title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republic's supporters within Spain ranged from centrists who supported a moderately-capitalist liberal democracy to revolutionary anarchists who opposed the Republic but sided with it against the coup forces. Their base was primarily secular and urban but also included landless peasants and was particularly strong in industrial regions like Asturias, the Basque country, and Catalonia.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: This faction was called variously "leales" "Loyalists" by supporters, "Republicans", the "Popular Front", or "the government" by all parties; and/or "los rojos" "the Reds" by their opponents. Republicans were supported by urban workers, agricultural labourers, and parts of the middle class.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The conservative, strongly Catholic Basque country, along with Catholic Galicia and the more left-leaning Catalonia, sought autonomy or independence from the central government of Madrid. The Republican government allowed for the possibility of self-government for the two regions, whose forces were gathered under the People's Republican Army ("Ejército Popular Republicano", or EPR), which was reorganised into mixed brigades after October 1936.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: A few well-known people fought on the Republican side, such as English novelist George Orwell (who wrote "Homage to Catalonia" (1938), an account of his experiences in the war) and Canadian thoracic surgeon Norman Bethune, who developed a mobile blood-transfusion service for front-line operations. Simone Weil briefly fought with the anarchist columns of Buenaventura Durruti.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: At the beginning of the war, the Republicans outnumbered the Nationalist ten to one, but by January 1937, that advantage had dropped to four to one.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The "Nacionales" or Nationalists, also called "insurgents", "rebels" or, by opponents, "Franquistas" or "fascists" —feared national fragmentation and opposed the separatist movements. They were chiefly defined by their anti-communism, which galvanised diverse or opposed movements like Falangists and monarchists. Their leaders had a generally wealthier, more conservative, monarchist, landowning background.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Nationalist side included the Carlists and Alfonsists, Spanish nationalists, the fascist Falange, and most conservatives and monarchist liberals. Virtually all Nationalist groups had strong Catholic convictions and supported the native Spanish clergy. The Nationals included the majority of the Catholic clergy and practitioners (outside of the Basque region), important elements of the army, most large landowners, and many businessmen. The Nationalist base largely consisted of the middle classes, conservative peasant smallholders in the North and Catholics in general. Catholic support became particularly pronounced as a consequence of the burning of churches and killing of priests in most leftists zones during the first six months of the war. By mid-1937, the Catholic Church gave its official blessing to the Franco regime; religious fervor was a major source of emotional support for the Nationalists during the civil war. Michael Seidmann reports that devout Catholics, such as seminary students, often volunteered to fight and would die in disproportionate numbers in the war. Catholic confession cleared the soldiers of moral doubt and increased fighting ability; Republican newspapers described Nationalist priests as ferocious in battle and Indalecio Prieto remarked that the enemy he feared most was "the requeté who has just received communion".


title: Spanish Civil War

text: One of the rightists' principal motives was to confront the anti-clericalism of the Republican regime and to defend the Catholic Church, which had been targeted by opponents, including Republicans, who blamed the institution for the country's ills. The Church opposed many of the Republicans' reforms, which were fortified by the Spanish Constitution of 1931. Articles 24 and 26 of the 1931 constitution had banned the Society of Jesus. This proscription deeply offended many within the conservative fold. The revolution in the Republican zone at the outset of the war, in which 7,000 clergy and thousands of lay people were killed, deepened Catholic support for the Nationalists.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Prior to the war, during the Asturian miners' strike of 1934, religious buildings were burnt and at least 100 clergy, religious civilians, and pro-Catholic police were killed by revolutionaries. Franco had brought in Spain's colonial Army of Africa ( or ) and reduced the miners to submission by heavy artillery attacks and bombing raids. The Spanish Legion committed atrocities and the army carried out summary executions of leftists. The repression in the aftermath was brutal and prisoners were tortured.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Moroccan "Fuerzas Regulares Indígenas" joined the rebellion and played a significant role in the civil war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: While the Nationalists are often assumed to have drawn in the majority of military officers, this is a somewhat simplistic analysis. The Spanish army had its own internal divisions and long-standing rifts. Officers supporting the coup tended to be "africanistas" (men who fought in North Africa between 1909 and 1923) while those who stayed loyal tended to be "peninsulares" (men who stayed back in Spain during this period). This was because during Spain's North African campaigns, the traditional promotion by seniority was suspended in favour of promotion by merit through battlefield heroism. This tended to benefit younger officers starting their careers as they could, while older officers had familial commitments that made it harder for them to be deployed in North Africa. Officers in front line combat corps (primarily infantry and cavalry) benefited over those in technical corps (those in artillery, engineering etc.) because they had more chances to demonstrate the requisite battlefield heroism and had also traditionally enjoyed promotion by seniority. The "peninsulares" resented seeing the "africanistas" rapidly leapfrog through the ranks, while the "africanistas" themselves were seen as swaggering and arrogant, further fuelling resentment. Thus, when the coup occurred, officers who joined the rebellion, particularly from Franco's rank downwards, were often "africanistas", while senior officers and those in non-front line positions tended to oppose it (though a small number of senior "africanistas" opposed the coup as well). It has also been argued that officers who stayed loyal to the Republic were more likely to have been promoted and to have been favoured by the Republican regime (such as those in the Aviation and Assault Guard units). Thus, while often thought of as a "rebellion of the generals", this is not correct. Of the eighteen division generals, only four rebelled (of the four division generals without postings, two rebelled and two remained loyal). Fourteen of the fifty-six brigade generals rebelled. The rebels tended to draw from less senior officers. Of the approximately 15,301 officers, just over half rebelled.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Catalan and Basque nationalists were divided. Left-wing Catalan nationalists sided with the Republicans, while Conservative Catalan nationalists were far less vocal in supporting the government, due to anti-clericalism and confiscations occurring in areas within its control. Basque nationalists, heralded by the conservative Basque Nationalist Party, were mildly supportive of the Republican government, although some in Navarre sided with the uprising for the same reasons influencing conservative Catalans. Notwithstanding religious matters, Basque nationalists, who were for the most part Catholic, generally sided with the Republicans, although the PNV, Basque nationalist party, was reported passing the plans of Bilbao defences to the Nationalists, in an attempt to reduce the duration and casualties of siege.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Spanish Civil War exposed political divisions across Europe. The right and the Catholics supported the Nationalists to stop the spread of Bolshevism. On the left, including labour unions, students and intellectuals, the war represented a necessary battle to stop the spread of fascism. Anti-war and pacifist sentiment was strong in many countries, leading to warnings that the Civil War could escalate into a second world war. In this respect, the war was an indicator of the growing instability across Europe.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Spanish Civil War involved large numbers of non-Spanish citizens who participated in combat and advisory positions. Britain and France led a political alliance of 27 nations that pledged non-intervention, including an embargo on all arms exports to Spain. The United States unofficially adopted a position of non-intervention as well, despite abstaining from joining the alliance (due in part to its policy of political isolation). Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union signed on officially, but ignored the embargo. The attempted suppression of imported material was largely ineffective, and France was especially accused of allowing large shipments to Republican troops. The clandestine actions of the various European powers were, at the time, considered to be risking another world war, alarming antiwar elements across the world.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The League of Nations' reaction to the war was influenced by a fear of communism, and was insufficient to contain the massive importation of arms and other war resources by the fighting factions. Although a Non-Intervention Committee was formed, its policies accomplished little and its directives were ineffective.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: As the conquest of Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War made the Italian government confident in its military power, Benito Mussolini joined the war to secure Fascist control of the Mediterranean, supporting the Nationalists to a greater extent than the National-Socialists did. The Royal Italian Navy () played a substantial role in the Mediterranean blockade, and ultimately Italy supplied machine guns, artillery, aircraft, tankettes, the Aviazione Legionaria, and the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) to the Nationalist cause. The Italian CTV would, at its peak, supply the Nationalists with 50,000 men. Italian warships took part in breaking the Republican navy's blockade of Nationalist-held Spanish Morocco and took part in naval bombardment of Republican-held Málaga, Valencia, and Barcelona. In total, Italy provided the Nationalists with 660 planes, 150 tanks, 800 artillery pieces, 10,000 machine guns, and 240,747 rifles.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: German involvement began days after fighting broke out in July 1936. Adolf Hitler quickly sent in powerful air and armoured units to assist the Nationalists. The war provided combat experience with the latest technology for the German military. However, the intervention also posed the risk of escalating into a world war for which Hitler was not ready. Therefore, he limited his aid, and instead encouraged Benito Mussolini to send in large Italian units.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Nazi Germany's actions included the formation of the multitasking Condor Legion, a unit composed of volunteers from the Luftwaffe and the German Army ("Heer") from July 1936 to March 1939. The Condor Legion proved to be especially useful in the 1936 battle of the Toledo. Germany moved the Army of Africa to mainland Spain in the war's early stages. German operations slowly expanded to include strike targets, most notably—and controversially—the bombing of Guernica which, on 26 April 1937, killed 200 to 300 civilians. Germany also used the war to test new weapons, such as the Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 87 Stukas and Junkers Ju-52 transport Trimotors (used also as Bombers), which showed themselves to be effective.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: German involvement was further manifested through undertakings such as Operation Ursula, a U-boat undertaking; and contributions from the Kriegsmarine. The Legion spearheaded many Nationalist victories, particularly in aerial combat, while Spain further provided a proving ground for German tank tactics. The training which German units provided to the Nationalist forces would prove valuable. By the War's end, perhaps 56,000 Nationalist soldiers, encompassing infantry, artillery, aerial and naval forces, had been trained by German detachments.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Hitler's policy for Spain was shrewd and pragmatic. The minutes of a conference at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on 10 November 1937 summarised his views on foreign policy regarding the Spanish Civil War: "On the other hand, a 100 percent victory for Franco was not desirable either, from the German point of view; rather were we interested in a continuance of the war and in the keeping up of the tension in the Mediterranean." Hitler wanted to help Franco just enough to gain his gratitude and to prevent the side supported by the Soviet Union from winning, but not large enough to give the Caudillo a quick victory.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: A total of approximately 16,000 German citizens fought in the war, with approximately 300 killed, though no more than 10,000 participated at any one time. German aid to the Nationalists amounted to approximately £43,000,000 ($215,000,000) in 1939 prices, 15.5% of which was used for salaries and expenses and 21.9% for direct delivery of supplies to Spain, while 62.6% was expended on the Condor Legion. In total, Germany provided the Nationalists with 600 planes and 200 tanks.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Estado Novo regime of Portuguese Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar played an important role in supplying Franco's forces with ammunition and logistical help.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Salazar supported Francisco Franco and the Nationalists in their war against the Second Republic forces, as well as the anarchists and the communists. While the Nationalists lacked access to seaports early on, they secured control of the entire border with Portugal by the end of August 1936, thus giving Salazar and his regime a free hand to render whatever assistance to Franco they saw fit without fear of Republican interference or retaliation. Salazar's Portugal helped the Nationalist side receive armaments shipments from abroad, including ordnance when certain Nationalist forces virtually ran out of ammunition. Consequently, the Nationalists called Lisbon "the port of Castile". Later, Franco spoke of Salazar in glowing terms in an interview in the "Le Figaro" newspaper: "The most complete statesman, the one most worthy of respect, that I have known is Salazar. I regard him as an extraordinary personality for his intelligence, his political sense and his humility. His only defect is probably his modesty."


