title: Snapchat

text: From its earliest days, Snapchat's main demographic has consisted of the Generation Z age group. On the app store, the age classification is 12+. In 2014, researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University designed a user survey to help understand how and why the application was being used. The researchers originally hypothesized that due to the ephemeral nature of Snapchat messages, its use would be predominantly for privacy-sensitive content including the much talked about potential use for sexual content and sexting. However, it appears that Snapchat is used for a variety of creative purposes that are not necessarily privacy-related at all. In the study, only 1.6% of respondents reported using Snapchat primarily for sexting, although 14.2% admitted to having sent sexual content via Snapchat at some point. These findings suggest that users do not seem to utilize Snapchat for sensitive content. Rather, the primary use for Snapchat was found to be for comedic content such as "stupid faces" with 59.8% of respondents reporting this use most commonly. The researchers also determined how Snapchat users do not use the application and what types of content they are not willing to send. They found that the majority of users are not willing to send content classified as sexting (74.8% of respondents), photos of documents (85.0% of respondents), messages containing legally questionable content (86.6% of respondents), or content considered mean or insulting (93.7% of respondents).


title: Snapchat

text: The study results also suggested that Snapchat's success is not due to its security properties, but because the users found the application to be fun. The researchers found that users seem to be well-aware (79.4% of respondents) that recovering snaps is possible and a majority of users (52.8% of respondents) report that this does not affect their behavior and use of Snapchat. Many users (52.8% of respondents) were found to use an arbitrary timeout length on snaps regardless of the content type or recipient. The remaining respondents were found to adjust their snaps' timeout depending on the content or the recipient. Reasons for adjusting the time length of snaps included the level of trust and relationship with the recipient, the time needed to comprehend the snap, and avoiding screenshots.


title: Snapchat

text: Snapchat has often been seen to represent a new direction in social media, with its users craving a more in-the-moment way of sharing and communicating via technology. With less emphasis on the accumulation of an ongoing status involving the presence of permanent material, Snapchat put the focus on the ephemeral nature of fleeting encounters.


title: Snapchat

text: Building on this distinction by launching as a mobile-first company, Snapchat, in the midst of the app revolution and the growing presence of cellular communication, did not have to make the transition to mobile in the way other competing social media networks had to do. Evan Spiegel himself described Snapchat as primarily a camera company. Spiegel also dismissed past comparisons to other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter when he was asked if the 2016 presidential race was going to be remembered as the Snapchat election, although major candidates did occasionally use the app to reach voters. Nevertheless, the growing mobile app moved to offer distinct publication, media, and news content within its Discover channel, as well as with its overall style of presentation. With Snapchat, a clear and identifiable line was drawn between brand content and user-based messaging and sharing, once again distinguishing the popular app from other social media networks, which typically have blended and blurred their different varieties of content.


title: Snapchat

text: Snapchat announced its then-upcoming advertising efforts on October 17, 2014, when it acknowledged its need for a revenue stream. The company stated that it wanted to evaluate "if we can deliver an experience that's fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted." Snapchat's first paid advertisement, in the form of a 20-second movie trailer for the horror film "Ouija", was shown to users on October 19, 2014.


title: Snapchat

text: In January 2015, Snapchat began making a shift from focusing on growth to monetization. The company launched its "Discover" feature, which allowed for paid advertising by presenting short-form content from publishers. Its initial launch partners included CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN and Food Network, among others. In June 2015, Snapchat announced that it would allow advertisers to purchase sponsored geofilters for snaps; an early customer of the offering was McDonald's, who paid for a branded geofilter covering its restaurant locations in the United States. Snapchat made a push to earn ad revenue from its "Live Stories" feature in 2015, after initially launching the feature in 2014. Ad placements can be sold within a live story, or a story can be pitched by a sponsor. Live stories are estimated to reach an average of 20 million viewers in a 24-hour span.


title: Snapchat

text: In September 2015, the service entered into a partnership with the National Football League to present live stories from selected games (including a Sunday game, and marquee games such as Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football), with both parties contributing content and handling ad sales. The 2015 Internet Trends Report by Mary Meeker highlighted the significant growth of vertical video viewing. Vertical video ads like Snapchat's are watched in their entirety nine times more than landscape video ads. In 2016, Gatorade came out with an animated filter as part of the Super Bowl ads in 2016. The dunk lens of Gatorade received 165 million views on Snapchat.


title: Snapchat

text: In April 2016, NBC Olympics announced that it had reached a deal with Snapchat to allow stories from the 2016 Summer Olympics to be featured on Snapchat in the United States. The content would include a behind-the-scenes Discover channel curated by BuzzFeed (a company which NBCUniversal has funded), and stories featuring a combination of footage from NBC, athletes, and attendees. NBC sold advertising and entered into revenue sharing agreements. This marked the first time NBC allowed Olympics footage to be featured on third-party property. In May 2016, as part of a campaign to promote "", 20th Century Fox paid for the entire array of lenses to be replaced by those based on characters from the "X-Men" series and films for a single day. In July 2016, it was reported that Snapchat had submitted a patent application for the process of using an object recognition system to deliver sponsored filters based on objects seen in a camera view. Later that year, in September 2016, Snapchat released its first hardware product, called the Spectacles. Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., called it “a toy” but saw it as an upside to freeing his app from smartphone cameras.


title: Snapchat

text: In April 2017, "Digiday" reported that Snapchat would launch a self-service manager for advertising on the platform. The feature launched the following month, alongside news of a Snapchat Mobile Dashboard for tracking ad campaigns, which rolled out in June to select countries. Also in 2017, Snapchat introduced a "Snap to Store" advertising tool that lets companies using geostickers to track whether users buy their product or visit their store in a 7-day period after seeing the relevant geosticker. On November 13, 2018, Snapchat announced the launch of the Snap Store, where they sell Bitmoji merchandise personalized by avatars from users and their friends. Items for sale include shirts, mugs, shower curtains, and phone cases.


title: Snapchat

text: In June 2018, Snapchat announced a new third-party development platform known as Snap Kit: a suite of components that allows partners to provide third-party integrations with aspects of the service. "Login Kit" is a social login platform that utilizes Snapchat accounts. It was promoted as being more privacy-conscious than competing equivalents, as services are only able to receive the user's display name (and, optionally, a Bitmoji avatar) and are subject to a 90-day inactivity timeout, preventing them from being able to collect any further personal information or social graphs through their authorization. "Creative Kit" allows apps to generate their own stickers to overlay into Snapchat posts. "Story Kit" can be used to embed and aggregate publicly posted stories (with for example, Bandsintown using Story Kit to aggregate stories posted by musicians), while "Bitmoji Kit" allows Bitmoji stickers to be integrated into third-party apps.


title: Snapchat

text: In response to industry competition from streaming platforms such as Netflix, Snapchat announced in late 2018 that it would diversify its content by launching Snap Originals (episodic content including both scripted shows and documentaries).


title: Snapchat

text: In June 2020, Snapchat announced the creation of its first-ever "shoppable" original show called "The Drop", which focused on "exclusive streetwear collage" from celebrities and designers. Each episode explored the relationship between the designer and celebrity collaborator. Viewers would learn about the item for sale and how it came together, as well as what time that day the item would go up for sale. Later that day, at the aforementioned time, the episode would be updated with more content that included a "swipe up to buy" action.


title: Snapchat

text: In 2014, Snapchat introduced a new feature called Snapcash which spurred its popularity among adult content creators.


title: Snapchat

text: Snapchat allows private premium accounts in which users can monetize their content. This feature is mostly used by models to monetize their adult content. Snapchat is increasingly becoming an integral part of the online porn industry.


title: Snapchat

text: Snapchat was hacked on December 31, 2013. Gibson Security, an Australian security firm, had disclosed an API security vulnerability to the company on August 27, 2013, and then made public the source code for the exploit on December 25. On December 27, Snapchat announced that it had implemented mitigating features. Nonetheless, an anonymous group hacked them, saying that the mitigating features presented only "minor obstacles." The hackers revealed parts of approximately 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers on a website named "SnapchatDB.info" and sent a statement to the popular technology blog "TechCrunch" saying that their objective had been to "raise public awareness... and... put public pressure on Snapchat" to fix the vulnerability. Snapchat apologized a week after the hack.


title: Snapchat

text: In 2014, Snapchat settled a complaint made by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The government agency alleged that the company had exaggerated to the public the degree to which mobile app images and photos could actually be made to disappear. Under the terms of the agreement, Snapchat was not fined, but the app service agreed to have its claims and policies monitored by an independent party for a period of 20 years. The FTC concluded that Snapchat was prohibited from "misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of users' information."


title: Snapchat

text: Following the agreement, Snapchat updated its privacy page to state that the company "can't guarantee that messages will be deleted within a specific timeframe." Even after Snapchat deletes message data from their servers, that same data may remain in backup for a certain period of time. In a public blog post, the service warned that "If you've ever tried to recover lost data after accidentally deleting a drive or maybe watched an episode of "", you might know that with the right forensic tools, it's sometimes possible to retrieve data after it has been deleted."


