← Dan Snow's History Hit
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Hello folks. Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London in England on 12th September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it. Get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there.
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You know how everything's a subscription now. Music, movies, even socks. I swear if it to continue this.
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Uh, what? No. Anyway, Blue Apron.
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Wait, no subscription?
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Hey, what's up? It's Mario Lopez. Back to school is an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated, a vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect. Everyday moments can become opportunities for someone with bad intentions. Whether you're a parent, teacher, coach or neighbor, check in, ask questions, stay connected. Blue Campaign is a national awareness initiative that provides resources to help recognize suspected instances of of human trafficking. Learn the signs and how to report@dhs.gov.
- [01:33]
D
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Shopify.comretail in the 1930s, Europe was racked with tension. Authoritarianism, nationalism, communism. All thriving amidst the wreckage of catastrophic economic dislocation. In 1936, a brutal conflict erupted in Spain. It was a civil war that would tear the country apart, claim hundreds of thousands of lives and establish a nearly four decades long right wing dictatorship. It also offered a chilling preview of the global war that was to come. The Spanish Civil War. A violent clash of ideologies. Neighbors turned on neighbors. Cities were bombed to rubble. The world watched as democracy and fascism and communism collided on the battlefields of Spain. It was the most important event in modern Spanish history, and it was one of the really defining conflicts of the 20th century. To understand how Spain spiraled into war and why it really mattered, we're going to be looking on this podcast Dan Snow's history into the deep political and social divisions of the early 20th century. You're going to look at the collapse of the monarchy, the rise of the second Republic, the reforms that enraged Spain's conservative elites. We're going to hear about country versus city, the place of religion in society, inequality, culture wars and the mobilizing, polarizing effect of new communication technologies. We're gonna Hear how in July 1936, a group of disaffected right wing generals launched a coup. It might have only lasted a few days, but a bizarre and unfortunate mix of meddling and complacency from international actors turbocharged it into a three year civil war. From the beginning, this was more than just a fight for power. It was a battle. Battle for the soul of Spain. Each side viewed the other as an existential threat. And as the violence escalated, atrocities mounted and families were torn apart. Hitler and Mussolini threw their support behind the rebels while the Soviet Union backed the Republic. Volunteers from around the world joined the fight. German and Italian warplanes bombed Spanish cities, most infamously the Basque town of Guernica, foreshadowing the horrors of World War II. By early 1939, the Republic had been defeated. General Francisco Franco seized control. Months later, Hitler invaded Poland. The Spanish Civil War had ended. But its lessons, both learned and ignored, echoed loudly as Europe plunged into an even greater catastrophe. Joining us to guide us through this turbulent history is Helen Graham. She's the very brilliant professor of modern European history at Royal Holloway. She's the author of the Spanish Civil War. A short introduction and in the Shadow Defeat. Radical Lives after the Spanish Civil War. And there is nothing she does not know about this conflict. We begin our story in the 1920s with a Spain desperate for stability and a man promising to deliver it. Enjoy.
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T minus 10.
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Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
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God save the King.
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No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.
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In 1923, General Miguel Primo de River seized power in a bloodless coup. He was backed by King Alfonso xiii and he was supported, at least initially, by many people in a war weary and politically fractured Spanish population. Spain had been stripped of its once mighty Global empire defeats over the centuries to the Brits and the Dutch and the French, well, they'd been followed in the late 19th century by humiliation at the hands of the United States of America. But there was worse to come. In 1921, Spain suffered really just a deeply humiliating defeat in Morocco at the hands of North African tribesmen. At the Battle of Annual, they lost over 10,000 soldiers. Confidence in parliamentary democracy was low and many elites and conservatives welcomed military rule as a temporary necessity. Primo de Rivera promised to restore order and pride. He focused on building infrastructure, railways, roads, public buildings. He sought to modernize Spain's economy. He thought this would be the answer to Spain's deep rooted social and economic problems. Vast rural poverty, fierce tension between landowners and peasants, and growing demands in the cities for secularism, for social justice. These fractures had been exacerbated, inflamed by the First World War. Surprisingly, given that Spain wasn't technically a combatant. Helen will explain. Helen, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
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My pleasure.
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Let's start in Spain itself. What are the preconditions for conflict in Spain itself? Is it some of those themes we see running through the 19th century? Is it indeed, during the Napoleonic invasion, ideas around modernity and religion, the place of Catholicism. Tell me about class and religion and all those things in Spain at the time.
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Well, all of these things are obviously part of the mix, but I mean, in a sense, the great event that really triggers everything is actually the Great War of 1914-18. Just like it triggers a whole process of tensions and changes across Europe. Now, obviously, we know Spain wasn't a belligerent power in the First World War, but as a colleague of mine has said, if Spain didn't enter the war, the war entered Spain, Spanish industry, everything was at full tilt. Exporting as a neutral power to the two sides in the agriculture industry. There wasn't the follow on reform and industrial reforms that were required, but there was a massive making of money and a massive demographic geographic shift of people to work into Madrid, and particularly Barcelona, which of course is the great industrial powerhouse. And so in a sense, that changes the balance of population in Spain. And it's echoing the same kind of tensions and questions across Europe in terms of mobilization of war workers and new constituencies wanting a voice and a vote. So in a sense, it's the war, the war of 1914, 18, which kind of kickstarts all of these tensions. All of the other things are there, class and religion, but in a sense, the tipping towards new kinds of industrialised cities. And the new constituencies in them is what really shakes everything off. And I think that's true for Spain too.
- [09:03]
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How absolutely fascinating. So, at the risk of sounding like a Brit who's familiar with British history or even a bit of a Marxist here, so you've got this process of industrialization and people crowding into cities and demanding votes and new middle class people which you see in Britain across almost 150 years that suddenly happens in Spain in quite a short and sharp amount of time. Does it? If that's not too simple.
