Transcript for:
Overview of the Spanish Civil War

the Spanish Civil War is one of the most lied about events in recent history which is actually perhaps the most relevant to today comparisons are almost always drawn up between our current situation in the modern day and Nazi Germany this is quite a stretch the Spanish situation however is far closer to home Spain's domestic struggles were between Christianity and Atheism traditionalism and liberalism order and freedom is this not almost identical to the West's current issues Germany was destroyed in a war and quickly recovered due to Hitler's mass movement whereas Spain situation was the result of a centuries long decline much like how most especially on the right would view our current situation therefore it is well worth a look back at Spain's struggle between 1936 and 1939 the Civil War is often mentioned but never in detail and almost always the information given is simply false Franco is seen as a Hitler type figure and the Republicans are seen as the legitimately elected government who did nothing wrong fighting the good fight against the insurgents their atrocities especially against the churches are simply ignored this view is simply propaganda due to Republican voices being Amplified at the time whilst the rebel voices were completely blocked out they never got to have their say even now outside of Spain let's take a step back and look at the reality what led to the events of 1936 why did the generals decide to finally put their foot down why did half the country take up their cause which factions were on each side how did the war play out without the usual myths and propaganda stories I will attempt to cover all of these aspects and much more and what is hopefully the most coherent although probably long video on the SPO Civil War on YouTube Before We Begin however a few things firstly whatst this video may be on a highly political topic that does not mean this video needs to be this video is entirely a work of history nothing more and nothing less so please don't overthink it secondly a big thank you to my patreon subscribe star and YouTube members who make these videos possible without their kind support I simply would not be able to do this for a living if you'd like to support the channel join our Discord or our weekly Hearts of Iron 4 games then please do consider signing up in one of the links in the description thank you lastly I'd like to give a gigantic thank you to Antelope Hill publishing Who provided me with several books for this video and other videos without their excellent website many sources would simply be lost to history as many of the books they provide were decades out of print before they came in one that I found invaluable for this video was Spain 1923 to 1948 Civil War and World War by artha F love day artha was an English businessman living in Spain throughout the period who can provide Insight that others simply could not in the English-speaking World another book from near of the time which Antelope Hill has brought back into print is Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera anthology of speeches and quotes which is invaluable to understanding the fange and their worldview except from these books they have a wide variety about other aspects of Western history which I can't recommend enough given that I've now read almost half their entire collection there're something for everyone on their side and they've also kindly given me a code Zuma historian 5 or lower caps to share with you guys which will give you 5% off any purchase on their site if you decide to check it out the link to their website will be in the description the events of 1936 were hardly unprecedented in Spanish history the last few centuries certainly hadn't been kind to the Spanish people in the 16th century the spani have created the biggest empire the world had ever seen yet as the 20th century dawned Spain was backwards in pretty much every conceivable sense crisis after crisis had plagued the Spanish at the start of the previous Century Napoleon's armies had effectively trampled Spain and turned it into a brutal war zone for half a decade the French also left what most Spaniard viewed as the moral scourge of liberalism behind too the British liberators weren't much better behaved in the country either soon afterwards Spain's American Empire vanished and they were powerless to stand up to the Rebels the Spanish state was far too corrupt for a functioning Army by now at the end of the century the Americans utterly humiliated the Spaniards in the Spanish American War the Army in this instance was so badly supplied that it almost defies description the Spanish Empire was now officially buried the last remnants except for a few tiny territories in Africa were gone this issue above all others would dominate the years to come most Spaniards still view themselves as the owners of a great world spanning Empire they simply couldn't come to terms with the reality of how far they had fallen this inability to accept their current circumstances rendered them completely unable to adapt to modernity as the Industrial Revolution swept into Spain their problems only escalated whilst the trade ports and Industrial centers of Catalonia boomed the interior of the country wilted one English traveler said that Leon was only quote kept in existence by the church he wasn't exaggerating in the early 1800s 20% of the entire population of Val deed was only surviving off of Charity from the church whilst in Madrid the convents pumped out 30,000 bowls of soup daily Spain at this point and for a long time afterwards was perhaps the most religious country in Europe and no wonder they were working miracles it seemed as if the entire world had forgotten about most of Spain except for the Catholic Church during the peninsul war Willington would admit quote the real power in Spain is in the clergy they kept the people right against France end quote the liberal guillas of the peninsula War I had to grudgingly admit that whatever the church said to the people counted for far more than whatever they or the provincial Parliament said the French had dissolved the monasteries and attempted to wipe out the Catholic Church in public life in general when the French Departed the Spanish liberals were more than happy to keep the church in their new place whilst in the more religious territories the monasteries were restored the Catholic church in Spain had opposed liberalism in Spain before but now they were mortal enemies it was this struggle which would perhaps become the most important factor of the Civil War a century later Spain's struggle at least for a period only really seemed to end after more than an entire Century had passed since the French left in 1923 many were absolutely sick of the corruption decay and political violence that rendered their country stuck deep in the past the Army itself was in a horrific State and corrupt to the core but it was the Army who would end up giving Spain its first taste of prosperity in Generations in 1923 General Primo de Rivera carried out a bloodless coup and would remain in power until 1930 after F love day in his book Spain 1923 to 1948 Civil War and World War contrast the before and the after up before 1923 he writes quote Law and Order were continually being flouted terrorism was Rife in all industrial and in many other centers a cardinal an ex-governor professional men employers and government officials had been murdered while in Barcelona the chief industrial center of Spain the gunman was almost completely in control and assassinations or fights between rival gangs took place almost daily both in the matter of Law and Order and in most of its functions the Cortez and successive political governments had proved their incompetence to govern public finances were in a state of chaos with big budget deficits the war in Morocco begun in 1919 was threatening to end in disaster while the sufferings of the troops owing to inefficient organization were causing an Ever growing discontent the railways were disorganized with Rolling Stock and permanent ways in a lamentable condition one would be justified in saying there were no roads fit for automobiles I'm probably right in saying that what roads there were were the worst in Europe public buildings schools Etc were generally in a ruinous State industry and Public Works were almost at a standstill owing to the rule of the gunman end quote love day describes the differences by the end of Primo's Reign quote Law and Order were reestablished and maintained without Bloodshed while agitators were either driven out of the country or in jail industry was more tranquil and prosperous than ever it had been before or for that matter has been since the war in Morocco had been ended satisfactorily for Spain and with Prestige to her arms public finances were in order and there was a budget surplus according to the budget statements of the Finance Minister kvoo the railways were universally acknowledged to be equal to the best roads anywhere in Europe end quote despite all this success however at the end of the day Primo de Rivera was politically naive and this would be his undoing no matter how successful he was he was unable to deal with the exiled agitators and their intrigues aided every step of the way by the Soviets Primo also was completely at odds with international finance and many speculated that it was them who intrigued to weaken the Spanish currency to tople his regime even while the country itself was entirely prosperous despite the global depression perhaps the biggest issue was of Catalonia which had by now become a persistent issue for every government Primo repressed the Catalan language and tried to enforce Spanish Unity most the catalans of course opposed this the Catalan problem as well as the Basque one to a lesser degree can be described in the following terms some catalonians believe they have a unique culture identity and language to varying degrees many catalans want autonomy or Independence because of this on the other hand most Spaniards argue that the catalonians were simply being whipped up by politicians and revolutionaries Catalonia and Castile had been United for almost half a millennium by this point and had forged the biggest empire on Earth at that time side by side back then there was no trouble over the past couple centuries however the issue would contined to escalate and the region would become a hot bed for extremism and political violence of the worst kind The Basque problem was similar yet far less heated The Basque language was far less prominent and most Bas were just happy with the way things were in fact many Basque areas with a very hard land of carlism as for the country at large however once Primo was out the door things immediately took a turn towards the events of 1936 just two months after his departure a general amnesty was declared and the agitators flooded back into Spain riots strikes and protests inevitably followed along with economic collapse years of hard work had been undone in a year soon enough King Alfonso and his family were fleeing for their lives to Paris and the nation quickly became a republic led by radical socialists the king refused to abdicate but maintained that he had simply left the country to prevent the horrors of a civil war befalling his people he would return if and when the people wished him to he said with the monarchy out of the picture the Socialists began to try to morph the country into an image completely counter to what the Spanish people themselves actually wanted quote its attempt to seize by force the power it was unable to conquer by Democratic or constitutional means by an Unholy alliance with all the most extreme and subversive elements such as the Fai or Iberian anarchist Federation the syndicato Unico or Anarchist Trade union and the extreme separatist of Catalonia Was Defeated end quote it wasn't only the alliances of the government who were extremely questionable but also the government themselves eight out of the 11 members of the original Republican caucus were Freemasons Freemasonry is a mortal sin in Catholicism and this was the ruling cleck of an overwhelmingly Catholic country also for some strange reason pretty much the first decree of the new Republic was one which cancelled the 15th century decree of ferdin and Isabella expelling the Jews this decree wasn't even being enforced say it was no more than a symbolic act who this symbolic Act was for opened the government up to intense criticism and fingers were immediately pointed at the Jewish elements of international communism some of the other first decrees all of which were passed in more dictatorial fashion than the dictator whom they had just replaced were alarming they're worth quoting in full love day writes quote one the complete secularization of Education the confiscation of all religious and church properties the expulsion of the Jesuits and the cutting off of the salaries of the parish priests this meant serious offense to the Christians of Spain and without providing any substitute deprived parents and children for the moment of the only good education in the country these measures together with the burning of churches and convents while the government troops and police stood by gave the actions of the socialist government the aspect of a persecution of Christianity two an agrarian law based on the Marxist doctrine that the land belongs to the peasant and not to its owner it compris the confiscation of many Estates not because they were Mal administered but because the owners had The Misfortune to be Nobles what happened in practice was that these Estates ceased to be worked at all as the peasant had neither the means ability nor Capital with which to work them and in his anger he often killed the cattle and burnt the crops free the statute of autonomy to Catalonia was the price paid by the Socialist government for the support of the Catalan deputies in passing their legislation own to the share of the Catalan government in the October 1934 Revolution a great part of the autonomy was gradually withdraw drawn by the governments of 1934 to 35 only to be regranted with additional features when the turn of the wheel brought back the left to power in February 1936 end quote it was only in June 1933 once all of the most important legislation had already been passed that the socialist government finally consented to a general election the result was a blood barath for the government and they only retained 58 of their 120 seats they had held in the previous quz the right now held 210 seats the center held 170 and the left held 100 a true reflection of the country's feelings the Communist and anti-christian legislation was slowly overturned by the new government and so the Socialists bitterly vowed to remove the Constitution entirely and take power in a violent revolution the Socialists openly worked with violent anarchists and whoever else would join their cause the result was a bootch revolution in October 1934 in which the asterian miners played a leading role Franco amongst other Army generals put down the Revolt incredibly easily and the Socialists were completely discredited After the Revolutionary trashed public buildings libraries and convents in AO Spain was put under martial law and the Socialist scheming was found everywhere a huge cash of arms was even found in the Socialist HQ in Madrid it was as if they weren't even trying to hide their intentions the prosecution of the wrongdoers however was an absolute fce a few were shot but most trials simply dragged on and Manuel lazana the prime mover was just let free much to the disgust of the army meanwhile the international propaganda machine went into overdrive to whitewash the violent revolutionaries outright lies such as to claim that the revolutionaries weren't even armed or that they merely reacted to government oppression were believed in Nations like Great Britain in fact the labor party of Great Britain even specifically asked the Spanish to go easy on the revolutionaries despite winning power the moderate right was simply too weak Jose Antonio Prima de Rivera son of the dictator said in 1935e if the right which was victorious in 1933 had had any message to bring to Spain the wouldbe Caesar of the April Revolution would have never reared his head again but it would be idle to seek precedence for a clumsier piece of blundering than that committed by the Spanish right instead of obliterating the memory of the Enemy by a sound and far-reaching piece of work for all to see they have done nothing but keep the memory of the enemy Alive by an endless campaign of crude and ugly defamation and Slumber in a deadly sloth unpardonable at a revolutionary moment like the present end quote in February 1936 after immense pressure an election was held in which the Socialists ended up coming to power again under the name of the popular front almost immediately however in a parallel to our modern times the election was disputed love day writes quote the official figures of votes as given at the time by the Spanish government itself were popular front 4, 356,000 parties of the right 4, 570,000 center 240 or a majority of right and center of a popular front of 44,000 this was the result notwithstanding the fact that election irregularities in favor of popular front candidates such as the destruction of the earn and voting papers by the mob and the falsification of election figures took place in many centers when the Cortez first assembled the figures for the deputies were popular front 256 and right and Center 217 or a majority of 39 for the popular front this did not in itself prove that the elections were irregular owing to The Peculiar electoral system but the proved irregularities of the polls should have