The International Brigades During The Spanish Civil War

Ari Krysmalski The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War â€Å"We do not believe in government through the voting booth† General Francisco Franco. On the 18th of July 1936 Generals of the Spanish Army led a coup against the democratically elected Popular Front government of Spain. Within days, the country was plunged into one of the bloodiest wars the world had ever seen, with the Republicans battling the insurgent Nationalists for control of the country. The Nationalists were fascist in principle, and therefore received massive amounts of aid from Hitler and Mussolini as a result of their shared ideology. The rest of the world turned their back on Spain and signed the nonintervention act, which constituted a series of agreements limiting foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War. The Republicans were communist and received a limited amount of aid from the Soviet Union. However, their main source of aid did not originate from a single power, but from a group of some forty thousand volunteers from around the world united in saving communism in Spain. These volunteers constituted the International Brigades and represented 53 different countries (Thomas 9415). They traveled from different corners of the world to fight in a war they had only heard of and to defeat an enemy they had never seen. What motivated so many people to leave the comforts of home to volunteer for the International BrigadesÍ ¾ how did their sacrifices shape the course of the war? Members of theShow MoreRelatedA New Middle Class Government And The Declaration Of The Second Spanish Republic1362 Words   |  6 PagesSecond Spanish Republic in 1931 until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Spanish society struggled to establish a stable, representative democracy for only the second time in its long political history. 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