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 8 September 1936, a naval revolt took place in Lisbon. The crews of two naval Portuguese vessels, the "NRP Afonso de Albuquerque" and the "NRP Dão", mutinied. The sailors, who were affiliated with the Portuguese Communist Party, confined their officers and attempted to sail the ships out of Lisbon to join the Spanish Republican forces fighting in Spain. Salazar ordered the ships to be destroyed by gunfire.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In January 1938, Salazar appointed Pedro Teotónio Pereira as special liaison of the Portuguese government to Franco's government, where he achieved great prestige and influence. In April 1938, Pereira officially became a full-rank Portuguese ambassador to Spain, remaining in this post throughout World War II.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Just a few days before the end of the Spanish Civil War, on 17 March 1939, Portugal and Spain signed the Iberian Pact, a non-aggression treaty that marked the beginning of a new phase in Iberian relations. Meetings between Franco and Salazar played a fundamental role in this new political arrangement. The pact proved to be a decisive instrument in keeping the Iberian Peninsula out of Hitler's continental system.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Despite its discreet direct military involvement—restrained to a somewhat "semi-official" endorsement, by its authoritarian regime—a "Viriatos Legion" volunteer force was organised, but disbanded, due to political unrest. Between 8,000 and 12,000 would-be legionaries did still volunteer, only now as part of various Nationalist units instead of a unified force. Due to the widespread publicity given to the Viriatos Legion previously, these Portuguese volunteers were still called "Viriatos". Portugal was instrumental in providing the Nationalists with organizational skills and reassurance from the Iberian neighbour to Franco and his allies that no interference would hinder the supply traffic directed to the Nationalist cause.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Conservative government of Britain maintained a position of strong neutrality and was supported by British elite and the media, while the left mobilized aid to the Republicans. The government refused to allow arms shipments and sent warships to try to stop shipments. It was theoretically a crime to volunteer to fight in Spain, but about 4,000 went anyway. Intellectuals strongly favoured the Republicans. Many visited Spain, hoping to find authentic anti-fascism in practise. They had little impact on the government, and could not shake the strong public mood for peace. The Labour Party was split, with its Catholic element favouring the Nationalists. It officially endorsed the boycott and expelled a faction that demanded support for the Republican cause; but it finally voiced some support to Loyalists.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Romanian volunteers were led by Ion Moța, deputy-leader of the Iron Guard ("Legion of the Archangel Michael"), whose group of Seven Legionaries visited Spain in December 1936 to ally their movement with the Nationalists.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Despite the Irish government's prohibition against participating in the war, about 600 Irishmen, followers of the Irish political activist and co-founder of the recently created political party of Fine Gael (unofficially called "The Blue Shirts"), Eoin O'Duffy, known as the "Irish Brigade", went to Spain to fight alongside Franco. The majority of the volunteers were Catholics, and according to O'Duffy had volunteered to help the Nationalists fight against communism.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: According to Spanish statistics, 1,052 Yugoslavs were recorded as volunteers of which 48% were Croats, 23% Slovenes, 18% Serbs, 2.3% Montenegrins and 1.5% Macedonians.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 26 July, just eight days after the revolt had started, an international communist conference was held at Prague to arrange plans to help the Republican Government. It decided to raise an international brigade of 5,000 men and a fund of 1 billion francs. At the same time communist parties throughout the world quickly launched a full scale propaganda campaign in support of the Popular Front. The Communist International immediately reinforced its activity sending to Spain its leader Georgi Dimitrov, and Palmiro Togliatti the chief of the Communist Party of Italy. From August onward aid started to be sent from Russia, over one ship per day arrived at Spain's Mediterranean ports carrying munitions, rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, artillery and trucks. With the cargo came Soviet agents, technicians, instructors and propagandists.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Communist International immediately started to organize the International Brigades with great care to conceal or minimize the communist character of the enterprise and to make it appear as a campaign on behalf of progressive democracy. Attractive names were deliberately chosen, such as Garibaldi Battalion in Italy, the Canadian "Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion" or Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the United States.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Many non-Spaniards, often affiliated with radical communist or socialist entities, joined the International Brigades, believing that the Spanish Republic was a front line in the war against fascism. The units represented the largest foreign contingent of those fighting for the Republicans. Roughly 40,000 foreign nationals fought with the Brigades, though no more than 18,000 were in the conflict at any given time. They claimed to represent 53 nations.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Significant numbers of volunteers came from France (10,000), Nazi Germany and Austria (5,000), and Italy (3,350). More than 1000 each came from the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Canada. The Thälmann Battalion, a group of Germans, and the Garibaldi Battalion, a group of Italians, distinguished their units during the siege of Madrid. Americans fought in units such as the XV International Brigade ("Abraham Lincoln Brigade"), while Canadians joined the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: More than 500 Romanians fought on the Republican side, including Romanian Communist Party members Petre Borilă and Valter Roman. About 145 men from Ireland formed the Connolly Column, which was immortalized by Irish folk musician Christy Moore in the song "Viva la Quinta Brigada". Some Chinese joined the Brigades; the majority of them eventually returned to China, but some went to prison or to French refugee camps, and a handful remained in Spain.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Although General Secretary Joseph Stalin had signed the Non-Intervention Agreement, the Soviet Union contravened the League of Nations embargo by providing material assistance to the Republican forces, becoming their only source of major weapons. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin tried to do this covertly. Estimates of material provided by the USSR to the Republicans vary between 634 and 806 aircraft, 331 and 362 tanks and 1,034 to 1,895 artillery pieces. Stalin also created Section X of the Soviet Union military to head the weapons shipment operation, called Operation X. Despite Stalin's interest in aiding the Republicans, the quality of arms was inconsistent. Many rifles and field guns provided were old, obsolete or otherwise of limited use (some dated back to the 1860s) but the T-26 and BT-5 tanks were modern and effective in combat. The Soviet Union supplied aircraft that were in current service with their own forces but the aircraft provided by Germany to the Nationalists proved superior by the end of the war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The movement of arms from Russia to Spain was extremely slow. Many shipments were lost or arrived only partially matching what had been authorised. Stalin ordered shipbuilders to include false decks in the design of ships and while at sea, Soviet captains used deceptive flags and paint schemes to evade detection by the Nationalists.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The USSR sent 2,000–3,000 military advisers to Spain; while the Soviet commitment of troops was fewer than 500 men at a time, Soviet volunteers often operated Soviet-made tanks and aircraft, particularly at the beginning of the war. The Spanish commander of every military unit on the Republican side was attended by a "Comissar Politico" of equal rank, who represented Moscow.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republic paid for Soviet arms with official Bank of Spain gold reserves, 176 tonnes of which was transferred through France and 510 directly to Russia, which was called Moscow gold.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Also, the Soviet Union directed Communist parties around the world to organise and recruit the International Brigades.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Another significant Soviet involvement was the activity of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) inside the Republican rearguard. Communist figures including Vittorio Vidali ("Comandante Contreras"), Iosif Grigulevich, Mikhail Koltsov and, most prominently, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov led operations that included the murders of Catalan anti-Stalinist Communist politician Andrés Nin, the socialist journalist Mark Rein, and the independent left-wing activist José Robles.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Others NKVD-led operations were the murder of the Austrian member of the International Left Opposition and Trotskyist Kurt Landau, and the shooting down (in December 1936) of the French aircraft in which the delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Georges Henny, carried extensive documentation on the Paracuellos massacres to France.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In his book, "Partners in Crime: Faustian Bargain", historian Ian Ona Johnson explains that in the 1920s and 30s (during the Spanish Civil War) Germany and Soviet Russia had entered into a partnership centering on economic and military cooperation. This led to the establishment of German military bases and facilities in Russia. Neither country worried about adhering to the terms of the Versailles Treaty. The Nazi planes that bombed Republican cities and towns like Guernica, killing thousand of innocent civilians, were all made possible by Soviet Russia and the Communist Party leadership. This military exchange of war material continued until June 1941, when Germany invaded Stalin's Russia.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Polish arms sales to Republican Spain took place between September 1936 and February 1939. Politically Poland did not support any of the Spanish Civil War sides, though over time the Warsaw government increasingly tended to favour the Nationalists; sales to the Republicans were motivated exclusively by economic interest. Since Poland was bound by non-intervention obligations, Polish governmental officials and the military disguised sales as commercial transactions mediated by international brokers and targeting customers in various countries, principally in Latin America; there are 54 shipments from Danzig and Gdynia identified. Most hardware were obsolete and worn-out second-rate weapons, though there were also some modern arms delivered; all were 20–30% overpriced. Polish sales amounted to $40m and constituted some 5–7% of overall Republican military spendings, though in terms of quantity certain categories of weaponry, like machine-guns, might have accounted for 50% of all arms delivered. After the USSR Poland was the second largest arms supplier for the Republic. After the USSR, Italy and Germany, Poland was the 4th largest arms supplier to the war-engulfed Spain.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Greece maintained formal diplomatic relations with the Republic, though the Metaxas dictatorship sympathized with the Nationalists. The country joined the non-intervention policy in August 1936, yet from the onset the Athens government connived at arms sales to both sides. The official vendor was Pyrkal or Greek Powder and Cartridge Company (GPCC), and the key personality behind the deal was the GPCC head, Prodromos Bodosakis-Athanasiadis. The company partially took advantage of the earlier Schacht Plan, a German-Greek credit agreement which enabled Greek purchases from Rheinmetall-Borsig; some of German products were later re-exported to Republican Spain. However, GPCC was selling its own arms, as the company operated a number of factories, and partially thanks to Spanish sales it became the largest company in Greece.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Most of Greek sales went to the Republic; on part of the Spaniards the deals were negotiated by Grigori Rosenberg, son of well-known Soviet diplomat, and Máximo José Kahn Mussabaun, the Spanish representative in the Thessaloniki consulate. Shipments set off usually from Piraeus, were camouflaged at a deserted island, and with changed flags they proceeded officially to ports in Mexico. It is known that sales continued from August 1936 at least until November 1938. Exact number of shipments is unknown, but it remained significant: by November 1937 34 Greek ships were declared non-compliant with the non-intervention agreement, and the Nationalist navy seized 21 vessels in 1938 alone. Details of sales to the Nationalists are unclear, but it is known they were by far smaller.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Total worth of Greek sales is unknown. One author claims that in 1937 alone, GPCC shipments amounted to $10.9m for the Republicans and $2.7m for the Nationalists, and that in late 1937 Bodosakis signed another contract with the Republicans for £2.1m (around $10m), though it is not clear whether the ammunition contracted was delivered. The arms sold included artillery (e.g. 30 pieces of 155mm guns), machine guns (at least 400), cartridges (at least 11m), bombs (at least 1,500) and explosives (at least 38 tons of TNT).


