The Spanish Civil War

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Alasdair

Or in the defence of a Revolution they believe in...

But the point is the military was equally as determined/principled as the revolutionaries. It wasn't like the US War of Independence or Vietnam, for instance, is what I mean.

Reply 21

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Bagration

But the point is the military was equally as determined/principled as the revolutionaries. It wasn't like the US War of Independence or Vietnam, for instance, is what I mean.

Well the military was also divided... so it's not that black and white.

Reply 22

Bagration

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Well the military was also divided... so it's not that black and white.

Ok. I don't know so much about the SCW, it was just a guess. But if you take the average soldier on both sides, who has the military qualities that you'd prefer to have when fighting a war?

Reply 23

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Bagration

Ok. I don't know so much about the SCW, it was just a guess. But if you take the average soldier on both sides, who has the military qualities that you'd prefer to have when fighting a war?

Well, it is probably fair to say what tipped the balance in favour of the Nationalists in military terms wasn't so much that they were the military, it was more that they had the Moorish forces recruited from Morocco. After all, the Spanish hadn't fought a major conflict since the Spanish-American conflict of 1898 aside from the brief scramble for nearby parts of Africa, so the Spanish military wasn't exactly a brilliant fighting force.

Reply 24

Pryste

I could also chime in that the one of the major reasons the Africanistas were able to get back to the Spanish mainland was due in part to nearby British naval forces. The Spanish navy was largely in the hands of the Republicans due to mutiny against commanding officers. Mutiny seen as being the worst offence one can commit on a ship, nearby British vessels broke the idea of non-involvement by aiding the Nationalists in ferrying he Africanistas from Morocco.

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Well the military was also divided... so it's not that black and white.

But I think there was a significant difference in the level of division. The military at least had something approaching a sense of unity, despite the initial doubts over whether Franco or Mola would lead in the end. By comparison the Republicans were split into several camps of separatists (Catalunyans and the Basques) as well as bitter infighting towards the end between differing ideologies (due in part to the Stalinist hunt for Trotsky sympathisers). Of course it isn't so black and white as to say one was in total disarray whilst the other was perfectly ordered but I think we can comparatively say that the one was better organised than the other (at least as the war progressed the differences became more pronounced).