The right wing prepared for the war, they were getting ready for the war with the help of General Emelio Mola. Military intervention took place by a terrorist fascist party called Falange Espanola who provoked violence and disorder. Rising: July 18, succeeds in the provincial capitals of rural Leon and Old castle, towns like Burgos, Salamanca, and Avila defeated by workers in Madrid.
Rebels controlled one third of Spain including Galicia, Leon, Old Castile, and part of Extremadura together with a smaller Andalusion triangle from Huelva to Seville to Cordoba.
The rebels had a bit of bad luck. They confronted unexpected initial problems with untrained workers, so their advantage lay in the hands of the African army, but this was blockaded by republican warships in Morocco. The republican crew mutinied against Rightist officers. The rebels needed help so, using help abroad as their only option left, they asked Hitler and Mussolini. They could only supply an airlift from Morocco to Seville.
Instead of the coup d’etat being a success, it just turned out to be a bloody war. The republic on the other hand got little help from the democratic powers, so instead the French premiere Leon Blum, who was paralyzed by the internal opposition and British fear of provoking a war, smothered his early plan of aiding the republic, so they had to turn to the Soviet union.
After the nationalists rebelled, they launched two campaigns, which greatly improved the situation. Mola attacked the province of Guipuzcoa, therefore isolating it from France, while Franco’s army moved on to Madrid (killing over 2000 prisoners at Badajoz. By august 10, things were starting to look up for the Spaniards, two blocks of Nationalist Spain were joined and they were moving up in position through August and September. The troops linked up in Seville, Cordoba, Granada and Cadiz lead by General Jose Enrique Varela.
The republicans could manage no comparable triumphs. Republican militia columns were bogged down besieging both the rebel garrison in the fortress of the Alcazar in Toledo, and the cities of Oviedo and Zaragoza, which had fallen quickly to the rebels.
On September 21, the leading rebel generals chose Franco as commander in chief both for obvious military reasons and to columns to the south-east of Madrid to relieve the Toledo garrison, losing an excellent chance to attack the capital before its defenses were ready. It permitted Franco to clinch his own power with an emotional victory and a great public coup. On October 1, Franco controlled a tightly centralized zone. In contrast, the republic was severely hampered by intense divisions between the communists and moderate socialists who made military survival their priority, and the anarchists, Trotskyists and extreme left socialists who were more concerned with social revolution.
October 7; he army of Africa resumed its march on a capital flooded with refugees and short of food and water. Franco’s delay allowed the reorganization of the defense of Madrid, aided by the arrival of arms from the Soviet Union and columns of volunteers; International Brigades. November 6; he government fled to Valencia, leaving Madrid in the hands of General Jose Miaja. He rallied the population, leaving the military planning to his Chief of staff; Colonel Vicente rojo. He failed his assault. The city would hold out for another 28 months.
Franco responded with a great effort to encircle the capital. The battles of Boadilla (December 1936), Jarama (February 1937), and Guadalajara (March 1937) saw his troops beaten back at bloody cost to the Republic. Many Italians troops were involved although the Nationalists still had the advantage. This was shown by a stream of victories, which permitted them to capture northern Spain in the spring and summer of 1937.
In March, 40,000 troops under Mola advanced through a Basque Country demoralized by the Condor Legion. The annihilation of several small towns, including Guanaco on April 26, 1937, undermined the morale of the defenders of the capital, Bilbao, which fell on June 19. After the Nationalists army captured Santander on August 26, they captured Austria during September and October. The rebels had a decisive plan to add to their growing superiority in the terms of men, tanks and airplanes.
Rojo tried to stem the Nationalists inexorable progress by a series of offensives. At Brunete, west of Madrid, on July 6, 50,000 troops broke through enemy lines, but the Nationalists had enough reinforcements to stem the flow. Ten days went by and in one of the costliest battles of the war, the Republicans were pounded by air and artillery attacks. At great cost, Rojo made a bold offensive against Zaragoza at the town of Belchite, but within 3 weeks the offensive had ground to a halt. The Republicans gained an early breakthrough, but never mustered the force for the killer punch. The same was true in December 1937, when Rojo launched a further pre-emptive attack against in the hope of once more diverting Franco from Madrid.
In bitterly cold weather, his troops took Teruel on January 8 but were dislodged after six weeks of relentless battering by artillery and bombers. After another costly defense of a small advance, they had to retreat on February 21, 1938. The casualties on both sides had been high.
The Nationalists now exploited Republican exhaustion to launch a great drive through Aragon and Castellon towards the Mediterranean. 100,000 troops, 200 tanks, and nearly 1,000 German and Italian aircraft moved forward on March 7, 1938. The Republicans were short of guns and ammunition and demoralized after the defeat of Teruel. Franco’s troops moved down the Ebro Valley cutting off Catalonia from the rest of the Republican and, by April 15, reached the sea.
July 1-23; Franco held back from capturing Barcelona, and instead launched a major attack on Valencia. The Republicans’ stubborn entrenched defense made progress slow and exhausting, but it remained inexorable, on the 23rd the Nationalists were less than 40 km away from Valencia. In desperation, Rojo launched a great diversionary assault across the river Ebro in an attempt to restore contact with Catalonia. But the Nationalists reinforcements arrived, Franco was determined to defeat the Republican army so he went in a three month battle of attrition. But the surprising thing was in the end he won; the Nationalists were forced from the territory taken in July, then Barcelona fell on January 26,1939.
In Madrid, on March 4, the commander of the Republican Army of the Centre, Colonel Segismundo Casado, rebelled against the Republican government in the hope of stopping increasingly senseless slaughter. His overtures for a negotiated peace were rejected by Franco and, after a minor civil war within the civil war, Republican troops simply began to surrender. The Nationalists entered a stunned capital on March 27. 400,000 Republicans were forced into exile. Franco’s victory was institutionalized into 38 years of dictatorship. Over one million spent time in prison or labour camps. In addition to the 400,000 killed in the war, there were at least a further 100,000 executions between 1939 and 1943.
What skills did you learn?
1. How to use Windows 98 and Microsoft Word
2. How to find information in the local and school library and on the internet
3. How to write an historical essay at leaving cert. honors level.
Bibliography
Thomas, H. (1990) The Spanish Civil War, Penguin Books
Beever, A. (2001) The Spanish Civil War, Cassell Military
Nelson, C. (1996) The Spanish Civil War by American Volunteers, university of Illinois Press
Preston, P. (1996), A concise History of the Spanish Civil War, Fontana Press
Hemingway, E. (1998) The fifth column and four stories of the Spanish Civil War, Scribner Book Company.