title: Snapchat

text: In November 2014, Snapchat announced a crackdown on third-party apps of its service and their users. Users of the Windows Phone platform were affected, as Snapchat did not have an official client for it, but numerous third-party apps existed, most popularly one called "6snap". In December, Microsoft was forced to remove "6snap" and all other third-party apps of Snapchat from the Windows Phone Store; Snapchat however did not develop an official app for the platform, leaving its users on the platform behind. A petition from users requesting an official Snapchat app reached 43,000 signatures in 2015, but the company still refused to respond and to build an app for Windows Phone. Snapchat was criticized once again later in 2015 when it did not develop an app for Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP).


title: Snapchat

text: In September 2015, an 18-year-old was using a Snapchat feature called "Lens" to record the speed she was driving her Mercedes C230 when she crashed into a Mitsubishi Outlander in Hampton, Georgia. The crash injured both drivers. The driver of the Outlander spent five weeks in intensive care while he was treated for severe traumatic brain injury. In April 2016, the Outlander driver sued both Snapchat and the user of Snapchat, alleging that Snapchat knew its application was being used in unlawful speed contests, yet did nothing to prevent such use so is negligent.


title: Snapchat

text: In October 2016, a similar collision occurred while a 22-year-old was driving at in Tampa, Florida, killing five people.


title: Snapchat

text: According to former Snapchat employee Anthony Pompliano in a lawsuit filed against Snap Inc., Spiegel made a statement in 2015 that Snapchat is "only for rich people" and that he does not "want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain." The incident sparked a Twitter trend called "#UninstallSnapchat", in which Indian users uninstalled the app, and caused backlash against the company, including a large number of low "one-star" ratings for the app in the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. Snapchat's shares fell by 1.5%. In response to the allegation, Snapchat called Pompliano's claim "ridiculous", and elaborated that "Obviously Snapchat is for everyone. It’s available worldwide to download for free."


title: Snapchat

text: In January 2017, former employee Anthony Pompliano filed a state lawsuit accusing Snapchat of doctoring growth metrics with the intention of deceiving investors. Pompliano said that CEO Evan Spiegel was dismissive of his concerns and that Pompliano was fired shortly thereafter. The judge dropped Pompliano's claims that Snapchat violated the Dodd-Frank and Consumer Protection Acts in retaliation against him, citing an arbitration clause in his contract. However, Snap Inc. faced blowback over a lack of disclosure regarding the contents of the lawsuit, resulting in plunging stock prices, several class-action lawsuits, and Federal investigations.


title: Snapchat

text: The June 2017 release of "Snap Map", a feature that broadcasts the user's location on a map, was met with concerns over privacy and safety. The feature, through an opt-in, delivers a message asking if the user would like to show their position on the map, but reportedly does not explain the ramifications of doing so, including that the app updates the user's position on the map each time the app is opened and not just when actively capturing snaps, potentially assisting stalkers. The map can be zoomed in to feature detailed geographical information, such as street addresses. "The Daily Telegraph" reported that police forces had issued child safety warnings, while other media publications wrote that safety concerns were also raised for teenagers and adults unaware of the feature's actual behavior. In a statement to "The Verge", a Snapchat spokesperson said that "The safety of our community is very important to us and we want to make sure that all Snapchatters, parents, and educators have accurate information about how the Snap Map works".


title: Snapchat

text: Users have the ability to operate in "Ghost Mode", or select the friends that they wish to share their location with. Although there has been an increase in advertising on Snapchat, Snapchat has stated that they do not plan on running ads on Snap Map stories.


title: Snapchat

text: In March 2018, an advertisement containing a poll about Rihanna was posted stating, "Would you rather punch Chris Brown or slap Rihanna?" Rihanna tweeted that Snapchat was "insensitive to domestic violence victims" and urged fans to delete Snapchat.


title: Snapchat

text: The increased use of body and facial reshaping applications such as Snapchat and Facetune has been identified as a potential cause of body dysmorphic disorder. In August 2018, researchers from the Boston Medical Center wrote in a "JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery" essay that a phenomenon they called 'Snapchat dysmorphia' had been identified, where people request surgery to look like the edited version of themselves as they appear through Snapchat Filters.


title: Snapchat

text: In May 2019, it was revealed that multiple Snapchat employees used an internal tool called SnapLion, originally designed to gather data in compliance with law enforcement requests, to spy on users.


title: Snapchat

text: Citing "vague, broad language" in Snapchat's privacy policy, Mozilla issued a September 2019 petition calling for public disclosures related to the app's use of facial emotion recognition technology. When reached for comment by "Scientific American," representatives for Snapchat declined to share a public response.


title: Snapchat

text: During the 2020 lockdown to inhibit the spread of COVID-19 in France, the app emerged as a hub for the dissemination of revenge porn of underage girls.


title: Snapchat

text: In 2020, a woman in North Carolina sued Snapchat (as well as dating app Tinder and the five men named in the attack), claiming features of the app enabled her alleged rapist and his friends to hide evidence of the rape. In particular, the suit alleges that "because of the ways Snapchat is and has been designed, constructed, marketed, and maintained, [the woman's assailants] were able to send these nonconsensual, pornographic photographs and videos of [her] with little to no threat of law enforcement verifying that they did so." The woman told the court that parent company Snap Inc. "specifically and purposely designed, constructed, and maintained Snapchat to serve as a secretive and nefarious communications platform that encourages, solicits, and facilitates the creation and dissemination of illicit and non-consensual sexually explicit content...and allowed Snapchat to operate as a safe-haven from law enforcement."


title: Snapchat

text: Snapchat was the subject of a class action lawsuit from the state of Illinois, alleging that the company violated the Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting and storing biometric data on Illinois residents who used the app's filters and lenses without providing a written explanation on why the data was recorded and what its term of storage would be. The company opted to settle the lawsuit with a $35 million payout.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Laverne Cox (born May 29, 1972) is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series "Orange Is the New Black", becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for "Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word", making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBSs "Doubt".


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox appeared as a contestant on the first season of VH1's reality show "I Want to Work for Diddy", and co-produced and co-hosted the VH1 makeover television series "TRANSform Me". In April 2014, Cox was honored by GLAAD with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her work as an advocate for the transgender community. In June 2014, Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of "Time" magazine. Cox is the first transgender person to appear on the cover of a "Cosmopolitan" magazine, with her February 2018 cover on the South African edition. She is also the first openly transgender person to have a wax figure of herself at Madame Tussauds.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama, and was raised by a single mother and grandmother within the AME Zion church. She has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrayed the pre-transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in "Orange Is the New Black". Cox has stated that she attempted suicide at the age of 11, when she noticed that she had developed feelings for her male classmates and had been bullied for several years for not acting "the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act".


title: Laverne Cox

text: She is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama, where she studied creative writing before switching to dance. She then studied for two years at Indiana University Bloomington before transferring to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she switched from dancing (specifically classical ballet) to acting. During her first season on "Orange Is the New Black", she was still appearing at a restaurant on the Lower East Side as a drag queen (where she had applied initially to work as a waitress).


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox appeared as a contestant on the first season of "I Want to Work for Diddy"; afterwards she was approached by VH1 about show ideas. From that came the makeover television series "TRANSform Me", which made Cox the first African-American transgender person to produce and star in her own TV show. Both those shows were nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding reality program, and when "Diddy" won in 2009, Cox accepted the award at the ceremony, giving a speech described by the "San Francisco Sentinel" as "among the most poignant because [it] reminded us how important it is to tell our stories, all of our stories." She has also acted in a number of TV shows and films, including "", "Bored to Death", and "Musical Chairs".


title: Laverne Cox

text: In 2013, Cox began her recurring role in the Netflix series "Orange is the New Black" as Sophia Burset, a trans woman sent to prison for credit-card fraud. In that year, she stated, "Sophia is written as a multi-dimensional character who the audience can really empathize with—all of the sudden they're empathizing with a real Trans person. And for Trans folks out there, who need to see representations of people who are like them and of their experiences, that's when it becomes really important." Cox's role in "Orange is the New Black" provides her a platform to speak on the rights of trans people.


title: Laverne Cox

text: In January 2014, Cox joined trans woman Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric's syndicated show, "Katie". Couric referred to transgender people as "transgenders", and after being rebuffed by Carrera on the subject of her surgeries, specifically what genital reconstruction she had done, turned the same question to Cox. Cox responded,


title: Laverne Cox

text: News outlets such as "Salon", "The Huffington Post", and "Business Insider" covered what was characterized by "Salon" writer Katie McDonough as Couric's "clueless" and "invasive" line of questioning.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox was on the cover of the June 9, 2014, issue of "Time" and was interviewed for the article "The Transgender Tipping Point" by Katy Steinmetz, which ran in that issue and the title of which was also featured on the cover; this makes Cox the first transgender person on the cover of "Time".


title: Laverne Cox

text: Later in 2014, Cox became the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category: Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia Burset in "Orange Is the New Black". She also appeared in John Legend's video for the song "You & I (Nobody in the World)".


