How the Nationalists Won the Spanish Civil War (ft. History w/Hilbert) | Animated History

Hi, I'm Griffin Johnson, the Armchair Historian. Today's video, the Spanish Civil War, and how Generalissimo Francisco Franco managed to achieve quite an unlikely victory. It is October 1938. A bomber plane screams above the burned out buildings of Madrid. The inhabitants below scurry for cover, but the bomb they heard was not intended for them. Not this time, at least. Instead, a paper bag, wrapped in a nationalist flag and attached to a small parachute, slowly drifts down from above. Also attached is a note. In a national Spain, great and free, there is no home without a fire, nor a family without bread. One of the starving inhabitants quickly snatches up the bread inside, leaving the bag behind. It is more of a taunt than a gift. The nationalist military forces of El Caudillo, their leader, have besieged the city since their failed coup attempt two years ago, slowly starving the inhabitants into submission. The grueling siege would last another five months. The Spanish Civil War, perhaps best known as a proxy conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, gave the world an early look at the type of war that would be waged on a global scale only a few years later. In the early decades of the 20th century, communist and fascist groups surged in popularity, competing for nothing less than total domination on the international stage. In the Spanish Civil War, these two worldviews clashed, and the result was disaster. Before we start, today's episode is brought to you by MagellanTV, which streams premium documentaries across a wide range of popular genres. Their exclusive history playlists make it easy to dive deep into various subjects, including the topic of this episode. I especially recommend Impossible Peace, which details the power struggles of the interwar period, including the Italian bombing of Barcelona and the rise of Francisco Franco. Armchair Historian subscribers get one month of VIP pass, so sign up using the link in the description below. The Caudillo we spoke of earlier was none other than Francisco Franco. An avowed monarchist in the days of the Spanish Republic, Franco went on to take over the country and pursue neutrality as the world descended into war, remaining in power up until his death in 1975. But how did he go from military commander of a small colonial garrison to the totalitarian leader of all of Spain? The Civil War in Spain represented the culmination of a period of inept leadership and increasing polarization in the country. As the financial gap widened between the wealthy, often devoutly Catholic elements of the country and middle class workers, both groups were increasingly drawn to political extremist ideas and rhetoric, including monarchism, fascism, communism, and militant anarchism to name a few. The Asturian Miner Strike in 1934 served as a grim prologue to the conflict to come. The labor uprising had begun in opposition to the rise of the Catholic Conservative political party, the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights, or SEDA, which socialist union leaders believed held dictatorial ambitions. And to be quite honest, they weren't completely wrong. Gil Robles, the leader of SEDA and admirer of the German Nazi party, had declared that "...democracy is not an end, but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either Parliament submits or we will eliminate it." Troops under the then-Major General Franco brutally crushed the labor uprising, giving him a reputation for merciless pragmatism toward his political enemies, and a growing loyalty among the rank and file. Sure enough, Gil Robles' words were more than just rhetoric. SEDA narrowly lost the 1936 Spanish general election to a left-wing coalition called the Popular Front. Unsatisfied with the result, a far-right military faction co-led by Franco launched a coup d'état on July 17th of that year. The Nationalists, as they called themselves, hoped to overwhelm the newly elected Popular Front government before the Republican Loyalists had time to react. However, their initial efforts were only partially successful. Just four days after the coup began, Nationalists had control of Spanish Morocco, the Canary Islands, and most of the Balearic Islands. On the mainland, they controlled much of the territory north of the Guadarrama Mountains. In most other areas, forces loyal to the Nationalists were not influential enough to mount a proper attempt at insurrection. But come August, the Nationalists made rapid progress by swiftly thrusting through western Spain as part of what was, essentially, a peninsular blitzkrieg. Troops from the Army of Africa led the advance, ultimately paving the way for Franco's ascension to Supreme Commander of the Nationalist Forces in October. Attempts to take the capital repeatedly failed, but further peripheral offensives in 1937 secured Malaga in the south and the industrially rich autonomous regions in the north. In contrast, the main Republican assault that year on Zaragoza was a complete disaster due to poor reconnaissance and a lack of coordination. During the attempt to take the fortified town of Fuentes del Ebro, Republican troops rode into battle on the hulls of Soviet-supplied BT-5 tanks, but suffered heavy casualties. After the battle, an American volunteer wrote, Courage and heroism are plentiful in Spain, and the Spanish people have no lack of it. What they need is tactics, and as for tactics, on 13 October, Regiment BT was bankrupt. 1938 proved to be one of, if not the most intense year of the conflict, with the Nationalists achieving a crucial victory during their Spring-Aragon Offensive, slicing the Republican zone in two. Moreover, the failed Republican attempt at reuniting their territories in the Battle of Ebro, the largest of the war, drained Republican military power to its breaking point. 