Quick questions on The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (VCE Modern History Unit 1)

King Alfonso XIII fled after municipal elections went against the monarchy. A liberal constitution, separation of church and state, agrarian reform programme. Polarisation between left (Socialists, anarchists, Catalan and Basque nationalists, Communists) and right (Catholic Church, military, monarchists, landowners, and from 1933 the Falange, Spain's small fascist party).

Coalition of left-wing parties won, alarming the right. Political assassinations on both sides through spring 1936.

Coalition of military, monarchists, Carlists, Falange, and Catholic Church. Franco emerged as Caudillo (October 1936) after Sanjurjo died in plane crash and Mola died in 1937. Tightly disciplined, professionally led, with major foreign aid.

Socialists, Communists, anarchists, Catalan and Basque nationalists, liberal parties. Less disciplined and internally divided. The "May Days" in Barcelona (May 1937) saw fighting between Communists and anarchist/POUM groups; Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938) documents this from a participant view.

Hitler sent the Condor Legion (peaked at $19\,000$ German military personnel), aircraft, tanks, and used Spain to test new tactics (combined-arms warfare, terror-bombing of civilians).

Mussolini sent the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV, up to $50\,000$ men).

Sent military advisers, T-26 tanks, I-15 and I-16 fighters, ammunition. Soviet involvement was indirect; the USSR was paid in Spanish gold reserves.

About $35\,000$ foreign volunteers fought for the Republic, organised by the Comintern. Notable participants included writers (Orwell, Hemingway, André Malraux). Australian volunteers about $66$ men.

The Non-Intervention Committee (1936) supposedly banned arms sales but was widely flouted. The policy favoured the Nationalists because Germany and Italy ignored it while Britain and France enforced it on themselves and forbade Spanish Republican arms purchases.

Republican defence held; the city did not fall until 1939.

Basque town bombed by the Condor Legion on market day. Killed approximately $200$-$1\,650$ (estimates vary). Pablo Picasso's painting (1937) made Guernica a global symbol of fascist atrocity.

Largest battle of the war. Republican offensive that initially succeeded but was eventually pushed back, exhausting Republican forces.

Barcelona fell. Half a million refugees fled to France.