Dan Snow's History Hit - The Spanish Civil War

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

Why did Spain spiral into civil war in 1936? Today, we delve into the grinding class conflicts and ferocious political divisions that split Spain in two, from the dictatorship of the 1920s to the ambitious and divisive government of the early 1930s. We explore why democracy unravelled in Spain, and how foreign intervention - or lack of it - turned a bungled coup into a full-blown conflict that killed half a million people, and gave rise to the regime of Francisco Franco.We're joined by Helen Graham, Professor of Modern European History at Royal Holloway and author of 'In the Shadow of Defeat: Radical Lives After the Spanish Civil War'. She explains how important international players were in shaping the conflict, and how crucial it was to the broader course of European history.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello folks, Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. In the 1930s, Europe. was racked with tension. Authoritarianism, nationalism, communism, all thriving amidst the wreckage of catastrophic economic dislocation.

In 1936, a brutal conflict erupted in Spain. It was a civil war that would tear the country apart, claim hundreds of thousands of lives, and establish a nearly four decades-long right-wing dictatorship. It also offered a chilling, preview of the global war that was to come. The Spanish Civil War, a violent clash of ideologies. Neighbors turned on neighbours.

Cities were bombed to rubble. The world watched as democracy and fascism and communism collided on the battlefields of Spain. It was the most important event in modern Spanish history, and it was one of the really defining conflicts the 20th century. To understand how Spain spiraled into war and why it really mattered, we're going to be looking on this podcast, Dan Snow's history, into the deep political and social divisions of the early 20th century. You're going to look at the collapse of the monarchy, the rise of the Second Republic, the reforms that enraged Spain's conservative elites. We're going to hear about

country versus city, the place of religion in society, inequality, culture wars, and the mobilizing, polarizing effect of new communication technologies. We're going to hear how in July 1936, a group of disaffected right-wing generals launched a coup. It might have only lasted a few days, but a bizarre, an unfortunate mix of meddling and complacency from international actors turbo-charged it into a three-year civil war. From the beginning, this was more than just a fight for power. It was a battle for the soul of Spain.

Each side viewed the other as an existential threat. And as the violence escalated, atrocities mounted and families were torn apart. Hitler and Mussolini threw their support behind the rebels while the Soviet Union backed the Republic. Volunteers from around the world joined the fight. German and Italian warplanes bombed Spanish cities, most infamously the Basque town of Guernica, foreshadowing the horrors of World War II.

By early 1939, the Republic had been defeated. General Francisco Franco seized control. Months later, Hitler invaded Poland. The Spanish Civil War had ended, but its lessons both learned and ignored echoed loudly as Europe plunged into an even greater catastrophe. Joining us to guide us through this turbulent history is Helen Graham. She's the very brilliant professor of modern European history at Roll Holloway. She's the author of The Spanish Civil War, a short introduction. and in the shadow defeat radical lives after the Spanish Civil War.

And there is nothing she does not know about this conflict. We begin our story in the 1920s with a Spain desperate for stability and a man promising to deliver it. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black white unity till there is first than black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. Gate. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the power. In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power in a bloodless coup. He was backed by King Alfonso the 13th, and he was supported, and he's initially by many people in a war-weary and politically fractured Spanish population. Spain had been stripped of its once mighty global empire, defeats over the centuries to the Brits and the Dutch and the French. Well, they've been followed in the late 19th century

by humiliation at the hands of the United States of America. But there was worse to come. In 1921, Spain suffered really just a deeply humiliating defeat in Morocco at the hands of North African tribesmen at the Battle of Anuel. They lost over 10,000 soldiers. Confidence in parliamentary democracy was low, and many elites and conservatives welcomed military rule there's a temporary necessity. Primo de Rivera promised to restore order and pride. He focused on building infrastructure, railways, roads, public buildings. He sought to modernize Spain's economy.

He thought this would be the answer to Spain's deep-rooted social and economic problems, vast rural poverty, fierce tension between landowners and peasants, and growing demands in the cities for secularism, for social justice. These fractures had been exacerbated, inflamed by the First World War, surprisingly, given that Spain wasn't technically a combatant. Helen will explain. Helen, thank you very much coming on the podcast. My pleasure.

Let's start in Spain itself. What are the preconditions for conflict in Spain itself? Is it some of those things we see running through the 19th century? Is it indeed during the polionic invasion? Ideas around modernity and religion, the place of Catholicism. Tell me about class and religion and all those things in Spain at the time. Well, all of these things are obviously part of the mix, But, I mean, in a sense, the great event that really triggers everything is actually the Great War of 1914 to 18, just like it triggers a whole process of tensions and changes across Europe.

Now, obviously, we know Spain wasn't a belligerent power in the First World War. But as a colleague of mine has said, if Spain didn't enter the war, the war entered Spain. Spanish industry, everything was at full tilt exporting to the two side as a neutral power to the two sides in agriculture industry. There wasn't the follow-on reform and industrial reforms that were required, but there was a massive making of money and a massive demographic shift of people to work into Madrid, but particularly Barcelona, which, of course, is the great industrial powerhouse. And so in a sense, that changes the balance of population in Spain. And it's echoing the same kind of tensions and questions across Europe in terms of mobilisation of war workers and new constituencies wanting a voice and a vote. So in the sense, it's the war, the war of 1914, 18, which kind of kickstarts all of these tensions. All of the other things are there, class and religion, but in the sense, the tipping towards new kinds of industrialised cities and the new constituencies in them is what really shakes everything off.

And I think that's true for Spain, too. Absolutely fascinating. So at the risk of sounding like a Brit who's familiar with British history or even a bit of a Marxist here. So you've got this a process of industrialisation and people crowding into cities and demanding votes and new middle class, which you see in Britain across almost 150 years, that suddenly happens in Spain in quite a short and sharp amount of time, does it, if that's not too simple?