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Unlike the United States and major Latin American governments, such as the ABC nations and Peru, the Mexican government supported the Republicans. Mexico abstained from following the French-British non-intervention proposals, and provided $2,000,000 in aid and material assistance, which included 20,000 rifles and 20 million cartridges.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Mexico's most important contributions to the Spanish Republic was its diplomatic help, as well as the sanctuary the nation arranged for Republican refugees, including Spanish intellectuals and orphaned children from Republican families. Some 50,000 took refuge, primarily in Mexico City and Morelia, accompanied by $300 million in various treasures still owned by the Left.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Fearing it might spark a civil war inside France, the leftist "Popular Front" government in France did not send direct support to the Republicans. French Prime Minister Léon Blum was sympathetic to the republic, fearing that the success of Nationalist forces in Spain would result in the creation of an ally state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, an alliance that would nearly encircle France. Right-wing politicians opposed any aid and attacked the Blum government. In July 1936, British officials convinced Blum not to send arms to the Republicans and, on 27 July, the French government declared that it would not send military aid, technology or forces to assist the Republican forces. However, Blum made clear that France reserved the right to provide aid should it wish to the Republic: "We could have delivered arms to the Spanish Government [Republicans], a legitimate government... We have not done so, in order not to give an excuse to those who would be tempted to send arms to the rebels [Nationalists]."