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Britain is different, as you know, from continental. Any industrializing part of continental Europe, Britain is different. It's a much more gradual process. But in Spain, yes, it's much more concentrated. And I think that's the nature of the problem. But it isn't just. For example, in the 1920s, Spain has a military dictatorship under another general, Primo de Rivera. And that is also a period of an attempted shift, an attempt to modify the army, an attempt to bring some kind of very constrained social welfarism to the acceptable face of labor, which is the socialist, quite moderate ugt, and even tries to tinker with other things. And of course, he's a landowner from Jareth. He both represents the military hierarchy and the landowning aristocracy of the south. So he represents the poles of old Spain's power. And he's trying to tinker with it in the 20s, bolstered by boom in Spain and by loans which he takes out from abroad. More and more modernization and more and more demographic shift. The iconography says that, you know, the republic went to war and it was a working class power. Well, it was in part, but it was also the aspirational urban middle classes, not all of whom were certainly they weren't sort of left wing, but they are hostile to the old regime which excludes them. I think it's very important to put out there the idea that the republic was a very diverse constituency of. Had a very diverse constituency of support.
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Primo de Rivera's regime was deeply authoritarian. He dissolved parliament, he sensed the press. He suppressed regional nationalism, particularly in Catalonia. The working and urban middle classes grew dissatisfied with his rule. He then tried to reform the military, which turned out to be a deeply unpopular decision with his core supporters in the army.
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He tries to tinker with the army and this of course, is, you know, how much harder is it going to be for a despised group of republican civilians who try to tinker with the army afterwards. But he tries to model, modify certain promotion structures so he loses the support of the army. There's a general sense that he's one of ours, but he's kind of done tinkering with the state. He's tried to introduce reforms. Let's just get back to the way we were before. So the dictatorship falls apart.
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By 1930, Primo de Rivera's popularity had plummeted. The military turned against him and he resigned. And he took down the monarchy with him within a year. In April 1931, with the dictatorship gone, the king in exile, Spain declared itself a republic, the Second Republic, as it was called this time. It was a broad church and it encompassed millions of newly enfranchised workers, as well as aspirational urban middle class. For many, it was a fresh start. There was bold promises. There was going to be land reform, secular education, expanded rights, women, autonomy for Catalonia in the Basque country, a nation that was saddled with debt, riddled with structural problems. Well, it seemed like it was on the brink of a great transformation. The Republican government, it was led by left leaning reformists. They moved quickly. The military was cut back. The Catholic Church, which had been so powerful in Spanish politics, it lost control over schools. Spain underwent a process of intense secularization. It was an extensive reforming agenda. They hoped it would modernize Spain. They hoped it would alter the fabric of Spanish society. But that is a challenging task. And they desperately struggled to find that elusive balance between too much change and too little that dogged this new government from the get go.
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The Republic comes in with a huge reforming agenda and I suppose one could say with perfect vision of hindsight, that it was probably too much. They want to kind of make a land reform without it being a revolutionary land reform. They're not going to expropriate. They're going to actually, over years, basically remunerate the landowners, the land they take. The object of this is to try and create an internal market to kickstart Spanish industry. It's not like a kind of ideological revolutionary program. It's about modernizing Spain, because that's what the Republic's about. It's an Enlightenment vision. It's about educating the population, it's about introducing primary education, but it's also about economic modernization. But the people who have the purse strings, the treasury, are never revolutionary. So they're not going to expropriate so immediately. There's a problem that they will only do it very slowly because they won't borrow money for it. The only thing they ever borrow money for is to open schools, a primary education, a schoolroom in every village in Spain. That's the only thing they ever borrow further abroad. So a land before which is crucial to the project, but is very slow. And this creates all kinds of disappointment and anger amongst the landless, of whom there are vast numbers, especially in the south of Spain, because the deep south of Spain is basically a land of large landed estates and effectively day laborers who are landless and desperate for land. So there's quite a lot of turbulence. People in the cities want the Republic to be the savior, to give them more social welfarism than the Republic can afford. So in a sense, it's a kind of irony that although the Republic does more for working people and the ordinary population than any regime before, it's perceived as not doing enough, because it's envisaged as almost like a secular saviour. And of course it can't live up to that. Above all in a depression saddled with debt.
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Rapid reform, unsurprisingly, met fierce resistance. Anarchists, socialists and communists, they felt the reforms weren't going far enough. Meanwhile, things like the promotion of secular education in particular enraged powerful landlords, traditional elites, industrious monarchists, the clergy. In 1932, there was an attempted right wing military coup by a monarchist named General San Jorjo. It failed, but the threat lingered.