Britain is different, as you know, from continental any, you know, industrialising part of continental Europe. Britain is different. It's a much more gradual process. But in Spain, yes, it's much more concentrated. And I think that's the nature of the problem. But it isn't just, for example, in the 1920s, Spain has a military dictatorship

and another general, Prima de Rivetta, and that is also a period of an attempted shift, an attempt to modify the army, an attempt to bring some kind of very constrained social welfareism to the acceptable face of labour, which is the socialist, quite moderate EGT, and even tries to tinker with other things. And of course, he's a landowner from Kareth. He both represents the military hierarchy and the landowning aristocracy of the South. So he represents the poles of all Spain's power.

And he's trying to tinker with it in the 20s bolstered by boom in Spain. and by loans which he takes out from abroad more and more modernisation and more demographic shift. The iconography says that the Republic went to Wong, it was a working class power. Well, it was in part, but it was also the aspirational urban middle classes, not all of whom were, certainly there weren't sort of left wing, but they are hostile to the old regime, which excludes them. I think it's very important to put out there the idea that the Republic was a very diverse constituency of, had a very diverse

constituency of support. Prima de Rivera's regime was deeply authoritarian. He dissolved Parliament, he sensed the press, he suppressed regional nationalism, particularly in Catalonia. The working and urban middle classes grew dissatisfied with his rule. He then

tried to reform the military, which turned out to be a deeply unpopular decision with his core supporters in the army. He tries to tinker with the army, and this of course is that, you know, how much harder is it going to be for a despise group of Republican civilians who try to tinker with the army afterwards, but he tries to modify certain promotion structures. So he loses the support of the army.

There's a general sense that he's one of ours, but he's kind of done tinkering with the state. He's tried to introduce reforms. Let's just get back to the way we were before. So the dictatorship falls apart. By 1930, Prima de Rivera's popularity had plummeted. The military turned against him, and he resigned, and he took down the monarchy with him. Within a year, in April 1931, with the dictatorship gone, the king in exile, Spain declared itself for a republic. The second republic, as it was called this time, it was a broad church, and it encompassed millions of newly enfranchised workers, as well as sort of aspirational urban middle class. For many, it was a fresh start. There was bold promises. There was going to be land reform,

secular education, expanded rights women, autonomy for Catalonia in the Basque Country, a nation that was saddled with debt, riddled with structural problems, well, it seemed like it was on the brink of a great transformation. The Republican government, it was led by left-leaning reformists. They moved quickly. The military was cut back. The Catholic Church, which had been so powerful in Spanish politics. It lost control over schools. Spain underwent a process of intense secularisation. It was an extensive reforming agenda. They hoped it would modernise Spain. They hoped it would alter the fabric of sparrish society. But that is a change. challenging task, and they desperately struggled to find that elusive balance between too much

change and too little that dogged this new government from the get-go. The Republic comes in with a huge reforming agenda, and I suppose one could say with perfect vision of hindsight, that it was probably too much. They want to kind of make a land reform without it being a revolutionary land reform. They're not going to expropriate. They're going to actually, over years, basically remunerate the landowners, the land they take. The object of this is to try and create an internal market to kickstart Spanish industry. It's not, you know, like a kind of entire ideological revolutionary program. It's about modernising Spain, because that's what the republic's about.

It's an enlightenment vision. It's about educating the population. It's about introducing primary education. But it's also about economic modernisation, but the people who have the purse strings, the treasury are never revolutionary, so they're not going to expropriate. So immediately there's a problem that they will only do it very slowly because they won't borrow money for it. The only thing they ever borrow money for is to open schools, the primary education, a schoolroom

in every village in Spain. That's the only thing they ever borrow further abroad for. So a lander for, which is crucial to the project, but is very slow. And this creates all kinds of disappointment and anger amongst the landless, of whom there are vast numbers, especially in the south of Spain, because the deep south of Spain is basically a land of large landed estates and effectively day labourers who are landless and desperate for land. So there's quite a little turbulence. People in the cities want the Republic to be the saviour to give them more social welfareism, the Republican afford. So in a sense, it's a kind of irony that although the Republic does more for working people and the ordinary population than any regime before, it's perceived as not doing enough because it's envisaged as almost like a secular saviour.

And, of course, it can't live up to that above all in the Depression, saddled with debt. Rapid reform, unsurprisingly met fierce resistance. Anarchists, socialists and communists, they felt the wrong. reforms weren't going far enough. Meanwhile, things like the promotion of secular education, in particular, enraged powerful landlords, traditional elites, industrious, monarchists, the clergy. In 1932, there was an attempted right-wing military coup by a monarchist named General Sanhoho. It failed, but the threat lingered. I think it's also important to talk about mindsets in this context, because we have to understand

the kind of conservatism that was looking at the Republic. Because if you want to understand the coalition, the social civilian coalition, which is behind the military, which supports the military coup, you have to understand something about another kind of Spain, both in terms of elites and patrician, but also poor, impoverished inland peasantry who see the republic is somehow going to rip away their Catholic faith and so on and so forth. So there's this enlightenment, forward-looking vision, which is in a sense triggered by the of Empire in 1898, the Republic emerges from that wider vision supported by urban constituencies. And not against that, you've got the army that's going to lose out because,

you know, junior officers are going to lose their jobs or not be recruited. You've got the patrician sort of hierarchy of the army. You've got the most conservative church hierarchy in Europe, ultramontane, fundamentalist, Catholic hierarchy. You've got a landed elite which believes in a divine right to rule. And so when the Republic comes along and says, you're illiterate labourers, we're going to educate them. We're going to put every child in a primary school for a number of years. To understand the kind of conservatism that there was, not every conservative in Spain, but this powerful kind of backward-looking block and certainly the patrician block, they're looking back to almost like a kind of medieval chain of being.