made them invalid the popular front were not content with this majority and adopted an entirely new parliamentary procedure in annulling by a m majority vote in Parliament the mandates of many of their prominent opponents and expelling them from the Cortez in this highly unconstitutional and undemocratic way the popular front raised their majority to 118 end quot president Zamora the father of the Revolution who had done all he could to prevent the right getting into Power wrote from his Paris retirement in 1937 quote in spite of the syndicalist reinforcements the popular front obtained only a few very few more than 200 seats out of a total of 473 thus it became the largest minority group but did not secure a majority in Parliament it managed however to obtain this majority by hurrying through two stages of procedure in defiance of all legality and with utter disregard to scruple end quote Stanley G Payne in his history of the Spanish Civil War wrote on the election issues quote balloting took place on February the 16th 1936 at first in an orderly manner by the evening however leftist crowds had taken to the streets in a considerable number of provincial capitals and other cities interfering with the remainder of the balloting and registry of votes in at least 12 provinces claiming victory in several cities they broke into prisons and freed revolutionaries still in jail in a number of electoral districts leftist mobs either put an end to voting or destroyed the results of the balloting which led to the repetition of voting in these areas between February the 17th and February the 19th in such cases rightest Representatives either resigned from the boards conducting or verifying the results or were forced out and these repeat elections were swept overwhelmingly by the popular front pressure from leftist mobs was so great that a number of provincial Governors and presidents of provincial assemblies who feared being caught in another Insurrection resigned immediately and abandoned the electoral process before the votes had even been registered end quote everyone with eyes could see as clear as day that the election was a farce the left-wing government themselves embarrassingly even refused to publish the official results as they showed a slight popular victory for the right as for the irregularities historian Roberto Villa Garcia came to the conclusion from his research that without the meddling the actual result was 51% for the right and 44% for the left a clear Victory the most remarkable part was that in March an electoral commission was set up by the leftists and began redistributing seats to themselves under obviously false pretenses the elections in Granada and QA both conservative provinces were simply annuled in May the new elections in these two provinces were held and right-wing candidates were prevented from running by extreme coercion and these provinces too magically became victories for the leftwing popular front seats continued to quite literally stolen until the left had enough seats to amend the Constitution the Socialists and the leftwing extremists in general may have been getting themselves masses of Power by these sketchy methods but they neglected the most important part of any government the trust of the people the corruption and the illegal Maneuvers were clear for all to see for the Catholic majority of the country it may have seemed like an impossible situation their country was fading away before their very eyes their fears were right the new president Manuel aana had only just been acquitted for his part in the 1934 Revolution and the new government's first move was to Simply turn back the clock to 1933 in regards to the reforms against the church and land owners almost immediately the nation was consumed by state sanctioned violence within 3 months of the new socialist government coming to power 300 churches were burned along with numerous other public and private buildings the police and civil guards were simply ordered to Stand Down by the government meanwhile the country was plagued by strikes and the government would always take the side of the strikers and give them whatever they wanted quote meanwhile the employer was not allowed to close his works and when Rising wages shorter hours and other demands exhausted his resources he was obliged to either hand over his work to the strikers or go to prison for he was forbidden by law to close down end quote in March 1936 a general amnesty was declared for the revolutionaries of 1934 the government once again wasn't even hiding their far-left agenda the country was descending into atheistic communist Anarchy and this was just the beginning soon enough the prisons now emptied were refilling with anyone who Dar speak up for the cause of Christian SP the primary target was the fange a patriotic Christian Movement led by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera son of the dictator his movement was small but growing rapidly as many had lost faith in the more mainstream Ceda party Jose Antonio and his more extreme rhetoric were quickly beginning to make sense to Spaniards the fange was one of the few groups actually fighting back yeah they were fighting an uphill battle Communists could essentially murder fange members at will and get away with it there would usually be no raids no investigations nothing yet if a communist was ever murdered the fange were immediately assumed to be the culprits their buildings were raided and shut down and their leaders not the culprits themselves were arrested and given unpayable fines essentially in a similar vein to our modern times the left would let off the hook for essentially anything while the right would just be collectively punished for everything down to the tiniest infraction Spain was broken in fact the left at this point could barely even be called Spaniards Jose Antonio would secretly write from prison in 1936 to the Armed Forces quote the slogans you have heard in the streets not only Long Live Russia and Russia yes Spain no but even the Shameless and monstrous Cry of death to Spain for shouting death to Spain no one has been punished so far yet for shouting Long Live Spain there are hundreds of people in prison if this appalling truth were not a public property one would not dare to write it for fear of being taken for a liar end quote the violence continued as the months TI by and the discontent grew and grew the Army and the Civil guards were even under constant attack as they were seen as the last supporters of Law and Order in the nation safe to say intrigues behind the scenes were bubbling on the 15th of July caloso a conservative parliamentarian and champion of patriotic Spaniards was kidnapped from his house by the police and then brutally murdered in the van the shortsighted assassination was a dangerous step the Spanish Patriots now had their biggest martyr the first of many love day recalls quote at the core of the conflict was the struggle between those who held the doctrines of KL Marx and those who held the doctrin of Christ the latter based on universal Brotherhood and obedience to Authority and the other on class Warfare and Revolution there could be no reconciliation between the two ideologies either in Spain or elsewhere and the murder of calvo Sato set the lights of the civil war between them which broke out on July the 16th with the Revolt of the Spanish Army in Morocco end quote anyone with eyes saw such a rising as inevitable in June a document was captured which proved Beyond doubt that the Communists were planning a revolution against the already far-left government in order to to establish a Soviet state under the dictatorship of lgo cabalero the same document was found all throughout the Civil War completely proving its authenticity the state of imminent Revolution was obvious to all love day toured the country in June one month before the breakdown quote the state of the country of which the writer of this history had been an eyewitness over a lengthy tour of Spain during the previous month was one of complete disorder in business industry and the Civil Life of the nation in large tracks of the country neither life nor property was safe and travelers on the roads were constantly held up and robbed by men with red shirts and rifles in the Big Towns church and other buildings have been destroyed strikes were Universal the red flag sickle and Hammer International pitches of Stalin Lenin and dimitrov protruded themselves on all sides the book stols of Madrid Barcelona Valencia bilau and of other various towns visited were irrefutable witness to the efforts and influence of the common turn and Soviet they were full of communist literature of All Sorts together with the pornographic and anti-christian literature that always accompanies it end quot he continues on perhaps more significant and more important were the red militia to be found Drilling in many parts of Spain in preparation for the coming communist rising of the proletariat and as laid down in the secret document these militia were called red because they professed to follow Soviet Russia and wore red shirts they were the military organizations of the anarchists and syndicalists who had been armed if not by the government itself at all events with their connivance for no attempt was made to disarm them or keep them in control by the government police or military on the other hand the army officers were constantly subject to hostility and insults on the part of the mobs who always appeared to have the support of the government when any incident took place end quote the nation of Spain was broken despite being a Catholic Nation Church burnings and the murder of clergy were common place and essentially actively encouraged by the government the Vatican and church leaders had even offered an extremely generous compromise of an American style separation of church and state yet this wasn't enough for the leftists and it was rejected they were dedicated to completely stamping out Catholicism route and Branch by the time war was about to break out religious services in parts of the country were simply suppressed and not allowed to go ahead the Jesuits had been expelled in a bid to make education a state Monopoly and in the same vein almost all of the Catholic schools in the nation had been closed many of these schools were simply taken over by force or burnt down when we think of a revolution we think of perhaps France or Russia in which there is either extreme violence or Civil War yet the reality is that revolutions build up slowly in Spain's case for the last half decade there had been a very real and very visible Revolution going on in the nation the cards were completely stacked against patriotic Catholic Spaniards by this point there seemed to be only one solution to save Spain before she fell to atheistic anarchism or communism forever the problems were Everywhere by the time Rebellion did break out 5% of the landed property in the country had been confiscated most of it illegally by the most extreme elements of the popular front the government simply did nothing and then recognized the New Order X postao in simpler terms Communism had literally taken over parts of Spain and the land was being redistributed those that didn't have their land seized had problems of Their Own by July rural labor costs were up 50 to 60% from the ridiculous laws the new government had passed most of the larger land owners simply couldn't afford their way of life anymore and many began to abandon their properties on the grounds that labor costs exceeded the value of the harv it was as if children had taken over the government the farmers couldn't even Farm anymore as for violence the nation was essentially Lawless by this point but it varied from Province to province in fact the first major action of the new Parliament was to dismiss Alcala Zamara as president of the Republic because he protested against the government's decrees which required blanket reinstatement and compensation for the workers involved in the 1934 Communist Revolution according to Samora quote the owners of small family businesses were required to rehire the murderers of a father or a brother according to a former governor of the banko de espia the latter was required to take back an employee who had fired seven gunshots at an administrator end quote many of the revolutionaries were simply put in charge of police forces by the new government in places like aerus and the government openly bragged about the arrest and mistreatment of the clergy in that Province the government dared anyone who opposed them to make their move aana claimed that the violence was fine as it was quote deeply rooted in the Spanish character end quot aana openly threatened the completely low abiding Ceda party in Parliament when they asked him to clean up the mess he said quote I don't intend to serve as anyone's Guardian Angel did you not want violence then take the violence be prepared to face the consequences end quot Payne writes quote this was an extraordinary gesture after the ceda's 5 years of observing Republican legality a bizarre spectacle of a parliamentary prime minister challenging the opposition to something approaching Civil War sensing that he had gone too far he later tried to soften his remarks but ended up once more by blaming violence and disorder on the Spanish character as if the government had little or no responsibility to enforce the law end quote aana however was soon replaced as the government was too shaky to appear even remotely legal casares Koga a sick man suffering from tuberculosis was chosen instead Quiroga wasn't much of an improvement in May for Spain Payne again writes quote in his inaugural speech to Parliament on May the 19th caseres Koga declared that his new government would be a strong partisan of the left insisting that all problems in Spain stem from the right and his government would be belligerently against fascism as he put it the only genuine fascist movement the fange had been declared illegal in March and suppressed eventually some 2,000 of its members were arrested and kept in prison usually not charged with any greater crime than illegal possession of firearms end quote in July especially the violence reached insane levels the government exclusively cracked down on falangists when they retaliated as opposed to the leftists who always initiated the violence on one occasion a fangus sympathizer was kidnapped and stabbed 33 times nothing was done about it another friend of the falangists was kidnapped held for several days tortured and then shot again nothing was done and those who retaliated were hunted down not the leftists who initiated the cycle of violence after the former murder in fact the government responded to the death of the kidna sympathizer by arresting 300 falangists quote any pretense at reconciliation being abandoned and the government's policy seemed to be depressed the right even further into total surrender or armed Revolt end quote squads of politicized police were given consent to arrest even men such as Jill robbles leader of the huge Ceda party and as we know Jose kvoo leader of the monarchists all bets were now off the government was simply arresting the opposition robes was fortunately away at the time yet C Tao as noted earlier wasn't so lucky C Tor was given confirmation that he was being taken for an emergency interrogation and that he wasn't under arrest after all both him and roers was subject to parliamentary legal immunity after the truck he was in preceded only a few blocks he was shot in the back of the head and killed almost instantly the government responded not by an investigation but by simply arresting more right- wiers and imposing stricter censorship the murderers were encouraged to go into hiding and headed north but were instead killed in the first days of the fighting when things kicked off despite all this chaos there was one positive of Miguel azan's government for patriotic Spaniards aana was reluctant to completely Purge or shake up the military his power was solely the result of cooperation with the far-left and if they ever got too rowdy he wanted to be able to break with them and this would be impossible with an impotent Army on the other hand he felt there wasn't a significant proportion of the army with the will to rebel against him this Viewpoint was perhaps understandable given the comically weak Revolt by General sanero in [Music] 1932 the writing was now on the wall in 1934 Jose Antonio prophesized quote there are only two serious ways of life the religious way and the military and the hour has now come for us to realize that it is by this religious and Military interpretation of life that Spain is destined to be restored end quote by 1936 patriotic Spaniard had overwhelmingly come to agree with him on the more moderate end Joel robz said to the government before all hell broke loose I know that you are carrying out a policy of persecution violence and extermination against everything that is rightest be are profoundly mistaken however great may be the violence the reaction will be greater still for everyone killed another combatant will rise up you who today are fostering violence will become the victims of it the phrase that revolutions like Saturn devour their own children is common place but no less true for being so today you are complacent because you see an adversary fall but the day will come when the same violence that you have Unleashed will be turned against you end quote the far left too saw Civil War as inevitable lgo cabalo's newspaper claridad ranted after the murder of Sao quote they don't like this government then let's substitute a leftist dictatorship for it they don't like the state of alarm then let there be allout civil war end quote the Prime Minister casarez