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I think it's also important to talk about mindsets in this context, because we have to understand the kind of conservatism that was looking at the Republic, because if you're going to understand the coalition, the social civilian coalition, which is behind the military, which supports the military coup, you have to understand something about another kind of Spain, both in terms of elites and patrician, but also poor, impoverished inland peasantry who see the Republic as somehow going to rip away their Catholic faith and so on and so forth. So there's this Enlightenment, forward looking vision which is in a sense triggered by the loss of Empire in 1898. The Republic emerges from that wider vision, supported by urban constituencies. And against that, you've got the army that's going to lose out because the junior officers are going to lose their jobs or not be recruited. You've got the patrician sort of hierarchy of the army. You've got the most conservative church hierarchy in Europe, ultramontane fundamentalist Catholic hierarchy. You've got a landed elite which believes in a divine right to rule. And so when the Republic comes along and says, you're illiterate laborers, we're going to educate them, we're going to put every child in a primary school for a number of years to understand the kind of Conservatism, that there was not every conservative in Spain, but this powerful kind of backward looking bloc, and certainly the patrician bloc they're looking back to, almost like a kind of medieval chain of being. They think nothing must ever change. It's no surrender, it's absolutely no give for anything, it's apocalypse, it's us or them. Spain wasn't feudal. It had long since ceased to be feudal in any economic sense. But socially, in the deep south, in the lands of the Latifundi, the big landed estates in the south, it was socially feudal. There were massive estates where the retainers and the people who worked the land never left for their whole lives. The chapel, their little chapel, would be inside the grounds. And to be told that these people have to be educated, they're not yours, they don't belong to you. And of course the church, not all bishops were conservatives and not that entirety of the church hierarchy was not totally hidebound. But in the heartland of Castile, in the inland, the rural, the central area, which is the heart of the long distant empire, there was this sense that any education is our prerogative. And of course, that is education according to social class, for an absolutely designated role in life. Right? We educate the poor to serve, we don't educate them to have ideas. We're not talking about a very grandiose education here. We're talking about what was achieved in France almost before the start of the 20th century. We're talking about a bit of writing, reading and arithmetic. We're talking about primary education. I started by saying this is about mindset. I think it is very important to understand how hidebound and how absolutely immobile patrician conservatism was. And of course he managed to attract to it the landlocked peasantry of Castile and Leon. Draw a line across Madrid above, but inland of the sea, where they all had tiny amounts of land and were very poor. But the priest often had quite an intimate relationship with these small landed, usually landed, but tiny, tiny handkerchiefs of land or very little. And that was a very different relationship. And they therefore felt that any kind of attack on the church was an attack on them, even though separation of church and state is a very different thing to an attack on Catholicism. But in any case, these inland peasantry were the kind of people who became the foot soldiers of Francoism who were recruited to the crusade for old Spain, the Spain of the 16th century, the hammer of heretics, with a unified religion, with everybody knowing their plate. The people who own 2/3 of Cadiz Province would say to the man who has a pocket handkerchief in Laon, we landowners are up against, as if the Republic is going to rip away your pocket handkerchiefs. The Republic had no intention, but you know, it's what you believe. I mean, the Republic wasn't perfect. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, but strategically, a lot of things could have been done better.
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In the 1933 elections, the pendulum swung right. The Catholic Conservative Party won on a platform of defending the Catholic Church and combating what it considered authoritarian socialism and religious persecution. The next few years became known as the Black Biennium. It was a period that saw a right wing shift in politics and resulted in increasing tension and open violence. Although this Catholic Party didn't immediately take power, in October 1934, the Republican government tried to include conservative Catholic ministers in the cabinet. To many, this looked like caving to fascism in Spain. Workers in Asturias protested with a strike that snowballed into an armed uprising. They stormed army barracks, they took over towns, they declared a revolutionary Workers Republic. For two weeks they controlled much of the region and they redistributed food, they sought local committees, they dismantled institutions they didn't like. But it wasn't a peaceful revolution. Churches were burned, priests were killed. Violence erupted on both sides. The Republican government, supported by this Catholic Conservative Party, sent in the army. The situation worsened and a general was brought in to quell the Asturian uprising. His name was Francisco Franco. Now, we've done an episode on Franco before January 2023, so go back and listen to that if you want to learn more about him. But in short, Franco, by this stage, he was well established figure in the Spanish military. He'd cut his teeth with the regulares in North Africa as a force of Moroccan troops. But the one that was led by Spanish officers, he'd been wounded. In 1916, he became the youngest major in the Spanish army. Later, he joined a newly formed elite unit, the Spanish Foreign Legion. He returned to North Africa to fight in the Rif War in the 1920s, and he proved capable. He was brutal. By 1934, he had notched up a string of battlefield successes and he now repressed this Asturian uprising ruthlessly. He brought in the Spanish Foreign Legion Moroccan colonial troops to crush the uprising. Thousands were killed, tens of thousands imprisoned. There was torture, summary executions. There were months of retaliation and repression that followed. The whole affair obviously, therefore deepened massively the polarization in Spanish politics. The right saw it as the proof of the threat by leftists. The left saw the government crackdown as proof of coming fascism. Trust between Political camps collapsed. And of course, this isn't just going on inside Spain. Right and left are clashing right across Europe. Fascism's on the rise. The far left. Communism is gaining popular traction. Observers in other countries began to see Spain as experiment, as a battleground on which the great ideologies of the time would go head to head. For the next two years, Spain grew ever more polarized. There was open violence, there were tit for tat assassinations. Members of leftist militias and extreme nationalist groups like the Falange would execute politicians and officials and members of the judiciary whose allegiances lay with the other side.
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That kind of sense of 1936 as a crescendo of disruption and violence, whether it was or not, of course, is another question. I mean, again, we have conservative newspapers magnifying everything and stringing together all of the incidents as if everywhere in Spain is in chaos. And then you have the tit for tat assassinations of, first of all, an assault guard leader, and then the Republican police go for the leader of the monoclist parliamentary opposition, and he's found dead after having been in Republican police custody, which is not a good look for a constitutional regime. I mean, obviously, he is. Assassination was not ordered by the Republic.
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In July of 1936, for a handful of discontented Nationalist army officers, the time had finally arrived for a coup that would overthrow the Spanish Republic once and for all. Ostensibly, they were mobilized by the assassination of one of the parliamentary conservatives that Helen's just mentioned, Jose Calvo Sotelo. But in truth, the plotters were already in the advanced stages of planning a coup by the time Sotello was killed.
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It's not that I think they suddenly are convinced that we need to do something. They're always convinced they need to do something, right? Right from the beginning, the Republic has to go. But the moment when they can make what I often call the coup against social change is in 1936, when, in a sense, there's enough fear and fright amongst conservative constituencies in Spain.