They think nothing must ever change. It's no surrender. It's absolutely no. give for anything. It's apocalypse. It's us or them. Spain wasn't feudal. It had long since ceased to be feudal in any economic sense. But socially in the deep south, in the lands of the Latifundi, the big land of estates in the south, it was socially feudal. You know, there were massive estates where the retainers and the people who work the land never left for their whole lives. The chapel, their little chapel would be inside the grounds. And to be told that these people have to be educated. They're not yours. They don't belong to you. And of course, the church, not all bishops were conservatives and not that entirety of the church hierarchy was not totally high bound.

But in the heartland of Castile, in the inland, the rural, the central area, which is the heart of the long-distant empire, there was this sense that any education is our prerogative. And of course, that is education according to social class for an absolutely designated role in life, right? We educate the poor to serve. We don't educate them to have ideas. We're not talking about a very grandiose education here. We're talking about what was achieved in France, you know, almost before the start of the 20th century. We're talking about a bit of writing, reading and arithmetic. You know, we're talking about primary education.

You know, I started by saying this is about mindsets. I think it is very important to understand how hidebound and how absolutely immobile patrician conservatism was. And, of course, he managed to attract to us the landlock peasantry of Castile and Leon, draw a line across Madrid above, but inland of the sea, where they all had tiny amounts of land and were very poor. But the priest often had quite an intimate relationship with these small, landed, usually landed, but tiny, tiny, cockat handkerchiefs of land are very little. And that was a very different relationship. And they therefore felt that any kind of attack on the church was an attack on them, even though separation of church and state is a very different

thing to an attack on Catholicism. But in any case, these inland peasantry were the kind of people who became the foot soldiers of Francoism, who were recruited to the crusade for old Spain, the Spain of the 16th century, the hammer of heretics with a unified religion, with everybody knowing their plate, the people who own two-thirds of Caddiff province would say to the man who has a pocket-handkerchief in Leone. We landowners are up against as if the republic is going to rip away your pocket-handkerchief. The Republic had no intention. But, you know, it's what you believe. I mean, the Republic wasn't perfect, again, with the benefit of hindsight, but strategically, a lot of things could have been done better. In the 1933 elections, the pendulum swung right.

The Catholic Conservative Party won on a platform defending the Catholic Church and combating what it considered authoritarian socialism and religious persecution. The next few years became known as the Black Bionium. It was a period that saw a right-wing shift in politics and resulted in increasing tension and open violence. Although this Catholic part didn't immediately take power, in October 1934, the Republican government tried to include conservative Catholic ministers in the cabinet. To many, this looked like caving to fascism in Spain. Workers in Asturias protested with a strike that snowballed into an armed uprising. They stormed army barracks. They took over towns. They declared a

A revolutionary workers' republic for two weeks, they controlled much of the region. And they redistributed food, they sought local committees, they dismantled institutions they didn't like. But it wasn't a peaceful revolution. Churches were burned. Priests were killed. Violence erupted on both sides. The Republican government, supported by this Catholic Conservative Party, sent in the army. The situation worsened and a general was brought in to quell the Asturian uprising.

His name was Francisco Franco. Now, we've done an episode on Franco before at January 20203. So go back and listen to that if you want to learn more about him. But in short, Franco, by this stage, he was well-established figure in the Spanish military. He'd cut his teeth with the Regulars in North Africa as a force of Moroccan troops, but the one that was led by Spanish officers. He'd been wounded in 1916. He became the youngest major in the Spanish army.

Later, he joined a newly formed elite unit, the Spanish Foreign Legion. He returned to North Africa to fight in the RIF War in the 1920s, and he proved capable, he was brutal. By 1934, he had notched up a string of battlefield successes. And he now repressed this Asturian uprising ruthlessly. He brought in the Spanish Foreign Legion at Moroccan colonial troops to crush the uprising. Thousands were killed, tens of thousands imprisoned. There was torture, summary executions. There were months of retaliation and repression that followed.

The whole affair, obviously therefore, deepened massively, the polarisation in Spanish politics. The right saw it as the proof of the threat by leftists. The left saw the government crackdown as proof of coming fascism. Trust between political camps collapsed. And of course, this isn't just going on inside Spain. Right and left are clashing right across Europe. Fascism's on the rise. The far left communism is gaining popular traction.

observers in other countries began to see Spain as experiment, as a battleground on which the great ideologies the time would go head to head. For the next two years, Spain grew ever more polarised, there was open violence, there were tit for assassinations, members of leftist militias and extreme nationalist groups like the Falange would execute politicians and officials and members of the judiciary whose allegiances lay with the other side. That kind of sense of 1936 is a crescendo of disruption and violence. Whether it was or not, of course, is another question. I mean, again, we have conservative newspapers magnifying everything and stringing together all of the incidents as if everywhere in Spain is in chaos, you know? And then you have the tit-for-tat assassinations

of, first of all, an assault guard leader, and then the Republican police go for the leader of the Monocles, Parliamentary opposition. And he's found dead, you know, after having been in Republican police custody, which is not a good look, for a constitutional regime. I mean, obviously, assassination was not ordered by the Republic. In July of 1936, for a handful of discontented nationalist army officers,

the time had finally arrived for a coup that would overthrow the Spanish Republic once and for all. Ostensibly, they were mobilised by the assassination of one of the parliamentary conservatives that Helens just mentioned, Jose Calvo Sotello. But in truth, the plotters were already in the advanced stages of planning a coupons, coup by the time Sotelo was killed.

It's not that I think they suddenly are convinced that we need to do something. They're always convinced they need to do something, right? Right from the beginning, the Republic has to go. But the moment when they can make what I often call the coup against social change is in 1936 when, in a sense, there's enough fear and fright amongst conservative constituencies in Spain. The killing of Sotelo and the outrage had inspired provided them with the the catalyst they needed to put their plan into action. There were really five key conspirators. There was General Emilio Mola. He was the brains behind it all. He was the Director General

of Security. He planned it all. His nickname among the rebels was El Director, meaning the director. Then there was General Jose Sanjaro, the same Sanjuro who we met in the Feldkou back in 1932. He was an exile in Portugal, but he was a sort of symbolic leader. He was nicknamed the Lion of the Riff for his exploits during the RIF war. He was supposed to return to Spain and take over overall command. But fate intervened. Just days after the coup began, he would die in a plane crash. Next we've got General Gonzalo, Cuepo de Yano, flamboyance, brutal figure.