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 1 August 1936, a pro-Republican rally of 20,000 people confronted Blum, demanding that he send aircraft to the Republicans, at the same time as right-wing politicians attacked Blum for supporting the Republic and being responsible for provoking Italian intervention on the side of Franco. Germany informed the French ambassador in Berlin that Germany would hold France responsible if it supported "the manoeuvres of Moscow" by supporting the Republicans. On 21 August 1936, France signed the Non-Intervention Agreement. However, the Blum government provided aircraft to the Republicans covertly with Potez 540 bomber aircraft (nicknamed the "Flying Coffin" by Spanish Republican pilots), Dewoitine aircraft, and Loire 46 fighter aircraft being sent from 7 August 1936 to December of that year to Republican forces. France, through the favour of pro-communist air minister Pierre Cot also sent a group of trained fighter pilots and engineers to help the Republicans. Also, until 8 September 1936, aircraft could freely pass from France into Spain if they were bought in other countries.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Even after covert support by France to the Republicans ended in December 1936, the possibility of French intervention against the Nationalists remained a serious possibility throughout the war. German intelligence reported to Franco and the Nationalists that the French military was engaging in open discussions about intervention in the war through French military intervention in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. In 1938, Franco feared an immediate French intervention against a potential Nationalist victory in Spain through French occupation of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Spanish Morocco.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: A large air and sealift of Nationalist troops in Spanish Morocco was organised to the southwest of Spain. Coup leader Sanjurjo was killed in a plane crash on 20 July, leaving an effective command split between Mola in the North and Franco in the South. This period also saw the worst actions of the so-called "Red" and "White Terrors" in Spain. On 21 July, the fifth day of the rebellion, the Nationalists captured the central Spanish naval base, located in Ferrol, Galicia.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: A rebel force under Colonel Alfonso Beorlegui Canet, sent by General Mola and Colonel Esteban García, undertook the Campaign of Gipuzkoa from July to September. The capture of Gipuzkoa isolated the Republican provinces in the north. On 5 September, the Nationalists closed the French border to the Republicans in the battle of Irún. On 15 September San Sebastián, home to a divided Republican force of anarchists and Basque nationalists, was taken by Nationalist soldiers.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republic proved ineffective militarily, relying on disorganised revolutionary militias. The Republican government under Giral resigned on 4 September, unable to cope with the situation, and was replaced by a mostly Socialist organisation under Francisco Largo Caballero. The new leadership began to unify central command in the republican zone. The civilian militias were often simply just civilians armed with whatever was available. Thus they fared poorly in combat, particularly against the professional Army of Africa armed with modern weapons, ultimately contributing to Franco's rapid advance.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On the Nationalist side, Franco was chosen as chief military commander at a meeting of ranking generals at Salamanca on 21 September, now called by the title "Generalísimo". Franco won another victory on 27 September when his troops relieved the siege of the Alcázar in Toledo, which had been held by a Nationalist garrison under Colonel José Moscardó Ituarte since the beginning of the rebellion, resisting thousands of Republican troops, who completely surrounded the isolated building. Moroccans and elements of the Spanish Legion came to the rescue. Two days after relieving the siege, Franco proclaimed himself "Caudillo" ("chieftain", the Spanish equivalent of the Italian Duce and the German Führer—meaning: 'director') while forcibly unifying the various and diverse Falangist, Royalist and other elements within the Nationalist cause. The diversion to Toledo gave Madrid time to prepare a defense, but was hailed as a major propaganda victory and personal success for Franco. On 1 October 1936, General Franco was confirmed head of state and armies in Burgos. A similar dramatic success for the Nationalists occurred on 17 October, when troops coming from Galicia relieved the besieged town of Oviedo, in Northern Spain.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In October, the Francoist troops launched a major offensive toward Madrid, reaching it in early November and launching a major assault on the city on 8 November. The Republican government was forced to shift from Madrid to Valencia, outside the combat zone, on 6 November. However, the Nationalists' attack on the capital was repulsed in fierce fighting between 8 and 23 November. A contributory factor in the successful Republican defense was the effectiveness of the Fifth Regiment and later the arrival of the International Brigades, though only an approximate 3,000 foreign volunteers participated in the battle. Having failed to take the capital, Franco bombarded it from the air and, in the following two years, mounted several offensives to try to encircle Madrid, beginning the three-year siege of Madrid. The Second Battle of the Corunna Road, a Nationalist offensive to the northwest, pushed Republican forces back, but failed to isolate Madrid. The battle lasted into January.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: With his ranks swelled by Italian troops and Spanish colonial soldiers from Morocco, Franco made another attempt to capture Madrid in January and February 1937, but was again unsuccessful. The Battle of Málaga started in mid-January, and this Nationalist offensive in Spain's southeast would turn into a disaster for the Republicans, who were poorly organised and armed. The city was taken by Franco on 8 February. The consolidation of various militias into the Republican Army had started in December 1936. The main Nationalist advance to cross the Jarama and cut the supply to Madrid by the Valencia road, termed the Battle of Jarama, led to heavy casualties (6,000–20,000) on both sides. The operation's main objective was not met, though Nationalists gained a modest amount of territory.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: A similar Nationalist offensive, the Battle of Guadalajara, was a more significant defeat for Franco and his armies. This was the only publicised Republican victory of the war. Franco used Italian troops and blitzkrieg tactics; while many strategists blamed Franco for the rightists' defeat, the Germans believed it was the former at fault for the Nationalists' 5,000 casualties and loss of valuable equipment. The German strategists successfully argued that the Nationalists needed to concentrate on vulnerable areas first.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The "War in the North" began in mid-March, with the Biscay Campaign. The Basques suffered most from the lack of a suitable air force. On 26 April, the Condor Legion bombed the town of Guernica, killing 200–300 and causing significant damage. The destruction had a significant effect on international opinion. The Basques retreated.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: April and May saw the May Days, infighting among Republican groups in Catalonia. The dispute was between an ultimately victorious government—Communist forces and the anarchist CNT. The disturbance pleased Nationalist command, but little was done to exploit Republican divisions. After the fall of Guernica, the Republican government began to fight back with increasing effectiveness. In July, it made a move to recapture Segovia, forcing Franco to delay his advance on the Bilbao front, but for only two weeks. The Huesca Offensive failed similarly.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Mola, Franco's second-in-command, was killed on 3 June, in an airplane accident. In early July, despite the earlier loss at the Battle of Bilbao, the government launched a strong counter-offensive to the west of Madrid, focusing on Brunete. The Battle of Brunete, however, was a significant defeat for the Republic, which lost many of its most accomplished troops. The offensive led to an advance of , and left 25,000 Republican casualties.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: A Republican offensive against Zaragoza was also a failure. Despite having land and aerial advantages, the Battle of Belchite, a place lacking any military interest, resulted in an advance of only and the loss of much equipment. Franco invaded Aragón and took the city of Santander in Cantabria in August. With the surrender of the Republican army in the Basque territory came the Santoña Agreement. Gijón finally fell in late October in the Asturias Offensive. Franco had effectively won in the north. At November's end, with Franco's troops closing in on Valencia, the government had to move again, this time to Barcelona.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Battle of Teruel was an important confrontation. The city, which had formerly belonged to the Nationalists, was conquered by Republicans in January. The Francoist troops launched an offensive and recovered the city by 22 February, but Franco was forced to rely heavily on German and Italian air support.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 7 March, Nationalists launched the Aragon Offensive, and by 14 April they had pushed through to the Mediterranean, cutting the Republican-held portion of Spain in two. The Republican government attempted to sue for peace in May, but Franco demanded unconditional surrender, and the war raged on. In July, the Nationalist army pressed southward from Teruel and south along the coast toward the capital of the Republic at Valencia, but was halted in heavy fighting along the XYZ Line, a system of fortifications defending Valencia.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republican government then launched an all-out campaign to reconnect their territory in the Battle of the Ebro, from 24 July until 26 November, where Franco personally took command. The campaign was unsuccessful, and was undermined by the agreement signed in Munich between Hitler and Chamberlain. The Munich Agreement effectively caused a collapse in Republican morale by ending hope of an anti-fascist alliance with Western powers. The retreat from the Ebro all but determined the outcome of the war. Eight days before the new year, Franco threw massive forces into an invasion of Catalonia.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Franco's troops conquered Catalonia in a whirlwind campaign during the first two months of 1939. Tarragona fell on 15 January, followed by Barcelona on 26 January and Girona on 2 February. On 27 February, the United Kingdom and France recognized the Franco regime.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Only Madrid and a few other strongholds remained for the Republican forces. On 5 March 1939 the Republican army, led by the Colonel Segismundo Casado and the politician Julián Besteiro, rose against the prime minister Juan Negrín and formed the National Defence Council "(Consejo Nacional de Defensa" or "CND)" to negotiate a peace deal. Negrín fled to France on 6 March, but the Communist troops around Madrid rose against the junta, starting a brief civil war within the civil war. Casado defeated them, and began peace negotiations with the Nationalists, but Franco refused to accept anything less than unconditional surrender.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: On 26 March, the Nationalists started a general offensive, on 28 March the Nationalists occupied Madrid and, by 31 March, they controlled all Spanish territory. Franco proclaimed victory in a radio speech aired on 1 April, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: After the end of the war, there were harsh reprisals against Franco's former enemies. Thousands of Republicans were imprisoned and at least 30,000 executed. Other estimates of these deaths range from 50,000 to 200,000, depending on which deaths are included. Many others were put to forced labour, building railways, draining swamps, and digging canals.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Hundreds of thousands of Republicans fled abroad, with some 500,000 fleeing to France. Refugees were confined in internment camps of the French Third Republic, such as Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where 12,000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions. In his capacity as consul in Paris, Chilean poet and politician Pablo Neruda organised the immigration to Chile of 2,200 Republican exiles in France using the ship .


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Of the 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs, farmers and others who could not find relations in France were encouraged by the Third Republic, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there, they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification" according to the Law of Political Responsibilities. After the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other "undesirable" people, the Spaniards were sent to the Drancy internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. About 5,000 Spaniards died in the Mauthausen concentration camp.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: After the official end of the war, guerrilla warfare was waged on an irregular basis by the Spanish Maquis well into the 1950s, gradually reduced by military defeats and scant support from the exhausted population. In 1944, a group of republican veterans, who also fought in the French resistance against the Nazis, invaded the Val d'Aran in northwest Catalonia, but were defeated after 10 days. According to some scholars, the Spanish Civil War lasted until 1952; until 1939 it was "conventional civil war", but afterwards it turned into an "irregular civil war".


