with a cabinet buttressed by the political junta of the National Council, a body resembling the fascist Grand Council of Mussolini's Italy. But the Franco regime was itself faction-ridden and held together only by the solidarity of the army leaders. Although the fascist Falange was the only legal political party, Spain under Franco was more of an authoritarian, extreme-conservative military dictatorship than a completely totalitarian fascist state.

Spain during World War II From the beginning of World War II, which broke out within months of the end of the Spanish Civil War, Franco's sympathies were with the Axis powers, yet neutrality up to a point was advantageous to both. But to revive the Spanish Empire with German help and so restore the old links with Latin America was the main policy of the Falange. The Germans early in the war promised to help Spain in this project, and also to assist further Spanish expansion in Morocco and northwest Africa at the expense of France – just as they had falsely promised to help Italy's ‘natural claims’ in Savoy, Tunisia, and Corsica. In return Hitler expected Franco to allow German forces to march through Spain and cooperate with Spanish forces in an attack on the British colony of Gibraltar.

Franco's attitude, however, seems to have been an equivocally neutral one; he was unsure of his support among the people of Spain, and of Spain's resources. When Germany attacked the USSR in 1941 Hitler shelved his earlier promises in the west, as his attention was turned to the east. Moreover, as Hitler was attacking the USSR, Spain was the sole gateway left open for communication between Germany and the outside world, particularly to America, whence the Germans obtained information through Portugal and Spain, while the flood of German propaganda and instructions to their agents in the American continent passed the same way.

In the spring of 1942, when the Allies, although still on the defensive, were planning the invasion of northwest Africa, Spain's continued neutrality was essential to the success of this operation. Hence the Allies made every effort to counteract powerful Axis pressure and to discourage Franco from making any flank attack from the Spanish peninsula. During 1942 and 1943 Spain was prevailed upon to grant the Allies an increasing number of facilities. By 1944 it was clear to Franco that, as the Allies were winning the war, it was time he heeded their warnings to take stock of Spain's position. His hold on power in Spain was such that the collapse of the German and Italian dictators did not touch off a reaction in Spain that would have resulted in his own overthrow.

For the history of Spain after 1945 see Spain.