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The killing of Sotelo and the outrage it inspired provided them with the catalyst they needed to put their plan into action. There were already five key conspirators. There was General Emilio Mola. He was the brains behind it all. He was the Director General of Security. He planned it all. His nickname among the rebels was el Director, meaning the Director. Then there was General Jose Sanjuro, the same Sanjuro who we met in the failed Coup back in 1932. He was in exile in Portugal, but he was a sort of symbolic Leader. He was nicknamed the lion of the Rif for his exploits during the Rif war. He was supposed to return to Spain and take over overall command. But fate intervened. Just days after the coup began, he would die in a plane crash. Next we've got General Gonzalo Cuypo de Jano. Flamboyant, brutal figure. He took control of Seville. He would be famous for his propaganda broadcasts. Infamous really, full of taunts and threats and sexualized boasts. He had the sort of mad charisma of a Mussolini. Then we have General Andres Saliquet. He would play the role of securing northern Spain for the rebels. Less famous, but he sort of embodies the group of officers who attempted to give the coup regional traction. Last but not least, we have General Francisco Franco. @ the time of the coup, he was stationed in the Canary Islands. He was cautious about throwing his lot in. Actually, right up until the last minute, his co conspirators dubbed him Miss Canary Island 1936 for his hesitation to join. But his reluctance was certainly not on moral grounds. He was an opportunist.
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He's very cautious, not because I think he has any love of the Republic, but because he doesn't want to risk his career. If it goes wrong, it goes pearl shaped. I mean, he's incredibly reserved and sealed, you know, he's a cold fish, but he's very, very ambitious.
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But Franco did join, and once the coup was underway on 17 July 1936, Franco became indispensable. That was because the coup began not on the Spanish mainland, but in Spanish Morocco where the 30,000 strong army of Africa was stationed. These were some of Spain's most experienced troops and included the Spanish Foreign Legion as well as the Moroccan regulares, both of whom were loyal to Franco. Very quickly, Spanish Morocco fell to the rebels. But not every officer supported the coup. Spain's military was split and many stayed loyal to the Republic. In fact, it's likely that if things had continued on this course without foreign intervention, the coup may never have spiralled into a war at all.
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We're not talking about what causes a three year war. None of this would cause a three year war. It's about the military coup. If the military coup had been just the military coup, without any foreign intervention, which is to say no intervention from the Third Reich or Mussolini, that coup would have been stifled in seven or 14 days and that would have been the end of it. We wouldn't be talking about a war. There's a three year war because Hitler and Mussolini get involved. The civil War is a civil war for seven days and after that it's internationalised.
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In that case, tell me about that coup. So the coup launches, are we in July 1936.
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We're on 17th and 18th. July 1936, it launches in North Africa and there's a declaration. The choreography of the coup is that it will spread to the mainland and there will be garrison rebellions across Spain in urban areas. Right. And they will take control of mainland Spain. It doesn't go to plan. And of course it doesn't go to plan because they don't understand that there's a huge demographic part of Spain, territorial part of Spain, that's looking for the change that's coming through the Republic. And that is what explains the resistance to the coup in most of urban populous Spain. Right. So it works in North Africa, but immediately the naval ratings mutiny against their rebel commanders. The navy blocks the Strait of Gibraltar. So there is no way to get the colonial army of Africa from Africa to Spain to be the spearhead of the reconquest, as they see it in those terms, a kind of colonial reconquest of the patria, if you like. So the two prongs, they're supposed to come across the straits and actually flow up and take control. And also the cities are going to be controlled by rebellions in urban garrisons. Well, neither of these things work because basically the straits are blocks that they conquered the army across. And in the majority of urban populist Spain, the revolt fails. The garrisons are defeated in street fighting, which is a combination of loyal police units, some military and the iconic image of the Spanish Civil War, trade union and political party militia.
- [28:23]
A
More Spanish Civil War coming up.
- [28:34]
C
Hey, what's up? It's Mario Lopez. Back to school is an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated, a vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect. Everyday moments can become opportunities for someone with bad intentions. Whether you're a parent, teacher, coach or neighbor. Check in, ask questions, stay connected. Blue Campaign is a national awareness initiative that provides resources to help recognize suspected instances of human trafficking. Learn the signs and how to report@dhs.gov Blue Campaign.
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A
Summer is finally here.
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But for those of you just like.
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Me who are counting down the days until the leaves turn golden, the nights start drawing in, and it's finally acceptable.
- [29:24]
B
To spend a whole weekend binge watching true crime in your PJs. After dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal. Normal can transport you there right now, twice a Week, every week. Tudor murder, ancient ghosts, Victorian mysteries. Our podcast has you covered. I'm Maddy Pelling. And I'm Anthony Delaney and we are friends and historians who love to find out about the darker side of history. Join us on the scaffold for Anne Boleyn's final moments. Step inside Tutankhamun's tomb, which is apparently cursed. Watch a jury deliberate the fate of the last three women to be hanged from witchcraft in England. Find us every Monday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. And now on YouTube. After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal is created by the award winning network History hit.
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A
Things were not going according to plan. The rebels had met fierce resistance and failed to take control in most major cities in Spain's industrial heartland. In the first few days, Franco had secretly flown to Spanish Morocco, take command of the army of Africa. But with the naval blockade preventing them from crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, they were forced to sit and twiddle their thumbs as the rebellion stalled. Behind the scenes, though, Franco secretly reached out to Adolf Hitler for help. He urged them to provide military assistance to help resuscitate the failing coup.
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There are many pleas to Hitler and Mussolini and they're not very interested. And then they suddenly think about it and think, well, maybe this could disrupt Europe. This could disrupt the balance of power in Europe. This is quite useful to us. Having a Franco Spain would be quite useful, basically pushing the envelope as far as we can against the dominant imperial powers of, of France and Britain and trying to upset the apple cart. This is the way of doing it. So why not get Franco's army to mainland Spain and allow him to launch. They didn't think they were getting into a three year civil war either. They were meant to turn around a failing coup because the Republic had got the cities, the gold reserves, the industrial capacity. So it was meant to turn around that failing coup which is being stifled in the cities. So they fly the army of Africa in Junker jets and Italian aircraft. They fly the army of Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar, which is the first airlift in modern warfare and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
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So that week in July, there is so much going on, the coup is spluttering out, it's not working. Within peninsula Spain, in the home country, everything now comes down to decisions made in Rome and Berlin.