openly wanted a Revolt to kick off he was quoted as telling a leading communiste that frail sickly man with feverish eyes tried to convince us that the government was in control of the situation and that the danger was not that great he even said that he hoped for a Revolt in order to crush them completely end quote ironically the only leftist faction who wanted to avoid Civil War at this stage was the small Communist party controlled by Moscow Spain currently had the most favorable circumstances possible for leftism and to take things too far was seen as a mistake the experienced revolutionaries knew full well that they would be risking everything with such a gamble when things were already naturally working out for them without a bloody Civil War as Jose Antonio said one of the only two serious ways of life was that of the military and it would be the military whom the task of counterrevolution would fall to the untrustworthy generals Franco among them had been demoted and exiled to far away posts in Franco's case he was now all the way in the Canary Islands these groups of generals had met previously and promised to keep in touch so they could be prepared if the government ever pushed things too far which they indeed had now been doing for a long time as things got worse throughout 1936 individual garrisons began to conspire separately from each other Jose Antonio's fange brutally repressed had begun to prepare themselves underground for violent measures meanwhile in the north the carlists a group of fanatically Catholic traditional monarchists were training their militia in Nar and the surrounding areas even in Seda the very Pinnacle of legality they were members beginning to see no alternative but a mass Rising the separate groups were prepared but all that remained was for their military to take the first step the man who emerged as the organizer of the military conspiracy was General alilio Moher a veteran of the Moroccan Wars he had been packed off by the government and sent to Pamplona with the intention of him becoming isolated there Moher instead immediately won over the local Garrison and his leadership was recognized for the Revolt when the time came if the Revolt was successful however MOA planned to give overall leadership to sanero who is currently in Exile in Portugal after his disastrous previous kill attempt a few years earlier the issue for mler was that many other generals were far more on the fence about the whole idea it was clear that if the Revolt failed then the current government would be less than lenient more than likely they would all be executed a prime example of this reluctance was Franco himself pay writes quote General Franco would commit only when they judged that it would literally be more dangerous not to Rebel than to Rebel a situation that matured only in mid July end quote it didn't help Muller's cause that neither the monarchists nor the Seda party had organized paramilitary strength nor had they really cooperated with the military Revolt which they knew was bubbling in the background only days before the Revolt kicked off did Jill robers of seder offer a financial subsidy to Mohler and Order his followers to cooperate with the military if things kicked off essentially the entire organization of the Revolt was a shambles with the vast majority of those who knew about it being on the fence as opposed to deeply committed it was the murder of saor that gave these men the kick up the ass they needed to throw their hat in the ring and completely commit just hours after receiving the news of the murder Franco fired off a letter to mhler stating that he was completely committed 2 days later in the North the Caris leaders committed all their forces to mher on the 17th of July the army of Africa in Morocco rose up first this was the elite of the Armed Forces and the government immediately lost control of the situation and admitted that Morocco was lost they did trust the Navy to blockade the straet however which proved to be the case the only experienced combat force in the entire Spanish Army was rebelling and indeed had succeeded but they were stuck in Africa in Mainland Spain garrisons all over the country rose up some were successful yet others were not those that failed met a very bitter fate indeed after just a few days onethird of the country was in the hands of the rebels most prominently a large area in the conservative north of the country and also a much smaller area in the South around Seville and cadis to Outsiders it appeared as if the rising had failed and this is exactly what the Italian Ambassador reported to musolini in a sense this view is understandable as only four of 24 major generals join the Rebellion yet in the more middle of the road ranks the percent percentage was much higher and it was this that made the difference five of the seven largest cities remained in Republican hands this meant that the majority of Industry arms and gold remained with the leftwing government the third Factor was by far the most important as Spain held the fourth largest gold reserves in the world despite being a rather undeveloped country in the modern sense in terms of actual men the government managed to maintain about half the Army in Spain itself 2third of the Navy and the overwhelming majority of the Air Force which they used to full effect over the coming months bombing Rebel population centers with impunity to strengthen their Manpower Advantage the government began to arm the far-left militias and pretty much anyone who wanted to fight that this might have a clear downside and create massive disorder seem to be overlooked almost immediately this will become apparent but I'll cover this in a chapter of its own essentially the Republican Zone turned into an area of complete unruliness and mass violent revolution Payne writes quote a paradox of the Spanish disaster was that whereas the insurgents had Ed a preemptive strike to take over before a full Revolution broke out the response of the left Republican government was to empower that very Revolution which began to cover nearly two-thirds of Spain the third and conclusive aspect of this Paradox was that in turn the revolution helped save the Insurgent cause because its fixation on atrocity and pillage massively diverted energy from the military conflict while the horrors of violent revolution on the March swung the sympathies of most of the middle and lower middle classes and nearly all of Catholic Society to cber the insurgence giving them Mass support in some parts of the country end quote the Army units that the government had at its disposal too were completely sabotaged pay again writes quote following the outline sketched only a few days earlier by lgo cabalero the government officially dissolved all rebellious Army units which had no effect at all on the insurgents and only weakened discipline in loyal units the greater number were regarded with such suspicion that they were also disolved leaving few more than 10,000 organized troops to fight for the left in the first weeks the government and the revolutionary leaders made up combat columns consisting of the remnants of loyal Army units of the Civil guard and assault guard and of new volunteer militia the military effectiveness of such columns varied but was usually limited inexperienced untrained poorly commanded and weakly disciplined militia possessed scant combat potential at wages of 10 patas more than a dollar per day they were the most highly paid infantry in the world but generally lacked cohesion if Rebel resistance was weak certain districts were conquered but wherever the insurgents possessed any strength the Republicans were usually stimi or fell back end quote the opposite was the case on the rebel side as their milias were far more effective the 20,000 strong carlist requests in the north were devout Catholics whom were extremely disciplined determined and combat ready they were ready to die for the cause and have been preparing for this day for Generations ever since the carlist wars of the previous Century Colonel raid described his carlist as men quote with faith in Victory with faith in God one hand holding a grenade the other a rosary end quote Peter Kemp an English volunteer with the carlists recalls how on one occasion his aim was hindered by the priest shouting in his ear to kill more of the apist Rabel the fanges militia too were quickly Incorporated their numbers eventually reached that of the revolutionaries on the left but this came with the downside of extremely varied Effectiveness as compared to their carlist counterparts in the north the rebel position was relatively secure the north was a staunchly Catholic land and they provided the rebels with whatever they needed there was no need to guard the supply line and the area was easy to hold down outside of the north though it was quite a different matter mhler was never going to be able to win the civil war alone and the entire ordeal rested on the shoulders of Francisco Franco and his ability to work his magic with his beloved Army of Africa it was one day after the initial rising in Morocco that Franco managed to get himself over there from the canaries thanks to a kind Englishman who allowed him to use his plane almost immediately however the blockade proved a gigantic hindrance to him only 700 troops managed to make their way across and the 24 hours before it was set up as noted it was actually General sanio who was meant to be at the head of the Rebellion but on the 20th of July he died in a plane crash coming back from his Portuguese Exile he proudly proclaimed that he was on his way to become Cordo yet insisted on overloading his plane with his vast luggage and it crashed Franco now assumed an even greater role that he was to have anticipated for now he exercised independent command in Morocco whilst Mohler set up a Juna in the north led by General cabanelas to counter the blockade Franco sent emissaries to Germany and Italy seeking assistance almost immediately independent of each other they accepted and agreed to send over a small amount of planes and weapons most important of all was the Squadron of juna's Transport planes which would be used to transport the army of Africa into the subn Nationalist Zone in Spain itself during this process the Republican Fleet showed themselves to be completely inept which made sense given that revolutionary Sailors had executed most of the Admirals or tied them up and throw them overboard in order to take charge themselves the nationalist daring operation went off without a hitch Franco was the very definition of cautious yet in this instance he felt he had no choice but to take the leap and was richly rewarded by the end of September 16,000 troops were across and waves of new volunteers of mostly ethnic Moroccans began to come over the following month meanwhile Franco began his daring march on Madrid in early August soon enough he was widely recognized as the most important of the Rebel generals and quite rightly so soon enough he would be accepted as the supreme leader it wasn't just Madrid that frano had to worry about however and it was here where his cautiousness would be useful he had to focus on consolidating his position and building up the infrastructure in the area from scratch there was also more isolated nationalist Pockets like the one at Granada which you needed to link up with it was also important to create a land bridge between the North where Mohler was horribly low on ammunition and needed desperate assistance other issues kept cropping up too which endlessly delayed the march on Madrid pay describes Franco's style of warfare quote throughout the war Franco would ER on the side of careful Logistics and methodical Advance while Shoring up secondary fronts whenever they were attacked to avoid even a temporary defeat in any sector this was not merely a military but also a political and psychological calculation it has been said that amateures do strategy while professionals do Logistics and Franco a professional certainly did Logistics but he dispersed his forces to the expense of strategic imagination and concentration of strength his two principal limitations as Commander end quote in the Russian Civil War the whites and reds made gigantic sweeps into each other's territory with extremely little logistical support or reserves as a result the offensives were often swept back just as fast as they had swept forward in the end the entire White Russian front collapsed due to this problem in Spain Franco was clearly trying to avoid exact mistake and as a result he never once had to conduct a retreat as for the push on Madrid Franco's Elite Army of Africa units led the way and were obliterating far larger Republican militia units with ease he would often use flanking Maneuvers which completely sent the inexperienced and cocky militia units into disarray and he would end up inflicting grossly disproportionate casualties on the Republicans as a result on the other fronts the balance between Army and militia on both sides were far more balanced but here the Republicans were getting completely blown away by Franco's experienced elite units by the 3D of September the nationalists had taken T Vera just 120 km away from Madrid Panic ensued in the capital soon enough enough though Franco decided to focus his efforts elsewhere in Toledo not far from Madrid the Epic of the alkazar was taking place in which a small group of nationalist Defenders held off against overwhelming Republican force in a months long Siege The Siege was one of many but this one particularly had become an international media spectacle The Siege held immense Sway With The nationalist forces themselves and had taken on a religious element inside the castle a statue of Charles I was hit by an explosive round but it deflected the blow and what the Defenders took as a sign from God on no other occasion during the gigantic bombardment was the statue touched the castle was essentially in Ruins yet hold out they did the tunnels beneath the ruins had been turned into a chapel and the men held out completely trusting in their faith in God despite the horrendous odds they faced to top the religious aspect off the last priests that hadn't been slaughtered and toed by the Republicans were with them in the Fortress there were also children miraculously born during The Siege two one given the name alkazar which further stiffened the defender's will to resist The Fortress had been restored by Charles the F himself Spain's greatest hero there was no chance the nationalists were letting this one go Anarchist leader Jean Garcia Oliver would lament quote it is a phenomenon of this war that when towns held by the fascists are attacked they hold out for a long time and that we do not resist at all they surround a small town and after a couple of days it is taken but when we surround one we spend our entire life there end quote the difference was obvious to all one side was deeply Christian and was scarcely afraid of death many were glad to become Martyrs the Republicans on the other hand were atheists and had no such reason to hold on to The Bitter End it was better to cut and run the nationalists were so deeply devout that even the kidnapping of the Commander's son didn't change the defender Minds the alcazar's telephone rang and general moscardo picked up he was informed that unless the alkazar was surrendered then his 24-year-old son Louise would be shot Moscato without flinching told his son on the other end quote commend your soul to God and die like a patriot shouting Long Live Christ the King and Long Live Spain end quot his son replied quote that I can do end quote soon enough Moscato was called back and given the news that his son was dead which indeed he was Franco diverted his forces and Against All Odds liberated the alkazar and soon enough they were back on the road to Madrid which got underway in full force by mid October by now however the Republicans were beginning to reorganize and the various competing factions agreed to pull together to save the capital as Franco got ever closer on the 27th a brand new far more centralized People's Army was announced more importantly the balance of foreign support completely flipped right as Franco approached Madrid he had received arms and aerial support yet now the Republicans were being flooded with guns too as well as hordes of the common turns International communist volunteers from all over the world on the 29th of October this Soviet Weaponry first came into play as Franco spearhead was hit by a small armored Counterattack which was repeated 5 days later these n ton t26 tanks completely outclassed Franco's small amount of lightly armored vehicles he had from Italy and Germany the issue was however that both counterattacks became failures as the Republicans simply lacked the training to coordinate infantry assaults and artillery with a rapid tank Advance the nationalists dealt with the tanks by the ingenious usage of Molotov cocktails which the fins would use against them too 3 years later where the device got its name meanwhile the Republicans in Madrid were determined to secure the City and began a brutal liquidation of what they deemed fifth columnists slogans of they shall not pass and Madrid will be the tomb of fascism rang out in the streets and the capital stood ready on the 6th of November Franco began his assault with a force of little more than 20,000 against 40,000 Defenders with overwhelmingly better Firepower a foothold was achieved on the western edge of Madrid but otherwise he failed to advance any further meanwhile the new People's Army of the Republic was effectively useless on the offensive much like its militia prede cessors the Republicans could not be dislodged from Madrid but whatever ground Franco gained could also