He took control of Seville. He would be famous for his propaganda broadcasts, infamous really, full of taunts and threats and sexualized boasts. He had the sort of mad charisma of a Mussolini. Then we have General Andres Saliquet. He would play the role of securing Northern Spain for the rebels. Less famous, but he sort of embodies the group of officers who attempted to give the coup regional traction.

Last but not least, we have General Francisco Franco. At the time of the coup, he was stationed in the Canary Islands. He was cautious about throwing his lot in, actually, right up until the last minute. His co-conspirators dubbed him Miss Canary Islands 1936 for his hesitation to join. But his reluctance was certainly not on Mars, moral grounds. He was an opportunist. He's very cautious, not because I think he has any love of the Republic, but because he doesn't want to risk his career. If it goes wrong, it goes perfect. I mean,

he's incredibly reserved and sealed. He's a cold fish, but he's very, very ambitious. But Franco did join. And once the coup was underway on the 17th of July, 1936, Franco became indispensable. That was because the coup began not on the Spanish mainland, but in Spanish Morocco, where the 30,000 strong army of Africa was stationed. These were some Spain's most experienced troops, and included the Spanish Foreign Legion, as well as the Moroccan Regulars, both of whom were loyal to Franco. Very quickly, Spanish Morocco fell to the rebels. But not every officer supported the coup. Spain's military was split and many-state law to the Republic. In fact, it's likely that if things had continued on this course

without foreign intervention, the coup may never have spiraled into a war at all. We're not talking about what causes a three-year war. None of this would cause a three-year war. It's about the military coup. If the military coup had been just the military coup without any foreign intervention, which is to say no intervention from the Third Reich or Mussolini, That coup would have been stifled in seven or 14 days, and that would have been the end of it. We wouldn't be talking about a war.

There's a three-year war because Hitler and Muslim are involved. The civil war is a civil war for seven days, and after that, it's internationalised. In that case, tell me about that coup. So the coup launches, are we in July, 1936? We're on 17 and 18th, July 1936. It launches in North Africa, and there's a declaration. The choreography of the coup is that it will spread to the mainland, and there will be garrison rebellions across Spain in urban areas, right? And they will take control of mainland Spain. It doesn't go

to plan. And of course, it doesn't go to plan because they don't understand that there's a huge demographic part of Spain, territorial part of Spain, that's looking for the change that's coming through the Republic. And that is what explains the resistance to the coup in most of urban populace, Spain, right? So it works in North Africa, but immediately the naval ratings mutiny against their rebel commandism, the Navy blocks the straitship Gibraltar. So there is no way to get the colonial army of Africa from Africa to Spain to be the spearhead of the reconquest, as they see it in those terms, a kind of colonial reconquest of the patria, if you like. So the two prongs, they're supposed to come across the straits and actually flow up and take

control. And also, the cities are going to be controlled by rebellions in urban garrisons. Well, neither of these things work because basically the straits of blocks that they conquered the army across, and in the majority of urban populist Spain, the revote fails. The garrisons are defeated in street fighting, which is a combination of loyal police units, some military and the iconic image of the Spanish Civil War, trade union and political party militia. More Spanish Civil War coming up. Summer is finally here, but for those of you, just like me, who are counting down the days until the leaves turn golden, the nights start drawing in, and it's finally acceptable to spend a whole weekend binge watching true crime in your PJs, after dark, myths, misdeeds, and the paranormal can transport you there right now, twice a week, every week. Tudor Murder, Ancient Ghosts, Victorian Mysteries, our podcast has you covered. I'm Maddie Pelling. And I'm Anthony Delaney, and we are friends and historians who love to find out about the darker side of history.

Join us on the scaffold for Anne Boleyn's final moments. Step inside Tutin Carmoon's tomb, which is apparently cursed. Watch a jury deliberate the fate of the last three women to be hanged for witchcraft in England. Find us every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcast. and now on YouTube. After Dark, Myths, Misteads and the Paranormal is created by the award-winning network History Hit. Things were not going according to plan.

The rebels had met fierce resistance and failed to take control in most major cities in Spain's industrial heartland. In the first few years, days, Franco had secretly flown to Spanish Morocco, take command of the Army of Africa. But with the naval blockade preventing them from crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, they were forced to sit and twiddle their thumbs as the rebellion stalled. Behind the scenes, though, Franco secretly reached out to Adolf Hitler for help.

He urged him to provide military assistance to help resuscitate the failing coup. There are many pleas to Hitler and Mussolini, and they're not very interested. and then they suddenly think about it and think, well, maybe this could disrupt Europe. This could disrupt the balance of power in Europe. This is quite useful to us. Having a Francois Spain would be quite useful, basically pushing the envelope as far as we can against the dominant imperial powers of France and Britain and trying to upset the apple card. This is the way of doing it.

So why not get Franco's army to mainland Spain and allow him to launch? They didn't think they were getting into a three-year civil war either. They were meant to turn around a failing coup because the report, had got the cities, the gold reserves, the industrial capacity. So it was meant to turn around that failing coup, which is being stifled in the cities. So they fly the Army of Africa in Junker jets and Italian aircraft. They fly the Army of Africa across the Straits of Shavals, which is the first airlift in modern warfare and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. So that week in July, there is so much going on. The coup is spluttering out. It is not

working within peninsular Spain and home country. Everything now comes down to decisions made in Rome and Berlin. Wow. And in London. Well, I was going to say, presumably the Republic is recognised as the legitimate government still in the Western democracies. Yes and no. The French governments from 1933 on and increasingly so are obviously terrified by the fear of fascist encirclement. They've now got Italy and Germany and they're terrified about this is this situation supervening in Spain, but they're so terrified that they always stick with Britain, even when it often, in hindsight, doesn't look as if it was in their best interest. But basically, although France is there, Britain is in a sense setting the agenda here.