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Yes.
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Wow.
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And in London.
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Well, I was gonna say. What? Presumably the Republic is recognized as the legitimate government still in the Western democracy.
- [32:16]
B
Yes and no. The French government from 1933 onwards, and increasingly so, are obviously terrified by the Fear of fascist encirclement. They've now got Italy and Germany and they're terrified about this situation supervening in Spain, but they're so terrified that they always stick with Britain, even when it often in hindsight, doesn't look as if it was in their best interest. But basically, although France is there, Britain is in a sense setting the agenda here. And the problem is, quite simply or complexly, but to say it very simply, is that the British official, Britain, British establishment governments, intensely dislike the Republic and have done since 1931. So you get the paradox of a kind of constitutional regime which is stymied from start to finish by British policy. At the same time as they're trying to damp everything down in Europe. They don't want a war which is uncontrollable and the whole business of trying to keep Europe in equilibrium. Basically they are aligned with the kind of people who support the coup, because if you think about it, in Gibraltar, the British military and naval personnel were basically in social networks with the kind of people who were the coup supporters. You know, the high society, high ranking military and naval officers, long standing British business interests in Spain, which also tended to lead to an alliance with the kind of coalition that Franco had. So in a sense, you know, you get that paradox. I mean, it's very different as the war goes on and what happens in British society. And there's an awful lot of support among Britain, kind of civil society, if you like, for the Republic, especially once it starts to be massively bombed big cities and there's a massive refugee problem as people flee the violence ahead of the Francois columns, the army of Africa, that's later the popular support in Britain. But British policy is basically to wait and see and hope that Franco will win very rapidly once Germany and Italy have got involved, and then they will all die away. And in order to help that, they prevent the Republican Navy from refueling in Gibraltar or Tangier, which means that the blockade of the Straits doesn't last that long. So immediately you've got British policy saying we want a quick Franco victory and then that doesn't happen. So it rolls out the confusingly named policy of non intervention. In theory, it's meant to stop any sales of arms to either side in the Spanish conflict by state or private enterprise. It works not at all like, works entirely against the Republic. Italy and Germany for a time are members of the non intervention Committee, but of course they're deeply sort of arrogant and this is Western and democratic and we have no truck with this. We'll Just do what we want. And so they basically just massively support Franco. The Nazis charter ships from third powers, flags of convenience, so there's never any interruption. Franco gets state aid complete with logistical backup. Suddenly, within a week, the Republic is not only up against Franco with his 19th century army, it's up against the most powerful military industrial complex in the world. The US and the Soviet Union are not those complexes. Until after 1945, there's nothing else. I mean the US isn't involved, but I'm simply trying to position the importance technologically and in terms of military, an industrial power, of what that meant to the Republic to be up against that when it had to rebuild an army. Because of course the peninsular army was just in fragments. The military coup makers destroyed it and it had to be reconstituted in what was republican territory. Rebuilding the army to fight not only Franco, but to fight Nazi tanks and aircraft.
- [35:59]
A
Yeah, effectively you're being invaded by the Axis.
- [36:02]
B
You are, yeah, you weren't even involved in the First World War. It's north to a thousand in minutes.
- [36:09]
A
By the end of July 1936, what could have been a violent but brief coup attempt had deepened into a full blown war. Franco's army of Africa was arriving on the Spanish mainland in Axis plains, ready to join the fight. The Republic's military had been fragmented by the coup, so as they moved north, the experienced, well armed rebel troops were largely going up against civilian militia carrying whatever outdated weaponry they could find. The figurehead of the coup, General San Giorho, had died in a plane crash on 20 July, leaving effective command of the rebels split between Franco in the south and Mola in the north. We haven't got time really to go through every sort of advance retreat of the war, but can you try and characterise it for me? Is it happening everywhere at once? Are there front lines with trenches that are sort of coherent as the country divided? Or is it just units marching around city to city playing whack a mole with whether it's forces loyal to the Republic or those loyal to Franco's nationalists.
- [37:11]
B
No, I mean it has a very specific choreography. Franco basically thinks that he will speed up through the south, massacring the civilian population, because there is now in the south, as he comes up through the south with the army of Africa, he's basically killing large numbers of landless laborers and sort of annihilating any possibility of landing reform because it is just the civilian population. But he's heading for Madrid and there's massive extrajudicial killing in all of the towns en route. But he's heading for Madrid, which he thinks he will capture immediately and that'll be the end of the war. Right, but he's also thinking of himself as a future leader. Already him personally has a press office. He is thinking ahead to the long game. So he doesn't go straight for Madrid. He does a detour to Toledo to relieve the brave cadets of the Alcafar, which is southeast of Madrid. But it's basically the Republic's been besieging the military fortress in Toledo. He gets there after the raising of the siege, but he kind of parades around the streets and is there on the Pase newsreels. He's curating his political career already. The reason I'm telling you this, there's no military value in Toledo. There's a photo opportunity for a leader in the making. But he delays the army's march on Madrid and that gives the Republic time to organize itself, to organize the defense of the city, to build the trenches. And the Soviet Union, which is the only major European power that gives anything to the republic. Mexico helps, but it's far away and it's a small power, is very late in involvement. Soviet Unions hope to get non intervention to work because it ironically wants to keep like Britain wants to keep the European panorama in balance. Because Stalin is caught up in mega internal turmoil in the Soviet Union and it doesn't want anything upsetting the balance of of power in Europe. So he's standing back and hopes that non intervention will work when it's clear that it isn't. Hitler and Mussolini are riding roughshod over this. He begins to think, well, they're really on a ramped up aggressive path now and sooner rather than later it's going to be Soviet frontiers. So why not give some kind of military advice and support to the republic to keep it fighting, to keep Germany, and it is Germany, not Italy, that he's worried about, away from Soviet frontiers. So very late in the day, while Franco is off to Toledo, he decides in September to send something. And so by October, by the time Franco is on the outskirts of Madrid, they never send ground troops. Basically it sends tanks and air support. I mean, this is a battle where the British are watching the air battles because they know at some point this is going to come. So basically it is the organization of Madrid in the time lapse that Franco gives them. It's the arrival of this crucial high tech aid, it's the arrival of international volunteers. There's thousands, in the end, 35,000 of European volunteers from all over Europe, from Canada, from the States, from Britain, the International Brigades and others who are not in the International Brigades, but in Madrid in the autumn and winter of 1936, they're rebuilding the army. They have this aid from the Soviet Union, military aid, and they have volunteer aid to use as firepower. So basically, to cut a very long story short, Madrid is held. Franco does not conquer Madrid.