not be retaken either the nationalists were beginning to take heavy casualties however and the Soviet Plaines now utterly dominated the skies for the Republicans as they were completely superior to the German and Italian models pay writes quote the battle marked a turning point the complete end of the nationalists original design for a relatively quick victory that scheme had originally presupposed no more than two or three weeks of fighting the fall of Madrid would not have meant the complete end of of the war but it would have dealt a massive blow to Republican morale and raised the likelihood of victory for Franco not long after henceforth both sides concentrated on building massive armies for a grueling conflict The People's Army grew more rapidly although its soldiers were more poorly trained and was assisted by 41,000 volunteers of the international brigades special communist Le units recruited by the common turn from all over Europe and the Americas Franco's forces were augmented by intensive recruiting in Morocco and the arrival of nearly 50,000 Italian troops early in 1937 although almost half of that force was soon withdrawn in February the southern coastal city of Malaga its defenses in disarray fell quickly to a combined defensive by Franco's troops and the Italians but afterward for nearly two months more Franco's attention would be focused on renewed attempts to capture Madrid end quote Franco's new strategy was to surround the capital from the south and the East and his army met the Republicans in the open field in February ground was one but the decisive victory that he needed evaded him the next attempt to outflank the Capital was the guadalahara offensive from the North in March led by the Italians a small amount of territory was won but the Italians were halted by the international brigades Soviet armor and Soviet air superiority the Italians unlike their Spanish counterparts couldn't take the Heat and abandoned their furthest line of Advance which marked a gigantic propaganda victory for the Republicans worldwide in what they called the first defeat of fascism the result was a stalemate on the central front in the end Franco accepted the advice of his staff and concentrated on the the industrially rich Northern Region instead which was cut off from the main Republican forces if Franco would achieve Victory here then the balance of power would dramatically tip in his favor this point marked a completely new phase of the war as the people's Army's most notable accomplishment the defense of Madrid was now left in the past Franco would now commence his new strategy of a slow methodical march to [Music] Victory from the outside looking in the rest of the world saw a civil war one side versus the other two armies facing each other on the Nationalist side this was entirely the case Franco's armies never had to guard the supply lines as they had the full support of the vast majority of the Spanish people whom generally speaking were Catholics who had a deeply held respect for the military and as in all Latin cultures the military strongman life in the Republican Zone however was quite the opposite which would have disastrous effects later on for their cause Payne writes quote once they were armed the revolution rather than the war drew the main attention of the workers movement for weeks even though thousands of workers volunteered for Frontline militia and sometimes battled bravely albeit with little skill they represented no more than a small minority of the membership of the Revolutionary organizations as most of their fellows dedicated themselves to seizure of economic facilities large scale pillage arson and massive violence against civilians and quote the transition into complete lawlessness and Anarchy was immediate upon the outbreak of War things were bad before but at the flick of a switch the remnants of the Republican institution melted away Horatio PR Secretary of the cnt's National Committee later admitted quote we proceeded immediately to dictatorship not even the Russian Bolsheviks themselves in their first phase were so quick to implant absolute power as the anarchists in Spain end quote Andrew nin acting leader of the PO spoke in the exact same vein and said that Spain was undergoing quote a more profound proletarian Revolution than the Russian Revolution itself end quot claraa comore the country's main champion of women's suffrage and right to divorce wrote of the first few months in the Republican Zone quote Madrid presented an astonishing appearance middleclass people saluting with the clenched Fist and shouting the Communist greeting on every occasion in order not to look suspicious men in worker overalls and sandals copying the uniform of the militia women Without Hats and in Old warn Out Clothing a complete invasion of ugliness and the moral more than material misery of people who humbly ask permission to survive the people who in normal times filled the streets and The Terraces of cafes were either in Disguise or 6 ft under and quote essentially all involved were entirely open about the reality on the ground yet all of them maintained a veil of Silence in regards to Foreign Relations as propaganda was so important to the Republican cause on the outside it appeared as if the Republic was fighting for its life yet on the inside the Republic was dead and buried along with the tens of thousands of victims of the leftist terror sweeping the entire Republican Zone on the 4th of September 1936 a government of victory was announced by lgo cabalero the issue with this extreme leftist government however was the same as always they all disagreed on what the revolution actually looked like anarchists Communists socialists Basque nationalists and slightly more moderate left-wing Republicans were all thrown into a bag and mixed together and everyone just hoped for the best each element continuously argued with the other and the entire Alliance was held together by a Fred that Fred being the United war against fascism as they called it these disagreements became material when it came to dividing the spoils in Russia during the revolution about 20% of all the Farmland in the Communist Zone was taken over in the Spanish case it was 40% 54% of this stolen land was then organized into collectives collectivization varied from state to state but by far the least revolutionary was the small part of the Basque Country not occupied by the nationalists the Bas were split threee ways one/ third supported Franco one3 supported the revolutionaries and one third supported Basque nationalism the latter despite being Catholic and non-revolutionary chose to throw their hat in with the revolutionaries and were given particular scorn by the nationalists for this reason especially so since the north was very carless territory in the province of qu driel on the other hand 99% of the land was collectivized in eastern Aragon and the small area of Eastern extreme adura that the revolutionaries held there was almost total collectivization as well how each province fared depended on which aspect of the Revolution was in charge in the Center and Eastern Aragon the CNT was in charge who were anarchists in the East and Southeast ugt ran the show who were socialists in smaller areas the pum were in charge who were more trotskyist leaning Communists yet had been disavowed by trosky the more mainstream Communists too had an increasingly growing presence due to all of the support from the Soviet Union CNT collectives were generally the most radical which included attempts to ban money ugt collectives tended to be run more as moderate cooperatives the results of collectivization were immediate the goal of most collectives was self-sufficiency and given that many of the experts have been killed as their property was stolen from them food production went off a cliff by the end of the war the Republican Zone was facing famine conditions more broadly when it came to other businesses things went off a cliff too there was now far less work discipline increased absenteeism and often even sabotage it was as if many of the revolutionaries weren't even trying to win the war but were instead acting out a sort of leftwing utopian fantasy simulator in their own little World much of this absolute mess has been memory hold now due to how the revolutionaries chose to portray their cause abroad pay writes quote the massive violence attending the revolution quickly gained the wartime Republic a negative reputation and some of the more moderate Republican leaders on the one hand and the Soviet and common turn bosses on the other insisted that the most useful strategy abroad would be to deny that the revolution even existed assistance from the Western democracies seemed much more likely if the wartime Republic could be presented in international propaganda as simp a parliamentary democracy based on private property similar to other Western democracies the result was what Bernett boleton called the Great camouflage denial that the revolution even existed a position that became a staple of Republican and common turn propaganda the Spanish Revolution became the revolution that dares not speak its own name end quote in the Nationalist Zone when it came to everyday life things were quite the opposite Catholics rejoiced as they could go back to the life they desired crucifixes were put back up in classrooms and religious further was at an all-time high visitors to the Nationalist Zone both during and following the war reported on the absolutely overwhelming Church attendance rates it was a true religious revival in the 20th century the support among the people for the nationalists was so high that as stated Franco didn't even need to guard his supply lines another important aspect of the revolution in Spain is of course the terror It produced which is such a big topic that I may potentially make a separate video on it Ern n said of the early days of the Revolution quote what the unsympathetic outside world saw in red Spain was above all chaos and bevic Terror poorly dressed masses armed with guns filling the streets atrocities in which political enemies were executed undisciplined mobs of anarchists mummies of nuns dragged from their tombs and placed for exhibit in the streets violent expropriations forced collectivization end quote it's no wonder that the left chose to change their tone for a foreign audience almost as soon as the war kicked off the executions followed on the 19th of July the first recorded executions took place in mad Madrid and many more followed the next day soon enough brutal reprisals were taken in areas occupied by the rebels themselves in the major cities the leftist parties formed specially made de squads and in Madrid there was even Checkers named after the horrifying State apparatus that carried out the Red Terror in Russia these Checkers was specially authorized by the Republican government Authorities on occasion not even just the revolutionary groups the official Republican police and security forces even often participated and the work of these de gangs were publicly praised by newspapers all over the Republican Zone it's worth noting the Nationalist form of repression too Franco publicly warned the Republicans that the stronger the resistance to his Revolt then the harsher the punishment would be letters to this effect were even dropped into Madrid during the initial attack on the city in terms of scale during the war the Nationalist Terror was far less prominent than the red one due to the overwhelming support for the Nationalist cause among the public so obviously there wasn't much of a public to punish there were some Rec Court Marshals in some districts which were handled rather professionally but in others the fanges especially were given limited autonomy by local military commanders to engage in smaller scale repressive acts of their own David Wilkinson described the difference between the two sides quite simply quote nationalist repression being more fough and continuous was more carefully directed at political activists rather than its symbolic class enemies end quote after the initial wave of absolutely senseless violence the revolutionaries did slowly under intense pressure moved towards people's courts which were essentially a highly politicized sham but regardless the murders were now given a slight tinge of legality the goal wasn't to end the repression but to channel it it took a long time to get there however and the biggest round of killing was all the way in November 1936 in which 2,500 executions were ordered in Madrid Alone by the following month though the reorganized Republican forces or what was left of them were able to gain greater control the nationalists too reformed their methods of doing things after 2,000 were executed once They seized Malaga in feu 37 after this the number of victims in the Nationalist Zone fell dramatically the location with the most killings was easily Madrid in which 10, were murdered by the revolutionaries as mentioned earlier it was November 1936 where this underwent its most brutal stage indeed this was the month where Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera was given a sham trial and executed Payne writes quote the largest number of killings amounted to perhaps as many as 10,000 took place in Madrid where unlike the situation elsewhere the most intense phase occurred in November 36 by that point the city's prisoners held more detainees than any other site in either Zone hundreds having been sent to the capital from other districts especially from the south the Jun defenser given command of the city judged that the thousands of prisoners constituted a major security risk apparently with Soviet encouragement the Communists socialists and anarchists who controlled the Juna agreed on the immediate execution of all fascists and dangerous elements among the prisoners without even a summary trial and by Mass Soviet style executions which has led some commentators to call this the Spanish kin in the next month approximately 2,500 people were executed under the command of Santiago cillo councelor of public order and dumped into pits in the vicinity of paruelo De durama and other sites East of the capital in an attempt to discourage any publicity Soviet authorities then carried out a second atrocity the International Red Cross had dispatch Dr George HRI to Madrid to report on humanitarian conditions after completing his investigation he attempted to return to France with an extensive dossier of data and photos on the repression two of the most reliable Soviet fighter pilots in the Republican Air Force part of which was under Soviet and not spanish command carried out an order to shoot down the Air France plane in which HRI was leaving Spain on December the eth though he survived his data was destroyed end quote inside of the city itself other foreigners were doing their best to help the Spanish against this revolutionary takeover the European and Latin American embassies were absolutely bursting at the seams with people who sought Sanctuary there around 11,000 people managed to reach safety in this way whom otherwise would have been brutally murdered at the hands of the revolutionaries many of this number were women and children in November 36 when Hitler recognized the Franco regime the German and for some reason Austrian embassies were raided and seized the Finnish Peruvian and Turkish embassies all Sheltering women and children were assaulted by the revolutionaries a fake Embassy was even set up in which women and children were welcomed in to seek shelter and then Julie butchered once they got inside the lowest rates of revolutionary repression were found in the deeply Catholic province of visaya in the Bas country in which there was 490 killings in 1937 the Revolutionary Terror entered a new phase in which the new government led by nrin began to repress the extreme revolutionary left 2,000 militants of the PO and CNT were arrested in Catalonia alone and several hundred were executed the most notorious being Andrew nin political Secretary of the PO whom was arrested by the Republican police and then tortured and killed by the nkvd the main line stalinist Communists profited nicely from the anarchist and po decline in the Russian Civil War the Orthodox Church was seen as one of the Prime enemies of the Communists in the Finish Civil War the white militia were mostly Lutheran farmers and this meant a great deal given that their opponents were atheistic Communists in Spain the issue was even more pronounced and in a way ended up being a war in which one of the primary aspects being fought for if not the primary one was Catholicism itself a great deal of propaganda has gone into justifying the intense anti-clerical violence of the Republic the most common justification is that the church held tyrannical Public Power but this is just patently untrue as church and state had been separated for 5 years by 1936 and the Catholic church had lost almost all of its economic resources and was in Dire Straits the reality is that Catholicism was the spiritual head of the traditional order and for that that reason the revolutionaries wanted to crush the church in Spain route and Branch it was an unprovoked and violent attack on a practically defenseless Target yet it was seen as necessary to crush the old order the attacks on the church in 1936 were nothing new in 1909 1931 and in Spring 1936 before the actual Rising itself churches had been burned on a gigantic scale the data for attacks on Church properties goes as follows 101 attacks in 1931 15 in 1932 70 in 1933 25 in 1934 2 in 1935 and 208 in the first 6 months of 1936 in 1934 this had been ramped up a level as priests and teenage Seminary students in aurus were targeted and executed in the Revolutionary Uprising there in 