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox joined a campaign in 2014 against a Phoenix, Arizona, law which allows police to arrest anyone suspected of "manifesting prostitution", and which she feels targets transgender women of color, following the conviction of activist (and transgender woman of color) Monica Jones. Cox stated, "All over the country, trans women are targeted simply for being who they are. Laws like this manifestation law really support systematically the idea that girls like me, girls like me and Monica, are less than [others] in this country." Later that year the Sylvia Rivera Law Project released a video in which Cox read a letter from transgender inmate Synthia China Blast, addressing common issues faced by trans inmates. But when Cox learned that Blast was found guilty of the 1993 rape and murder of a 13-year-old child, she wrote on her Tumblr, "I was not aware of the charges for which she was convicted. If I had been aware of those charges, I would have never agreed to read the letter."


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox was featured in the annual "Rebels" issue of "V" in late 2014. For the issue, V asked celebrities and artists to nominate who they saw as their personal rebels, and Natasha Lyonne nominated Cox. Cox was also on the cover of the October 2014 issue of "Essence" magazine, along with actresses Alfre Woodard, Nicole Beharie, and Danai Gurira.


title: Laverne Cox

text: On October 17, 2014, "Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word", an hour-long documentary executive-produced and narrated by Cox, premiered on MTV and Logo simultaneously. That same year, Cox was featured on the fifth anniversary cover of "C☆NDY" magazine along with 13 other transgender women – Janet Mock, Carmen Carrera, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Gisele Alicea, Leyna Ramous, Dina Marie, Nina Poon, Juliana Huxtable, Niki M'nray, Pêche Di, Carmen Xtravaganza (House of Xtravaganza), and Yasmine Petty.


title: Laverne Cox

text: In 2015, Cox won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as Executive Producer for "Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word." This made Cox the first transgender woman to win a Daytime Emmy as an Executive Producer; as well, "The T Word" is the first trans documentary to win a Daytime Emmy. That year Cox, among others, posed nude for the "Allure" annual "Nudes" issue, becoming the first transgender actress to do so.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox is the cover subject for the June 11, 2015, "totally not-straight issue" of "Entertainment Weekly", the first issue of the magazine in 15 years to focus exclusively on gay, lesbian, and transgender entertainment.


title: Laverne Cox

text: In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Cox and others told the stories of the people killed there.


title: Laverne Cox

text: In 2017, Cox began her role as transgender attorney Cameron Wirth on "Doubt" on CBS. However, after only two episodes had aired, CBS announced that they were pulling the series from their schedule, leaving the future of the remaining unaired episodes uncertain. It was the first official cancellation of the 2016–17 season, following weak viewership. CBS later announced that the remaining 11 episodes would be broadcast on Saturday, beginning July 1.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox was nominated in 2017 for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her role in "Orange Is the New Black".


title: Laverne Cox

text: Also in 2017, Cox collaborated with the ACLU, Zackary Drucker, Molly Crabapple, and Kim Boekbinder, in making a video about transgender history and resistance, called "Time Marches Forward & So Do We", which Cox narrated. That year Cox became one of the four faces of the fall campaign for the Ivy Park line of clothing.


title: Laverne Cox

text: In February 2019, Cox headlined the New York Fashion Week show for 11 Honoré, a luxury e-retailer focused on plus-sized designer fashion.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox was featured in Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down" music video, which was released June 17, 2019.


title: Laverne Cox

text: She was one of fifteen women chosen by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to appear on the cover of the September 2019 issue of British "Vogue"; this made Cox the first transgender woman to appear on the cover of British "Vogue".


title: Laverne Cox

text: In September 2019, Cox brought ACLU attorney Chase Strangio as her date to the 2019 Emmy Awards, and carried a custom rainbow clutch featuring the phrases "Oct 8", "Title VII", and "Supreme Court". This action was in reference to the U.S. Supreme Court case "R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission", in which Strangio was one of the lawyers representing Aimee Stephens, a trans woman who was fired from her job at a funeral home. Cox and Strangio spoke to reporters on the red carpet about the upcoming court case. Cox executive produced the documentary "", which premiered on Netflix on January 27, 2020.


title: Laverne Cox

text: In May 2021, E! announced that Cox would become the host of "Live from the Red Carpet" starting in January 2022, replacing Giuliana Rancic. In December 2021, she was cast in Netflix's dystopian fantasy film "Uglies" directed by McG, based on a book of the same name by Scott Westerfeld.


title: Laverne Cox

text: Cox has been noted by her LGBT peers, and many others, for being a trailblazer for the transgender community, and has won numerous awards for her activist approach in spreading awareness. Her impact and prominence in the media has led to a growing conversation about transgender culture, specifically transgender women, and how being transgender intersects with one's race. She is the first transgender person to be on the cover of "Time" magazine, be nominated for a Primetime Emmy, and have a wax work in Madame Tussauds, as well as the first transgender woman to win a Daytime Emmy as an executive producer. In May 2016, Cox was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School in New York City for her progressive work in the fight for gender equality.


title: Bob Ross

text: Robert Norman Ross (October 29, 1942 – July 4, 1995) was an American painter, art instructor, and television host. He was the creator and host of "The Joy of Painting", an instructional television program that aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS in the United States, CBC in Canada, and similar channels in Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. Ross would subsequently become widely known through his posthumous internet presence.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, to Jack and Ollie Ross, a carpenter and a waitress respectively, and raised in Orlando, Florida. As an adolescent, Ross cared for injured animals, including armadillos, snakes, alligators and squirrels, one of which was later featured in several episodes of his television show. He had a half-brother, Jim, whom he mentioned in passing on his show. Ross dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. While working as a carpenter with his father, he lost part of his left index finger, which did not affect his ability to later hold a palette while painting.


title: Bob Ross

text: In 1961, 18-year-old Ross enlisted in the United States Air Force and was put into service as a medical records technician. He rose to the rank of master sergeant and served as the first sergeant of the clinic at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, where he first saw the snow and mountains that later appear as recurring themes in his paintings. He developed his quick painting technique during brief daily work breaks. Having held military positions that required him to act tough and mean, "the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work", Ross decided he would not raise his voice when he left the military.


title: Bob Ross

text: During his 20-year Air Force career, Ross developed an interest in painting after attending an art class at the Anchorage U.S.O. club. He found himself frequently at odds with many of his painting instructors, who were more interested in abstract painting. Ross said, "They'd tell you what makes a tree, but they wouldn't tell you how to paint a tree."


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was working as a part-time bartender when he discovered a TV show called "The Magic of Oil Painting", hosted by German painter Bill Alexander. Alexander used a 16th-century painting style called (Italian for 'first attempt'), widely known as "wet-on-wet", that allowed him to create a painting within thirty minutes. Ross studied and mastered the technique, began painting and then successfully selling Alaskan landscapes that he would paint on novelty gold-mining pans. Eventually, Ross's income from sales surpassed his military salary. He retired from the Air Force in 1981 as a master sergeant.


title: Bob Ross

text: He returned to Florida, studied painting with Alexander, joined his "Alexander Magic Art Supplies Company" and became a traveling salesman and tutor. Annette Kowalski, who had attended one of his sessions in Clearwater, Florida, convinced Ross he could succeed on his own. She, along with Ross and his wife, pooled their savings to create his company, which struggled at first.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was noted for his permed hair, which he ultimately disliked but kept after he had integrated it into the company logo.


title: Bob Ross

text: The origins of the TV show "The Joy of Painting" are unclear. It was filmed at the studio of the PBS station WIPB in Muncie, Indiana.


title: Bob Ross

text: The show ran from January 11, 1983, to May 17, 1994, but reruns continue to appear in many broadcast areas and countries, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.


title: Bob Ross

text: During each half-hour segment, Ross would instruct viewers in the quick, wet-on-wet oil painting technique, painting a scene without sketching it first, but creating the image directly from his imagination, in real time. He explained his limited paint palette, deconstructing the process into simple steps.


title: Bob Ross

text: Art critic Mira Schor compared Ross to Fred Rogers, host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", noting that Ross's soft voice and the slow pace of his speech were similar.


title: Bob Ross

text: With help from Annette and Walt Kowalski, Ross used his television show to promote a line of art supplies and class recordings, building what would become a $15-million businessBob Ross Inc.which would ultimately expand to include classes taught by other artists trained in his methods. Following Ross's death, ownership of the company was passed to the Kowalskis.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross also filmed wildlife, squirrels in particular, usually in his garden, and he would often take in injured or abandoned squirrels and other animals. Small animals often appeared on his "Joy of Painting" canvases.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross painted an estimated 30,000 paintings during his lifetime. Despite the unusually high supply of original paintings, Bob Ross original paintings are scarce on the art market, with sale prices of the paintings averaging in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000. The major auction houses have never sold any of Ross's paintings, and Bob Ross Inc. continues to own many of the ones he painted for "The Joy of Painting", as Ross himself was opposed to having his work turned into financial instruments.


title: Bob Ross

text: In contrast to more traditionally famous artists, Ross's work, described by an art appraisal service as a cross between "fine art" and "entertainment memorabilia" — is most highly sought after by common fans of "The Joy of Painting", as opposed to wealthy collectors. The artwork circulating among collectors is largely from Ross's work from before he launched the television show.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross used a wet-on-wet oil painting technique of painting over a thin base layer of wet paint. The painting could progress without first drying. The technique used a limited selection of tools and colors that didn't require a large investment in expensive equipment. Ross frequently recommended odorless paint thinner (odorless mineral spirits) for brush cleaning.


