Why Did Americans Die Fighting In Spain, 1932-1939?

Question

Why did the American Government choose to ignore Adolf Hitler's assistance to suppress the workers and peasants
who objected to General F. Franco?

Answer 1

General Franco led an insurrection against the existing monarchy. Perhaps strange to say, Leftists and communists flocked to the royalist/loyalist banner to fight against Franco who was supported by the Nazis and fascists. The Soviets supported the monarchist/communist side. It was a matter of political ( usually communist ) philosophy that motivated Americans to join the "Lincoln Brigade" to fight for the monarchist side.

Answer 2

The Americans who fought there were members of the 15th International Brigade, known in leftist political circles in the U.S. as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, although the rest of its ranks were fellow Marxists from several European countries and Canada. The U.S. had been on a "Red Scare" since the creation of Soviet Russia in late 1917. So, a war with Marxists fighting the falangists of Francisco Franco for control of Spain was not something the U.S. wanted to get involved with. Our army and navy had been reduced to minimal manning because of the Washington Naval Conference and the rising tide of pacifism in reaction to the carnage of the Great War years earlier.
Hitler used the Spanish Civil War as a real-time tactical test of his new Luftwaffe assets. Still, after he assumed power, Franco did not have Spain enter into a military alliance with Germany the way that Mussolini did with Italy.

Answer 3

Some Americans were sympathetic to the Spanish Government's struggle against Franco who was a fascist like Hitler and Mussolini.
The American government stayed out of it because they feared losing support at the next election. At that time one in three Americans were of German extraction and the Germans were supporting Franco

Answer 4

America was in an isolationist state at the time, due to the horrors of WWI. They were also deep in the depression so they couldn't afford to get into that mess.

Answer 5

Ernest Hemingway was in this war as an ambulance driver: he was influenced by it and wrote "For whom the bells toll"