- [40:21]
A
The republican defence of Madrid was encapsulated by the anti fascist slogan, no pasaran, they shall not pass. Republican resistance was bolstered by the arrival of Soviet tanks and a few thousand members of the International Brigade. The Republicans were able to hold the capital and repel the rebel advances. In early 1937, rebel forces launched major new offensives to encircle Madrid. Madrid. But the Republicans managed to hold their ground in two significant battles at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937 and the Battle of Guadalajara the following month. Republican forces, including many International Brigade volunteers, successfully blunted Franco's attacks on Madrid's flanks, notably at Guadalajara. A motorized unit of the Italian Expeditionary Corps was decisively defeated by the Republican Army. The failure of these offensives secured Madrid against immediate capture and marked a major setback for the rebel forces.
- [41:22]
B
It's a stalemate after that. After that, it becomes a war of attrition. Franco is always obsessed with Madrid, but he never takes it militarily in the end, because of the complicated end of the war. And so Franco then opens a new front in the north, in the Basque country, which is part and parcel of the probably what British people do know about the war, which is the saturation annihilation of Guernica. But of course, there's been saturation bombing in Madrid and the Basque country before the annihilation of Guernica in April 26, 1937.
- [41:52]
A
In April 1937, Franco moved to tighten his control over the factions on the rebel side. He pushed through the merger of the ultra nationalist Falange Party with the monarchist Karlist Move movement, creating a unified party under his personal leadership. Around the same time, the Nationalists intensified their northern campaign against the Basque Country. On April 26, 1937, the German Condor Legion, Hitler's expeditionary air force in Spain, inflicted terror from the skies by bombing the Basque town of Guernica. The aerial bombardment devastated the city and killed hundreds of civilians and provided a horrific early example of the impact of strategic bombing of civilians. News of the atrocity shocked international observers. The event is famously memorialized by Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica. But the bombing did shatter Military resistance to the nationalists. They marched into Guernica just days later. So militarily it demonstrated the brutal effectiveness of German and Italian air support for the rebels.
- [43:03]
B
They do successfully take the Basque country by June. Of course, the Basque country is the heavy industry, it's the shipyards, it's the iron and steel foundries. And of course the problem for the Republic always is it's organizing its troops. The difficulties of getting adequate weaponry and weaponry that isn't tat from the First World War. Because of non intervention, it can never really arm its reserves. It can never fight offensive battles.
- [43:27]
A
In early May 1937, political divisions within the Republican camp reached a crisis. Street fighting erupted in Republican held Barcelona, known as the May Days. Anarchist and anti Stalinist Marxist militias clashed with forces of the Republican government and communist cadres. The internecine conflict was suppressed after several days, but it fatally fractured the unity in the Republican count camp. In its wake, Prime Minister Largo Caballero, who had resisted communist influence, was forced to resign. President Manuel Azania appointed Juan Negren, a socialist more aligned with the communists, as the new prime minister in late May 1937.
- [44:08]
B
Once the north is lost, a new prime minister comes into power who's much more savvy. Juan Negrin, Republican Prime Minister much more savvy about the international environment because he's polyglot. He was educated in. He's a Madrid University professor. Wife is not quite a White Russian, but a Russian emigre from after the revolution. Speaks many languages, has many contacts professional. Otherwise all across Europe understands that this war now, especially after the loss of the Basque country, will be won and lost in the chancelleries of Europe. And that he has to negotiate non interventions and arms embargo works only against the Republic. So to try and get that lifted because we can build an army, but we can't provision it, we can't arm it. And it's Britain that's stopping them, right? In spite of the most remarkable ascendant aggression from the Axis, it never changes its policy. But Negrine is constantly trying to get Franco to the negotiating table. And in a sense that's somewhere where Britain could have helped. They really could have put pressure on Franco, but they had no intention of doing so. The Francoists, they blockade the Mediterranean ports from in the summer of 1937. So all aid has to come in through France, right? Even if the Soviet Union can broker it for the Republic has to come in through France and France is part of the non intervention pact. But he's so terrified of the onward March of Francoism. There are 70,000 Italian troops in Spain by beginning of 1930. Mussolini is at war with the Spanish Republic. The French are terrified, but they still can't quite release themselves from the British grasp. And. And so they kind of sit on the fence. And that sitting on the fence is called non intervention. Re la chaise. Relax. Non intervention. So the frontier is opening and closing and opening and closing, depending on who's on duty and which government's in power.
- [45:55]
A
The Eastern dance knows history. Here there's more Spanish Civil War after this.
