The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

Roesch, Claudia
Spain as a battlefield of ideologies – The Changes of International
Alliances due to the Spanish Civil War 1936 – 1939 1
The Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 has been analysed by scholars in
several dimensions: the internal Spanish issues that caused the war, the artistic
dimension that brought about famous works of art like Pablo Picasso's Guernica or
Ernest Hemingway's For whom the Bell Tolls, the military dimension, which
includes the testing of new strategies and the concept of total war, and the
international dimension, which often is interpreted as a prelude to the Second
World War. The last interpretation, which is contested among scholars, 2 is based
on the fact that all major European powers which took part in World War Two
were already involved in the international debates surrounding the Spanish Civil
War. These international powers can be seen as representatives of the three great
ideologies of the twentieth century: liberalism, fascism and communism. In the
international sphere, it is obvious that Britain and France, who chose to be
neutral in the context of the Spanish conflict, represent liberalism, Nazi Germany
and Italy incorporate fascism 3 and the Soviet Union stands for communism.
In the internal context of the Spanish political sphere, neither ideology has a
clear representation: Stanley Payne notes that in the beginning of the coup d'état
Francisco Franco and his Falange were not fascists but a mix of militarists,
monarchists and conservatives, who only became fascists during the course of
the war. 4 The Partido Socialista Obrero Española (PSOE), which was the party of
Prime Minister Francisco Largo Caballero and President Manuel Azaña, should
have been the protector of the liberal democratic Spanish Republic but drifted far
more to the left than socialists in other Western European countries. Meanwhile,
the communist PCE shifted to the centre of the political sphere after the VII.
Comintern Congress by protecting private property and forming alliances with
bourgeois parties in the Popular Front government.
Even though neither of those parties is identifiable with one ideology in its
pure form, they were perceived as representatives of fascism, communism and
liberalism by the international press and foreign governments. For example, the
1
This paper is based on my master thesis „Spanien kämpft für uns” Die Bedeutung des
Spanischen Bürgerkriegs für die deutsche Linke im Exil, Berlin 2009, unpublished.
2
UHL, Michael: Mythos Spanien. Das Erbe der Internationalen Brigaden in der DDR.
Dietz, Bonn, 2004. 37.
3
Keeping in mind the differences between Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany and
Benito Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy, for example in the question of Anti-Semitism, both
countries will be treated as representatives of fascism, since they were perceived as such by
contemporaries of the 1930s.
4
PAYNE, Stanley G.: Los Orígenes de la Guerra Civil Española. In: Revisión de la Guerra
Civil Española. DE MENDOZA, Bullón, TOGORES, Alfonso and Luis Eugenio (ed.). Actas
Edición, Madrid, 2002. 28.
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