Osprey Essential Histories 37 : The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 was of enormous international and national significance. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy intervened to assist General Franco, while the Soviet Union came to the aid of the Second Spanish Republic that he sought to overthrow. Britain and France tried to prevent the conflict from escalating into a European war, but the idealistic volunteers from across Europe and North America who rushed to fight for the Republic, argued that the Spanish war was already part of a wider confrontation between democracy and fascism. Within six months of the end of the Civil War, Britain and France were plunged into the international conflict with Germany that they had dreaded. The death toll, material devastation and scale of human suffering were unprecedented in Spanish history. General Franco's victory inaugurated an unforgiving dictatorship of almost 40 years' duration, ending only with his death in 1975. For Spanish republicans, military defeat brought political annihilation and personal disaster through imprisonment, expropriation, exile or even execution. This book explores the complex divisions within the two sides in addition to the military and political conflict between them. It evaluates the impact of foreign intervention in the course of the first major war in which air power, and air bombardment of civilians played a major role, immortalized by Pablo Picasso's Guernica, painted in 1937. Finally, it highlights the experiences of men and women caught up in the crisis, whether as soldiers or civilians. For them too, the stakes were painfully high. Text by Frances Lannon.

Contents

• Introduction
• Chronology
• Background to War
• Warring Sides
• Outbreak
• The Fighting
• Portrait of a Soldier
• The World around War
• Portrait of a Civilian
• How the War Ended
• Conclusion and Consequences