title: Bob Ross

text: Combining the wet-painting method with the use of large one- and two-inch brushes, as well as painting knives, allowed the painter to quickly complete a landscape scene.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross painted three versions of almost every painting featured on his show. The first was painted prior to taping and sat on an easel off-camera during filming, where Ross used it as a reference to create the second copy which viewers actually watched him paint. After filming the episode, he painted a more detailed version for inclusion in his instructional books. The versions were each marked on the side or back of the canvas: "Kowalski" for the initial version, "tv" for the version painted during the TV show and "book" for the book version.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross dedicated the first episode of the second season of "The Joy of Painting" to Bill Alexander, explaining that "years ago, Bill taught me this fantastic [wet-on-wet] technique, and I feel as though he gave me a precious gift, and I'd like to share that gift with you." As Ross's popularity grew, his relationship with Alexander became increasingly strained. "He betrayed me," Alexander told "The New York Times" in 1991. "I invented 'wet on wet', I trained him, and... he thinks he can do it better."


title: Bob Ross

text: Art historians have pointed out that the "wet-on-wet" (or alla prima) technique actually originated in Flanders during the 15th century and was used by Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez, Caravaggio, Paul Cézanne, John Singer Sargent and Claude Monet, among many others.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was well known for phrases he tended to repeat while painting, such as "let's add some happy little trees".


title: Bob Ross

text: In most episodes, Ross would note that he enjoyed cleaning his paint brush. He was fond of drying off a brush dipped in odorless thinner by striking it against the can of thinner, then striking it against a box (on early seasons of the show) and a trash can (on later seasons). Occasionally, he would strike the brush hard on the trash can, saying he "hit the bucket" and then on the easel. He would smile and often laugh aloud as he said to "beat the Devil out of it". He also used a lightly sanded palette to avoid reflections from the studio lighting.


title: Bob Ross

text: In every show, Ross wore jeans and a plain light-colored shirt, which he believed would be a timeless look, and spoke as if addressing one viewer.


title: Bob Ross

text: When asked about his relaxed and calm approach, he said, "I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, 'Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.' That's for sure. That's why I paint. It's because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news."


title: Bob Ross

text: The landscapes he painted, typically mountains, lakes, snow and log cabin scenes, were inspired by his years in Alaska, where he was stationed for the majority of his Air Force career. He repeatedly said everyone has inherent artistic talent and could become an accomplished artist given time, practice and encouragement. Ross would say, "we don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents."


title: Bob Ross

text: In 2014, the blog FiveThirtyEight analysed 381 episodes in which Ross painted live, concluding that 91% of Ross's paintings contained at least one tree, 44% included clouds, 39% included mountains and 34% included mountain lakes. By his own estimation, Ross completed more than thirty thousand paintings. His work rarely contained human subjects or signs of human life. On rare occasions, he would incorporate a cabin, sometimes with a chimney but without smoke, and possibly unoccupied.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was fond of country music and in 1987 was invited on stage by Hank Snow at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. The audience gave him a huge ovation; he was slightly nervous at first, but felt better after cracking a joke to the crowd. Snow was later given a private painting lesson by Ross.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross visited New York City to promote his hardcover book, "The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross", and painting techniques to a studio audience several times. On one visit in 1989, he appeared on "The Joan Rivers Show". He returned in 1992 for a live show with hosts Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford. In 1994, Ross appeared on the "Phil Donahue Show" and took five audience members on-stage to do a painting. Donahue also did a painting during that episode.


title: Bob Ross

text: In the early 1990s, Ross did several MTV promotional spots that, according to the "American City Business Journals", "dovetailed perfectly with Generation X's burgeoning obsession with all things ironic and retro".


title: Bob Ross

text: In 1995, a visibly ill Ross made his final public television appearance as a guest on the pilot episode of the children's series "The Adventures of Elmer and Friends". The series premiered in 1996, one year after Ross's death. The episode included a final message of thanks from Ross to his fans and viewers and a musical tribute.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was married three times and had two children: a child he fathered from a relationship he had as a teenager, and a son, Robert Stephen "Steve" Ross, with his first wife, Vivian Ridge. Steve, also a talented painter, occasionally appeared on "The Joy of Painting" and became a Ross-certified instructor. Steve appeared on camera in the last episode of Season 1, in which he read a series of general "how-to" questions sent in by viewers during the season. Bob answered them one at a time, technique by technique, until he had completed an entire painting.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross and Ridge's marriage ended in divorce in 1977, allegedly due to Ross' infidelity. Ross and his second wife, Jane, had no children together. In 1992, Jane died of cancer. In 1995, two months before his death, Ross married for a third time, to Lynda Brown.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was very secretive about his life and had a great preference for privacy. Some of only a few interviews with his close-knit circle of friends and family can be found in the 2011 PBS documentary "Bob Ross: The Happy Painter". Other conversations were destroyed as part of a legal settlement between Ross' family and Bob Ross Inc. Bob Ross Inc. is protective of his intellectual property and his privacy to this day.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross was not a member of any specific organized religion. He frequently expressed his belief in a creator god and often closed his shows with a wish that "God bless" his viewers.


title: Bob Ross

text: A cigarette smoker for most of his adult life, Ross expected to die young and had several health problems over the course of his life. He died at the age of 52 on July 4, 1995, in Orlando, Florida, due to complications from lymphoma.


title: Bob Ross

text: His remains are interred at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Gotha, Florida, under a plaque marked "Bob Ross; Television Artist". Ross kept his diagnosis a secret from the general public. His lymphoma was not known outside of his circle of family and friends until after his death.


title: Bob Ross

text: Under the terms of the incorporation of Bob Ross Inc., the death of any partner in the company would lead to that person's stock being equally divided among the partners. Ross's death, along with that of his second wife, the other partner in the company, left the Kowalskis with sole ownership of the company. The Kowalskis were largely only interested in using Ross's name for painting supplies. They became very aggressive against Ross's family members and associates, allegedly trying to pressure an ailing Ross to sign over rights to his estate before his death.


title: Bob Ross

text: Instead, Ross wrote the Kowalskis out of his will and testament, leaving his estate and rights to his name and likeness to his son Steve and half-brother Jimmie Cox. The Kowalskis countered that virtually everything Ross had done in his lifetime was a work for hire and thus Ross had no right to bequeath them. The Kowalskis eventually won the lawsuit.


title: Bob Ross

text: After the Kowalskis retired and Joan Kowalski took over the company, she became more open to merchandising the Ross brand outside of its core business of painting products, setting in motion the mass marketing of his name from the 2010s onward. Joan also engineered a settlement with Steve Ross and Jimmie Cox granting Bob Ross Inc. rights to Ross's name and likeness, in exchange for a guarantee that Steve Ross could resume his art career without threat of lawsuit, something that Steve Ross said had largely stopped him from painting in public after his father's death.


title: Bob Ross

text: Ross's likeness has become part of popular culture, with his image spoofed in television programs, films and video games like "Family Guy", "The Boondocks", "Deadpool 2" and "Smite".


title: Bob Ross

text: Google celebrated the 70th anniversary of his birth with a Google Doodle on October 29, 2012. It portrayed Ross painting a depiction of the letter "g" with a landscape in the background. A board game titled "Bob Ross: The Art of Chill" was released and carried by Target stores, while a Chia Pet model in Bob Ross's likeness was also released. Ross was going to have a video game released on Wii, the Nintendo DS and PC, with development handled by AGFRAG Entertainment Group, although this never came to fruition.


title: Bob Ross

text: Newfound interest in Ross occurred in 2015 as part of the launch of Twitch Creative. Twitch hosted a nine-day marathon of "The Joy of Painting" beginning on October 29 to commemorate what would have been Ross's 73rd birthday. Twitch reported that 5.6million viewers watched the marathon and, due to its popularity, created a weekly rebroadcast of one season of "The Joy of Painting" each Monday. A portion of the advertising revenue was promised to charities, including St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.


title: Bob Ross

text: In June 2016, Ross's series "Beauty Is Everywhere" was added to the Netflix lineup. The 30-minute episodes are taken from seasons 20, 21 and 22 of the original "The Joy of Painting" series. The newfound interest surprised the Kowalskis, since they were managing Ross's image and "The Joy of Painting" episodes. They created a YouTube channel for Ross which gained more than a million subscribers within a year.


title: Bob Ross

text: The renewed interest in Ross also led to questions of where his paintings were located, given that more than a thousand works were created for "The Joy of Painting". In an investigative report by "The New York Times", the Kowalskis affirmed that they still held all of them, though without the proper care generally needed to store art. Prompted by numerous letters and emails from fans of Ross, the Smithsonian American Art Museum contacted the Kowalskis and offered to take a selection of Ross's paintings, along with other items from the show, to place on exhibit at the museum.


title: Bob Ross

text: In August 2021, Netflix released a documentary called "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed" exploring Ross's life, career, legacy, and the controversy surrounding the Kowalskis versus Bob Ross's family.