And the problem is quite simply or complexly, but to say it very simply, is that the British official Britain, British establishment governments intensely dislike the Republic and have done since 1931. So you get the paradox of a kind of constitutional regime, which is stymied, start to finish by British policy at the same time as they're trying to damp everything down in Europe. They don't want a war, which is uncontrollable in the whole business of trying to keep Europe in equilibrium. Basically, they are aligned with the kind of people who support the coup. Because if you think about it, in Gibraltar, the British military and naval personnel were basically in social networks with the kind of people who were the coup supporters, you know,

that high society, high-ranking military and naval officers, longstanding British business interests in Spain, which also tended to lead to an alliance with the kind of coalition that Franco had. So in a sense, you know, you get that paradox. I mean, it's very different as the war goes on and what happens in British society and there's an awful lot of support among Britain, kind of civil society, if you like, for the Republic, especially once it starts to be massively bombed big cities and, you know, there's a massive refugee problem as people flee the violence head of the Francoist columns, the Army of Africa. That's later the popular support in Britain. But British policy is basically to wait and see and hope that Franco will win very

rapidly once that Germany and Italy have got involved and then they will all die away. And in order to help that, they prevent the Republican Navy from refueling in Gibraltar or Tangier, which means that the blockade of the straits doesn't last that long. So immediately, you've got British policy saying, we want a quick Franco victory. And then that doesn't happen. So it rolls out the confusingly named policy of non-intervention. In theory, it's meant to stop any sales of arms to either side in the Spanish conflict by state or private enterprise. It works not at all like that. It works entirely against the Republic, Italy and Germany for a time, or members of the Intervention Committee. But of course, they're deeply sort of arrogant and this is Western and

democratic and we have no truck with this. We'll just do what we want. And so they basically just massively support Franco. The Nazis charter ships from third powers, flags of convenience. So there's never any interruption. Franco gets state aid complete with logistical backup. Suddenly within a week, the Republic is not only up against Franco with his 19th century. army. It's up against the most powerful military industrial complex in the world. The US and the Soviet Union are not those complexes until after 1945. There's nothing else. I mean, the US isn't involved, but I'm simply trying to position the importance technologically and in terms of military and industrial power of what that meant to the Republic to be up against that when it had to

rebuild an army because, of course, the peninsular army was just in fragments. The military co-maker has destroyed it. And it had to be reconciled. in what was Republican territory, rebuilding the army to fight, not only Franco, but to fight Nazi tanks and aircraft. Yeah. Effectively, you're being invaded by the Axis. You are, yeah. You weren't even involved in the First World War. It's nought to a thousand in minutes. By the end of July, 1936, what could have been a violent but brief coup attempt had deepened into a full-blown war. Franco's army of Africa was arriving on the Spanish mainland in Axis plains, ready to join the fight.

The Republic's military had been fragmented by the coup, so as they moved north, the experienced well-armed rebel troops were largely going up against civilian militias, carrying whatever outdated weaponry they could find. The figurehead of the coup, General Sanjuro, had died in a plane crash on the 20th of July, leaving effective command of the rebels split between Franco and the south and Mola in the north. We haven't got time really to go through every sort of advance retreat of the war, but can you try and sort of characterize it for me?

I mean, is it happening ever at once? Are there front lines with trenches that are sort of coherent as the country divided? Or is it just units marching around city to city playing whackamol with whether it's forces law to Republic or those loyal to Franco's nationalists? No, I mean, it has a very specific choreography.

Franco basically thinks that he will speed up through the South, massacring the civilian property, because there is no, in the South, as he comes up through the South with the Army of Africa, he's basically killing large numbers of landless labourers and sort of annihilating any possibility of land reform, because it is just the civilian population, but he's heading for Madrid, right? And there's massive extrajudicial killing in all of the towns en route. But he's heading for Madrid, which he thinks he will capture immediately, and that'll be the end of the war, right? But he's also thinking of himself as a future leader already. Him personally has a press,

office. He is thinking ahead to the long game. So he doesn't go straight for Madrid. There's a detour to Toledo to relieve the brave cadets of the Al-Qafer, which is southeast of Madrid, but it's basically the Republic's been besieging the military fortress in Toledo. He gets there after the raising of the siege, but he kind of parades around the streets and is there on the patho newsreels. He's creating his political career already. The reason I'm telling you this, There's no military value in Toledo. There's a photo opportunity for a leader in the making, but he delays the army's march on Madrid. And that gives the Republic time to organize itself, to organize the defense of the city, to build the trenches.

The Soviet Union, which is the only major European power that gives anything to the Republic. Mexico helps, but it's far away and it's a small power, is very late involvement. Soviet Union's hoped to get non-intervention to work because it ironically wants to keep, like, Britain wants to keep the European panorama imbalance because Stalin is caught up in mega internal turmoil in the Soviet Union. It doesn't want anything upsetting the balance of power in Europe. So he's standing back and hopes that non-intervention will work. When it's clear that it isn't, Hitler and Mussolini are riding roughshod over this, he begins to think, well, they're really on a ramped up aggressive path now. And sooner rather than later, it's going to be Soviet frontiers.