1936 things reached an entirely new level if the clergy were an ethnic group then it would have been deemed a genocide a vast amount of revolutionaries in the Republican Zone literally wanted to kill every single one of them pain writes quote despite all the rhetoric about extermination the only social sector marked out for extermination as such by either side was the clergy by some of the revolutionaries in the Republican Zone end quote to show the sheer size of this mass murder you only need to look at the jacoban phase of the French Revolution in which 2,000 clergymen were slain in Spain over three times this number were killed whilst the number of clergymen in the two countries were roughly the same in France at the time too the church was far far more powerful than the church was in Spain in 1936 6 the final tally is as follows secular priests 4,022 regular clergy 2000 376 nuns 282 seminarians 95 Bishops 12 Apostolic administrator one this gives us a total of 6,788 total members of the clergy killed percentage wise this is nearly 10% of the total clergy in terms of male clergy the total is over 20% this figure is also only taking into account Spain as a whole if we were to focus purely on the Republican Zone then you're looking at a far greater figure than that it's also worth noting that it was exclusively the Catholic clergy who were targeted not Protestants Payne writes quote the tiny Protestant minority scarcely .1% of the total population was in some cases identified with the left most Protestant churches in the Republican Zone remained open persecution of Protestants was a feature of the Nationalist Zone where there were increasing restrictions and where a small number of protestant ministers were executed end quote Julio de laquo observed the methods used to kill these 6,788 victims quot others were hanged drowned suffocated burned to death or buried alive on many occasions victims were tortured at times in shockingly sophisticated ways mockery insults blasphemy and coersion to blasphemy were very common parts of the torture which could also include forcing victims to strip naked beating cutting skinning and mutilation in the case of mutil ation there was a morbid fixation on genitalia all these rights of violence performed on the clergy further contributed to dehumanizing people whose Humanity had long ago been denied by anti-clerical discourse and at the same time facilitating conditions for guilt free Massacre the combination of cultural and sexual references ritualized violence and humiliation of the victim who is no longer a human being but an animal reached its most exact expression in instances of priests being treated like pigs at the slaughter house or Bulls in the bull ring finally irrespective of the death they suffered the corpses of the clerics were likely to be dragged through the streets exposed in public places or desecrated in many other ways end quote it wasn't just the people themselves who were destroyed but the church's property countless Priceless works of art were ruined the total value of these Works was completely incalculable as more importantly these works of art were the very cultural heritage of Spain itself and their loss was bitterly felt on top of this churches were occupied or partly destroyed by revolutionaries who would stage mock sacriligious rituals wearing the garments they found whilst looting given all of this the Catholic leadership committed itself more and more to the side that protected the church as opposed to the one that was trying to kill every single one of them initially mohler's plan for the Revolt had been to maintain a republic which would have continued to uphold the separation of church and state with the deeply devout Catholic Franco at the helm however things quickly changed as noted there was a religious revival of massive proportions all across the country thousands of Catholics who in full away from their faith suddenly refounded again in the face of the attempt to exterminate the clergy the people themselves almost immediately saw the dividing line between the two sides as religious just as much as it was political in mid-september 1936 Bishop Marcelino OA in Pamplona officially called the conflict a crusade in public a term which reverberated around the Catholic World this language never became official in the church however it did become official with the Franco regime on the 1st of July 1937 all but five members of the church hierarchy whom hadn't been murdered formerly endorsed Franco's cause in a public Collective letter inside they declared that Franco was waging a war as defined in traditional catholic principles in September 1937 the Vatican appointed a representative to the Franco regime although not as an official Nuno the following year an official Nuno was appointed as well as an official Ambassador Payne writes of the Nationalist cause quote there is no doubt that the Civil War turned into a war of religion for the Catholic majority in the Nationalist Zone such commitment whose Dimensions were simultaneously spiritual emotional and individual became the strongest single force behind Franco's cause it became so strong that even the fascistic falangists had to redouble their efforts to Proclaim and to Define their own Catholic identity religion was probably the most important single factor in the morale and cohesion of Franco's forces the only parts of Spain where there was significant division of opinion among Catholics were the Bas country and Catalonia in the former about half of Catholic sentiment supported the Republic after the latter granted Basque political autonomy a minority of Catalan Catholics took the same attitude end quote whilst the Republicans grew to dominate the propaganda aspect of the war Franco certainly helped himself with the Catholic Crusade language he used in America where the propaganda machine was incredibly effective Catholic sentiment was split in Catholic nations in Europe however they worked wonders Catholic Ireland was in fact the only Western democracy to support Franco's cause and a volunteer Legion even came to join what they themselves deemed a Catholic Crusade on the other hand the atrocities against Catholics caused a negative effect for the Republicans their anti-clericalism appeared to be as much of a religion as the other side's Catholicism albe it of course a false one this was a negative worldview however and they could never hope to Garner anywhere near as much support as Franco did from the religious issue pain again writes quote it put the left on the defensive for much of the war its greatest single weakness in the struggle for World opinion although the religious persecution became a boomerang for the left strengthening their enemies more than their own cause endend quote by the time the end of the war came around the church was restored to an even greater position than it held under the rule of Alfonso VII before he fled the country the blood of All Those whom lost their lives for the cause of Catholicism became a basis for a new Catholic Revival which continued in its intensity all the way into the 1950s in 1987 the Vatican officially beatified 489 Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War the largest single beatification in Catholic history when all was said and done the Catholic Revival that had taken place in Spain during the Civil War and in the following decades was by far the most successful Revival of traditional Christianity in all of the Western World throughout the 20th [Music] century in the Russian Civil War the left were completely United beneath the leadership of Lenin the whites on the other hand were absolutely crippled by disunity this time around in Spain the left were the ones crippled by this disunity they couldn't even agree on an ideology never mind a leader the rebels were completely unified beneath Francisco Franco foreign visitors would often express their surprise after having met Franco for the first time for all the big talk about El Cordo he was actually a short stocky balding and overweight man hardly a muscolini type figure with his square jaw and serious countenance on the other side of things he was hardly a Hitler either the fura won over the hearts of Germans not with his appearance but with his otherworldly rhetorical ability Franco was nothing of the sort Spain's new dictator had a squeaky voice and despite being polite and prop ER he also came across as timid in his first conversations with visitors Franco's appeal was something else entirely for years Spaniards overwhelmingly Catholics had been downtrodden and abused by their government as they tried to impose a far-left regime on the nation for years there had been no one to speak out for them seemingly no one in the world cared the nation was drifting towards Civil War for a long time yet there appeared to be no figurehead who could light the spark and lead the nation back to its former glory Jose Antonio of the falangists was one of the most charismatic men in the nation it is fange seemingly didn't appeal to Spaniards they couldn't even bring in 1% of the vote it wouldn't be until the violence itself broke out that the Spaniards would find their hero after the first couple of months it was clear that Franco would lead the way it was his army of Africa whom with the Elite Force pushing towards Madrid and it was his emissaries which secured Spain the vital support from Italy and Germany that she so desperately needed Franco had personally turned a ragtag rebellion which began on opposite sides of the country into a truly successful counterrevolution which could undo all that leftism liberalism and masonry had imposed on the country of the past Century or so as Spaniards saw it Franco's leadership was simply accepted by the Spanish population as fact despite not being a stereotypical leader he was exactly what Spaniard wanted he was a man of the people who had always been a devout Catholic this simple fact as well as his genius mind for military tactics was all that was needed he had become their savior there was very little squabbling between ideologies like in the Republican Zone the carlists accepted subordination to fr's regime whilst maintaining their unique identity at the same time as they always had the monarchists were few in number and deemed Franco as their best chance from the get-go the Catholics whom had voted for Seda were disillusioned with that party and their absolute failure to take advantage of their multiple opportunities with the legal route their youth Wing had begun to turn to the fange in the hunt for a more extreme solution to their problems after the breakout of hostilities the Sader leaders accepted the disillusion of their party for the sake of unity the fange were few in number but upon the outbreak of hostilities began to become more prominent they accepted Franco's Rule and very few ever kicked up a fuss about it about 200 were placed under arrest for a short period of time for sewing discontent yet they were quickly released the falangists were Catholics like the rest of them but they had a strong sense of anti-conservative which didn't exactly naturally jive with most others in the movement yet for the sake of unity all parties knew they had to stick together which they did without anything more than the slightest of disturbances another group which must be mentioned is the Moroccans as many as 880,000 Muslims served in Franco's forces about 8% of the total Manpower these Muslims volunteers for the most part suffered disproportionately heavy casualties Spain only controlled a small part of Morocco it had come with endless headaches as the natives put up such a struggle Franco however was well respected and was the hero of the army of Africa and he made sure Morocco was handled perfectly throughout the war the Republicans often tried to subvert this relationship and promis the Moroccans Independence but this was even vetoed by Stalin himself as he wanted to play for support from the Western democracies as any Insurrection there would inevitably spread to French Morocco and cause an international nightmare the rates of pay for these Muslim volunteers wasn't crazy for Western European standards but for boys from the poorest part of the mreb this offered an excellent opportunity Franco also made sure Islam was respected and there was even official support for the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca the common struggle of both Christianity and Islam against Marxist atheism was stressed extensively as for Franco himself Payne writes quote he saw his regime as uniquely Spanish eclectic in composition even though it adopted the form of the onep party nationalist dictatorships already in Vogue in Central and East Central Europe gone were the references to the more moderate Portuguese model that Franco had made in the first weeks by accepting the 26 points of the fanga state Doctrine Franco adopted a fascistic CREDO of authoritarianism National syndicalism activism militarization and imperialism at the same time he stressed that it was a system that had not assumed final form and would continue to evolve he was especially concerned to avoid the Primo de Rivera mistake the failure of Spain's first dictator to develop a Doctrine and a system which had led to his downfall Franco intended to accomplish effectively and permanently what Primo had done incompetently and transiently which meant building a structured regime system even though in this as in other things he proceeded slowly end quote as soon as the war broke out the Republicans were in much better shape than the nationalists when it came to International support Spain was led by a government called the popular front and so was France both were extremely left-wing and thus natural friends the Republicans quite rightly suspected that Leon Blum the Jewish extremely anti- Catholic leader of France would come to their aid almost immediately however he was urged not to do so by Great Britain whom France was essentially entirely dependent on by now so publicly Blum had to keep a lid on the issue yet in private the help went ahead love day writes quote French intervention only began with the Civil War and was probably more powerful than that of any other country there were probably more Frenchmen than any other foreigners fighting in Spain throughout the war and until July 1938 the pinan frontier was never close to the passage of arms and volunteers who continued to pour into Spain by land and sea it was just as much a government intervention as that of Italy and Germany the only difference was that no secret was made of the latter while France continued to pose as the protagonist of non intervention end quote overall it was the Soviet Union France and Czechoslovakia who supplied the Republicans there was so much foreign support from these nations that the nationalists actually acquired a lot of their supplies by capturing the ones intended for the Republicans around 100 ships loaded to the brim with war supplies from these free nations were captured and used for the opposite of their intended purposes the foreign support especially from France was essentially never mentioned the BBC made a gigantic deal of Italian and German intervention yet never mentioned France who had intervened far earlier and to a greater extent the same was the case for all mainstream media especially in places like Great Britain or America the propaganda was off the charts it was painted that Italian and German troops were on the ground winning all of Franco's battles for him whilst the poor little Republicans were up against this Superior might without a friend in the world the reality was quite the opposite no foreign troops fought in Franco's armies until he was given no choice by the arrival of the Communist organized International brigades even once all the major Powers signed on intervention committee things didn't change Italy and France especially just brazenly continued to support their respective sides France tried to hide it yet Italy did not the Soviets especially became increasingly in charge of Republican Affairs to the point where they could hardly be referred to as a sovereign country anymore which I'll cover in a chapter of its own when it comes to actual foreign volunteers the true numbers are incalculable because as soon as the foreign volunteers arrived for the Republicans they were simply given Spanish passports and officially became Spanish and mixed in with other units with the nationalists the main free supporters were Italy Germany and Portugal for Portugal it was a matter of life and death from the get-go as the Spanish left had actively participated in the attempt to overthrow the Salazar regime in Lisbon in 1932 33 Salazar quite rightly decided that his regime would not be able to survive if the Iberian Peninsula was engulfed by a government hellbent on leftist extremism and violence Portugal was only able to provide so much as she had such limited Military capabilities of her own but logistical support was provided from the beginning as well as a large volunteer Legion known as the vatos which boasted 12,000 men Britain Portugal's Ally simply tend a blind eye to any of the support on the 8th of September three Portuguese warships were victims of an attempted leftist Revolt in lisban Harbor almost immediately Salazar decided to up his support further to be rid of these threats and the volunteer Legion was announced a month later he broke off relations with the Republican government the nation that gave more support to Franco than anyone by far was melini Nazi Germany enjoyed far greater Prestige due to the effectiveness of their Condor Legion and due to the major moves Hitler was making in Germany in general the Italians however were both racially and religiously more similar to the Spaniards