title: Bob Ross

text: In 2021, Bob Ross Inc. in conjunction with Running Press Kids, in imprint of Hachette Book Group, released the official Bob Ross children's book biography titled: "This is Your World: The Story of Bob Ross". Written by Sophia Gholz and illustrated by Robin Boyden, the book shares the story of Ross's life and how he eventually became one of the most well-known American painters of his time.


title: Bob Ross

text: The Twitch streams created a new interest in Ross and caused his popularity to grow. His videos subsequently became popular with devotees of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response). ASMR refers to a pleasant form of paresthesia, or tingling, often brought about by specific visual or auditory stimuli. Many viewers found that listening to Ross triggered an ASMR response. According to Joan Kowalski, the president of Bob Ross Inc.: "He's sort of the godfather of ASMR... People were into him for ASMR reasons before there even "was" an ASMR."


title: Belfast (film)

text: Belfast is a 2021 British coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Kenneth Branagh. The film stars Caitríona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciarán Hinds, Colin Morgan and Jude Hill. The film, which Branagh has described as his "most personal", follows a young boy's childhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the beginning of The Troubles in 1969.


title: Belfast (film)

text: "Belfast" had its world premiere at the 48th Telluride Film Festival on 2 September 2021; shortly thereafter, it won the People's Choice Award at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was released in the United States on 12 November 2021 by Focus Features, and in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 21 January 2022, by Universal Pictures. It received praise from critics for Branagh's direction and screenplay, cinematography and the performances of the cast, and grossed over $49 million worldwide.


title: Belfast (film)

text: The film received seven nominations at the 94th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning for Best Original Screenplay. It was named one of the best films of 2021 by the National Board of Review and tied with "The Power of the Dog" for a leading seven nominations at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, and won for Best Screenplay. It also tied with "West Side Story" for a leading eleven nominations at the 27th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture, and also received six nominations at the 75th British Academy Film Awards, winning Outstanding British Film.


title: Belfast (film)

text: The film chronicles the life of a working-class Ulster Protestant family from the perspective of their nine-year-old son Buddy during The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Buddy's father Pa works overseas in England, while the family—Ma, elder brother Will, and paternal grandparents Granny and Pop—live in Belfast.


title: Belfast (film)

text: During the August 1969 riots, a group of Protestant loyalists attack the homes and businesses of Catholics on Buddy's street. The residents of the street set up a barricade to prevent further conflict and Pa returns home from England to check up on the family’s wellbeing. The family attends church, where the minister delivers a harsh fork in the road speech; the rhetoric is continually reflected upon by Buddy throughout the film. Buddy develops feelings for a fellow high-achieving Catholic classmate, Catherine, and they eventually become friends.


title: Belfast (film)

text: Local criminal and sectarian rabble-rouser Billy Clanton approaches Pa demanding his involvement in "the cause"; when Pa refuses, he becomes aggressive and continues to incessantly approach Buddy. Meanwhile, the family struggles to pay off their accumulated tax bill. Pa dreams of emigrating to Sydney or Vancouver, a prospect met with distress from Ma. However, she can no longer deny the option of leaving Belfast as the conflict worsens and Pa is offered a promotion and housing deal in England from his employers. At Christmas, they attempt to discuss the matter with the boys, but Buddy breaks down at the thought of leaving.


title: Belfast (film)

text: Buddy and his cousin Moira attempt to steal chocolates from a sweet shop, but the plan goes awry. When later questioned by the police, he does not reveal his co-conspirators. Following this, Moira recruits him into her local gang, who turn out to be Ulster loyalists that loot a supermarket during a riot. A reluctant Buddy is coerced into stealing a box of laundry detergent before he returns home and informs Ma of his activities. Ma berates him and drags both Buddy and Moira back to the ongoing looting in order to return their stolen items.


title: Belfast (film)

text: Billy then appears and takes them hostage as leverage for his own escape. Pa, Will and the British Army arrive at the scene to end the riot. This initiates a standoff with Billy who attempts a shootout until Pa and Will manage to disarm him. He is then promptly arrested and swears retribution.


title: Belfast (film)

text: When realising that they are no longer safe in Belfast, the family decides to leave for England. Pop passes away. Before departing, Buddy bids farewell to Catherine. He later laments whether he could have pursued a future with her despite the fact she was a Catholic. Pa responds that it should not make any difference and, as Granny watches, the family boards a bus headed for the airport. Granny watches as the bus departs and encourages her family to go forward towards the future, and not to look back.


title: Belfast (film)

text: Kenneth Branagh started working on the film in March 2020. In July 2020, Branagh announced that he would write and direct the film. In September 2020, Judi Dench, Caitríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Ciarán Hinds and Jude Hill joined the cast of the film.


title: Belfast (film)

text: Principal photography began in September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming initially took place in and around London, before moving to Belfast. The entire film was shot in seven weeks. Production concluded by October 2020. The film was predominantly shot in black and white.


title: Belfast (film)

text: The film features music by Belfast native Van Morrison, including the score he composed, dominated by electric guitar and saxophone, eight of his classic songs, and a new song he wrote for the film, "Down to Joy." It is Branagh's first film since "Peter's Friends" not to be composed by Patrick Doyle.


title: Belfast (film)

text: "Belfast" had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on 2 September 2021, where it became the festival's most often-screened film of that year. It also screened at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September 2021, where it won the People's Choice Award. By the end of its run, it will have screened at film festivals in Chicago, Hamburg, London, Middleburg, Mill Valley, Philadelphia, San Diego and Vancouver. It held its Los Angeles premiere at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on 8 November 2021. The film was released on 12 November 2021 through Focus Features in the United States, and on 21 January 2022 in Ireland and the United Kingdom through Universal Pictures.


title: Belfast (film)

text: "Belfast" was then released on digital download on iTunes and Amazon Prime Video on February 8, 2022, and on Blu-ray and DVD on March 1, 2022 in the United States by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (through Studio Distribution Services LLC) and on April 25, 2022 in the United Kingdom by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.


title: Belfast (film)

text: "Belfast" grossed $49million worldwide, with over $19 million coming from the United Kingdom. The United States and Canada were the film's largest overseas market, with a gross of $9.3 million.


title: Belfast (film)

text: The film had a strong debut in the United Kingdom and Ireland, opening in second place just behind "", with £2.2 million. It was the eighth-widest release of all-time in the territory, and was the top film at 412 of the 705 locations it played at. It performed especially well in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which accounted for 20 percent of its total takings. Its location average in Northern Ireland was £8,801, compared to £3,121 across the rest of the market. In its seventh weekend, "Belfast" surpassed the £14.4 million gross of "Schindler's List", to become the highest-grossing black and white film of the modern era. The film ultimately grossed £15.6 million in the United Kingdom and Ireland.


title: Belfast (film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Belfast" was projected to gross around $1 million from 588 cinemas in its opening weekend. It went on to debut to $1.8 million, finishing eighth at the box office. It averaged $3,111 per-venue, one of the best of figures of 2021 for an indie total; 73% of the audience was over 35. In its second weekend the film fell 47% to $940,000. The film made $1.3 million over the five-day Thanksgiving frame, including $958,770 in its third weekend, finishing eleventh. In its twelfth weekend, the film had an expansion to 200 theatres, grossing an estimated $120,000.


title: Belfast (film)

text: In the weekend after earning six BAFTA nominations, the film grossed $3.23 million from seven markets. The following weekend, the film earned $2.2 million from seven markets.


title: Belfast (film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 320 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A deeply personal project for writer-director Kenneth Branagh, "Belfast" transcends its narrative deficits with powerful performances and directorial craft." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while 79% of filmgoers at PostTrak said they would definitely recommend it.


title: Belfast (film)

text: Reviewing the film, Kevin Maher of "The Times" gave it 5/5 stars and wrote: "It's a film of formal beauty, letter-perfect performances, complex and textured writing (also from Branagh) and enough comedic one-lines and Van Morrison musical montages to make you forget that you are watching a drama about seething sectarian hatreds". Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" also gave the film 5/5 stars and addressed it as "a seductive piece of myth-making from Branagh". Writing for "TheWrap", Steve Pond praised the performances of Dornan and Balfe, and said: "The film feels true in the way it must be exploring Branagh's memories of a tumultuous and confusing time, and the way it pays tribute to a vibrant community as that community is irrevocably changed." Stephanie Zacharek of "Time" said that it was hard to resist the film's affectionate energy. Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" said that "Branagh's genuine affection and nostalgia for his subject suffuse the movie; if only the misty romanticism of his story could match it" and gave the film a "B−" score.


title: Belfast (film)

text: David Ehrlich of "IndieWire", who gave the film a "C" grade, wrote: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and this scattershot crowd-pleaser renders them both in such broad strokes that it seems as if Branagh can only imagine the Belfast of his youth as a brogue-accented blend of other movies like it."


title: Belfast (film)

text: At the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, the film won the People's Choice Award. At the Middleburg Film Festival, the Best Narrative Feature award went to "Belfast". Kenneth Branagh won for Best Screenplay at the 79th Golden Globe Awards. The film won the Outstanding British Film Award at the 75th BAFTA Awards.