So why not give some kind of military advice and support to the Republic to keep it fighting, to keep Germany, and it is Germany, not Italy that he's worried about, away from Soviet frontiers? So very late in the day, while Franco is off to Toledo, he decides in September to send something. And so by October, by the time Franco is on the outskirts of Madrid, they never send ground troops. Basically, it sends tanks and air support. I mean, this is a battle. where the British are watching the air battles because they know, you know, at some point this is going to come. So basically, it is the organisation of Madrid in the time lapse that Franco gives them. It's the arrival of this crucial high-tech aid. It's the arrival of international volunteers. Thousands in the end, 35,000 of European volunteers from all over Europe, from Canada, from the States, from Britain, the International Brigades and others who are not in the International Brigades. But in Madrid, in the autumn and winter of 1936, they're rebuilding the army. They have

this aid from the Soviet Union, military aid, and they have volunteer aid to use his firepower. So basically, to cause a very long story short, Madrid is held. Franco does not conquer Madrid. The Republican defense of Madrid was encapsulated by the anti-fascist slogan, No Pasaran. These shall not pass. Republican resistance was bolstered by the arrival of Soviet tanks and a few thousand members of the International Brigade. The Republicans were able to hold the capital.

and repel the rebel advances. In early 1937, rebel forces launched major new offensives to encircle Madrid, but the Republicans managed to hold their ground in two significant battles. At the Battle of Jarama, in February 1937, and the Battle of Guadalajara the following month, Republican forces, including many international brigade volunteers, successfully blunted Franco's attacks on Madrid's flanks. Notably at Guadalajara,

a motorised unit of the Italian Expeditionary Corps was decisively defeated by the Republican Army. The failure of these offensives secured Madrid against immediate capture and marked a major setback for the rebel forces. It's a stalemate after that. After that, it becomes a war of attrition. Franco is always obsessed with Madrid,

but he never takes it militarily in the end because of the complicated end of the war. So Franco then opens a new front in the north, in the Basque Country, parcel of the, you know, probably what British people do know about the war, which is the saturation annihilation of Gernica. But of course, there's been saturation bombing in Madrid and the Basque country before the annihilation of Gernicca in April, 26th of April, 1937. In April 1937, Franco moved to tighten his control over the factions on the rebel side.

He pushed through the merger of the ultra-nationalist Falange party with the monarchist carlist movement, creating a. unified party under his personal leadership. Around the same time, the Nationalists intensified their northern campaign against the Basque country. On April 26, 1937, the German Condor Legion, Hitler's Expeditionary Air Force in Spain, inflicted terror from the skies by bombing the Basque town of Gernica. The aerial bombardment devastated the city and killed hundreds of civilians, and provided a horrific early example of the impact of strategic bombing of civilians. News of the atrocity shocked international observers. The event is famously memorialised by Pablo Picasso's

painting, Gernica. But the bombing did shatter military resistance to the nationalists. They marched into Gernica just days later, so militarily it demonstrated the brutal effectiveness of German and Italian air support for the rebels. They do successfully take the Basque Country by June. Of course, the Basque Country is the heavy industry. It's the shipyards. It's the iron and steel foundries. And of course, the problem for the Republic always is it's organising its troops.

The difficulties of getting adequate weaponry and weaponry that isn't tatt from the First World War, you know, because of non-intervention. It can never really arm its reserves. It can never fight offensive battles. In early May, 1937, political divisions within the Republican camp reached a crisis. Street fighting erupted in Republican-held Barcelona, none as the May days. Anarchist and anti-Stalinist-Marxist militias clashed with forces of the Republican government and communist cadres. The interneissine conflict was suppressed after several days,

but it fatally fractured the unity in the Republican camp. In its wake, Prime Minister Lago Caballero, who had resisted communist influence, was forced to resign. President Manuel Azania appointed Juan Nény. a socialist more aligned with the communist as the new prime minister in late May in 1937. Once the north is lost, a new prime minister comes into power who's much more savvy in Juan Negrin,

Republican Prime Minister, much more savvy about the international environment because, you know, he's polyglot he was educated in, he's a Madrid University professor, wife is not quite a white Russian, but a Russian emigre from after the revolution, speaks many languages, has many contacts, professional, otherwise all across. Europe understands that this war now, especially after the loss of the last country, will be won and lost in the chancellories of Europe and that he has to negotiate.

Non-interventions and arms embargo that works only against the Republic. So to try and get that lifted, because we can build an army, but we can't provision it. We can't arm it. And it's Britain that's stopping them, right? In spite of the most remarkable ascendant aggression from the Axis, it never changes its policy. But Negrean is constantly trying to get Franco to the negotiating. table. And in a sense, that's somewhere where Britain could have helped. They really could have put pressure on Franco, but they had no intention doing so. The Francoists, they blockade the

Mediterranean ports from the summer of 1937. So all aid has to come in through France, right? Even if they're a brokerate for the Republic, has to come in through France. And France is part of the non-intervention pact. But he's so terrified of the onward march of Franco. There are 70,000 Italian troops in Spain by beginning of 1930. Mussolini is at war with the Spanish Republic. The French are terrified, but they still can't quite release themselves from the British grasp. And so they kind of sit on the fence, and that sitting on the fence is called non-intervention relax non-intervention. So the frontier is opening and closing and opening and closing, depending who's on duty and which government's in power.

Eastern Down Snow's history here is more Spanish civil war after this. Summer is finally here, but for those of you, just like me, who are counting down the days until the leaves turn golden, the nights start drawing in, and it's finally acceptable to spend a whole weekend binge watching true crime in your PJs, after dark, myths, misdeeds, and the paranormal can transport you there right now, twice a week, every week. Tudor Murder, Ancient Ghosts, Victorian Mysteries, our podcast has you covered. I'm Maddie Pelling. And I'm Anthony Delaney, and we are friends and historians who love to find out about the darker side of history. Join us on the scaffold for Anne Boleyn's final moments. Step inside Tutin Carmoon's tomb, which is apparently cursed. Watch a jury deliberate the fate of the last three women to be hanged for witchcraft in England.