Nazi Germany too was far more of a racial movement which was a problem that Spain simply did not share geographically too Italy was far closer mellini reasoned there was nothing but positives to be gained from helping Franco and seemed to Envision Spain becoming a sort of satellite state attached to his future Italian Empire Franco wasn't that impressed with the man however and found the Italian troops who volunteered at first to be very lackluster by February 1937 there were 49,000 Italian troops in the country almost 60% of whom were fascist party volunteer militia the material support was staggering between December 1936 and February 1937 the totals were as follows 130 planes 700 mortars 12,000 machine guns and 3,800 Motor Vehicles the Italian's most memorable moment was a huge propaganda blunder from ini in early 1937 there was an attempt to break through in guad lahara which ended in a stalemate afterwards there had to be a review of the troops due to how poor Italian performance had been many of the overaged poorly conditioned and incompetent volunteers were sent home whilst better quality troops were sent to replace them the overall size of the bloated volunteer Legion was reduced as a result but their combat Effectiveness was improved and they would play a large part in the rest of the war Payne writes of the relations between the Italians and the Spaniards quote Italian fascist were often taken back by the extremely rtist character of the Franco regime and what they saw as its reactionary and clerical qualities by contrast Italian fascism tended to see itself as modern and Progressive and the Italian leaders sought to encourage the evolution of Franco and his new system toward the Italian model they urged the Spanish Cordo to form a single new United State party and provided guidelines which influenced some of the new francoist institutions especially the labor Charter of 1938 end quot there was a black mark on Italy's contribution in 1938 however as on the 16th and 18th of March musolini completely on his own initiative began a terror bombing campaign against Barcelona this was by far the heaviest bombing carried out by either side and nearly 1,000 civilians died soon after this the Italians seemed to lose their heads the Republican offensive across the Ebro in July 1938 resulted in them becoming completely depressed and they began to cry their eyes out about Franco's strategy to whomever would listen Payne writes quote melini became more more and more disgusted with Franco complaining that he failed to exploit opportunities his son-in-law and foreign minister chano recorded in his diary that Franco has no vision of symphysis in war his operations are those of a magnificent Battalion Commander musolini complained to chano after the Republic's Ebro offensive began write in your book today August 29 I foresee the defeat of Franco this man either does not know how or does not want to wage a war the reds are Fighters Franco no end quote a a year later melini had greatly changed his tune and he was singing Franco's Praises once again melini was confident that he had developed Spain into an Italian satellite state and chano proudly boasted in his diary quote the foundations were laid for a Roman Mediterranean Empire end quote Franco however had no such intention and completely blew off any attempts to be directed by musolini the Spaniards saw the Italians as loyal friends whom had helped them in a time of need but they were certainly not willing to hand over the fate of their country to melini which turned out to be the correct policy just a few years later after melini was deposed Franco and other veterans would look back and remember their old friend melini warmly with a great deal of nostalgia they'd been through a lot in Spain together as for the Germans I will cover the Condor Legion in a separate video essentially a legion although much sper in size than the Italian one was sent to Spain by Hitler the composition of the Legion was overwhelmingly aerial but there were a few armored ground units too Hitler was never as infusiasm Salini was in terms of support but he absolutely supported Franco if anything the Spanish Civil was a great distraction whil he tried to navigate his difficult situation in Central Europe musolini would constantly urge Franco to attack attack attack because he just wanted it over and done with yet Hitler was fine with Franco's slow and methodical strategy it just prolonged the distraction a leading German official paraphrased Hitler's policy at the end of 1936 quote if the attention of the European powers could further be directed to Spain this would entail considerable advantages to German policy in Europe Germany's interests which alone should be considered were therefore not so deeply involved in an early conclusion of the Spanish Civil War as to risk limitation of its own rearmament on the contrary German policy would be Advanced if the Spanish question continued for a time to occupy Europe's attention and diverted it from Germany end quote the length of the war also suited Hitler because his terms were much harsher than melin's the longer the war went on the more concessions Hitler could get in Spanish mining operations Franco would resist as hard as he could but in times of difficulty he was forced to relent and hand over more and more rights of Spain's roban materials to Germany a strange note to mention is that the Germans mostly guring sold weapons albeit lesser quality ones to the Republicans via third parties mostly the Greeks this kind of double dealing would have been absolutely Unthinkable to musolini who was genuinely passionate about the Spanish cause Hitler was happy to join in with the fight against communism but he was simply not as invested as musolini was unlike musolini however Hitler didn't seem to change anything about Franco's regime when he found out that his Ambassador was meddling and trying to help the fange to to achieve domination the furer immediately intervened to stop [Music] him ironically the Soviet Union master of revolutions actually didn't want a Civil War in this case the situation in Spain as mentioned earlier was perfect as it was to launch a violent revolution would have been an absolute propaganda nightmare at a time when British and French support was so necessary also there was the frustrating fact that Spain's left was mostly socialist or Anarchist not communist many of the Communists weren't even the right kind of Communists for Stalin they were closer to trotskyists once the Civil War began in Earnest however all this was thrown aside and the support was given when the initial wartime prime minister Geral asked the Soviets on the 25th of July to send arms to the Embassy in Paris for them the first response was a massive fundraising Drive within the Soviet Union itself in which the equivalent of1 1.4 million was raised by the end of the war then there began the propaganda War pain CS the number of front organizations that the common turn used but wildering most importantly of all for the Republicans however was the formation of the international brigades on the model of the 100,000 foreign internationalist volunteers who arrived to fight in Russia in their Revolution the Brigade idea was officially adopted in September 1936 and by November there was men at the front fighting in the Battle of Madrid where they were led by mostly Red Army commanders or Soviet Military Intelligence Officers around 41,000 of these volunteers arrived most of them were European but 3,000 arrived from the United States and many smaller numbers from various other parts of the world a hugely disproportionate amount of the volunteers were Jewish especially those from the United States the result was a mess as the left of the world was all mixed together with predictable results 500 or more of these volunteers were executed by their own side and thousands of them were arrested or purged for political or disciplinary Reasons by mid 37 the brigades were in terminal Decline and by the summer of the following year it was decided it was better to simply be rid of them as it would put pressure on the Spanish to say send their Germans and Italians home too in October 38 most of the volunteers were paraded to public Applause in Barcelona before they left Spain in terms of combat ability the brigades were woeful the extremely Pro Republican author Anthony Beaver writes quote Marty told the volunteers that when the first International Brigade goes into action they will be properly trained men with good rifles a well equipped core this was all part of the party's myth of the professional when in fact sheer courage bolted by the belief that the world depended on them had to make up for a poing deficiencies in the brigadiers basic training men who were to be sent against the army of Africa had to project the aura of experts to impress the militias but they could do little except for form ranks March and turn many of them had never even handled a rifle until they were on the way to the front and the few Great War veterans had to show them how to load their obsolete weapons of varied calibers from a box of assorted ammunition inexperienced soldiers had to find the right bullets to fit their rifles the number of jammed weapons through wedges and separated cases was predictably high end quote as well as the international brigades Stalin sent over a number of Soviet Airmen with far more advanced aircraft than the Spaniards already had at their disposal the Spaniards only purchased aircraft and didn't make their own so this was an extremely helpful addition for the Republicans in the early stages of the war where they dominated the skies before more support could be sent however Stalin had some reservations the first was the Republican will to resist and the second was the financial cost the former was soled when lgo cabalero from the new government is September 36 and the latter was solded when the Republican authorities just offered up their entire gold reserves the fourth biggest in the world on a platter to the Soviets in exchange for support by mid- October weapons were flooding in for the Republicans at a far higher rate than the nationalists were receiving from the Germans or the Italians the new Soviet tanks were far superior to anything the Nationalist hadat too and proved quite the headache for Franco pay describes the overall Soviet approach quote although the Soviet regime adopted a four-track approach to the Spanish War one major direct military participation in the form of red army weapons and Personnel two major internal political participation through the com and the pce three major collateral political propaganda and material assistance through the worldwide activities of the common turn its parties and innumerable front organizations as well as through the provision of food and other non-military supplies from the Soviet Union with other Soviet collateral assistant from a variety of international dummy companies and four active diplomatic support for the Republic particularly in the non-intervention committee as well as through bilateral diplomacy with the Western Powers end quote by the end of October about $530 Million worth of Spanish gold had made its way to Moscow the point was to use it for arms and other supplies for the next 18 months for the Spanish but there was no independent auditing and the rate of exchange employed by the Soviets was favorable to themselves so they could essentially just milk the Republicans for all they had at a highly inflated cost the most invaluable reward that the Soviets gained from the War however was the change in worldwide opinion the Soviet Union was viewed by all except most of the left as hell on Earth a state that had committed unspeakable Horrors Winston Churchill of all people had spent years and years rallying against them now however there was an absolute propaganda Miracle throughout the Civil War which painted the Soviets as the good guys fighting against fascism whatever that meant this anti-fascist crusade in Spain Drew attention away from the great Terror currently underway in Moscow and instead a facade was put up in its place which most liberals Across the Western World gobbled up hook lion and sinker except for the years of the molotov ribbon trop pact the Soviets used the banner of anti-fascism to full effect right up until the collapse of their empire in terms of actual boots on the ground combat troops in Spain though the Soviets never had more than 3,000 men this was nothing in comparison to the Italian 70,000 or even the Germans 16,000 the Soviet role was more behind the scenes more subversive this isn't to say that this was just a token Force though not a single one of these 3,000 men regular infantry like the Italian volunteers were there were 800 air crewmen as well as several hundred other tank crewmen many of the rest were high ranking officers or technical support Personnel 600 were regular officers who played vital roles in advising leading and training The People's Army behind the scenes was an extensive nkvd network which helped train Republican gorillas more importantly they were deep inside of the Republican Administration not that the Republicans much minded pay described some of the nkvd activities quote through its Spanish agents the nkvd was able to play a special role in the security system of the Republican Zone this enabled it to purge and execute various anti-soviet foreigners and a small number of dissident Spanish Republicans of whom the most famous was Andrew nin leader of the PO killed in June 37 the nkvd even maintained its own crematorium to dispose of corpses but the total number of executions it carried out in Spain was comparatively limited the Soviets have been credited with setting up the first NK avd extr territorial spy school in the Republican Zone which trains new Espionage agents certain members of the international brigades were screen for their potential and some became students most of them were eventually assigned to espionage activities in Western Europe and North America the thousands of passports brought by members of the brigades constituted another windfall particularly in the case of certain ones such as the new American passports that were particularly difficult to duplicate or falsify these opportunities helped develop the means a few years hence to learn the secrets of the atomic bomb nkvd operations in Spain were so elaborate that its Personnel also participated in the special kidnap and assassination teams who seized or liquidated several White Russian leaders and trotskyists in France and one of its Spanish recruits would later carry out the assassination of Leon trosky in Mexico City in 1940 end quote despite all this as time passed Stalin became less and less interested in Spain as the writing appeared to be on the wall he had the Japanese invasion of China to worry about in 1937 to where he was sending as many if not more arms to the Chinese the Mediterranean was also now ruled out due to shipping risks so Soviet arms shipments to Spain had to go from the northern ports and Via France which greatly increased delivery times and costs in the second half of 37 onwards the supply slowly wound down but Starling could never quite find an acceptable exit [Music] strategy by early 1937 the front line had essentially stabilized the Franco's initial failure to take Madrid this line was Finly held from end to end and indeed would be for the rest of the war this war was overall rather low intensity yet with several high intensity major battles that would decide things there simply wasn't enough men in Spain for this to turn into a meat grind of the scale of which had taken place in the Russian Civil War after the idea of a quick war was out the window both sides did attempt to build mass armies however and by the end of 1937 each side had around 700,000 troops a piece and total whilst equal on paper the nationalists had the upper hand as the Republicans were mostly incompetent due to their endless squabbling and inviting the quality of advisers too helped tip the balance the Germans who arrived to help the Spaniards were of far better quality than their Soviet counterparts on the other side who had the double task of directing the political policies as well as the military the nationalists also had the upper hand as whenever they conquered new territories they tended to find far more recruits after the conquest of the north for example the nationalists took 50,000 prisoners over a period of 5 months and these were quickly sorted out and half were deemed fit to serve in the Nationalist Army instead some deserted but the vast majority served loyally under Franco overall though both armies were far from highly effective one of Franco's veteran commanders General solchaga joked in his diary quote lucky for us that the reds are worse end quot regardless after the attempt to take Madrid failed Franco chose to head north the center was seen as too tough to crack at the moment but the resource Rich Industrial ized and also overwhelmingly nationalist sympathetic North was seen as a much more suitable task on the 31st of March 1937 the offensive began with just 40,000 infantry against a more numerous enemy local superiority was maintained by Franco concentrating his forces as well as clever usage of his 200 artillery pieces and planes a breakthrough was quickly made but due to Heavy Rain hilly terrain and a determined defense the advance led to half a mile a day during April it was during this initial advance that the infamous bombing of G occurred by the 5th of June The Basque capital of bil b along with its heavy industry had been taken this was essentially a de blow to the Republicans in the north 50,000 cash L had been inflicted on them which includes many prisoners