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republicans oversaw the evacuation of 30,000–35,000 children from their zone, starting with Basque areas, from which 20,000 were evacuated. Their destinations included the United Kingdom and the USSR, and many other countries in Europe, along with Mexico. The policy of evacuating children to foreign countries was initially opposed to by elements in the government as well as private charities, who saw the policy as unnecessary and harmful to the well-being of the evacuated children. On 21 May 1937, around 4,000 Basque children were evacuated to the UK on the aging steamship SS "Habana" from the Spanish port of Santurtzi. Upon their arrival two days later in Southampton, the children were sent to families all over England, with over 200 children accommodated in Wales. The upper age limit was initially set at 12, but raised to 15. By mid-September, all of "los niños", as they became known, had found homes with families. Most were repatriated to Spain after the war, but some 250 were still in Britain by the end of the Second World War in 1945. Some chose to settle down in Britain, while the remaining children were eventually evacuated back to Spain.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: During the Civil War the Nationalist and Republican military expenditures combined totalled some $3.89bn, on average $1.44bn annually. The overall Nationalist expenditures are calculated at $2.04bn, while the Republican ones reached ca. $1,85bn. In comparison, in 1936–1938 the French military expenditure totalled $0.87bn, the Italian ones reached $2.64bn, and the British ones stood at $4.13bn. As in the mid-1930s the Spanish GDP was much smaller than the Italian, French or British ones, and as in the Second Republic the annual defence and security budget was usually around $0,13bn (total annual governmental spendings were close to $0.65bn), wartime military expenditures put huge strain on the Spanish economy. Financing the war posed enormous challenge for both the Nationalists and the Republicans.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The two combatant parties followed similar financial strategies; in both cases money creation, rather than new taxes or issue of debt, was key to financing the war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Both sides relied mostly on domestic resources; in case of the Nationalists they amounted to 63% of the overall spendings ($1.28bn) and in case of the Republicans they stood at 59% ($1.09bn). In the Nationalist zone money creation was responsible for some 69% of domestic resources, while in the Republican one the corresponding figure stood at 60%; it was accomplished mostly by means of advances, credits, loans and debit balances from respective central banks. However, while in the Nationalist zone the rising stock of money was only marginally above the production growth rate, in the Republican zone it by far exceeded dwindling production figures. The result was that while by the end of the war the Nationalist inflation was 41% compared to 1936, the Republican one was in triple digits. The second component of domestic resource was fiscal revenue. In the Nationalist zone it grew steadily and in the 2nd half of 1938 it was 214% of the figure from the 2nd half of 1936. In the Republican zone fiscal revenues in 1937 dropped to some 25% of revenues recorded in the proportional area in 1935, but recovered slightly in 1938. Neither side re-engineered the pre-war tax system; differences resulted from dramatic problems with tax collection in the Republican zone and from the course of the war, as more and more population was governed by the Nationalists. A smaller percentage of domestic resources came from expropriations, donations or internal borrowing.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Foreign resources amounted to 37% in case of the Nationalists ($0,76bn) and 41% in case of the Republicans ($0,77bn). For the Nationalists it was mostly the Italian and German credit; in case of the Republicans it was sales of gold reserves, mostly to the USSR and in much smaller amount to France. None of the sides resolved to public borrowing and none floated debt on foreign exchange markets.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Authors of recent studies suggest that given Nationalist and Republican spendings were comparable, earlier theory pointing to Republican mismanagement of resources is no longer tenable. Instead, they claim that the Republicans failed to translate their resources into military victory largely because of constraints of the international non-intervention agreement; they were forced to spend in excess of market prices and accept goods of lower quality. Initial turmoil in the Republican zone contributed to problems, while at later stages the course of the war meant that population, territory and resources kept shrinking.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The death toll of the Spanish Civil War is far from clear and remains—especially in part related to war and postwar repression—a very controversial issue. Many general historiographic works—notably in Spain—refrain from advancing any figures; massive historical series, encyclopedias or dictionaries provide no numbers or at best propose vague general descriptions; more detailed general history accounts produced by expert Spanish scholars often remain silent on the issue. Foreign scholars, especially English-speaking historians, are more willing to offer some general estimates, though some have revised their projections, usually downward, and the figures vary from 1 million to 250,000. Apart from bias/ill will, incompetence or changing access to sources, the differences result chiefly from categorisation and methodology issues.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The totals advanced usually include or exclude various categories. Scholars who focus on killings or "violent deaths" most typically list (1) combat and combat-related deaths; figures in this rubric range from 100,000 to 700,000; (2) rearguard terror, both judicial and extrajudicial, recorded until the end of the Civil War: 103,000 to 235,000; (3) civilian deaths from military action, typically air raids: 10,000 to 15,000. These categories combined point to totals from 235,000 to 715,000. Many authors opt for a broader view and calculate "death toll" by adding also (4) above-the-norm deaths caused by malnutrition, hygiene shortcomings, cold, illness, etc. recorded until the end of the Civil War: 30,000 to 630,000. It is not unusual to encounter war statistics which include (5) postwar terror related to Civil War, at times up to the year of 1961: 23,000 to 200,000. Some authors also add (6) foreign combat and combat-related deaths: 3,000 to 25,000, (7) Spaniards killed in World War II: 6,000, (8) deaths related to postwar guerilla, typically the Invasion of Val d'Aran: 4,000, (9) above-the-norm deaths caused by malnutrition, etc., recorded after the Civil War but related to it: 160,000 to 300,000.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Demographers take an entirely different approach; instead of adding up deaths from different categories, they try to gauge the difference between the total number of deaths recorded during the war and the total that would result from applying annual death averages from the 1926–1935 period; this difference is considered excess death resulting from the war. The figure they arrive at for the 1936–1939 period is 346,000; the figure for 1936–1942, including the years of postwar deaths resulting from terror and war sufferings, is 540,000. Some scholars go even further and calculate the war's "population loss" or "demographic impact"; in this case they might include also (10) migration abroad: 160,000 to 730,000 and (11) decrease in birth rate: 500,000 to 570,000.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Death totals remain debated. British historian Antony Beevor wrote in his history of the Civil War that Franco's ensuing "white terror" resulted in the deaths of 200,000 people and that the "red terror" killed 38,000. Julius Ruiz contends that, "Although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone, with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain". Historian Michael Seidman stated that the Nationalists killed approximately 130,000 people and the Republicans approximately 50,000 people.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the executions investigated was that of the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca, whose body has never been found. Mention of García Lorca's death was forbidden during Franco's regime.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Research since 2016 has started to locate mass graves, using a combination of witness testimony, remote sensing and forensic geophysics techniques.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Historians such as Helen Graham, Paul Preston, Antony Beevor, Gabriel Jackson and Hugh Thomas argue that the mass executions behind the Nationalist lines were organised and approved by the Nationalist rebel authorities, while the executions behind the Republican lines were the result of the breakdown of the Republican state and chaos:


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Conversely, historians such as Stanley Payne, Julius Ruiz and José Sánchez argue that the political violence in the Republican zone was in fact organized by the left:


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Nationalist atrocities, which authorities frequently ordered so as to eradicate any trace of "leftism" in Spain, were common. The notion of a "limpieza" (cleansing) formed an essential part of the rebel strategy, and the process began immediately after an area had been captured. Estimates of the death toll vary; historian Paul Preston estimates the minimum number of those executed by the rebels as 130,000, while Antony Beevor places the figure much higher at an estimated 200,000 dead. The violence was carried out in the rebel zone by the military, the Civil Guard and the Falange in the name of the regime. Julius Ruiz reports that the Nationalists killed 100,000 people during the war and executed at least 28,000 immediately after. The first three months of the war were the bloodiest, with 50 to 70 percent of all executions carried out by Franco's regime, from 1936 to 1975, occurring during this period. The first few months of killings lacked much in the way of centralisation, being largely in the hands of local commanders. Such was the extent of the killings of civilians that General Mola was taken aback by them, despite his own planning emphasising the need for violence; early in the conflict he had ordered a group of leftist militiamen to be immediately executed, only to change his mind and rescind the order.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Many such acts were committed by reactionary groups during the first weeks of the war. This included the execution of schoolteachers, because the efforts of the Second Spanish Republic to promote laicism and displace the Church from schools by closing religious educational institutions were considered by the Nationalists as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. Extensive killings of civilians were carried out in the cities captured by the Nationalists, along with the execution of unwanted individuals. These included non-combatants such as trade-unionists, Popular Front politicians, suspected Freemasons, Basque, Catalan, Andalusian, and Galician Nationalists, Republican intellectuals, relatives of known Republicans, and those suspected of voting for the Popular Front. The Nationalists also frequently killed military officers who refused to support them in the early days of the coup. Many killings in the first few months were often done by vigilantes and civilian death squads, with the Nationalist leadership often condoning their actions or even assisting them. Post-war executions were conducted by military tribunal, though the accused had limited ways to defend themselves. A large number of the executed were done so for their political activities or positions they held under the Republic during the war, though those who committed their own killings under the Republic were also amongst executed as well. A 2010 analysis of Catalonia argued that Nationalist executions were more likely to occur when they occupied an area that experienced greater prior violence, likely due to pro-Nationalist civilians seeking revenge for earlier actions by denouncing others to the Nationalist forces. However, during the war, executions declined as the Francoist state began to establish itself.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Nationalist forces massacred civilians in Seville, where some 8,000 people were shot; 10,000 were killed in Cordoba; 6,000–12,000 were killed in Badajoz after more than one thousand of landowners and conservatives were killed by the revolutionaries. In Granada, where working-class neighbourhoods were hit with artillery and right-wing squads were given free rein to kill government sympathizers, at least 2,000 people were murdered. In February 1937, over 7,000 were killed after the capture of Málaga. When Bilbao was conquered, thousands of people were sent to prison. There were fewer executions than usual, however, because of the effect Guernica left on Nationalists' reputations internationally. The numbers killed as the columns of the Army of Africa devastated and pillaged their way between Seville and Madrid are particularly difficult to calculate. Landowners who owned the large estates of Southern Spain rode alongside the Army of Africa to reclaim via force of arms the land given to the landless peasants by the Republican government. Rural workers were executed and it was joked that they had received their "land reform" in the form of a burial plot.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Nationalists also murdered Catholic clerics. In one particular incident, following the capture of Bilbao, they took hundreds of people, including 16 priests who had served as chaplains for the Republican forces, to the countryside or graveyards and murdered them.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Franco's forces also persecuted Protestants, including murdering 20 Protestant ministers. Franco's forces were determined to remove the "Protestant heresy" from Spain. The Nationalists also persecuted Basques, as they strove to eradicate Basque culture. According to Basque sources, some 22,000 Basques were murdered by Nationalists immediately after the Civil War.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Nationalist side conducted aerial bombing of cities in Republican territory, carried out mainly by the Luftwaffe volunteers of the Condor Legion and the Italian air force volunteers of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Guernica, Durango, and other cities were attacked. The Bombing of Guernica was the most controversial. The Italian air force conducted a particularly heavy bombing raid on Barcelona in early 1938. While some Nationalist leaders did oppose the bombing of the city—for example, Generals Yagüe and Moscardó, who were noted for being nonconformists, protested against the indiscriminate destruction—other Nationalist leaders, often those of a fascist persuasion, approved of the bombings which they saw as necessary to "cleanse" Barcelona.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Michael Seidman observes that the Nationalist terror was a key part of the Nationalist victory as it allowed them to secure their rear; the Russian Whites, in their civil war, had struggled to suppress peasant rebellions, bandits and warlordism behind their lines; British observers argued that if the Russian Whites had been able to secure law and order behind their lines, they would have won over the Russian peasantry, while the inability of the Chinese Nationalists to stop banditry during the Chinese Civil War did severe damage to the regime's legitimacy. The Spanish Nationalists, in contrast, imposed a puritanically terrorist order on the populace in their territory. They never suffered from serious partisan activity behind their lines and the fact that banditry did not develop into a serious problem in Spain, despite how easy it would have been in such mountainous terrain, demands explanation. Seidman argues that severe terror, combined with control of the food supply, explains the general lack of guerilla warfare in the Nationalist rear. A 2009 analysis of Nationalist violence argues that evidence supports the view that killings were used strategically by the Nationalists to pre-emptively counter potential opposition by targeting individuals and groups deemed most likely to cultivate future rebellions, thus helping the Nationalists win the war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Scholars have estimated that between 38,000 and 70,000 civilians were killed in Republican-held territories, with the most common estimate being around 50,000.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Whatever the exact number, the death toll was far exaggerated by both sides, for propaganda reasons, giving birth to the legend of the "millón de muertos". Franco's government would later give names of 61,000 victims of the red terrors, but which are not considered objectively verifiable. The deaths would form the prevailing outside opinion of the republic up until the bombing of Guernica.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The leftist Revolution of 1936 that preceded the war was accompanied since the first months by an escalation of leftist anticlerical terror that, between 18 and 31 July alone, killed 839 religious, continuing during the month of August with 2055 other victims, including 10 bishops killed, that was 42% of the total number of registered victims in that year. Particularly noteworthy repression was conducted in Madrid during the war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republican government was anticlerical, and, when the war began, supporters attacked and murdered Roman Catholic clergy in reaction to the news of military revolt. In his 1961 book, Spanish archbishop Antonio Montero Moreno, who at the time was director of the journal "Ecclesia", wrote that 6,832 were killed during the war, including 4,184 priests, 2,365 monks and friars, and 283 nuns (many were first raped before they died), in addition to 13 bishops, a figure accepted by historians, including Beevor. Some of the killings were carried out with extreme cruelty, some were burned to death, there are reports of castration and disembowelment. Some sources claim that by the conflict's end, 20 percent of the nation's clergy had been killed. The "Execution" of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Communist militiamen at Cerro de los Ángeles near Madrid, on 7 August 1936, was the most infamous of widespread desecration of religious property. In dioceses where the Republicans had general control, a large proportion—often a majority—of secular priests were killed. Michael Seidman argues that the hatred of the Republicans for the clergy was in excess of anything else; while local revolutionaries might spare the lives of the rich and right-wingers, they seldom offered the same to priests.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Like clergy, civilians were executed in Republican territories. Some civilians were executed as suspected Falangists. Others died in acts of revenge after Republicans heard of massacres carried out in the Nationalist zone. Even families who simply attended Catholic Mass were hunted down; including children. Air raids committed against Republican cities were another driving factor. Shopkeepers and industrialists were shot if they did not sympathise with the Republicans, and were usually spared if they did. Fake justice was sought through commissions, named "checas" after the Soviet secret police organization.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: It is important to note that there was infighting between the Republican factions, and that the Communists following Stalinism declared the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM, an anti-Stalinist communist party) to be an illegal organization, along with the Anarchists. The Stalinists betrayed and committed mass atrocities on the other Republican factions, such as torture and mass executions. George Orwell would record this in his "Homage to Catalonia" as well as write "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm" to criticize Stalinism.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: As pressure mounted with the increasing success of the Nationalists, many civilians were executed by councils and tribunals controlled by competing Communist and anarchist groups. Some members of the latter were executed by Soviet-advised communist functionaries in Catalonia, as recounted by George Orwell's description of the purges in Barcelona in 1937 in which followed a period of increasing tension between competing elements of the Catalan political scene. Some individuals fled to friendly embassies, which would house up to 8,500 people during the war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In the Andalusian town of Ronda, 512 suspected Nationalists were executed in the first month of the war. Communist Santiago Carrillo Solares was accused of the killing of Nationalists in the Paracuellos massacre near Paracuellos de Jarama. Pro-Soviet Communists committed numerous atrocities against fellow Republicans, including other Marxists: André Marty, known as the Butcher of Albacete, was responsible for the deaths of some 500 members of the International Brigades. Andrés Nin, leader of the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), and many other prominent POUM members, were murdered by the Communists, with the help of the USSR's NKVD.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Republicans also conducted their own bombing attacks on cities, such as the bombing of Cabra, and in fact conducted more indiscriminate air raids on cities and civilian targets than the Nationalists.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Thirty-eight thousand people were killed in the Republican zone during the war, 17,000 of whom were killed in Madrid or Catalonia within a month of the coup. Whilst the Communists were forthright in their support of extrajudicial killings, much of the Republican side was appalled by the murders. Azaña came close to resigning. He, alongside other members of Parliament and a great number of other local officials, attempted to prevent Nationalist supporters from being lynched. Some of those in positions of power intervened personally to stop the killings.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragon and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and peasants collectivised land and industry and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government. This revolution was opposed by the Soviet-supported communists who, perhaps surprisingly, campaigned against the loss of civil property rights.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: As the war progressed, the government and the communists were able to exploit their access to Soviet arms to restore government control over the war effort, through diplomacy and force. Anarchists and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ("Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista", POUM) were integrated into the regular army, albeit with resistance. The POUM Trotskyists were outlawed and denounced by the Soviet-aligned Communists as an instrument of the fascists. In the "May Days" of 1937, many thousands of anarchist and communist Republican soldiers fought for control of strategic points in Barcelona.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The pre-war Falange was a small party of some 30,000–40,000 members. It also called for a social revolution that would have seen Spanish society transformed by National Syndicalism. Following the execution of its leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, by the Republicans, the party swelled in size to several hundred thousand members. The leadership of the Falange suffered 60 percent casualties in the early days of the civil war, and the party was transformed by new members and rising new leaders, called "camisas nuevas" ("new shirts"), who were less interested in the revolutionary aspects of National Syndicalism. Subsequently, Franco united all fighting groups into the Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the National Syndicalist Offensive Juntas (, FET y de las JONS).


