Spanish Civil War
Date July 17, 1936 – April 1, 1939
Location Continental Spain, Spanish Morocco, Spanish Sahara, Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Spanish Guinea, Mediterranean Sea
Result Nationalist victory; dissolution of the Spanish Republic and formation of the Spanish State. Workers rights taken away. Power given back to the Catholic Church.

Chronology: 1936 1937 1938-39
The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted coup d'état committed by parts of the army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The Civil War devastated Spain from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, ending with the victory of the Facists united with the Catholic Church and the founding of a dictatorship led by the Facist Nationalist General Francisco Franco who the Catholic church backed. Francisco Franco was the Benito Mussolini of Spain. The Catholic Church also backed Hitler during the Spanish Civil War. The supporters of the Republic, or Republicans (republicanos), gained the support of the Soviet Union and Mexico, while the followers of the Rebellion, nacionales (literally, "nationals" but rendered in the English bibliography as "nationalists"), received the support of the major European Axis powers of Italy and Germany. The United States remained officially neutral, but sold airplanes to the Republic and gasoline to the Francisco Franco regime.

The war increased tensions in the lead up to the Second World War and became in some cases a world war by proxy, with Germany in particular using the war as a rehearsal for many of the blitzkrieg tactics it later used in the war in Europe. The advent of the mass media allowed an unprecedented level of attention (Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and Robert Capa all covered it) and so the war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired, and for atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict.

The Italian contribution amounted to over 60,000 troops at the height of the war, and the involvement helped to increase Mussolini's popularity among Italian Catholics, as the latter had remained highly critical of their ex-Socialist fascist Duce.[citation needed] Italian military help to Nationalists against the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic atrocities committed by the Republican side worked well in Italian propaganda targeting Catholics. On July 27, 1936 the first squadron of Italian airplanes sent by Benito Mussolini arrived in Spain.

Not all Italians were pro-Franco. Some Italians who had moved abroad during Mussolini’s time in power, formed the Garibaldi Brigade. They fought on the Republicans side. At the Battle of Guadalajara, Italians fought Italians – something people in Italy had dreaded. In this battle the Republicans won. Mussolini was furious that his ‘volunteers’ had been beaten but blamed the Garibaldi Brigade. Three months after the defeat at Guadalajara, the leader of the Garibaldi Brigade, Carlos Roselli, was found murdered. Mussolini’s secret agents had done this.
The Spanish Civil War was deeply unpopular in Italy, as many people there could not see what it had to do with them. Also, the Italian involvement was hardly a success.

This apparent alienation in Europe drove Mussolini even further to Hitler. Mussolini referred to Italy and Germany being the most influential countries in Europe and that all the rest of Europe would revolve around this "axis".

It has been speculated that Hitler used the Spanish Civil War issue to distract Mussolini from Hitler's own designs on and plans for Austria (Anschluss), as the authoritarian Catholic, anti-Nazi Vaterländische Front government of autonomous Austria had been in alliance with Mussolini, and in 1934 the assassination of Austria's authoritarian president Engelbert Dollfuss had already successfully invoked Italian military assistance in case of a Nazi German invasion.