Seen as a dress rehearsal for the Second World War or even as the “Last Crusade” between Socialism and Fascism, this was a war to the death! Spain was faced by increasing political and economic turmoil in the twenties and early thirties, with appallingly weak and corrupt governments in which the extremists of Radicalism and Reaction prospered. Largely abandoned by the western powers and the League of Nations, Spain descended into a brutal and fractious civil war in which the Fascists eventually triumphed in 1939.