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The 1930s also saw Spain become a focus for pacifist organisations, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League, and the War Resisters' International. Many people including, as they are now called, the "insumisos" ("defiant ones", conscientious objectors) argued and worked for non-violent strategies. Prominent Spanish pacifists, such as Amparo Poch y Gascón and José Brocca, supported the Republicans. Brocca argued that Spanish pacifists had no alternative but to make a stand against fascism. He put this stand into practice by various means, including organizing agricultural workers to maintain food supplies, and through humanitarian work with war refugees.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Throughout the course of the Spanish Civil War, people all over the world were exposed to the goings-on and effects of it on its people not only through standard art, but also through propaganda. Motion pictures, posters, books, radio programs, and leaflets are a few examples of this media art that was so influential during the war. Produced by both nationalists and republicans, propaganda allowed Spaniards a way to spread awareness about their war all over the world. A film co-produced by famous early-twentieth century authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Lillian Hellman was used as a way to advertise Spain's need for military and monetary aid. This film, "The Spanish Earth", premiered in America in July 1937. In 1938, George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia", a personal account of his experiences and observations in the war, was published in the United Kingdom. In 1939, Jean-Paul Sartre published in France a short story, "The Wall" in which he describes the last night of prisoners of war sentenced to death by shooting.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Leading works of sculpture include Alberto Sánchez Pérez's "El pueblo español tiene un camino que conduce a una estrella" ("The Spanish People Have a Path that Leads to a Star"), a 12.5 m monolith constructed out of plaster representing the struggle for a socialist utopia; Julio González's "La Montserrat", an anti-war work which shares its title with a mountain near Barcelona, is created from a sheet of iron which has been hammered and welded to create a peasant mother carrying a small child in one arm and a sickle in the other. and Alexander Calder's "Fuente de mercurio" (Mercury Fountain) a protest work by the American against the Nationalist forced control of Almadén and the mercury mines there.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Salvador Dalí responded to the conflict in his homeland with two powerful oil paintings in 1936: "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans": "A Premonition of Civil War" (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and "Autumnal Cannibalism" (Tate Modern, London). Of the former, the art historian Robert Hughes stated, "Salvador Dalí appropriated the horizontal thigh of Goya's crouching Saturn for the hybrid monster in the painting "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, Premonition of Civil War", which rather than Picasso's "Guernica" – is the finest single work of visual art inspired by the Spanish Civil War." On the later, Dalí commented "These Iberian beings mutually devouring each other correspond to the pathos of civil war considered as a pure phenomenon of natural history as opposed to Picasso who considered it a political phenomenon."


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" in 1937, taking inspiration from the bombing of Guernica, and in Leonardo da Vinci's "Battle of Anghiari". "Guernica", like many important Republican masterpieces, was featured at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. The work's size (11 ft by 25.6 ft) grabbed much attention and cast the horrors of the mounting Spanish civil unrest into a global spotlight. The painting has since been heralded as an anti-war work and a symbol of peace in the 20th century.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Joan Miró created "El Segador" (The Reaper) in 1937, formally titled "El campesino catalán en rebeldía" (Catalan peasant in revolt), which spans some 18 feet by 12 feet and depicted a peasant brandishing a sickle in the air, to which Miró commented that "The sickle is not a communist symbol. It is the reaper's symbol, the tool of his work, and, when his freedom is threatened, his weapon." This work, also featured at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris, was shipped back to the Spanish Republic's capital in Valencia following the Exhibition, but has since gone missing or has been destroyed.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The Army of Africa would feature a place in propaganda on both sides, due to the complex history of the Army and Spanish colonialism in North Africa. Both sides would invent different characters of the Moorish troops, drawing on a wide range of historical symbols, cultural prejudices and racial stereotypes. The Army of Africa would be used as part of a propaganda campaign by both sides to portray the other side as foreign invaders attacking from outside the national community, while portraying their own as representing "true Spain".