the region was hardly a pain in the ass to absorb either as this was the only Catholic tolerant Zone that the Republicans held also a few days before B ba fell General Mohler commander of the northern offensive died in a plane crash and Franco's rule was completely solidified as Mohler was the only possible alternative and the only man gave AP of talking back to him regardless mler was solely missed and was much loved amongst the nationalists the next stage took a little longer as the Republicans launched a Counterattack in the center it's on the 12th of August the assault on Santander began by now 990,000 infantry had been mustered as well as more artillery pieces The Defenders by this point were in complete disarray and the city was completely occupied by the 1st of September with Asus too was almost immediately assaulted afterwards the resistance here was stiffer after all this was the main scene of the 1934 Communist Revolution and minor strike franker himself had put down the Revolt then and he had every intention of repeating himself now in the hilly terrain this was no walk in the park yet still it only took SL less than two months and the city was captured by the nationalists most Republicans surrendered but some did take to the hills to fight a gorilla Campaign which never really amounted to much pain describes the Republicans Folly in the north quote the Republican troops in the north suffered above all from confused and divided leadership and lack of coordination as well as inferior Armament at placed in several key categories all of which made it possible for them to be destroyed peac meal by a smaller invading Force little use had been made of the Region's industrial resources including the country's Chief arms Industries disorganized by the Revolution and the absence of a firm policy while the 100 war planes dispatched by the Republican government in Valencia had been sent in small detachments that were destroyed peac meal by Franco's Air Force an effort by the Republican Naval command to use its Superior forces to seize control of the northern coast had failed completely leaving the northern Zone subject to a partial blockade the nationalists captured sizable military stores nearly 250,000 rifles several thousand automatic weapons and some 500 cannons the Republicans had lost one of its two prime industrial regions as well as nearly 150,000 troops Tren prisoned by Franco of whom approximately half were incorporated into Franco's army they had earlier provided the highest rate of volunteering in any Republican area and their loss would never be made good the northern campaign also produced a new phenomenon Republican Refuge g s living abroad during the first year of the conflict many thousands of people had left Spain but they consisted primarily of conservatives and moderates fleeing the Red Terror during the summer and Autumn of 1937 at least 165,000 Republicans including dependants were evacuated from the northern Zone most soon re-entered Republican territory through France but as many as 35,000 may have remained abroad the loss of the northern Zone was a strategic disaster of the first magnitude something not lost on Republican leaders such as aana and Geral who from that point despaired of Victory sinking into progressively greater pessimism the military historian Jesus Salas larazabal has calculated that as of August the 1st 1937 the correlation of strength between the two sides stood at 10 to9 in favor of the Republicans whereas by October after the completion of the northern campaign that ratio had declined to 86 to 100 in favor of Franco end quote as noted in July the Republicans did actually launch their own offensive in the center this operation which became known as the Battle of brunette began on the 5th of July the goal was to encircle Franco's forces North and Northwest of Madrid the Republican superiority was overwhelming and a breakthrough was quickly achieved in typical Republican fashion however things quickly fell apart due to their abysmal capabilities on the attack several nationalist units held out fanatically which caused endless headaches and the Republican commanders showed a horrible lack of initiative instead of continuing on with their assault the Republicans simply got bogged down trying to deal with these smaller units all momentum was lost and Franco simply shifted his main air units and parts of his best infantry down South for a Counterattack the offensive was completely shattered the land was regained and the Republicans took more casualties losing the land than they had caused by initially taking it it was a fiasco after swatting away this attack Franco simply redirected his men back North and finished up his operation there instead rather than trying to take advantage of the situation in the center this was a pretty familiar theme with any Republican offensive Bright Start failure to take advantage all coordinate and then disaster to make up for the latest failures a major effort was made to rebuild and indeed expand the People's Army 200,000 new draes were called up in Autumn 37 the prisoners lost of the nationalists had been replaced but the equipment lost was simply Irreplaceable on average as noted Franco's troops were better trained and now equipped too the rest of the war would be an incredibly uphill battle for the Republicans if they could even be called by that name by this point given how much the Communist Party had ballooned in power never mind the anak ists trotskyists and socialists despite the setbacks General Rojo of the Republicans decided on a new offensive in southern Aragon which began on the 16th of December the goal was to capture terwell the provincial capital terwell was lightly defended and as usual the Republicans got off to a flyer The Defenders surrendered on the 6th of January 1938 and the capture of a provincial capital proved a boon to morale all across the Republican lands Franco was well aware of the city's importance on morale and had no intention of letting it slip away Franco's advisers including the Germans advised him against this and suggested a knockout blow on Madrid instead by this stage however Franco had begun to see himself as chosen by God to lead this struggle and he was absolutely convinced that he was taking the right decision Franco blew off anyone else's advice so frequently the General von joked quote there are times when I think that what is about to be done should not be done and since all you have to do with Franco is to present an objection in order for him to insist on his own way I have decided to adopt a tactic of saying the opposite of what I think in order for him to do what I really think end quote regard less Franco persisted on the 17th of January the counter offensive began and by the 5ifth of the following month the Breakthrough had reached far better terrain from which a Pinsir operation could be launched to recapture the city by the 22nd of February turel was back in nationalist hands within two weeks a full offensive inter Aragon was ready to launch on the 9th of March the Republicans were absolutely annihilated the most devastating air attacks of the war were carried out on rear areas and enemy Vehicles which destroyed enemy morale leading to mass desertions by theth 15th of April the Nationalist armies were standing on the Mediterranean Coast the Republic had been split in two 4 days later the entire Southern Bank of the ebra river was in nationalist hands the Republic was in disarray and disciplinary executions ballooned within the Republican forces most simply could no longer see how victory was feasible and they were quite right desertion was becoming a route Franco's next decision was a strange one Payne explains quote even though Catalonia lay for the moment virtually undefended Franco renounced a seemingly easy Triumph and opted instead for a difficult Advance Southward through mountainous terrain and along the coastal Road toward Valencia there is no conclusive explanation for his reasoning he talked of the need to gain more foreign exchange by controlling the Citrus exports of Valencia an observation that bewildered his staff officers years later he made a reference to the danger of French intervention in Catalonia and this may well have been the ultimate factor in deciding to turn South Hitler indicated that he preferred Franco not to occupy Catalonia in order to prolong the war which was Hitler's own strategy but he is not clear how hard he tried to force such a decision on Franco other than the stipulation that the Condor Legion not operate within 50 km of the French Frontier at any rate Catalonia was spared for the moment while Republican resistance stiffened on the narrow front north of Valencia the nationalists made slow steady progress but they suffered heavier casualties in their opponents in repeated frontal attacks and the war slowed considerably between May and July 1938 giving the People's Army one final opportunity end quote Francos decision allowed Catalonia to undergo a miraculous recovery and the French border was officially open to Arms shipments from the Soviets and others 200,000 more troops were able to be called up all over the Republican Zone and the People's Army now reached its peak of 800,000 or more men regardless defeatism was still Rife and the Republican leadership were obsessed with the idea of an offensive Victory to raise morale and to show the Western democracies that their cause was not dead and still worth supporting on the 24th to 25th of July a series of makeshift Bridges were set up across the Ebro River and the Nationalist unit holding that area collapsed this division alone gave up 4,000 prisoners 20 to 40 km of territory were gained by the Republicans in a slow push forwards as their tanks and trucks struggled across the river at this point this was the largest Republican Advance ever which was impressive at this stage of the war All Things Considered regardless though this offensive went the same way as all those that came before Franco canceled his plans elsewhere and responded with a gigantic counter offensive on the 6th of August casualties were heavy on both sides sides as Franco insisted on a frontal assault on the strategically useless new Republican territory the Republicans held out stly against overwhelming air and artillery support all over the world their heroics were broadcast and their Prestige for the moment soared sections of the French government meanwhile were urging intervention Admiral dalah head of the Navy and future prime minister of yishi France suggested that Germany was far too distracted in Central Europe right now and that Spanish Morocco should be occupied he even suggested that an invasion should be launched of the Bas country in the North this proposal was rejected but Franco could never be sure of this and it was always at the back of his mind this would be the third time the French intervened in his country's Affairs and trash the place in the past Century or so meanwhile for the first time in the conflict nationalist morale seemed to drop each major battle was regarded as the final push in nationalist propaganda yet battle after battle seemed to come many had simply had enough frankco responded to the international situation by declaring total neutrality in the face of the Munich crisis a decision that infuriated Hitler but made French intervention far less likely 16 battalions were also sent to reinforce Morocco in case of a French offensive there too only chamblin's appeasement Master Class saved Europe from war at the end of September which significantly lowered the tension in Spain itself in regards to intervention despite all the worries by mid November Franco had his victory and the Republicans have been sent packing back across the river where they came from 50,000 nationalist had been injured in the process including just over 6,000 dead it was an extremely costly Affair for seemingly very little reason when the entire enemy territory could simply have been bypassed the Republicans however suffered even more heavily and 20,000 prisoners were taken Franco's best units had suffered heavily yet the people's Army's best units had suffered even more it was a grinding Affair that sapped Morale on both sides yet in the end Franco came out massively on top albe it at Great cost the Republicans had now shot their last bolt A desperate offensive ATT turn to a nightmare that cost them the best of their army and arms reserves were now dangerously low at a time when Soviet support was dwindling meanwhile behind the lines economic conditions were absolutely brutal and inflation was through the roof pay writes quote the Ebro battle thus became psychologically counterproductive leaving Republican morale at a low EB International complications temporarily at an end Franco invaded Catalonia in December 38 with a series of decisive blows and reached the French border by mid-February driving the Republican government into Exile and shrinking its territory to the Southeastern corner of Spain the military struggle was essentially over for there was not much will to Res first end quote perhaps Franco's decision hadn't been so crazy and inexplicable after all but rather a genius move which obliterated the Republicans will to resist [Music] forever when planning his Insurgency Mohler made a severe oversight when it came to the Navy in general naval officers tended to be from the upper Strat of society and thus were more conservative no action was taken to ensure their anticipation in the Revolt when the Revolt actually broke out it was a disaster for most of those that tried to join the cause Sailors tended to be far more left-leaning and were also far more capable of collective action due to the close proximity in which they lived therefore in many cases when naval officers tried to join the Revolt a mutiny was staged the officers were simply murdered typically in a brutal fashion in Al foral and other Northern ports many officers succeeded in going over to the Revolt as assistance was immediately forthcoming from the Army the same was the case in the south Al for cadis in other places naval officers were just killed right off the bat even though they hadn't expressed the slightest intention of joining the Revolt in the first six months of the war half of all naval officers in the Republican Zone had been murdered by the left the sheer scale is ghastly but it didn't come without its downsides for the left as the ships were now leaderless and extremely ineffective Maritime Soviets organized on the ships also served as a huge obstacle when it came to command in September 36 indicio PR became Minister for the Navy and he attempted to introduced discipline yet even this was futile the damage was done at the start of the war the Republicans ended up with two-thirds of the Fairly impressive Spanish Navy in its possession yet because of discipline loyalty solid leadership or whatever else you like to put it down to the smaller nationalist Navy was far more effective the Republicans ended up having their Naval matters mostly run by Captain Nikolai ketov and he promoted a defensive and passive strategy focused on defending Republican shipping there wasn't much else he could do with such a disorganized mess KZ netv who as can tell by the name wasn't Spanish ended up becoming commander of the entire Soviet navy in 1945 throughout the entire War there was no great single naval battle the only time a solid benefit was seen from the Republican Navy was when it briefly blocked the straight at the start of the war but after this it didn't do much good even the blockade ended up backfiring as just two nationalist ships ended up battering them and an order was given to abandon the blockade during the northern offensive a far more effective blockade was organized This Time by the nationalists in this inance two of the Republican ships in the area fled to France where all the remaining officers and crewman ended up going over to the nationalists all of the other ships refused to attack and one of the submarines ended up being sunk the Republicans simply did not have the ability to coordinate with each other for an offensive in the same way they had trouble doing so on land except to a far greater degree in the naval case after the north was Secure most of the Nationalist Naval action was spent attacking Republican shipping where musolini happily sent his submarine Fleet to join in the Republicans didn't stand a chance in September 37 musolini was forced to pull out due to British and French pressure but by this point the damage was done and the Nationalist strategic goal was complete the Soviets had completely written off the med and the only supplies came via France as noted earlier throughout the war the Republic was terrified of Italian and German Supply ships and dared not touch them the nationalists however had no such fears and every single Soviet ship coming through the Straits of jalter were checked by April 37 84 vessels of various nationality had been detained even in the North shipping was harassed or sunk when it came to nationalist shipping there was 290 Italian Supply ships and 180 German ones not a single ship was ever sunk or intercepted the only Naval disaster the nationalists suffered was in March 38 when a republican torpedo sent the new Cruiser bz to the bottom with great loss of life as the war neared its end most of the Republican Navy simply deserted and the ships headed to French ports where they would later just be turned over to Franco by the French authorities when all was said and done the Republic lost 5 154 ships of all types the nationalists by comparison lost only 31 ships of all [Music] types the Spanish Civil War was the first major war in which the air War played a major part compared to what came later in World War II