title: Belfast (film)

text: At the 94th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Actor in a Supporting Role (for Hinds) and Actress in a Supporting Role (for Dench). At the age of 87, Judi Dench became the second oldest nominee in the category of Best Supporting Actress for her performance, after Gloria Stuart was nominated in the same category for her role in "Titanic" (1997). Branagh became the first individual to have been nominated in a total of seven different categories with his nominations in the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay categories for his work on the film.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Spanish Civil War () was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism. According to Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the "dress rehearsal" for World War II. The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Republican government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces, with General Emilio Mola as the primary planner and leader and having General José Sanjurjo as a figurehead. The government at the time was a coalition of Republicans, supported in the Cortes by communist and socialist parties, under the leadership of centre-left President Manuel Azaña. The Nationalist group was supported by a number of conservative groups, including CEDA, monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists, and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party. After the deaths of Sanjurjo, Emilio Mola and Manuel Goded Llopis, Franco emerged as the remaining leader of the Nationalist side.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The coup was supported by military units in Morocco, Pamplona, Burgos, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Cádiz, Córdoba, and Seville. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities—such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, and Málaga—did not gain control, and those cities remained under the control of the government. This left Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists and the Republican government fought for control of the country. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Portugal, while the Republican side received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government but followed an official policy of non-intervention. Despite this policy, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict. They fought mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades, which also included several thousand exiles from pro-Nationalist regimes.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Nationalists advanced from their strongholds in the south and west, capturing most of Spain's northern coastline in 1937. They also besieged Madrid and the area to its south and west for much of the war. After much of Catalonia was captured in 1938 and 1939, and Madrid cut off from Barcelona, the Republican military position became hopeless. Following the fall without resistance of Barcelona in January 1939, the Francoist regime was recognised by France and the United Kingdom in February 1939. On 5 March 1939, in response to an alleged increasing communist dominance of the republican government and the deteriorating military situation, Colonel Segismundo Casado led a military coup against the Republican government, with the intention of seeking peace with the Nationalists. These peace overtures, however, were rejected by Franco. Following internal conflict between Republican factions in Madrid in the same month, Franco entered the capital and declared victory on 1 April 1939. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fled to refugee camps in southern France. Those associated with the losing Republicans who stayed were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists. Franco established a dictatorship in which all right-wing parties were fused into the structure of the Franco regime.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired and for the many atrocities that occurred. Organised purges occurred in territory captured by Franco's forces so they could consolidate their future regime. Mass executions on a lesser scale also took place in areas controlled by the Republicans, with the participation of local authorities varying from location to location.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The 19th century was a turbulent time for Spain. Those in favour of reforming the Spanish government vied for political power with conservatives who intended to prevent such reforms from being implemented. In a tradition that started with the Spanish Constitution of 1812, many liberals sought to curtail the authority of the Spanish monarchy as well as to establish a nation-state under their ideology and philosophy. The reforms of 1812 were short-lived as they were almost immediately overturned by King Ferdinand VII when he dissolved the aforementioned constitution. This ended the Trienio Liberal government. Twelve successful coups were carried out between 1814 and 1874. There were several attempts to realign the political system to match social reality. Until the 1850s, the economy of Spain was primarily based on agriculture. There was little development of a bourgeois industrial or commercial class. The land-based oligarchy remained powerful; a small number of people held large estates called "latifundia" as well as all of the important positions in government. In addition to these regime changes and hierarchies, there was a series of civil wars that transpired in Spain known as the Carlist Wars throughout the middle of the century. There were three such wars: the First Carlist War (1833–1840), the Second Carlist War (1846–1849), and the Third Carlist War (1872–1876). During these wars, a right-wing political movement known as Carlism fought to institute a monarchial dynasty under a different branch of the House of Bourbon descended from Don Infante Carlos María Isidro of Molina.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In 1868, popular uprisings led to the overthrow of Queen Isabella II of the House of Bourbon. Two distinct factors led to the uprisings: a series of urban riots and a liberal movement within the middle classes and the military (led by General Joan Prim) concerned with the ultra-conservatism of the monarchy. In 1873, Isabella's replacement, King Amadeo I of the House of Savoy, abdicated due to increasing political pressure, and the short-lived First Spanish Republic was proclaimed. After the restoration of the Bourbons in December 1874, Carlists and anarchists emerged in opposition to the monarchy. Alejandro Lerroux, Spanish politician and leader of the Radical Republican Party, helped to bring republicanism to the fore in Catalonia—a region of Spain with its own cultural and societal identity in which poverty was particularly acute at the time. Conscription was a controversial policy that was eventually implemented by the government of Spain. As evidenced by the Tragic Week in 1909, resentment and resistance were factors that continued well into the 20th century.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Spain was neutral in World War I. Following the war, wide swathes of Spanish society, including the armed forces, united in hopes of removing the corrupt central government of the country in Madrid, but these circles were ultimately unsuccessful. Popular perception of communism as a major threat significantly increased during this period. In 1923, a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power. As a result, Spain transitioned to government by military dictatorship. Support for the Rivera regime gradually faded, and he resigned in January 1930. He was replaced by General Dámaso Berenguer, who was in turn himself replaced by Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar-Cabañas; both men continued a policy of rule by decree. There was little support for the monarchy in the major cities. Consequently, much like Amadeo I nearly sixty years earlier, King Alfonso XIII of Spain relented to popular pressure for the establishment of a republic in 1931 and called municipal elections for 12 April of that year. Left-wing entities such as the socialist and liberal republicans won almost all the provincial capitals and, following the resignation of Aznar's government, Alfonso XIII fled the country. At this time, the Second Spanish Republic was formed. This republic remained in power until the culmination of the civil war five years later.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The revolutionary committee headed by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora became the provisional government, with Alcalá-Zamora himself as president and head of state. The republic had broad support from all segments of society. In May, an incident where a taxi driver was attacked outside a monarchist club sparked anti-clerical violence throughout Madrid and south-west portion of the country. The slow response on the part of the government disillusioned the right and reinforced their view that the Republic was determined to persecute the church. In June and July, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) called several strikes, which led to a violent incident between CNT members and the Civil Guard and a brutal crackdown by the Civil Guard and the army against the CNT in Seville. This led many workers to believe the Spanish Second Republic was just as oppressive as the monarchy, and the CNT announced its intention of overthrowing it via revolution. Elections in June 1931 returned a large majority of Republicans and Socialists. With the onset of the Great Depression, the government tried to assist rural Spain by instituting an eight-hour day and redistributing land tenure to farm workers. The rural workers lived in some of the worst poverty in Europe at the time and the government tried to increase their wages and improve working conditions. This estranged small and medium landholders who used hired labour. The Law of Municipal Boundaries forbade the hiring of workers from outside the locality of the owner's holdings. Since not all localities had enough labour for the tasks required, the law had unintended negative consequences, such as sometimes shutting out peasants and renters from the labour market when they needed extra income as pickers. Labour arbitration boards were set up to regulate salaries, contracts and working hours; they were more favourable to workers than employers and thus the latter became hostile to them. A decree in July 1931 increased overtime pay and several laws in late 1931 restricted whom landowners could hire. Other efforts included decrees limiting the use of machinery, efforts to create a monopoly on hiring, strikes and efforts by unions to limit women's employment to preserve a labour monopoly for their members. Class struggle intensified as landowners turned to counterrevolutionary organisations and local oligarchs. Strikes, workplace theft, arson, robbery and assaults on shops, strikebreakers, employers and machines became increasingly common. Ultimately, the reforms of the Republican-Socialist government alienated as many people as they pleased.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Republican Manuel Azaña Diaz became prime minister of a minority government in October 1931. Fascism remained a reactive threat and it was facilitated by controversial reforms to the military. In December, a new reformist, liberal, and democratic constitution was declared. It included strong provisions enforcing a broad secularisation of the Catholic country, which included the abolishing of Catholic schools and charities, which many moderate committed Catholics opposed. At this point once the constituent assembly had fulfilled its mandate of approving a new constitution, it should have arranged for regular parliamentary elections and adjourned. However fearing the increasing popular opposition, the Radical and Socialist majority postponed the regular elections, prolonging their time in power for two more years. Diaz's republican government initiated numerous reforms to, in their view, modernize the country. In 1932, the Jesuits who were in charge of the best schools throughout the country were banned and had all their property confiscated. The army was reduced. Landowners were expropriated. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of its own. In June 1933, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, "On Oppression of the Church of Spain", raising his voice against the persecution of the Catholic Church in Spain.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In November 1933, the right-wing parties won the general election. The causal factors were increased resentment of the incumbent government caused by a controversial decree implementing land reform and by the Casas Viejas incident, and the formation of a right-wing alliance, Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups (CEDA). Another factor was the recent enfranchisement of women, most of whom voted for centre-right parties. The left Republicans attempted to have Niceto Alcalá Zamora cancel the electoral results but did not succeed. Despite CEDA's electoral victory, president Alcalá-Zamora declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government fearing CEDA's monarchist sympathies and proposed changes to the constitution. Instead, he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. Despite receiving the most votes, CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Events in the period after November 1933, called the "black biennium", seemed to make a civil war more likely. Alejandro Lerroux of the Radical Republican Party (RRP) formed a government, reversing changes made by the previous administration and granting amnesty to the collaborators of the unsuccessful uprising by General José Sanjurjo in August 1932. Some monarchists joined with the then fascist-nationalist Falange Española y de las JONS ("Falange") to help achieve their aims. Open violence occurred in the streets of Spanish cities, and militancy continued to increase, reflecting a movement towards radical upheaval, rather than peaceful democratic means as solutions. A small insurrection by anarchists occurred in December 1933 in response to CEDA's victory, in which around 100 people died. After a year of intense pressure, CEDA, the party with the most seats in parliament, finally succeeded in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The Socialists (PSOE) and Communists reacted with an insurrection for which they had been preparing for nine months. The rebellion developed into a bloody revolutionary uprising, against the existing order. Fairly well armed revolutionaries managed to take the whole province of Asturias, murdered numerous policemen, clergymen, and civilians, and destroyed religious buildings including churches, convents, and part of the university at Oviedo. Rebels in the occupied areas proclaimed revolution for the workers and abolished existing currency. The rebellion was crushed in two weeks by the Spanish Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish colonial troops from Spanish Morocco. Azaña was in Barcelona that day, and the Lerroux-CEDA government tried to implicate him. He was arrested and charged with complicity. In fact, Azaña had no connection with the rebellion and was released from prison in January 1935.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In sparking an uprising, the non-anarchist socialists, like the anarchists, manifested their conviction that the existing political order was illegitimate. The Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga, an Azaña supporter and an exiled vocal opponent of Francisco Franco, wrote a sharp criticism of the left's participation in the revolt: "The uprising of 1934 is unforgivable. The argument that Mr Gil Robles tried to destroy the Constitution to establish fascism was, at once, hypocritical and false. With the rebellion of 1934, the Spanish left lost even the shadow of moral authority to condemn the rebellion of 1936."