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Payment for the war on both sides was very high. Monetary resources on the Republican side were completely drained from weapon acquisition. On the Nationalist side, the biggest losses came after the conflict, when they had to let Germany exploit the country's mining resources, so until the beginning of World War II they barely had the chance to make any profit.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The number of civilian victims is still being discussed, with some estimating approximately 500,000 victims, while others go as high as 1,000,000. These deaths were not only due to combat, but also executions, which were especially well-organised and systematic on the Nationalist side, being more disorganised on the Republican side (mainly caused by loss of control of the armed masses by the government).


title: Spanish Civil War

text: However, the 500,000 death toll does not include deaths by malnutrition, hunger or diseases brought about by the war.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: After the War, the Francoist regime initiated a repressive process against the losing side, a "cleansing" of sorts against anything or anyone associated with the Republic. This process led many to exile or death.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: Exile happened in three waves. The first one was during the Northern Campaign (March–November 1937), followed by a second wave after the fall of Catalonia (January–February 1939), in which about 400,000 people fled to France. The French authorities had to improvise concentration camps, with such hard conditions that almost half of the exiled Spaniards returned. The third wave occurred after the War, at the end of March 1939, when thousands of Republicans tried to board ships to exile, although few succeeded.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: The political and emotional repercussions of the War transcended the national scale, becoming a precursor to the Second World War. The war has frequently been described by historians as the "prelude to" or the "opening round of" the Second World War, as part of an international battle against fascism. Historian Stanley Payne suggests that this view is an incorrect summary of the geopolitic position of the interwar period, arguing that the international alliance that was created in December 1941, once the United States entered the Second World War, was politically much broader than the Spanish Popular Front. The Spanish Civil War, Payne argues, was thus a far more clear-cut revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggle between the left and right wings, while the Second World War initially had fascists and communist powers on the same side with the combined Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. Payne suggests that instead the civil war was the last of the revolutionary crises that emerged from the First World War, observing it had parallels such as the complete revolutionary breakdown of domestic institutions, the development of full-scale revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggles, the development of a typical post-WW1 communist force in the form of the People's Army, an extreme exacerbation of nationalism, the frequent use of WW1-style military weapons and tactics and the fact that it was not the product of the plan of any of the major powers, making it more similar to the post-WW1 crises which arose after the Treaty of Versailles.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: After the War, Spanish policy leaned heavily towards Germany, Portugal and Italy, since they had been the greatest Nationalist supporters and aligned with Spain ideologically. However, the end of the Civil War and later the Second World War saw the isolation of the country from most other nations until the 1950s, in which the American anti-Communist international policy favoured having a far-right and extremely anti-communist ally in Europe.


title: Spanish Civil War

text: There have been numerous attempts to define the Spanish Civil War in terms of its key mechanism, prevailing logic and dominant conflict line; many of these interpretations strove also to identify the conflict in terms of major threads of continental or even global history. These attempts might not differ much from propaganda, advanced by both warring parties or their sympathizers; they might form part of broad public discourse, either in Spain or abroad; they might also belong to professional academic historiographic debate. Major theories are listed in the below table.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Miriam Rogers (née Spickler; born January 27, 1956) is an American actress. Her notable film roles are "Gung Ho" (1986), "Someone to Watch Over Me" (1987), "Desperate Hours" (1990), and "Full Body Massage" (1995). She garnered the greatest acclaim of her career for her role in the religious drama "The Rapture" (1991), with critic Robin Wood declaring that she "gave one of the greatest performances in the history of the Hollywood cinema." Rogers has since appeared in "Reflections on a Crime" (1994), "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996), "" (1997), "Lost in Space" (1998), "Ginger Snaps" (2000), "The Door in the Floor" (2004), and "For a Good Time, Call..." (2012). Her extensive work in television includes "Paper Dolls" (1984), "Weapons of Mass Distraction" (1997), "The Loop" (2006–2007), and recurring roles on "The X-Files" (1998–1999), "Two and a Half Men" (2011–2015), "Wilfred" (2014), "Mad Men" (2015), "Bosch" (2014–2021), and "" (2022).


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Rogers was born Miriam Spickler at General Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida. She is the daughter of Philip C. Spickler, a civil engineer, and Kathy Talent, a former dance and drama major. Rogers' father was Jewish and her mother Episcopalian. Her father became involved with Scientology before she was born, and the organization was part of her upbringing.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: The family lived in Virginia, Arizona, Michigan, and England before settling in Los Angeles. At the age of fourteen, Rogers finished her formal education and graduated from high school. She later worked in a hospital for incapacitated patients outside Palo Alto, California, and for six years she worked part-time as a social worker involved in substance-abuse counseling.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: After her first marriage ended, Rogers moved to Los Angeles to embark on an acting career. She studied acting with Milton Katselas for nine months and then sought an agent. She screen tested for the lead role in "Body Heat" which eventually went to Kathleen Turner. Her earlier roles included television appearances in "Hill Street Blues" (1981) as a love interest for officer Andy Renko (Charles Haid), in "Magnum, P.I." (1982), and in "Hart to Hart" (1983). In 1982, Rogers starred in the made-for-TV-movie "Hear No Evil" as Meg. Between 1983 and 1984, she worked extensively in television as a series regular on "The Rousters" and as supermodel Blair Harper-Fenton in "Paper Dolls". In 1986, she starred alongside Michael Keaton in "Gung Ho".


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 1986, Rogers auditioned for the female lead in "Fatal Attraction" which went to Glenn Close. However, Rogers got her breakthrough role when she was cast opposite Tom Berenger in "Someone to Watch Over Me" (1987). Rogers played Claire Gregory, a socialite who is protected after she witnesses a murder. In 1989, she was in "The Mighty Quinn" starring Denzel Washington. In 1990, she appeared in "Desperate Hours".


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 1991, Rogers starred as the protagonist in "The Rapture" about a woman who converts from a swinger to a born-again Christian after learning that a true Rapture is upon the world. She received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead nomination for her role in the film. "Slant Magazine" praised her "spectacular performance, which seems in part inspired by the physical splendors and feral glances of Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck."


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 1993, Rogers posed nude for the March 1993 edition of "Playboy" magazine, and also appeared on that issue's cover. She later explained "Playboy had been after me for years, and finally I agreed to pose when they gave me complete approval over the shoot. It was done in a tasteful way, and since I knew that I wanted to have children soon, I thought it might be nice to have a permanent record of my body in its prime."


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 1994, Rogers starred as a woman on death row in the prison thriller "Reflections on a Crime" and received the Best Actress prize for the film at the Seattle International Film Festival. "New York Magazine" praised Rogers' "typically terrific performance" in the film.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Rogers later joined an ensemble cast in the critically acclaimed comedy-drama "Trees Lounge" (1996). She also had a supporting role alongside Barbra Streisand and Lauren Bacall in "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996). Her next film was the beginning of what would become a major franchise, when she appeared as Mrs. Kensington in "" (1997).


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 1998, she co-starred in "Lost in Space". A year later, she co-produced and co-starred in the Holocaust drama "The Devil's Arithmetic". Together with her fellow producers, Rogers received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Children's Special for the film. Between 1998 and 1999, Rogers also had a recurring role on "The X-Files" playing Diana Fowley for seven episodes. In 2000, she starred in the critically acclaimed Canadian horror film "Ginger Snaps". She was also a series regular on the short-lived ABC series "The Geena Davis Show" (2000–01).


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Rogers later made television appearances on "Dawson's Creek" (2003) as the mother of Jen Lindley (Michelle Williams) and in "Las Vegas" (2003). She also appears in the comedy prequel "" (2003). In 2004, she starred alongside Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger in the drama "The Door in the Floor". Between 2006 and 2007, Rogers was a series regular on the Fox comedy "The Loop" playing Meryl. In 2010, Rogers had a guest voice role on "King of the Hill" and served as a producer on "Unstoppable".


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 2010, she performed at the Geffen Playhouse in "Love, Loss, and What I Wore". In 2011, she was cast in the recurring role of Robin Schmidt, a primatologist and Ashton Kutcher's mother on "Two and a Half Men". Rogers resumed the role in the season 10 premiere episode. In 2012, she made a guest appearance on "The Client List", and appeared in the films "For a Good Time, Call..." and, alongside Meryl Streep, in "Hope Springs".


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In March 2012, she was cast alongside Chad Michael Murray in the ABC pilot "Scruples", as Harriet, a "powerful and vindictive magazine editor".


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Since 2014, she has had a recurring role in "Bosch". Rogers appears as Honey Chandler, an attorney at odds with the titular character portrayed by Titus Welliver. She is set to reprise the role as Honey Chandler in the Amazon Freevee (recently rebranded from IMDb TV) spin-off "".


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Having played poker as a teenager, Rogers took up competitive poker in 2003 and finished in the money in her first major tournament at the World Poker Tour's 240 player Shooting Stars' main event No-Limit Texas hold 'em tournament in San Jose, California, on March 4, 2004. She is on the board of directors of the World Poker Tour. In July 2006, she finished in the money (33rd place) at the $1000 Ladies' No-Limit Hold 'em World Series of Poker event.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Rogers has been married three times. She married James Rogers in 1976 and assumed his surname; they divorced in 1980. She then had a relationship with Emilio Estevez. On May 9, 1987, she married actor Tom Cruise in a New York City ceremony; the marriage broke down at the end of 1989, and a divorce was finalized in February 1990. In January 1990, the couple released a joint statement: "While there have been very positive aspects to our marriage, there were some issues which could not be resolved even after working on them for a period of time." It was Rogers who introduced Cruise to Scientology.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In an interview with "Playboy" in 1993, Rogers discussed her split from Cruise and said that he had been considering becoming a monk, which affected their intimacy. Rogers later retracted the comments and claimed she had been misinterpreted.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In 1990, Rogers met her present husband, producer Chris Ciaffa, on the set of the made-for-cable film "Fourth Story". The couple has a daughter, Lucy (born 1994) and a son, Charlie (born 2001). They married on March 20, 2003, at the Beverly Hills courthouse. During an interview on "The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn", Rogers joked that the marriage – after 13 years living together and two children – was just so they would be eligible for a country club membership.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Rogers' father became interested in Dianetics in 1952 and later became a prominent Mission Holder with the Church of Scientology and friend of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Rogers also reportedly became a highly trained "auditor" with the church. Prior to her acting career, she opened a "field auditing" practice, the Enhancement Center, with her first husband, Jim Rogers. According to Sonny Bono, Rogers was his "auditor" for dianetics. Tom Cruise was also a client before being directed towards a Celebrity Centre.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: In an interview given to the "Los Angeles Times" in 1991, Rogers said about Scientology: "that philosophy was simply part of my upbringing and I liked it. And, I think it was an excellent system of belief to grow up with because Scientology offers an extremely pragmatic method for taking spiritual concerns and breaking them down into everyday applications."