- [46:07]
C
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- [46:43]
D
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- [47:36]
A
The Rebels Northern campaign had captured the Republic's industrial heartland and secured Franco a vital source of coal and steel. Combined with the policy of non intervention on which the Western democracies refused to budge, this meant that the Republic's ability to supply and arm its forces was severely impaired. By late 1937, Franco had greatly shortened his front lines. Although Catalonia in the northeast and central southern Spain, including Madrid and Valencia, remained under Republican control. In a bid to regain the initiative from December 1937 to February of the following year, the Republican army launched a major winter offensive against the rebels at Teruel, a provincial capital in Aragon. In frigid conditions, Republican forces succeeded in capturing the city by early January. It was a rare Republican victory in a set piece battle. Franco responded by diverting massive reinforcements to this front. After weeks of brutal fighting, his troops had recaptured the city by February 1938 and the Republicans were forced to retreat. It was one of the bloodiest engagements of the entire war and a paradoxical one. On the one hand, it proved that the Republican army was a serious fighting force, but on the other it was a catastrophic setback that resulted in the destruction of some of the Republicans best units. All told, there had been over 100,000 combined rebel and Republican casualties in the fighting. Exploiting this victory, Franco surged eastwards into Aragon. In spring of 1938 the Nationalists launched a powerful offensive that broke the Republican front in this region. In early April, Nationalist spearheads reached the Mediterranean at Vinaros, cutting the remaining Republican held territory in two. This was a severe blow. Rather than immediately press north into Catalonia, Franco then turned south towards city of Valencia. This decision provided the republicans with a brief, much needed window to regroup. On 24 July 1938, the Republican General Vincente Rogio launched a surprise crossing of the Ebro river into rebel held territory in Catalonia. It was a last ditch counter offensive that was initially successful. The Republican army, by now well trained, experienced fighting force, gained ground. Their morale lifted. But Soviet support had dwindled and they were short of tanks and planes and ammunition and they couldn't sustain the advance. Meanwhile, Franco, benefiting from the constant support of his Axis allies, concentrated his German Italian backed forces to contain and gradually roll back the incursion. Fierce fighting raged through the summer and the autumn, the fall of 1938, with high caches on both sides. By November 1938, the rebels had defeated the Republican army on the Ebro front. This battle of the Ebro fatally sapped the Republican army's strength and equipment. While Franco's victory opened the way for a final offensive into Catalonia. The Ebro offensive was also the last battle involving the International brigades. In late 1938, as the International context darkened in Europe Europe, the Spanish Republic's foreign allies distanced themselves. In September 1938, Prime Minister Negrin, hoping to encourage Britain France to aid the Republic or restrain Franco, ordered the unilateral withdrawal of all foreign volunteers from the Republican Army. The International Brigades, their ranks thinned after two years of combat, were formally withdrawn from Spain. October November 1938. By contrast, the Germans and Italians remained very active in Franco's forces. Despite all of this, the policy of non intervention held. Helen explains some of the reasons why the British government wouldn't budge on the issue.
- [51:15]
B
The end of the Republic it's this tragic paradox that by 1938 it has an absolutely astounding army, professional army that could if it could be armed, it could hold the pass. But in 1938, it's very clear that, well, there's an awful lot of support in Britain for the Republic in terms of refugees and bombed civilians and medical aid and so on, but the British government just won't budge. Eden's resignation in 1938 is a drop in the ocean. But basically they just think, we can always manage this situation and we prefer Franco to the Republic. There's a lot of visceral prejudice, I think, involved here, because, you know, the Republic was not of Bolshevik regime. It was full of people who were wealthy, it had plenty of moneyed people. But the British, you know, I've read the Foreign Office documentation, you know, it's sulfurous. It rises off the paper that they have these extreme prejudices about the Republic and they think they can manage Franco. Franco will have to come to the city for loans to rebuild Spain and if he really cuts up, funny, we'll just blockade Spain. So they always think they can manage Franco and they really don't like the Republic, in spite of the fact that these are the constitutional Spaniards kids. And they basically lean on France in 1938 to keep that frontier closed. And that's really the end. The Republic fights some very long, amazing battles in 1938, the Ebro from July to November 1938. But it has to retreat in the end because they can't arm people, right? They have no weapons. It is a very sad story. This whole program's not about what the British did, but why were they so resistant to the Republic in the end, at the end of 1938, finally, Churchill, of course, is not the centre of power, says this is mistaken. Yes, sure, I can understand why my class stands with Franco, but the British Empire has to stand with them. The Republic is giving Britain chance to rearm. It's giving it time. And even in the end, what do the British do? They sell Czechoslovakia out, which would have been a much better ally than Poland, with its war industry that Hitler wanted and got at Munich. There's an awful lot for British historians to do that they haven't yet done. To think about all of this.
- [53:25]
A
Between January and February 1939, Franco's forces conquered Catalonia in a swift, final campaign. His troops, spearheaded by tanks supported by aircraft, drove into a demoralized Catalan front. Barcelona, the Republican capital since 1937, fell to Franco's army on January 26 after minimal resistance. As Catalonia collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Republican soldiers and civilians desperately fled across the French border to escape retaliation. By mid February 1939, all of Northeastern Spain was under Franco's control. The Spanish Republic zone was reduced to Madrid, a few central provinces and the Mediterranean port of Valencia, isolated enclaves awaiting the final blow. The end of the war was accompanied by internal treachery. On March 5, as Franco's forces prepared to advance on Madrid, a group of Republican officers led by Colonel Segismundo Casado launched a coup in the capital against Prime Minister Negrin's republican government. For Madrid, which had been starved and bombed throughout a 28 month siege, this was the final straw.