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Reversals of land reform resulted in expulsions, firings, and arbitrary changes to working conditions in the central and southern countryside in 1935, with landowners' behaviour at times reaching "genuine cruelty", with violence against farmworkers and socialists, which caused several deaths. One historian argued that the behaviour of the right in the southern countryside was one of the main causes of hatred during the Civil War and possibly even the Civil War itself. Landowners taunted workers by saying that if they went hungry, they should "Go eat the Republic!" Bosses fired leftist workers and imprisoned trade union and socialist militants, and wages were reduced to "salaries of hunger".


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In 1935, the government led by the Radical Republican Party went through a series of crises. President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, who was hostile to this government, called another election. The Popular Front narrowly won the 1936 general election. The revolutionary left-wing masses took to the streets and freed prisoners. In the thirty-six hours following the election, sixteen people were killed (mostly by police officers attempting to maintain order or to intervene in violent clashes) and thirty-nine were seriously injured. Also, fifty churches and seventy conservative political centres were attacked or set ablaze. Manuel Azaña Díaz was called to form a government before the electoral process had ended. He shortly replaced Zamora as president, taking advantage of a constitutional loophole. Convinced that the left was no longer willing to follow the rule of law and that its vision of Spain was under threat, the right abandoned the parliamentary option and began planning to overthrow the republic, rather than to control it.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: PSOE's left wing socialists started to take action. Julio Álvarez del Vayo talked about "Spain' being converted into a socialist Republic in association with the Soviet Union". Francisco Largo Caballero declared that "the organized proletariat will carry everything before it and destroy everything until we reach our goal". The country rapidly descended into anarchy. Even the staunch socialist Indalecio Prieto, at a party rally in Cuenca in May 1936, complained: "we have never seen so tragic a panorama or so great a collapse as in Spain at this moment. Abroad, Spain is classified as insolvent. This is not the road to socialism or communism but to desperate anarchism without even the advantage of liberty". The disenchantment with Azaña's ruling was also voiced by Miguel de Unamuno, a republican and one of Spain's most respected intellectuals who, in June 1936, told a reporter who published his statement in El Adelanto that President Manuel Azaña should commit suicide "as a patriotic act".


title: Spanish Civil War

text: According to Stanley Payne, by July 1936, the situation in Spain had deteriorated massively. Spanish commentators spoke of chaos and preparation for revolution, foreign diplomats prepared for the possibility of revolution, and an interest in fascism developed among the threatened. Payne states that, by July 1936:


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Laia Balcells observes that polarisation in Spain just before the coup was so intense that physical confrontations between leftists and rightists were a routine occurrence in most localities; six days before the coup occurred, there was a riot between the two in the province of Teruel. Balcells notes that Spanish society was so divided along Left-Right lines that the monk Hilari Raguer stated that in his parish, instead of playing "cops and robbers", children would sometimes play "leftists and rightists". Within the first month of the Popular Front's government, nearly a quarter of the provincial governors had been removed due to their failure to prevent or control strikes, illegal land occupation, political violence and arson. The Popular Front government was more likely to persecute rightists for violence than leftists who committed similar acts. Azaña was hesitant to use the army to shoot or stop rioters or protestors as many of them supported his coalition. On the other hand, he was reluctant to disarm the military as he believed he needed them to stop insurrections from the extreme left. Illegal land occupation became widespread—poor tenant farmers knew the government was disinclined to stop them. By April 1936, nearly 100,000 peasants had appropriated 400,000 hectares of land and perhaps as many as 1 million hectares by the start of the civil war; for comparison, the 1931–33 land reform had granted only 6,000 peasants 45,000 hectares. As many strikes occurred between April and July as had occurred in the entirety of 1931. Workers increasingly demanded less work and more pay. "Social crimes"—refusing to pay for goods and rent—became increasingly common by workers, particularly in Madrid. In some cases this was done in the company of armed militants. Conservatives, the middle classes, businessmen and landowners became convinced that revolution had already begun.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Prime Minister Santiago Casares Quiroga ignored warnings of a military conspiracy involving several generals, who decided that the government had to be replaced to prevent the dissolution of Spain. Both sides had become convinced that, if the other side gained power, it would discriminate against their members and attempt to suppress their political organisations.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Shortly after the Popular Front's victory in the 1936 election, various groups of officers, both active and retired, got together to begin discussing the prospect of a coup. It would only be by the end of April that General Emilio Mola would emerge as the leader of a national conspiracy network. The Republican government acted to remove suspect generals from influential posts. Franco was sacked as chief of staff and transferred to command of the Canary Islands. Manuel Goded Llopis was removed as inspector general and was made general of the Balearic Islands. Emilio Mola was moved from head of the Army of Africa to military commander of Pamplona in Navarre. This, however, allowed Mola to direct the mainland uprising. General José Sanjurjo became the figurehead of the operation and helped reach an agreement with the Carlists. Mola was chief planner and second in command. José Antonio Primo de Rivera was put in prison in mid-March in order to restrict the Falange. However, government actions were not as thorough as they might have been, and warnings by the Director of Security and other figures were not acted upon.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The revolt was devoid of any particular ideology. The major goal was to put an end to anarchical disorder. Mola's plan for the new regime was envisioned as a "republican dictatorship", modelled after Salazar's Portugal and as a semi-pluralist authoritarian regime rather than a totalitarian fascist dictatorship. The initial government would be an all-military "Directory", which would create a "strong and disciplined state". General Sanjurjo would be the head of this new regime, due to being widely liked and respected within the military, though his position would be largely symbolic due to his lack of political talent. The 1931 Constitution would be suspended, replaced by a new "constituent parliament" which would be chosen by a new politically purged electorate, who would vote on the issue of republic versus monarchy. Certain liberal elements would remain, such as separation of church and state as well as freedom of religion. Agrarian issues would be solved by regional commissioners on the basis of smallholdings but collective cultivation would be permitted in some circumstances. Legislation prior to February 1936 would be respected. Violence would be required to destroy opposition to the coup, though it seems Mola did not envision the mass atrocities and repression that would ultimately manifest during the civil war. Of particular importance to Mola was ensuring the revolt was at its core an Army affair, one that would not be subject to special interests and that the coup would make the armed forces the basis for the new state. However, the separation of church and state was forgotten once the conflict assumed the dimension of a war of religion, and military authorities increasingly deferred to the Church and to the expression of Catholic sentiment. However, Mola's program was vague and only a rough sketch, and there were disagreements among coupists about their vision for Spain.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 12 June, Prime Minister Casares Quiroga met General Juan Yagüe, who falsely convinced Casares of his loyalty to the republic. Mola began serious planning in the spring. Franco was a key player because of his prestige as a former director of the military academy and as the man who suppressed the Asturian miners' strike of 1934. He was respected in the Army of Africa, the Army's toughest troops. He wrote a cryptic letter to Casares on 23 June, suggesting that the military was disloyal, but could be restrained if he were put in charge. Casares did nothing, failing to arrest or buy off Franco. With the help of the British intelligence agents Cecil Bebb and Hugh Pollard, the rebels chartered a Dragon Rapide aircraft (paid for with help from Juan March, the wealthiest man in Spain at the time) to transport Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco. The plane flew to the Canaries on 11 July, and Franco arrived in Morocco on 19 July. According to Stanley Payne, Franco was offered this position as Mola's planning for the coup had become increasingly complex and it did not look like it would be as swift as he hoped, instead likely turning into a miniature civil war that would last several weeks. Mola thus had concluded that the troops in Spain were insufficient for the task and that it would be necessary to use elite units from North Africa, something which Franco had always believed would be necessary.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 12 July 1936, Falangists in Madrid killed police officer Lieutenant José Castillo of the Guardia de Asalto (Assault Guard). Castillo was a Socialist party member who, among other activities, was giving military training to the UGT youth. Castillo had led the Assault Guards that violently suppressed the riots after the funeral of "Guardia Civil" lieutenant Anastasio de los Reyes. (Los Reyes had been shot by anarchists during 14 April military parade commemorating the five years of the Republic.)