Find us every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcast. and now on YouTube. After Dark, Myths, Misteads and the Paranormal is created by the award-winning network History Hit. The Rebels' northern campaign had captured the Republic's industrial heartland and secured Franco a vital source of coal and steel. Combined with the policy of non-intervention,

on which the Western democracies refused to budge, this meant that the Republic's ability to supply and arm its forces was severely impaired. By late 1937, Franco had greatly shortened his front lines, although Catalonia in the northeast, and central southern Spain, including Madrid and Valencia, remained under Republican control. In a bid to regain the initiative,

from December 1937 to February the following year, the Republican Army launched a major winter offensive against the rebels at Teruel, a provincial captain at Aragon. In frigid conditions, Republican forces succeeded in capturing the city by early January. It was a rare Republican victory in a set-piece battle. Franco responded by diverting massive reinforcements to this front. After weeks of brutal fighting, his troops had recapture the city by February 1938, and the Republicans were forced to retreat. It was one of the bloodiest engagements of the entire war, and a paradoxical one. On the one hand, it proved that the Republican Army was a serious fighting force, but on the other, it was a catastrophic setback that resulted in the destruction of some of the Republicans' best units.

All told, there had been over 100,000 combined rebel and Republican casualties in the fighting. Exploiting this victory, Franco surged eastwards into Adagon. In spring of 1938, the Nationalists launched a powerful offensive that broke the Republican Front in this region. early April, nationalist spearheads reached the Mediterranean at Vineros, cutting the remaining Republican-held territory in two. This was a severe blow. Rather than immediately pressed north into Catalonia, Franco, then turned south or city of Valencia. This decision provided the Republicans with a brief, much-needed window to regroup. On the 24th of July 1938, the Republican General Vincente Rogo launched a surprise crossing of the Ebro River into rebel-held

territory in Catalonia. It was a last-ditch counter-offensive. that was initially successful. The Republican Army, by now well-trained, experienced fighting force, gained ground, their morale lifted. But Soviet support had dwindled, and they were short of tanks and planes and ammunition, and they couldn't sustain the advance. Mnor Franco, benefiting from the constant support of his Axis allies, concentrated his German-Italian-backed forces to contain and gradually roll back the incursion. Fierce fighting raged through the summer and the autumn, the fall of 1938, with high cashiers on both sides. By November 1938, the rebels have defeated the Republican Army on the Ebro front.

This battle of the Ebro fatally sapped the Republican Army's strength and equipment, while Franco's victory opened the way for a final offensive into Catalonia. The Ebro Offensive was also the last battle involving the international brigades. In late 1938, as the international context darkened in Europe, the Spanish Republic's foreign allies distanced themselves. In September 1938, Prime Minister Negrin, hoping to encourage Britain and France to aid the Republic or restrain Franco, ordered the unilateral withdrawal of all foreign volunteers from the Republican Army, the international brigades, their ranks thinned after two years of combat,

were formally withdrawn from Spain in October, November 1938. By contrast, the Germans and Italians remained very active in Franco's forces. Despite all of this, the policy of non-intervention held. Helen explains some of the reasons why the British government wouldn't budge on the issue. The end of the Republic, it's this tragic paradox that by 1938, it has an absolutely astounding army, professional army, that could, if it could be armed, it could hold the pass. But in 1938, it's very clear that, well, it was enormous of a lot of support in Britain

for the Republic in terms of refugees and bombed civilians and medical aid and so on. But the British government just won't budge. Eden's resignation in 1938 is a drop in the ocean. But basically they just think we can always manage this situation and we prefer Franco to the Republic. There's a lot of visceral prejudice, I think, involved here. Because, you know, the Republic was not a Bolshevik regime. It was full of people who were wealthy.

It had plenty of money people. But the British, you know, I've read the Foreign Office documentation. You know, it's sulfurous. It rises off the paper that they have these extreme prejudices about the Republic. And they think they can manage Franco. Franco will have to come to the city for loans to rebuild Spain. And if he really cuts up funny, we'll just blockade Spain. So they've always think they can manage Franco. And they really don't like the Republic, in spite of the fact that these are the constitutional Spaniards. And they basically lean on France in 1938 to keep that frontier closed. And that's really the end. The Republic fights some very long, amazing battles in

1938, the Ebro from July to November 1938. But it has to retreat in the end because they can't own people, right? They have no weapons. It is a very sad story. This whole program is not about what the British did. But why were they so resistant to the Republic? In the end, at the end of 1938, finally, Churchill, of course, is not at the centre of power, says, this is mistaken. You know, yeah, sure, I can understand why my class stands with Franco. But the British Empire has to stand with it. The Republic is giving Britain chance to rearm. It's giving it time. And even in the end, what do the British do they sell Czechoslovakia out, which would have been a much better ally than Poland with this war industry that Hitler wanted and got at Munich. There's an awful lot for British historians

to do that they haven't yet done to think about all of this. Between January and February 1939, Franco's forces conquered Catalonia in a swift final campaign. His troops spearheaded by tanks, supported by aircraft, drove into a demoralized Catalan front. Barcelona, the Republican capital since 1937, fell to Franco's army on January the 26th after minimal resistance. As Catalonia collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Republican soldiers and civilians desperately fled across the French border to escape retaliation.

By mid-February, 1939, all of northeastern Spain was under Franco's control. The Spanish Republic zone was reduced to Madrid, a few central provinces and a Mediterranean port of Valencia, isolated enclaves awaiting the final blow. The end of the war was accompanied by internal treachery. On March the 5th, as Franco's forces prepared to advance on Madrid, a group of Republican officers, led by Colonel Segismundo Cassado, launched a coup in the capital against Prime Minister Negrin's Republican government. For Madrid, which had been starved and bombed throughout a 28-month siege,

this was the final straw. The end of the war comes through a coup against the Republican government, which is led in Madrid by an army officer who was for a long time in touch with the Francoas fifth column, which are the military lines are very close outside Madrid. So it's very leaky. It's like a colander. They always have intelligence very early. So Colonel Casado, Seggismundo Casado, who leads a coup against the Nigerian government,

Well, he says he's going to negotiate peace terms with Franco. Good luck. Negreen spent two and a half years trying to get Franco to agree to peace terms. Negrein will not surrender. I mean, he's hoping to just keep an enclave in Spain that can be kind of maintained with the limited weapon just to keep it going in the southeast for a while until the European situation explodes and things change. But he made one condition of peace with Franco.

