Spanish Civil War Experiments

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Was the Spanish Civil War an experiment for World War II?

The dress rehearsal of World War Two. That is what this war is remembered as. However, could such an exploitation truly be real or is it just that historians have over analysed the events and that it was all a mere coincidence? "The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris,Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain." “Because of the power disparities between agrarian Spain and the industrialized major players of Europe, their stance towards the conflict was bound to be decisive, at least in the absence of complete non-intervention by all outside actors.” It was within the power of several leading states, including Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and the Soviet Union, …show more content…
The Spanish Civil War was fought from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939 between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratically elected Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a fascist rebel group led by General Francisco Franco and there has always been widespread debate on whether this war was actually an experiment for World War II which was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's nations,eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The essay aims to unravel on whether the Allies and Axis powers allegedly took advantage of this war to test out various weapons, strategies and whether their leaders manipulated the public into believing they were involved for other reasons. There are two key ideas. The first being that the war was utilized by the Germans and Italians as a trial, particularly in the utilization of air ambushes against infantry and tanks . The second one being that the Germans and Italians had genuine approaches in supporting Franco and creating another partner. The most evident was - it profited them enormously to have a threatening Spain on France's outskirt, constraining French military options and troop arrangements. Another unconventional view on this topic after adequate amount of research of different historians’ interpretations is that the Spanish Civil War …show more content…
Firstly we have to accept that the Spanish Civil War certainly had reasons for outsiders to take part in as established by the previous point. Let us be reminded of the amount of equipment and money the other nations spent of this war: it was extremely high a war with no direct impact on them. Thus, there definitely had to be some point in time whereby they decided that they could kill two birds with one stone. That which was to have an ally and also experiment weapons for a potential war. One extremely famous example is the german dive bombers which were very effective. Hitler would later comment that Franco ought to have erected a monument to the Junker-52, as it was to that airplane that he owed everything. Therefore, it could be said that the civil war eventually turned out to be an
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