1939 saw Catalonia easily subdued by Franco, and that same year, the war was over. The Civil War in Spain was certainly not an unbroken string of Francoist victories, but the Nationalists almost always had the upper hand. But why was that the case? Well, first off, the uniquely high Nationalist troop quality in comparison to the Republican foe is of great importance. The Nationalist advance in August 1938, which secured its territorial integrity for the rest of the war, was only made possible by its most elite formation, the Army of Africa. Composed of both Spanish colonial troops and North African regulares, it was led by a cadre of well-trained and highly professional officers called Africanistas. The Army of Africa advanced ruthlessly, securing vast swathes of agriculturally rich territories for the Nationalist cause, opposed only by hastily armed peasants and worker militias. By early 1937, they had increased in size to around 60,000 troops, from a measly 1,500 during their initial deployment the year before. Both the local African and Spanish soldiers of the Army of Africa possessed a professionalism that was matched only by their capacity for viciousness. They repeatedly committed atrocities against soldiers and civilians in areas they conquered. Due to their infamous reputation, Nationalist commanders would place them in the most dangerous positions along the front to intimidate Republican forces. But it wasn't brute force alone that allowed Nationalist forces to triumph. At this time, much of Spain's land was devoted to traditional agriculture, and controlled by a small group of aristocrats. During the Civil War, these land-owning conservative elites almost unanimously sided with the rebellious Nationalists. This gave the Nationalists a decisive logistical advantage. In a radio address, Franco proclaimed that the Battle of Huit, as he called it, was as important as, or even more so, than those at the front. Food became such an alluring motif that Nationalist propaganda directed at often emitiated Republican soldiers almost always emphasized the full stomachs of Franco's troops. So how exactly did Nationalist administrators acquire such a well-regulated food supply during such a devastating war while the Republicans failed to do so? As it turns out, the Nationalists' partial coup in 1936 was more successful than it initially seemed. Capturing the agriculturally rich regions of Andalusia and Castile meant that, by 1937, the Nationalists possessed twice the wheat reserves of their adversaries. Furthermore, the military regime employed an ethos of pragmatic productivism to ensure output was high, granting incentives to effective producers of grain, meat, and other essential foodstuffs regardless of ideological concerns. Perhaps most importantly, Nationalist military administrators were ordered not to disrupt communities under Nationalist control. A proactive effort was made to ensure that the population was kept fed and potential enemies kept suppressed. This efficient management led to a relative continuity of normal life for local populations. In contrast to the relative order behind Franco's lines, the Republic, under its president Manuel Azana, was almost perpetually in a state of internal division, with its many factions squabbling with one another. The most notable of these civil wars within a civil war is known as the May Days of 1937, which broke out in Catalonia and pitted Republicans against far-left anarchist and socialist factions. This strike resulted in roughly a thousand dead and 1,500 wounded. Now I'd like to introduce my friend Hilbert from History with Hilbert to talk a bit about the foreign intervention in the war. Superior domestic military units were a key determinant in the Nationalist victory, but foreign military aid was just as vital. Despite the signing of a non-intervention pact in August of 1936, the fascist governments of Germany and Italy and the dictatorial regime in Portugal continued to aid Francoist Spain. Critically, these allies also assisted in transporting the Army of Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, as well as sending combat aircraft and armoured vehicle reinforcements, including around 350 tanks and 1,260 aircraft. Notably, the Condor Legion, a German volunteer formation compromising air and ground forces, proved highly effective in maintaining air superiority in many battles, and is perhaps most notorious for its participation in the levelling of the Basque city of Guernica, an event many at the time and to this day rightfully see as a war crime. While novel for 1937, the targeted mass bombing of a civilian area became a staple German tactic during the Second World War in order to psychologically force an enemy population to submit, while on a smaller scale new tank tactics were trialled that would form the basis of the famous Blitzkrieg in Europe. If you want to find out more about how the Spanish Civil War influenced the Second World War, then head over to my channel, History with Hilbert, and give it a watch. As for the Republican government, they were, for the most part, on their own. No democracy was bold enough to risk escalating the conflict, so the task fell to the Communists. The Soviet Union sent up to approximately 360 tanks and 800 planes. Unlike their nationalist counterparts, however, the Republicans had to pay for a lot of these goods during the war. It should be noted that despite the neutrality of many democratic governments, many sympathetic citizens of those nations did volunteer in what was known as the International Brigades. However, they did not prove particularly effective. We can, therefore, conclude that by almost all measures, the foreign support that the nationalists received was far more robust. Altogether, loyal and professional military units, order behind the lines, and a pragmatically organized authoritarian economy and food supply, as well as extensive foreign backing, created the conditions that led to nationalist victory in 1939. The ripple effects produced by the Spanish Civil War on the country it was fought in cannot be overstated. Widespread economic destruction and deaths to other countries took the nation decades to recover from, and recent estimates indicate that around 500,000 people died during the war out of a population comprising only 25 million. Some put the number of deaths as high as 2 million. Little wonder why Spain stayed neutral during the Second World War. Today, the Spanish people still feel the cultural echoes of their Civil War. On a wider scale, the Spanish Civil War served as a macabre testing ground for Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. Tactics and technologies that were to be employed with great effect in the coming Second World War were perfected on the fields and streets of Spain, from Huesca to Madrid.