ABSTRACT
There are two common interpretations of the Spanish Civil War (July 1936 – March 1939). The popular view is that the Spanish War was merely a prelude to World War II, a struggle among democrats, fascists and communists – a grand manoeuvre carried out by the Germans,. Italians and Russians on Spanish soil while the democracies practiced appeasement. It was bloody and violent, yet merely the foreshadowing of a real war. Another view, commonly expressed in contemporary writing, describes the Spanish War as the last act of World War I. The war, according to this view, was rooted in the disruption of the European order after 1914–18. Even though it was fought with equipment such as tanks and high-performance aircraft, it featured the stationary lines and outmoded tactics of the Great War. 1
