The Spanish Civil War divided American public opinion between those who supported the Republic and those who condemned the Republican forces for carrying out attacks on the Catholic Church. Roosevelt's administration chose not to intervene officially in the conflict, although the President sought to clandestinely provide some aid to the besieged Republic after 1937.
In the United States, President Franklin D. Some scholars argue that the Non-Intervention Agreement benefited Franco, who could acquire armaments on credit from his allies, while the Republic had to pay hard currency to arms dealers to obtain often outdated weapons and find ways to transport these goods into the embargoed country. Italy and Germany continued to supply Franco's forces, while the Soviet Union provided military advisors, tanks, aircraft, and other war materiel to the Republic. The latter three signatories openly violated the policy. In August 1936, more than two dozen nations, including France, Great Britain, Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, signed a Non-Intervention Agreement on Spain. The Spanish conflict quickly generated worldwide fears that it could explode into a full-fledged European war. Spain became a military laboratory to test the latest weaponry under battlefield conditions. Fascist Italy supplied some 75,000 troops in addition to its pilots and planes. The most notorious of these attacks came on April 26, 1937, when German and Italian aircraft leveled the Basque town of Gernike (Guernica in Spanish) in a three-hour campaign that killed 200 civilians or more.
Some 5,000 German air force personnel served in the Condor Legion, which provided air support for coordinated ground attacks against Republican positions and carried out aerial bombings on Republican cities. Throughout the three years of the conflict, Hitler and Mussolini provided the Spanish Nationalist Army with crucial military support. Thanks to their military assistance, he was able to airlift troops from Spanish Morocco across to the mainland to continue his assault on Madrid. Great Britain immediately rejected the Republic's call for support.įaced with potential defeat, Franco called upon Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for aid. Initially, France pledged to support the Spanish Republic, but soon reneged on its offer to pursue an official policy of non-intervention in the civil war. Within days of the uprising, both the Republic and the Nationalists called for foreign military aid. Some Spanish officers remained loyal to the Republic and refused to join the uprising. In other areas, particularly cities with strong leftist political traditions, the revolts met with stiff opposition and were often quelled. They quickly seized political power and instituted martial law. In rural areas with a strong right-wing political presence, Franco's confederates generally won out. The Nationalist rebels' initial efforts to instigate military revolts throughout Spain only partially succeeded. The Spanish Civil War began on July 17, 1936, when generals Emilio Mola and Francisco Franco launched an uprising aimed at overthrowing the country's democratically elected republic.