and that was no reprisals against the civilian population. Franco wouldn't agree that because already from two years back, they've been planning what is effectively a totalitarian state and a state which will be entirely, tightly controlled and which people will be, you know, the massive prison population, there will be massively controlled living space for those they consider the enemy that defeated those at,

the antipathria, those outside the regime, there's going to be mass trials, there's going to be a massive investigation of anybody who is in Republican territory. an incredibly detailed way. So certainly he's not going to agree to no reprisals against the civilian population. But Casar, though, thinks whether he's either very disingenuous or he's more sinister, there are different views about this, he says as a military officer, as an old guard, pre-war military officer, will be able to negotiate with Franco. And of course, Franco plays with

this and there's just Franco's high command. But in the end, there is no negotiation. There's five days of fighting in Madrid. He quells the resistance. And he basically tells people to put the white flags up. And so Francoist army is marching to Madrid. The Casado coup triggers a very confused rebellion in the southeast port, Republican port of Cartagena, and the Navy set sail. So there are no boats now to evacuate people who are most at risk, which is part of Negrean's plan. He was trying to chart merchant vessels to come, take people off, flanked by the Navy. But the Navy's gone, and the French internet in Deserterter and Tunisia, and it's handed over to Franco.

So lots of refugees head, terrified head for Alicante on the eastern coast, which is the last stand, thousands and thousands, no boats. Very few people get out. A few people get out, have resources, have contacts, get out, the political leaders get out from various little ports on either side of Alicante, but basically those people are taking into concentration camps. On April 1st, 1939, after two years and eight months of brutal fighting, the last the Republican forces surrendered.

Franco broadcast his declaration of victory via radio, establishing a period of personal dictatorship that would continue for 36 years. The death toll of the war was staggering. Most estimates put the number of people who died due to combat, executions, famine and disease at around half a million. Refugees who were able to escape over the Pyrenees into France were held in internment camps in squalid conditions. After the creation of the Nazi-aligned Vichy regime by Marshal Paitin, many of these refugees were turned over to the Franco regime. Thousands of them were deported to Nazi Germany and killed in concentration camps like Mauthausen.

The violence in Spain itself would continue long after the end of the war. There were reprisal killings and executions, ordered by Franco that claimed the lives of tens of thousands. Many more were imprisoned or forced into hard labour. The civil war does not end on the 1st of April 1939 on Frank. announces victory. It is the beginning of the institutionalisation of the war and the segregation of population into victors and defeated in the creation of effectively a security state or police state where everything is supposedly controlled and thousands of people into military trials, all sorts of other tribunal proceedings, which are too complicated to talk about, but a way in which

people are being fixed. This is not a strategy for after the end of the war which is designed to create a unified population, absolutely opposite. And that, of course, is the beginning of another story. But perhaps by way of a final remark, it's in a sense for most of the people who've lost the military war in 1939 in the Republic, they don't really see it as over because, of course, within a few months, all of Europe goes up, right? And so they see the war in Europe as a continuation of the Spanish Civil War in which they will be able to turn over that result. When the tanks rolled into Paris in 1944, that they would roll over the Pyrenees and liberate Spain, at least from Franco. Because, you know, Franco was not a belligerent in the

Second World War, but in fact, he was much more useful to Hitler as a non-belligerent because he gave him everything he wanted in terms of resources and reconnaissance and fuel and labor and access to intelligence networks in South America and refueling new boats. I mean, he was in all but Maine, he was an Axis member and never, ever accepted that Hitler had lost the war until virtually victory in Europe day. I mean, they wanted to be part of, remember, they'd made a coup against change in 1936 in favor of a very hierarchical society in Spain. Franco wasn't interested in a racial state that Hitler was, but he was interested in as brutal hierarchical social order as Hitler was suggested. He was the social dominist by and mother name in the sense of Franco, although

he'd never have fought himself in those terms. So in the sense, you know, the loss of the axis, the defeat of the axis was very hard for Franco. the Cold War would save him, talking up a, we've been anti-communist from the first hour, but they were with the access in more ways, I think, than British people understand. Well, Helen, thank you so much for helping teaching me all about the war and also internationalizing it for me as well. Thank you very much, Helen Graham, for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Spanish Civil War was a striking precursor to the ideological and military conflict

that would soon engulf the world in the Second World War. Though it was rooted in Spain's own deep political, social and regional divisions, the war rapidly became a transnational battleground, drawing in foreign powers and foreshadowing the cataclysm to come. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy treated the conflict as a proving ground for their forces, pioneering modern warfare, testing blitzkrieg tactics, aerial bombardment, and armoured coordination with infantry. while the Soviet Union sought to preserve the Spanish Republic as a potential bulwark against fascism.

The formation of the international brigades, comprising tens of thousands of anti-fascist volunteers from across the globe, revealed both the moral urgency and the polarization that defined that late interwar period. The war offered bitter lessons on the consequences of non-intervention. With Britain and France's refusal to aid the legitimate Republican government, effectively ceding the military initiative to fascist powers, In contrast, the coordinated, well-equipped support given to Franco, Republican forces were undermined by inconsistent foreign aid, disunity, and internal ideological strife.

The collapse of the Spanish Republic demonstrated the lethal cost of democratic isolation in the face of rising authoritarianism. In it, there is a lesson for our times. The war also previewed the technological and psychological methods of warfare, that we'd see in World War II, terror bombing of Gernica and other cities, propaganda battles, purges, the recruitment of foreign allies. It also teaches us a worrying lesson about the fragility, perhaps the timidity of some liberal democracies in responding to international crises.

Its legacy endures as a warning about the perils of appeasement and the necessity for international solidarity in the face of aggression. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Thank you so much to you for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History It. We could not make this podcast without you. That's actually true. So make sure, if you want to keep it going, that is, to hit follow in your podcast player right now. You'll get new episodes dropped into your podcast library automatically by the power of tech. You can listen anywhere you get your pods, Apple, Spotify, even BBC sounds.

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