it would appear like small fry yet for the time it was a big deal when things kicked off the nationalists only had 100 planes and had too many Pilots for them the Republicans on the other hand had 200 Pilots yet they had 400 planes a race immediately began as both sides tried to buy as many modern planes as they could from foreign Nations too in order to solve their lack of Pilots the Republicans paid foreign mercenaries extremely high wages to fill in the gaps by September the two sides had acquired a similar amount of planes from abroad the nationalists had 67 whereas the Republicans had 64 the key difference was quality however the Italian and German Pilots were far more skillful and they quickly turned the tide of the air War for the nationalists the arrival of Soviet Fighters and Soviet Pilots quickly changed this and things were more balanced in the center the Republicans ended up dominating the airspace for months in response to the Soviet escalation Hitler offered to escalate in response which ended up taking the form of the Condor Legion this consisted of 90 planes and their Crews together with anti-aircraft guns artillery and two companies of light tanks initially the German planes are pretty outdated and wouldn't be replaced by newer models until the following year for the time being the backbone of the Nationalist Air Force would be melini's Fiat cr32 planes of which uch sent 400 during the war on a more relatable note to World War II this war was where bombardment of civilians from the air was inen his fair game the Germans had done a little at the end of World War I however now the Republicans just started bombing nationalist cities right off the bat whilst they had a Supremacy in the air the favor was quickly returned and this took the form of bombardments on Madrid Franco quickly realized what the British did not a few years later this had no effect on enemy morale and the bombing ceased almost as soon as they had begun ironically more nationalists died than Republicans as a result of the Madrid bombings as the latter took Revenge upon nationalists or other political prisoners in the city itself after this Franco concentrated his Air Force in the north to great effect the Republicans simply could not bring themselves to send more planes up north at the cost of Madrid and as a result they lost the north it was up north that the bombing of gica took place a small town of 5,000 the town was right in the main Battlefront housed fre battalions of Basque troops and was a major Munitions Hub which produced a among other things the very same incendiary bombs which destroyed the city The Defenders also torched the city on their way out and destroyed pretty much everything in their wake when all was said and done the combination of the bombing the Munitions factories and the Republican sabotage resulted in a fire that gutted most of the city and left 150 people dead the Republicans would cry foul in the international media to incredibly great effect and to this day it is one of the most memorable events of the war The Story Goes that the nationalists just brutally bombed the city to the ground and destroyed it on purpose yet this would be a city in an area in which they held so much support the international media claimed that 1,654 died 10 times the actual figure the Republicans also knew full well that the city would be a bombing Target due to the Munitions production so seven bomb shelters had already been prepared for the event as for the accusation of random Terror bombing this was ridiculous Franco had expressly stated that no Terror bombings could be carried out the Germans requested permission to hit B ba in reprisal for the lynching of a Down German Airman yet they were denied Franco said this was totally politically unacceptable and he kept his word throughout the war in the North especially this was the case because as stated the Basque region was extremely Catholic and Julie switched over to the nationalists without much trouble after the occupation bombing Munitions plant is not the same as random bombing in fact the Allies in 1944 employed the exact same strategy to a far more brutal degree as tens of thousands of Frenchmen died from Allied air attacks on cities producing Munitions before D-Day it is worth noting that one terab bombing did take place later on which I noted earlier in March 38 molini went behind Franco's back and bombed Barcelona with absolutely no military Target in mind it was a terror raade pure and simple almost a thousand people died almost all of which were civilians this attack greatly enraged Franco and also the pope who sent a letter of reprimand to Franco obviously they should have gone to melini however at the start of the war A's newspaper had gloated over a random civilian bombardments of Their Own It boasted of the Damage Done to civilian targets quote inundated with iron and Fire end quote essentially gica is a very odd fixation considering one side engaged in Terror bombing far more than the other in 1938 at Republican urging A League of Nations military mission was sent to evaluate the supposed nationalist Terror bombings their findings said quote that both the small numbers usually involved as well as the bombing patterns pointed towards a Doctrine which prioritized the destruction of specific targets like Bridges or Railway stations end quote in the North many areas were carpet bombed as the condo Le found pin pipe bombing technically impossible with the technology at their disposal at the time some resulted in greater loss of life than gica it didn't even make a stir in the media regardless the air power up north utterly dominated The Defenders and it was the damage to morale rather than the bombs themselves which probably had the greatest effect on the troops by Autumn 37 Franco had total Air Supremacy once again at his disposal he had 150 planes piloted by Spaniards around the same number piloted by Italians and 90 piloted by the Germans the greatest to air fighting took place around the Ebro offensive in 38 in which 150 Republican fighter planes were in combat with 200 nationalist ones Payne writes of the air Wars legacy quote the air war in Spain pressed that of World War II not in heavy bombardment of urban targets but by introducing the first significant air to ground support and the employment of combined arms tactics that were only in their infancy in World War I it also had an impact on World opinion which became more aware of the potential of aerial bombardment end quote [Music] in his book on the Civil War Stanley G Payne describes the key issues that plagued the stability of the Republican cause quote one the Revolutionary extreme left especially the anarchos syndicalists of the Fai CNT who at first sought to concentrate on social and economic Revolution more than on the military effort two Basque and Catalan nationalists who sought to advance their own agendas extending so far in the case of the Bas as the goal of outright separatism and theed negation of the partition of Spain with foreign powers three the Comon 10 and the pce which did not seek to impose a Communist Regime but which should dominate as much as possible forming in 3738 a limited hegemony under nrin and four the growing opposition of the relative moderates at first left Republicans and then more and more of the Socialists who looked towards a negotiated peace and came increasingly to oppose nrin and the Communists end quote this was simp too much to keep under control for a prolonged Civil War the Fai CNT were anarchists who wanted a stateless and classless society yet here they were in a civil war on the same side as Communists who wanted a strong State and had an obsession with class they would become the only Anarchist movement ever to join forces with a regular government the Fai CNT especially continued to make concession after concession to their cause until it was entirely diluted the PO wanted to recreate the Russian Civil War yet the conditions for one simply weren't there they were picturing themselves in a far worse situation than they were actually in they lived in an extremely leftwing Spain not autocratic zaris Russia they quickly found themselves a minority within the Republican cause the PO were aligned more with trotskyism and they opposed stalinism which certainly wasn't a very popular position on the side which became increasingly dominated by the Soviet Union both the Fai CNT and the pum had Catalonia as their stronghold and this made them natural allies although the latter collaborated far less than the former Stalin from the get-go wanted to liquid the PO because they were a rival Communist Party who were loyal to Trotsky who as we know Stalin wasn't the biggest fan of soon enough the common turnback Communists dominated the government security system and the Army all the top leaders of the pum were arrested and the leader killed the party was essentially confined to the background and disappeared for as long as the War lasted other elements of the Republican cause which barely fit into the framework of the Republic with the two main separatist movements The Basque government was dominated by The Basque nationalist party for the 9 months of its existence during the war the Republican state was simply ignored in most key policies and all the while the basks attempted to sign their own Separate Peace the Bas at least those who sided with the Republicans wanted their own State nothing more nothing less ideologically they were probably more similar to Franco than the left as a sort of diversity hire a single Basque nationalist remained in the Republican government throughout the war but they were also a terrible and very forced fit into the greater Republican framework as for the catalans there was a split much like with the Bas the Catalan government in Barcelona only represented leftist interests and thus the conservative sector of catalanism Simply decided with Franco Payne explains how the catalans navigated their complicated situation far better than I can quote the government of Louise companies played a deceptive triple game first co-opting the revolutionaries of the Fai CNT in a manner that both embraced the Revolution and also channeled it to some extent the general atat also nominally cooperated with the Republican government but in practice followed its own policies as much as possible once the Republican government was able to reassert its own autonomy particularly from May 37 Catalan autonomy was progressively reduced until not very much remained the left catalanist also sometimes engaged in independent diplomatic Maneuvers abroad but not to the same extent as did the Bas resentment on the part of the Republican leaders against both groups was naturally very great end quote in terms of infighting the biggest crisis of all came when Catalonia was occupied and the Republican government fled to France whilst heavily demoralized there were still in fact more than 500,000 men in the People's Army common advisers and party leaders still in the Republican Zone scratched their heads on how to keep up resistance there was talk behind the scenes of a democratic revolutionary dictatorship being set up with a quote Council of Defense labor and security with a pair of ministers two or three other political personalities without ministerial status and a pair of military leaders end quote as demoralization increased the other leftist parties began to lose their fear of the Communists and began to openly descent everything was coming apart at the seams the pce the official common turn Communist Party printed a Manifesto denouncing traitors and capitulation ISS the popular front Committee in Madrid responded by formally censoring the pce for its domineering policies in several other cities the Socialists just abandoned the popular frontal together in other areas some Communist party members were just arrested on flimsy pretexts the Communists and prime minister nrin appear to be taking no steps to end the war and so all the other group group like the Socialists anarchists and left Republicans decided to support a scheme led by Colonel seis Mundo Cado commander of the central front cadoo was under the impression that the current leadership couldn't negotiate with Franco but he a military man could the war was thus about to end the same way it began with a military revolt against the government whom the military felt was dominated by Communists by this point many of the other leftist groups have become almost as anti-communist as they were anti-fascist they wanted to defeat Franco but they unlike the communist were well aware that it was over the Republican Zone was facing famine conditions inflation had obliterated the currency there was nothing left to fight for in the early hours of the 6th of March the Revolt began which had been in planning for weeks the fighting in Madrid was bitter and nrin as well as other top pce leaders and the remaining Soviet and commenton advisers fled the Country Republican defense crumbled and Franco's offensive of Victory began on the 26th of March on the 1st of April the war was officially over Madrid had had been spared an absolutely unnecessary blood [Music] bath on the 19th of May the gigantic Victory Parade took place on the aena Del generalisimo in Madrid 120,000 soldiers took part Franco was guarded by his bodyguard and Moroccan Cavalry the legionnaires Colonial regulars fists and carlist requests followed shortly behind the rear was brought up by the Italian the Portuguese Legion and the Condor Legion the streets were covered in Catholic symbolism and the Nationalist flag crowds had gathered absolutely everywhere and wherever you looked women were unable to control their emotions overcome with happiness and crying their eyes out men thre up the fascist salute and showed their gratitude to General Franco and his Victorious Army the day was a true reflection of Spanish opinion Colonel Rick toen of the Condor Legion recorded in his diary quote I am driving at the front The Spectators go wild Viva Alania in the sky above aircraft formed the initials of Viva Franco end quot Anthony Beaver described the religious procession the next day Cardinal Gomer primate of Spain gave Franco The Wooden cross to kiss at the door of the Church of Santa Barbara where the Cordo entered under a canopy as the kings of Spain used to do in the middle of a solemn ceremony imbued with heavy medieval imagery Franco laid his Victorious sword in front of the miraculous Christ of lanto brought especially from Barcelona for the occasion all the trappings and in inations represented the sentiments and self-image of the crusading Conqueror in his struggle to defeat the Marxist Hydra Franco had been fighting against the past as well as the present against the 19th century poisoned by liberalism against the 18th century which had produced The Enlightenment and Freemasonry and against the defeats of the 17th century end quote and with that the Spanish Civil War had officially come to an end Against All Odds Jesus Christ had triumphed over KL marks Catholicism had triumphed over the combined might of Communism and anism socialism liberalism and corrupt democracy the Spanish people had triumphed over the Soviet Union the story of the Spanish Civil War however would live on for decades to come in the minds of the Spanish people countless Republican prisoners now languished in jails and many would soon find their lives at an end the Red Terror had come and gone and ended up a failure all the revolutionaries had done was enraged their now Victorious opponents most of whom had lost an innocent friend or family member the nationalists would now take their Revenge the losers were completely at the mercy of Franco and that story is for my next video which is a complete history of the man himself thank you very much for watching this was probably by far my favorite video I've ever made so if you've made it all the way to the end then please do consider sharing the video and 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mandas sword dog aussie W Prada Aussie Zuma Joe Ford J jinang Mr Toad Le agnu Carolyn J Alex D violently normal Brendan Stout K Reich unlikely Balmer Enclave welcome to C Yuga the alt Vault Justin F Lane Perkins King Fried Chicken renie malr Gianni robati Panza Jim ala aola lordal Hans Chris Jordan Troy Jihad Gandalf AEL Lucas liken ring the hog shotgun bjon RoR Grady Peters Patrick Finn Nemesis 88 Mike and Johnny secret pod Emil flinch h of Argan Li Rand Atlas 1902 Dustin Stratton Tyler Yoshida what next Hines habber PX tiby maray Zuma historian is the best Pat Mike geneses Vice Ace Gunner Martin harkinson John sley scar chronic military collector Jan coder herwig hogga tun TIY Gerald Loren Devin lay Henry ramdas Jr Adam Croucher malvin Cade poopa ugab Booga col Maloney xan norf iby Avery Muller Fang guard Kirk Weaver hindrik Mueller John Shelton Surfer Dude Dakota rosson Michael Holly Adel man random person 24 D GS no name 325 sinful hero agent pragmatic culture W Justin wols martes Sebastian Andy Matthew bragon Jalil Alex FF Quinton Lewis Sam W scutty hod Hail Mary Luther branon Christopher es Carter SE afolabi Joo savarian Majin Perez Matthew Hosford Hubert Lucas Tyler stagel man Landon Harris Jax alex22 arter Brook John kler Julius Hunter P Charles price elzu Austy Cascadian Cowboy it's okay to be a nationalist inflection point vet exempt automat 762 x39 mons Mercier Charlie Black Will from Florida history by Grace scale friendly fash Jonathan s marinsky Demetrius laan fouchi Christian arminius is Revenge mini monies gerdon R's 14inch turds the Waller Suma kubc Jan 1997 Abal cinsky KL young James Ferris Anna Paula Gomez coolo pavement to 86 CT Lind the Glorious lion Omega Kirk Panza final son of Tiamat Luke Shifty Sheriff 2 Gerard Gerard and abberation