On this day, 1 April 1939, the Spanish civil war ended, with victory for general Franco and his Nationalist forces.
Workers, largely organised in the anarchist CNT and socialist UGT unions, had launched a social revolution in 1936 and beaten back the right-wing military takeover. But after nearly 3 years of intense fighting, the anti-fascist forces were eventually overcome by brute force.
While the “democratic allies” of the Republic like the UK blockaded Spain, military aid for the Nationalists from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy poured in.
After hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of the remaining anti-fascists had to flee the country to avoid the punitive mass executions which killed tens of thousands. Spanish refugees were interned in concentration camps in France, which then came under Nazi control during German occupation.
But large numbers of civil war veterans joined resistance movements, and help liberate France.
We give an overview of the conflict in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1684845825033894/?type=3