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Rogers has left the Church of Scientology and has been described in media reports as a former member of the church.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: Cruise biographer Andrew Morton alleged that Rogers' father had been declared a Suppressive Person after leaving the church in the early 1980s, during a cull of Mission Holders.


title: Mimi Rogers

text: A 2012 article in "Vanity Fair" alleged that Rogers held an unfavorable view of the church's controversial leader, David Miscavige. In "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief", published in 2013, author Lawrence Wright alleged that Miscavige had pushed Rogers from her marriage with Cruise so the latter could pursue Nicole Kidman.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Eugene Allen Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American actor and retired novelist. In a career that has spanned more than six decades, Hackman has won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, two BAFTAs and one Silver Bear.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Nominated for five Academy Awards, Hackman won Best Actor for his role as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in the critically acclaimed thriller "The French Connection" (1971) and Best Supporting Actor as "Little" Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Western film "Unforgiven" (1992). His other nominations for Best Supporting Actor came with the films "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and "I Never Sang for My Father" (1970), with a second Best Actor nomination for "Mississippi Burning" (1988).


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman's other major film roles included "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), "The Conversation" (1974), "French Connection II" (1975), "A Bridge Too Far" (1977), "Superman" (1978) and its sequels "Superman II" (1980) and "" (1987), "Hoosiers" (1986), "No Way Out" (1987), "Bat*21" (1988), "The Firm" (1993), "The Quick and the Dead" (1995), " Get Shorty" (1995), "Crimson Tide" (1995), "Enemy of the State" (1998), "Antz" (1998), "The Replacements" (2000), "Behind Enemy Lines" (2001), "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001), "Runaway Jury" (2003) and "Welcome to Mooseport" (2004)—his final film role before retirement.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Eugene Ezra Hackman and Anna Lyda Elizabeth (née Gray). He has one brother, Richard. He has Pennsylvania Dutch, English, and Scottish ancestry; his mother was Canadian, and was born in [Sarnia, Ontario]]. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the "Commercial-News", a local paper. His parents divorced when he was 13 and his father subsequently left the family. Hackman decided that he wanted to become an actor when he was ten years old.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman lived briefly in Storm Lake, Iowa, and spent his sophomore year at Storm Lake High School. He left home at age 16 and lied about his age to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. He served four and a half years as a field radio operator. He was stationed in China (Qingdao and later in Shanghai). When the Communist Revolution conquered the mainland in 1949, Hackman was assigned to Hawaii and Japan. Following his discharge in 1951, he moved to New York City and had several jobs. His mother died in 1962 as a result of a fire she accidentally started while smoking. He began a study of journalism and television production at the University of Illinois under the G.I. Bill, but left and moved back to California.


title: Gene Hackman

text: In 1956, Hackman began pursuing an acting career. He joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman. Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, Hackman and Hoffman were voted "The Least Likely To Succeed", and Hackman got the lowest score the Pasadena Playhouse had yet given. Determined to prove them wrong, Hackman moved to New York City. A 2004 article in "Vanity Fair" described Hackman, Hoffman, and Robert Duvall as struggling California-born actors and close friends, sharing NYC apartments in various two-person combinations in the 1960s. To support himself between acting jobs, Hackman was working at a Howard Johnson's restaurant when he encountered an instructor from the Pasadena Playhouse, who said that his job proved that Hackman "wouldn't amount to anything". A Marine officer who saw him as a doorman said "Hackman, you're a sorry son of a bitch". Rejection motivated Hackman, who said,


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman got various bit roles, for example on the TV series "Route 66" in 1963, and began performing in several Off-Broadway plays. In 1964 he had an offer to co-star in the play "Any Wednesday" with actress Sandy Dennis. This opened the door to film work. His first role was in "Lilith", with Jean Seberg and Warren Beatty in the leading roles. In 1966 he played a small part as Dr. John Whipple in the epic film "Hawaii." In 1967 he appeared in an episode of the television series "The Invaders" entitled "The Spores". Another supporting role, Buck Barrow in 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde", earned him an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. In 1968 he appeared in an episode of "I Spy", in the role of "Hunter", in the episode "Happy Birthday... Everybody". That same year he starred in the "CBS Playhouse" episode "My Father and My Mother" and the dystopian television film "Shadow on the Land". In 1969 he played a ski coach in "Downhill Racer" and an astronaut in "Marooned". Also that year, he played a member of a barnstorming skydiving team that entertained mostly at county fairs, a movie which also inspired many to pursue skydiving and has a cult-like status amongst skydivers as a result: "The Gypsy Moths". He nearly accepted the role of Mike Brady for the TV series "The Brady Bunch", but his agent advised that he decline it in exchange for a more promising role, which he did.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman was nominated for a second Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in "I Never Sang for My Father" (1970). The next year, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as New York City Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in "The French Connection" (1971), marking his graduation to leading-man status.


title: Gene Hackman

text: After "The French Connection", Hackman starred in ten films (not including his cameo in "Young Frankenstein") over the next three years, making him the most prolific actor in Hollywood during that time frame. He followed "The French Connection" with leading roles in the disaster film "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" (1974), which was nominated for several Oscars, and won the Palme d'Or in Cannes. That same year, Hackman appeared, in what would become one of his most famous comedic roles, as Harold the Blind Man in "Young Frankenstein".


title: Gene Hackman

text: He appeared as one of Teddy Roosevelt's former Rough Riders in the Western horse-race saga "Bite the Bullet" (1975). He reprised his Oscar-winning role as Doyle in the sequel "French Connection II" (1975), and was part of an all-star cast in the war film "A Bridge Too Far" (1977), playing Polish General Stanisław Sosabowski. Hackman showed a talent for both comedy and the "slow burn" as criminal mastermind Lex Luthor in "Superman: The Movie" (1978), a role he would reprise in its 1980 and 1987 sequels.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman alternated between leading and supporting roles during the 1980s, with prominent roles in "Reds" (1981)—directed by and starring Warren Beatty—"Under Fire" (1983), "Hoosiers" (1986) (which an American Film Institute poll in 2008 voted the fourth-greatest film of all time in the sports genre), "No Way Out" (1987) and "Mississippi Burning" (1988), where he was nominated for a second Best Actor Oscar. Between 1985 and 1988, he starred in nine films, making him the busiest actor, alongside Steve Guttenberg.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman appeared with Anne Archer in "Narrow Margin" (1990), a remake of the 1952 film "The Narrow Margin". In 1992, he played the sadistic sheriff "Little" Bill Daggett in the Western "Unforgiven" directed by Clint Eastwood and written by David Webb Peoples. Hackman had pledged to avoid violent roles, but Eastwood convinced him to take the part, which earned him a second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actor. The film also won Best Picture.


title: Gene Hackman

text: In 1993, he appeared in "" as Brigadier General George Crook, and co-starred with Tom Cruise as a corrupt lawyer in "The Firm", a legal thriller based on the John Grisham novel of the same name. Hackman would appear in two other films based on John Grisham novels, playing convict Sam Cayhall on death row in "The Chamber" (1996), and jury consultant Rankin Fitch in "Runaway Jury" (2003).


title: Gene Hackman

text: Other notable films Hackman appeared in during the 1990s include "Wyatt Earp" (1994) (as Nicholas Porter Earp, Wyatt Earp's father), "The Quick and the Dead" (1995) opposite Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, and as submarine Captain Frank Ramsey alongside Denzel Washington in "Crimson Tide" (1995). Hackman played movie director Harry Zimm with John Travolta in the comedy-drama "Get Shorty" (1995). He reunited with Clint Eastwood in "Absolute Power" (1997), and co-starred with Will Smith in "Enemy of the State" (1998), his character reminiscent of the one he had portrayed in "The Conversation".


title: Gene Hackman

text: In 1996, he took a comedic turn as conservative Senator Kevin Keeley in "The Birdcage" with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman co-starred with Owen Wilson in "Behind Enemy Lines" (2001), and appeared in the David Mamet crime thriller "Heist" (2001), as an aging professional thief of considerable skill who is forced into one final job. He also gained much critical acclaim playing against type as the head of an eccentric family in Wes Anderson's comedy film "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001), for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In 2003, he also starred in another John Grisham legal drama, "Runaway Jury", at long last getting to make a picture with his long-time friend Dustin Hoffman. In 2004, Hackman appeared alongside Ray Romano in the comedy "Welcome to Mooseport", his final film acting role to date.


title: Gene Hackman

text: Hackman was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field" in 2003.