Why is the spanish Civil war of 1937 so important?

Answer 1

As internal disagreements mounted in the coalition, strikes were frequent, and there were pistol attacks on unionists and clergy[2]. In the elections of February 1936, the Popular Front won a majority of the seats in parliament. The coalition, which included the Socialist Party (PSOE), two liberal parties (the Republican Left Party of Manuel Azaña and the Republican Union Party), and Communist Party of Spain, as well as Galician and Catalan nationalists, received 34.3 percent of the popular vote, compared to 33.2 percent for the National Front parties led by CEDA.[3] The Basque nationalists were not officially part of the Front, but were sympathetic to it. The anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), which had sat out previous elections, urged its members to vote for the Popular Front in response to a campaign promise of amnesty for jailed leftists. The Socialist Party refused to participate in the new government. Its leader, Largo Caballero, hailed as "the Spanish Lenin" by Pravda, told crowds that revolution was now inevitable. Privately, however, he aimed merely at ousting the liberals and other non-socialists from the cabinet. Moderate Socialists like Indalecio Prieto condemned the left's May Day marches, clenched fists, and talk of revolution as insanely provocative.[4]

From the Comintern's point of view the increasingly powerful, if fragmented, left and the weak right constituted an optimum situation. Its goal was to use the deteriorating situation to establish a bourgeois democracy, part of a series of instinctive yet counter-intuitive Comintern decisions that were primarily taken on the basis of military alliances with other European states and with the added motivation of discrediting all "Trotskyist" factions - which would come to include parties such as POUM, led by Andreu Nin, that was later unjustly and untruthfully accused of working with the fascists. An excellent account of the Comintern's mendacious behaviour can be found in George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia

Answer 2

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 was an armed conflict between elected, left-wing government and what would later be called fascist regimes. It was also a war in which Nazi German and Bolshevik Russian forces would aid one side or the other to try out new means of waging war. In a sense, it was a rehearsal for World War II. Englishmen and Americans went to Spain to fight for the republic, because it was anti-fascist. To get a sense of what it was like, read Ernest Hemmingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and George Orwell, "Homage to Catalonia." "Fascist" really refers to the regime set up by Benito Mussolini in Italy after 1926. The party of Franscisco Franco, who won the Spanish civil war were the phalangists.

Answer 3

It was a precursor to and testing ground for WWII. A program called Lend Lease gave the Soviet Union an opportunity to test equipment and materiel obtained by the US, in which many U.S.-built weapons were quietly transferred to the USSR in preparation for the WWII. PT boats, tanks, fighter aircraft, jeeps and supply trucks were some of the weaponry and support elements that would help determine the outcome of the world war - the ability of the USSR to withstand the Nazi advance - and hence, to determine the face of post-war Europe with its Communist satellite and western-allied nations.

Prior to WWII, Joseph Stalin was very concerned about the spread of fascism in Europe - notably, in Generalissimo Franco's Spain. While Hitler supplied Franco with planes, ground warfare equipment, etc., in October 1936 large quantities of Soviet tanks and aircraft began arriving in Spain to support the revolutionary forces. Many of these were US-built and delivered to the USSR via Lend Lease. They were accompanied by a large number of tank-drivers and pilots from the Soviet Union. All told, about 850 Soviet advisers, pilots, technical personnel and interpreters took part in the Spanish Civil War.

The Soviet Union were the main suppliers of military aid to the anti-Franco Republican Army. Their forces included 1,000 aircraft, 900 tanks, 1,500 artillery pieces, 300 armoured cars, 15,000 machine-guns, 30,000 automatic firearms, 30,000 mortars, 500,000 riles and 30,000 tons of ammunition.

In essence, Lend Lease and the Spanish Civil War served as a proving ground for the future Allied nations to test their equipment and capabilities against those deployed by the Nazi goverment.