Why the Nationalists Won the Spanish Civil War

The Republicans concentrated on making a revolution, while the Nationalists concentrated on winning the war.  The Nationalists built a mass army which was professionally trained and led.  The Republicans were amateurish in comparison, with Leftist, Communist and Anarchist politics usually taking a front seat to military matters, and sometimes breaking out into open warfare between Republican factions.  Officers of the pre-civil war Spanish regular army who fought for the Republic tended to be viewed with great suspicion by their political masters, and they were often advised that their families would pay the ultimate penalty if they proved disloyal.

Franco was no military genius but a solid commander.  He conquered the Basque regions and the other Republican regions in the north of Spain, and then split Republican Spain into two sections with an offensive that reached the Mediterranean south of Barcelona.  He never panicked during the war and always maintained adequate reserves to crush Republican offensives, which were always futile bloody failures.  Considering the fact that throughout most of the war the Republicans had the most productive and populous regions of Spain under their control, Franco’s victory was quite impressive.

The intervention of the foreign powers of  Germany and Italy on the side of the Nationalists, and the Soviet Union on the side of the Republicans, was not the decisive factor in the outcome of the war.   The foreign units and the international brigades attracted a lot of press attention at the time, but militarily they were not significant, with the exception of the German air  transport units at the beginning  of the war that flew Franco’s Army of Africa into Spain.

Throughout the War the Nationalist forces were well fed, and compared to the Republican forces well trained, with better officers and NCOs, and with elite units like the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Requetes who could be depended upon to fight to the death if necessary..  Voltaire quipped that God was on the side of the big battalions.  As usual, he was glib rather than wise.  However, the Nationalists produced the better battalions overall who, in the memorable Spanish phrase, fought with nooses about their necks, knowing that for them it was really victory or death.  War, like most human endeavors, tends to reward those who work the hardest for what they want, and the Nationalists simply worked harder at producing a more effective fighting force than the Republicans did.