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Assault Guard Captain Fernando Condés was a close personal friend of Castillo. The next day, after getting the approval of the minister of interior to illegally arrest specified members of parliament, he led his squad to arrest José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones, founder of CEDA, as a reprisal for Castillo's murder. But he was not at home, so they went to the house of José Calvo Sotelo, a leading Spanish monarchist and a prominent parliamentary conservative. Luis Cuenca, a member of the arresting group and a Socialist who was known as the bodyguard of PSOE leader Indalecio Prieto, summarily executed Calvo Sotelo by shooting him in the back of the neck. Hugh Thomas concludes that Condés intended to arrest Sotelo, and that Cuenca acted on his own initiative, although he acknowledges other sources dispute this finding.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Massive reprisals followed. The killing of Calvo Sotelo with police involvement aroused suspicions and strong reactions among the government's opponents on the right. Although the nationalist generals were already planning an uprising, the event was a catalyst and a public justification for a coup. Stanley Payne claims that before these events, the idea of rebellion by army officers against the government had weakened; Mola had estimated that only 12% of officers reliably supported the coup and at one point considered fleeing the country for fear he was already compromised, and had to be convinced to remain by his co-conspirators. However, the kidnapping and murder of Sotelo transformed the "limping conspiracy" into a revolt that could trigger a civil war. The arbitrary use of lethal force by the state and a lack of action against the attackers led to public disapproval of the government. No effective punitive, judicial or even investigative action was taken; Payne points to a possible veto by socialists within the government who shielded the killers who had been drawn from their ranks. The murder of a parliamentary leader by state police was unprecedented, and the belief that the state had ceased to be neutral and effective in its duties encouraged important sectors of the right to join the rebellion. Within hours of learning of the murder and the reaction, Franco changed his mind on rebellion and dispatched a message to Mola to display his firm commitment.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Socialists and Communists, led by Indalecio Prieto, demanded that arms be distributed to the people before the military took over. The prime minister was hesitant.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The uprising's timing was fixed at 17 July, at 17:01, agreed to by the leader of the Carlists, Manuel Fal Conde. However, the timing was changed—the men in the Morocco protectorate were to rise up at 05:00 on 18 July and those in Spain proper a day later so that control of Spanish Morocco could be achieved and forces sent back to the Iberian Peninsula to coincide with the risings there. The rising was intended to be a swift coup d'état, but the government retained control of most of the country.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Control over Spanish Morocco was all but certain. The plan was discovered in Morocco on 17 July, which prompted the conspirators to enact it immediately. Little resistance was encountered. The rebels shot 189 people. Goded and Franco immediately took control of the islands to which they were assigned. On 18 July, Casares Quiroga refused an offer of help from the CNT and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), leading the groups to proclaim a general strike—in effect, mobilising. They opened weapons caches, some buried since the 1934 risings, and formed militias. The paramilitary security forces often waited for the outcome of militia action before either joining or suppressing the rebellion. Quick action by either the rebels or anarchist militias was often enough to decide the fate of a town. General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano secured Seville for the rebels, arresting a number of other officers.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The rebels failed to take any major cities with the critical exception of Seville, which provided a landing point for Franco's African troops, and the primarily conservative and Catholic areas of Old Castile and León, which fell quickly. They took Cádiz with help from the first troops from Africa.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The government retained control of Málaga, Jaén, and Almería. In Madrid, the rebels were hemmed into the Cuartel de la Montaña siege, which fell with considerable bloodshed. Republican leader Casares Quiroga was replaced by José Giral, who ordered the distribution of weapons among the civilian population. This facilitated the defeat of the army insurrection in the main industrial centres, including Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, but it allowed anarchists to take control of Barcelona along with large swathes of Aragón and Catalonia. General Goded surrendered in Barcelona and was later condemned to death. The Republican government ended up controlling almost all the east coast and central area around Madrid, as well as most of Asturias, Cantabria and part of the Basque Country in the north.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Hugh Thomas suggested that the civil war could have ended in the favour of either side almost immediately if certain decisions had been taken during the initial coup. Thomas argues that if the government had taken steps to arm the workers, they could probably have crushed the coup very quickly. Conversely, if the coup had risen everywhere in Spain on the 18th rather than be delayed, it could have triumphed by the 22nd. While the militias that rose to meet the rebels were often untrained and poorly armed (possessing only a small number of pistols, shotguns and dynamite), this was offset by the fact that the rebellion was not universal. In addition, the Falangists and Carlists were themselves often not particularly powerful fighters either. However, enough officers and soldiers had joined the coup to prevent it from being crushed swiftly.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The rebels termed themselves "Nacionales", normally translated "Nationalists", although the former implies "true Spaniards" rather than a nationalistic cause. The result of the coup was a nationalist area of control containing 11 million of Spain's population of 25 million. The Nationalists had secured the support of around half of Spain's territorial army, some 60,000 men, joined by the Army of Africa, made up of 35,000 men, and just under half of Spain's militaristic police forces, the Assault Guards, the Civil Guards, and the Carabineers. Republicans controlled under half of the rifles and about a third of both machine guns and artillery pieces.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Spanish Republican Army had just 18 tanks of a sufficiently modern design, and the Nationalists took control of 10. Naval capacity was uneven, with the Republicans retaining a numerical advantage, but with the Navy's top commanders and two of the most modern ships, heavy cruisers "Canarias"—captured at the Ferrol shipyard—and "Baleares", in Nationalist control. The Spanish Republican Navy suffered from the same problems as the army—many officers had defected or been killed after trying to do so. Two-thirds of air capability was retained by the government—however, the whole of the Republican Air Force was very outdated.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The war was cast by Republican sympathisers as a struggle between tyranny and freedom, and by Nationalist supporters as communist and anarchist red hordes versus Christian civilisation. Nationalists also claimed they were bringing security and direction to an ungoverned and lawless country. Spanish politics, especially on the left, was quite fragmented: on the one hand socialists and communists supported the republic but on the other, during the republic, anarchists had mixed opinions, though both major groups opposed the Nationalists during the Civil War; the latter, in contrast, were united by their fervent opposition to the Republican government and presented a more unified front.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The coup divided the armed forces fairly evenly. One historical estimate suggests that there were some 87,000 troops loyal to the government and some 77,000 joining the insurgency, though some historians suggest that the Nationalist figure should be revised upwards and that it probably amounted to some 95,000.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: During the first few months, both armies were joined in high numbers by volunteers, Nationalists by some 100,000 men and Republicans by some 120,000. From August, both sides launched their own, similarly scaled conscription schemes, resulting in further massive growth of their armies. Finally, the final months of 1936 saw the arrival of foreign troops, International Brigades joining the Republicans and Italian CTV, German Legion Condor and Portuguese Viriatos joining the Nationalists. The result was that in April 1937 there were some 360,000 soldiers in the Republican ranks and some 290,000 in the Nationalist ones.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The armies kept growing. The principal source of manpower was conscription; both sides continued and expanded their schemes, the Nationalists drafting more aggressively, and there was little room left for volunteering. Foreigners contributed little to further growth; on the Nationalist side the Italians scaled down their engagement, while on the Republican side the influx of new "interbrigadistas" did not cover losses on the front. At the turn of 1937–1938, each army numbered about 700,000.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Throughout 1938, the principal if not exclusive source of new men was a draft; at this stage it was the Republicans who conscripted more aggressively, and only 47% of their combatants were in age corresponding to the Nationalist conscription age limits. Just prior to the Battle of Ebro, Republicans achieved their all-time high, slightly above 800,000; yet Nationalists numbered 880,000. The Battle of Ebro, fall of Catalonia and collapsing discipline caused a great shrinking of Republican troops. In late February 1939, their army was 400,000 compared to more than double that number of Nationalists. In the moment of their final victory, Nationalists commanded over 900,000 troops.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The total number of Spaniards serving in the Republican forces was officially stated as 917,000; later scholarly work estimated the number as "well over 1 million men", though earlier studies claimed a Republican total of 1.75 million (including non-Spaniards). The total number of Spaniards serving in the Nationalist units is estimated at "nearly 1 million men", though earlier works claimed a total of 1.26 million Nationalists (including non-Spaniards).


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Only two countries openly and fully supported the Republic: the Mexican government and the USSR. From them, especially the USSR, the Republic received diplomatic support, volunteers, weapons and vehicles. Other countries remained neutral; this neutrality faced serious opposition from sympathizers in the United States and United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent in other European countries and from Marxists worldwide. This led to formation of the International Brigades, thousands of foreigners of all nationalities who voluntarily went to Spain to aid the Republic in the fight; they meant a great deal to morale but militarily were not very significant.