- [54:32]
B
The end of the war comes through a coup against the Republican government which is led in Madrid by an army officer who was for a long time in touch with the Franco's Fifth Column, which. The military lines are very close outside Madrid. So it's very leaky. It's like a colander. They always have intelligence very early. So Colonel Casado, Segismundo Casalo, who leads a coup against the Negrin government, well, he says he's going to negotiate peace terms with Franco. Good luck. Negrine spent two and a half years trying to get Franco to agree to peace terms. Negrine will not surrender. I mean, he's hoping to just keep an enclave in Spain that can be kind of maintained with the limited weaponry, just to keep it going in the southeast for a while until the European situation explodes and things change. But he made one condition of peace with Franco and that was no reprisals against the civilian population. Franco wouldn't agree that because already from two years back they've been planning what is effectively a totalitarian state and a state which will be entirely tightly controlled in which people will be a massive prison population that will be massively controlled living space for those they consider the enemy that defeated those at the antipatria, those outside regime. There's going to be mass trials, there's going to be a massive investigation of anybody who is in republican territory, an incredibly detailed way. So certainly he's not going to agree to no reprisals against the swiggy population. But Casado thinks whether he's either very disingenuous or he's more sinister. There are different views about this. He says as a military officer, as an old guard, pre war military officer will be able to negotiate with Franco. And of course Franco plays with this and does just Franco's high command. But in the end there is no negotiation. There's five days of fighting in Madrid. He quells the resistance and he basically tells people to put the white flags up and so Franco's armies march into Madrid. The Casado coup triggers a very confused rebellion in the southeast port, Republican port of Cartagena. And the navy sets sail. So there are no boats now to evacuate people who are most at risk, which was part of Negrine's plan. He was trying to chart merchant vessels to come take people off, flanked by the navy. But the navy's go and the French Internet in Gizerta and Tunisia, and it's handed over to Franco. So lots of refugees head, terrified, head for Alicante on the eastern coast, which is the last stand. Thousands and thousands and no boats. Very few people get out. A few people get out, have resources, have contacts, get out. The political leaders get out from various little ports on either side of Alicante, but basically those people are taken into concentration camps.
- [57:11]
A
On April 1, 1939, after two years and eight months of brutal fighting, the last the Republican forces surrendered. Franco broadcast his declaration of victory via radio, establishing a period of personal dictatorship that would continue for 36 years. The death toll of the war was staggering. Most estimates put the number of people who died due to combat executions, famine and disease at around half a million. Refugees who were able to escape over the Pyrenees into France were held in internment camps in squalid conditions, conditions after the creation of the Nazi aligned Vichy regime by Marshal Petain. Many of these refugees were turned over to the Franco regime. Thousands of them were deported to Nazi Germany and killed in concentration camps like Mauthausen. The violence in Spain itself would continue long after the end of the war. There were reprisal killings and executions ordered by Franco that claimed the lives of tens of thousands. Many more were imprisoned or forced into hard labor.
- [58:15]
B
The civil war does not end on 1 April 1939, when Franco announces victory. It is the beginning of the institutionalization of the war and the segregation of population into victors and defeated in the creation of effectively a security state, a police state where everything is supposedly controlled, and thousands of people into military trials, all sorts of other tribunal proceedings which are too complicated to talk about, but a way in which people are being fixed. This is not a strategy for after the end of the war, which is designed to create a unified population, absolutely opposite. And that of course, is the beginning of another story, but perhaps by way of a final remark, in a sense, for most of the people who've lost the military war in 1939, in the Republic, they don't really see it as over because of course, within a few months, months, all of Europe goes up, right? And so they see the war in Europe as a continuation of the Spanish Civil War in which they will be able to turn over that result when the tanks rolled into Paris in 1944, that they would roll over the Pyrenees and liberate Spain, at least from Franco, because Franco was not a belligerent in the Second World War. But in fact he was much more useful to Hitler as a non belligerent because he gave him everything he wanted in terms of resources and reconnaissance and fuel and labor and access to intelligence networks in South America and refueling U boats. I mean, he was in all but name, he was an Axis member and never ever accepted that Hitler had lost the war until virtually victory in Europe day. I mean, they wanted to be part of. Remember they'd made a coup against change in 1936 in favor of a very hierarchical society in Spain. Franco wasn't interested in a racial state that Hitler was, but he was interested in as brutal hierarchical social order as Hitler was interested in. He was the social Darwinist by another name in the science. Franco, although he'd never thought of himself in those terms. So in the sense, you know, the loss of the Axis, the defeat of the Axis was very hard for Franco and the Cold War would save him talking up a. We've been anti communist from the first hour, but they were with the Axis in more ways I think the British people understand.
- [60:26]
A
Well, Helen, thank you so much for helping teach me all about the war and also internationalizing it for me as well. Thank you very much, Helen Graham, for coming on the podcast.
- [60:34]
B
My pleasure.
- [60:40]
A
The Spanish Civil War was a striking precursor to the ideological and military conflict that would soon engulfed the world in the Second World War. Though it was rooted in Spain's own deep political, social and regional divisions, the war rapidly became a transnational battleground, drawing in foreign powers and foreshadowing the cataclysm to come. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy treated the conflict as a proving ground for their forces, pioneering modern warfare, testing blitzkrieg tactics, aerial bombardment, bombardment and armored coordination with infantry. While the Soviet Union sought to preserve the Spanish Republic as a potential bulwark against fascism. The formation of the International Brigade, comprising tens of thousands of anti fascist volunteers from across the globe, revealed both the moral urgency and the polarization that defined that late interwar period. The war offered bitter lessons on the consequences of non intervention with Britain. France's refusal to aid the legitimate republican government, effectively ceding the military initiative to fascist powers. In contrast, the coordinated, well equipped support given to Franco republican forces were undermined by inconsistent foreign aid disunity and internal ideological strife. The collapse of the Spanish Republic demonstrated the lethal cost of democratic isolation in the face of rising authoritarianism. In it, there is a lesson for our times. The war also previewed the technological and psychological methods of warfare that we'd see in World War II terror bombing of Guernica and other cities, propaganda battles, purges, the recruitment of foreign allies. It also teaches us a worrying lesson about the fragility, perhaps the timidity, of some liberal democracies in responding to international crises. Its legacy endures as a warning about the perils of appeasement and the necessity for international solidarity in the face of aggression. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Thank you so much to you for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History. We could not make this podcast without you. That's actually true, so make sure if you want to keep it going, that is to hit follow in your podcast player right now, you'll get new episodes dropped into your podcast library automatically. By the power of tech, you can listen anywhere you get your pods, Apple, Spotify, even BBC sounds. Imagine a world. Just imagine where you never miss an episode of this podcast. I mean, it's there. The technology makes that possible. That could be your reality right now if you hit Fox. See you next time.
- [63:55]
D
When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe, Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail.