Soviet policy in Spain became as controversial as the German intervention, and was more complex, with a major internal political dimension in addition to the Soviet military role. It also formed part of a broader international strategy more complicated than that of Germany. Unlike the Axis powers, the Soviet Union had been attempting to intervene in Spanish politics ever since Soviet agents had taken the initiative in organizing the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) in 1920. By contrast, Italian policy prior to the war had been directed primarily to cultural affairs, although Rome provided a modest subsidy to the Falange in 1935–36, after its earlier agreement with monarchists had become a dead letter. The Third Reich had limited itself to comparatively modest propaganda activities.

For fifteen years, the PCE was a complete failure, one of the weakest European Communist parties. There were various schisms and numerous changes in the party leadership, until in October 1932 the Communist International (Comintern) appointed the ex-anarchist José Díaz secretary general. He led a new team composed of such figures as Vicente Uribe and the very young Jesús Hernández, together with the party's first woman luminary, the eloquent Vizcayan propagandist and head of the women's section, Dolores Ibárruri (“Pasionaria”), who would become the best-known Communist during the civil war. These new leaders were tough, resourceful, hardworking, disciplined, and loyal to Moscow. They would provide determined and effective direction in the dramatic struggles that followed.

The social and economic revolution that swept through the Republican zone during the weeks following the arming of the worker movements on July 19 was proportionately the most extensive, and also most nearly spontaneous, worker revolution in a European country. It was carried out by genuine worker organizations on the local level, working from the bottom up, rather than being organized from the top down by a political party of middle-class intellectuals and activists, as in Russia. In Spain, most productive facilities were quickly taken over by trade union groups and committees, adopting a wide variety of revolutionary procedures.

By contrast, the revolution of March 1917 in Russia had not been a worker revolution (although workers figured prominently in it), but a general revolt against the autocracy in which various social sectors took part, giving rise to a chaotic form of democracy – a system of dual government by a limited parliament on the one hand and local revolutionary councils, or soviets, on the other. The Bolshevik coup d'etat seven months later was a military seizure of power by a single party carrying out a counterrevolution against democracy. It was supported by many, but not all, workers and did not involve the great majority of Russians, who lived in the countryside.

“Civil war within the Civil War” has become a cliché about the internal conflicts of the revolutionary Republic, yet such strife had been inherent in Spanish left-liberalism from its beginning more than a century earlier. Even more severe internal strife had characterized the left-liberal side in the two civil wars of the nineteenth century. During the First Carlist War (1833–40) two different new constitutions had been introduced, the second of them preceded by violent intra-liberal clashes that overthrew the government, whereas in the Second Carlist War (1869/73–76), there had been two complete changes of regime, the first accompanied by numerous provincial insurgencies, partially modeled on the Paris Commune.

The Second Republic was always prone to severe conflict, violent rebellion by Republicans antedating the Republic itself. The Republican coalition initially launched a military pronunciamiento against the government of Alfonso XIII in December 1930, not during the dictatorship but during the period in which the monarchy was moving, however slowly, toward new elections. There followed the four revolutionary insurrections of 1932–34, the pre-revolutionary insurgency of the spring of 1936, and the conflicts within the Civil War itself. For the Republicans, as Edward Malefakis has written, the Civil War was less the simple morality play that Republican propaganda strove to present than it was “Greek tragedy or modern drama, with their portrayal of the protagonist as his own chief enemy, unable to triumph because he is unable to gain ascendancy over himself.” Negrín's correspondence after the Civil War seems to have agreed with such an assessment.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Spain experienced less internalconflict than other large Western countries such as France, England, or Germany.This changed drastically, however, with the transition to modern politics in thenineteenth century, when Spain became the most conflict-prone country in WesternEurope.

The long history of Spain has been marked by extreme heights and depths. It tookthe Romans much longer to conquer the peninsula – nearly two centuries– than any other part of their empire, but the land they called“Hispania” then became an important and integral part of the Romanworld. It is from Rome that it would derive its name, languages, laws, culture,religion, and initial social development. After the breakup of Rome, the newkingdom of the Visigoths in what was then called “Spania” createdthe first of the historic nations of Europe, with a written legal code and thebeginning of a new identity and institutional structure. Yet the Visigoths werenever able to achieve political unity, and internal division contributed greatlyto their sudden overthrow.

The course of Spanish history was drastically altered in 711, when a Musliminvasion overthrew the Visigothic monarchy and soon occupied most of thepeninsula. During the next three centuries, most of the country becamereligiously and culturally Islamic, part of the Middle Eastern world centered onMecca and Bagdad. Small, isolated Christian communities survived only with thegreatest difficulty in the northern mountains, but they slowly became strongeruntil they eventually reconquered the entire peninsula. This was the onlysignificant case in world history in which a major territory was not merelyconquered militarily by Muslims, but also religiously and culturallyIslamicized, and then was completely reconquered by a portion of its nativepopulation, who not merely expelled the intruders, but also restored their ownreligion and culture. Had the Spanish never achieved anything else in all theirhistory, this alone would have made them unique in human annals.

Francisco Franco has been called the leader of the most successful counterrevolutionary movement of the twentieth century. This is all the more ironic given that Franco clearly had no such ambition as late as July 12, 1936, or even a week afterward, when he arrived in Spanish Morocco to take command of the Army of Africa. Though always a conservative, he had also been discreet and had never been known as a “political general.” Unlike some of his comrades, he had never been directly involved in politics, except for his candidacy on a rightist electoral ticket in May 1936 that was quickly withdrawn. When he finally joined the planned insurrection, Franco had gone along with Mola's scheme to retain the republican form of government, with separation of church and state, and possibly a referendum or new parliament to determine the final character of the regime. Like nearly all the district commanders, Franco began the rebellion under the slogans of “!Viva España! !Viva la República!” The goal, it was claimed, was to restore the legal system, corrupted by the Popular Front.

The Junta de Defensa Nacional, formed by Mola in Burgos on July 23, was an interim all-military junta. General Miguel Cabanellas nominally presided as the most senior active general, ultimately becoming something of an embarrassment insofar as he was a Mason, a moderate liberal, and a former candidate of the Radical Party. The two months that followed became a time of prolonged military emergency, punctuated in the rear guard by mass atrocities in the repression carried out by the Nationalists.

The Spanish civil war has been defined in quite diverse ways, most of them derived from ideological predilections or international power struggles. Only occasionally has the war been analyzed in terms of its most accurate definition, as a revolutionary/counterrevolutionary struggle, typical of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, though also singular because of its geographic location, timing, and special features. The reasons for this reluctance to treat the civil war as a revolutionary conflict have been discussed in Chapter 6. The Soviet definition, however, was not reluctant to do so, for decades labeling it the “Spanish national-revolutionary war” and, unlike some Western commentaries, giving major importance to the revolutionary struggle.

As emphasized earlier, the most unique features of the Spanish civil war had to do with 1) its timing, long after the revolutionary wave of 1917–23 yet prior to World War II, at first moving strongly counter to European political tendencies of the 1930s; 2) its location, the only full-scale civil war in Western Europe during the entire era; and 3) its origins – of all the violent domestic conflicts between 1917 and 1949, it was the only one not provoked, or at least influenced in a major way, by foreign war. There were other differentiating factors, some completely unique and others only partially distinct.

Hugh Thomas titled the last part of his classic history of the Civil War “The War of the Two Counter Revolutions.” Certainly the extreme revolutionary left – the FAI-CNT, POUM, and many of the caballerista Socialists – accused the Communists and their allies (left Republicans and the more moderate sectors of Socialists) of imposing counterrevolution. Was this correct? The charge always infuriated the Communists, because they claimed to be the only serious revolutionaries in Spain, the only ones who had experience carrying out a successful revolution. They insisted that they simply sought to apply necessary revolutionary discipline, indispensable to the revolution's long-term success. What both the extreme left and some historians called a left-wing counterrevolution was a calculated strategy to restore order among the left and prosecute the war more effectively. This also enabled the Communists to achieve a limited, but very incomplete, hegemony.

For the leaders of the Communist International in Moscow, the situation had become paradoxical. For fifteen years they had tried to provoke or exploit revolutionary situations worldwide. The Comintern had attempted multiple violent initiatives in Germany, insurrections in Bulgaria, Estonia, and Brazil, a revolutionary takeover in southeast Asia, and even an effort to blow up the entire Bulgarian government. Nonetheless, what was called revolutionary Third Period policy had backfired disastrously, requiring the switch to the Popular Front strategy. This partial moderation of Communist tactics then coincided with the acceleration of the revolutionary process in Spain. By the time the civil war began, the bulk of the Spanish worker left was positioned tactically to the left of the PCE.

Foreign intervention sometimes played a crucial role in the outcome of theEuropean civil wars of the early twentieth century. The Baltic states couldnever have beaten back the Bolsheviks without the assistance of the British andGermans. In Hungary, Rumanian invasion, not counterrevolution, overthrew theBela Kun regime. In Finland, the Whites substantially defeated the Reds, butGerman assistance sealed the victory. Later, Soviet invasion guaranteed thefinal triumph of Tito's Yugoslav Partisans. British and American assistance wasdecisive in the outcome of the Greek civil war of 1944–49.

The Russian civil war seems to have been the exception. Limited intervention byBritain, France, Japan, and the United States failed to prevent the triumph ofBolshevism. The crucial intervention in Russia, however, was that of Germany,whose cooperation made possible the initial consolidation of the Bolshevikregime.

Spain had been absent from great power politics for a century and more, and hadno allies, but then, except in 1898, it had not recently had need of them. Onthe other hand, Salvador de Madariaga, as acting representative of the Republicat the League of Nations in Geneva, had undertaken a new role virtually on hisown, assuming the leadership of the lesser powers in opposition to Japanese andItalian aggression. This was the most significant new Spanish diplomaticinitiative in more than a century, though it all went for naught.

The Spanish civil war was the most important political and military struggle in Europe during the decade prior to World War II. It not only polarized Spain, but produced an intense reaction among millions all over Europe and the Americas. The war was given many names. Leftists, as well as many liberals, termed it varyingly “fascism versus democracy,” “the people versus the oligarchy” (or “against the army”), “revolution versus counterrevolution,” and even “the future versus the past.” Rightists and conservatives at different times called it a struggle of “Christianity versus atheism,” “Western civilization against communism,” “Spain versus anti-Spain,” and “law and order against subversion.” These labels were antithetical, but nonetheless not always mutually exclusive, for the war was extremely complicated and contradictory, and there were greater or lesser amounts of truth in most of these appellations, although some were more accurate than others.

The war began over internal issues in Spain, but once all three major European dictatorships initiated limited intervention, many people began to see it as an international conflict by proxy. In other countries, attitudes were sometimes colored more by opinion about the intervening states than about the Spanish conflict itself, for the outcome was perceived by many as potentially changing the balance of power in Western Europe.

From the beginning of the Republic in 1931, both the extreme left and extreme right had conspired against it, but in the first years neither was important. Ultra-right-wing monarchists, erstwhile supporters of the former king Alfonso XIII known as “alfonsinos,” began to conspire almost as soon as the monarchy collapsed, while the Republic's religious persecution stimulated the reemergence of their rivals, the traditionalist monarchists or Carlists, whose origins lie early in the nineteenth century. Few monarchists, however, were willing to become directly involved, so that the abortive rebellion of General José Sanjurjo in August 1932 gained success in only one garrison (Seville) and quickly collapsed, enjoying less support than any of the three anarchist insurrections.

Founding of the monarchist journal Acción Española first provided a new theoretical basis for what was termed the instauración, not restoration, of a new kind of neotraditional, Catholic, and corporative-authoritarian monarchy, but the alfonsino political party, Renovación Española, was never able to generate much support. The two monarchist groups, the Carlist Comunión Tradicionalista and Renovación Española, together could scarcely draw as much as 10 percent of the vote. After the partial victory of the CEDA in the elections of 1933, the extreme right despaired of its own strength and turned to Mussolini's Italy, signing an agreement with the Italian government on March 31, 1934, which was to provide Italian financial support, military training facilities, and a limited amount of weapons to assist an eventual monarchist revolt in Spain. The very need to look abroad was evidence of the weakness of this conspiracy, which predictably produced nothing and by the following year had become a dead letter.

The Spanish Civil War was the most important conflict in Europe in the decade prior to World War II and has generated an enormous literature. Even after the passage of three generations it continues to stimulate interest. The controversies ignited by the war still find partisans, well beyond Spain, while within the country the war continues to play a dominant role both in historiography and in partisan discourse.

The first objective history, published by Hugh Thomas in 1961, was expanded into a more thorough 1,100-page work sixteen years later. Though no single volume can capture completely and definitively a conflict that was as complex as the French Revolution, the revised edition of Thomas remains unsurpassed as a single-volume narrative. The present book does not offer an exhaustive description of the war, but tries to clarify the key issues, discussing the most salient themes within an analytical and comparative framework, while incorporating the results of the most recent research. It especially seeks to respond to the injunction of José Ortega y Gasset in 1938 that the most important thing to understand about the war is the nature of its origins.

The impact of the revolutionary insurrection was profound. In Asturias, therevolutionaries had seized control of most of a province, and a militarycampaign of more than two weeks was required to defeat them. From this point,polarization increased, and some historians have referred to the insurrectioneither as the “prelude to” or “first battle” of theeventual civil war. Nonetheless, the democratic Republic remained intact, andthere was still opportunity to overcome, or at least palliate, the deepeningpolarization.

Almost all the new polities established in Europe after 1919 featured multipartysystems, but the Spanish Republic was unique in producing three successivedrastic shifts in government within less than five years, making continuity verydifficult and encouraging radicalization. Yet more unique was the absence of anycoherent hegemonic force of the sort that, for good or ill, resolved crises inother countries. The Republic was unable to produce any kind of viable majoritycoalition, a dominant nationalist movement, a major hegemonic party, or even atemporary authoritarian government capable of enforcing its will.

For nearly a year, from October 1934 to September 1935, Spain was governed by aCEDA-Radical coalition. Whereas the initial biennium of 1931–33 had been a timeof advanced, sometimes radical, reformism, the second phase under the Radicalsin 1933–34 was a period of balanced administration from the center. Thegovernment that Lerroux led in the third phase from 1934 to 1935 was acenter-right coalition that moved in a much more conservative direction,revising or canceling a number of the earlier reforms and abruptly reversingmost of the limited agrarian reform. In one sense, this was a normal developmentin a representative political system in which different electoral results maylead to different policies, but according to the left, it was the beginning of“fascism.”

Franco left the Canaries on July 18 and arrived by plane in Spanish Morocco on the following day to assume command of the key forces stationed there. He had first gained his reputation as a combat officer in the long and arduous campaigns between 1912 and 1926 to put down the native insurgency in the Protectorate, and his prestige among the military in Spanish Morocco was unrivaled. The entire Protectorate fell under the control of the Nationalists at the outset, providing them with a military base and the only combat-ready units in the army. The insurgent leaders quickly began to move troops to the mainland, but only about 700 were transferred during the first twenty-four hours before the Republican navy established a blockade.

Once Franco had joined the insurrection, he immediately assumed a major role, all the more important given that the nominal commander-in-chief, General José Sanjurjo, died in a plane crash on July 20 when attempting to leave his Portuguese exile for what would be called the zona nacional – the “Nationalist zone.” Mola then created a governing body for the insurgents on July 23, when he established a multimember Junta de Defensa Nacional in Burgos in the far north, led by General Miguel Cabanellas, the most senior officer among the rebel commanders. Franco would only officially join it on August 3, but from the beginning he exercised independent command in Morocco, in which he took the initiative on both the military and the diplomatic fronts.

The civil war was the most destructive experience in modern Spanish history, rivaled only by the French invasion of 1808. It resulted in great loss of life, much human suffering, disruption of the society and the economy, distortion and repression in cultural affairs, and truncation of the country's political development. Franco's regime continued for nearly four decades, until the aged dictator's death in 1975, even if during this long life it changed from a brutally repressive semi-fascist regime to becoming a sort of “progressive dictatorship,” however incongruous the concept.

It is not possible to generate precise statistics about the war and its aftermath, but the cost in military deaths alone was not as great proportionately as in the First Carlist War or the American Civil War. Military deaths for both sides combined amounted to little more than 150,000, to which must be added perhaps as many as 25,000 foreign participant fatalities. As indicated in Chapter 6, the total number of victims of the repression remains problematic, but was probably at least equal to the number of Spanish military deaths, with approximately 56,000 executions by the Republicans and a somewhat higher number by the Nationalists. In addition, on both sides combined, about 12,000 civilians died from military action (mostly in the Republican zone), to which must be added thousands of deaths beyond the normal rate as a result of stress, disease, and malnutrition. The total for victims of violence amounted to approximately 1.1 percent of the Spanish population. If all civilian fatalities beyond the norm are added, the number of deaths attributable to the civil war would reach approximately 344,000, or nearly 1.4 percent. To this may be added several hundred thousand fewer births than normal for the four years between 1936 and 1940.

Conditions in Spain between February and July 1936, which eventually produced civil war, were unique in the history of twentieth-century European states in peacetime, for nowhere else did a parliamentary government preside over an equivalent breakdown of law and order without the stress of external crisis. The elections had been won, however dubiously, by an alliance of the moderate left and the revolutionaries. Because the latter refused to participate in any but a revolutionary regime, the new government was formed by a minority coalition of left Republican parties, led by Azaña. Even though the authority of this government steadily declined, it would remain the key actor for the next five months, with responsibility for guiding the country and avoiding breakdown or civil war. It failed to meet these responsibilities because its priorities were, first, to maintain an exclusively all-leftist government that rejected any compromise with the center or moderate right and, second, to avoid any break with the revolutionaries because their support was necessary to remain in power. The Republic's first historian, the noted Catalan journalist Josep Pla, termed this strategy Azaña's “ideological Kerenskyism,” referring to the Russian prime minister who fell to the Bolsheviks.

Azaña's design was to complete the Popular Front program, consolidating radical changes to guarantee domination by the moderate left. Allying with the center would have required moderation – a policy anathema to Azaña – who had always held that earlier Spanish progressives inevitably failed because of moderation and compromise, which he was determined to eschew. He pledged a policy of rapid and radical reform, “in no way,” as he put it, equivalent to the more moderate program of his first government in 1931–33. This could not be enacted without the support of the revolutionary parties, but he expected the latter to moderate their demands in the process. If they did not, he would later be prepared to break with them once his program had been enacted. This further explains why he engaged in no drastic purge or shakeup of the military, despite growing hostility among the latter. He thought it unlikely that any sizable sector of the military would rebel against the government, while ultimately he would have to depend on them to keep the revolutionaries in line. In the interim, the government was reluctant to restrain the revolutionaries too much, and also maintained a comparatively complacent attitude toward the military.