1. Beginnings of the Campaign at Ebro in 1938
On July 24, 1938 the Ebro offensive began, and was considered the crucial factor in determining the end of the Spanish Civil War. The brutal fighting in the past 2 years leading up to the offensive gave the impartial observer the impression that the war would never end. The Republican government of Spain would capitulate shortly thereafter thanks to this campaign, and on February 1939 prime minister Juan Negrin would be addressing the Cortes, or Spanish Parliament, in a castle near Figueras in northern Catalonia the last time before the takeover by the nationalists. The Ebro offensive was carried out by Republican troops against Nationalist forces that had divided the nation during a brutal civil war.
At the commencement of the campaign, the Nationalist army was in disarray but quickly regained it’s composure, and managed to barely avoid fulfilling it’s objectives. The Ebro offensive saw the biggest attack by the Republican army since the start of the war, showcasing the effectiveness of the Ejercito Popular as a fighting force.
The complexity in terms of social and political factors that worked in unison to propel Spain into a civil war can only be described in simplified terms as one of a clash in public discourse between reactionary and progressive ideologies, even though in itself it was not the only driving force that led to their predicament at the time.
The wider political ideological spectrum was evident in both sides, and soldiers only ended up fighting in the war because they were garrisoned in places controlled by either the nationalists or the republicans. Family members that lived apart and in either zone were forced to take arms against each other due to this conundrum. But family also fought each other because they sided with one political ideology or another until it took on a more extremist tone. On July 1936 there was a failed coup d’etat by the nationalist which marked the official start of the war, due to years of resentment and further divisions between the conservative and wealthier members of Spanish society and those of the increasingly angry and frustrated working class people.
The revolts first started in the biggest cities in Spain on July 17 and 18 in 1936, led by generals Sanjurjo, Mola, Goded and Quiepo de Llano. General Francisco Bahamonde Franco was dispatched to Spanish controlled Morocco on July 19, 1936 and managed to take control over the military forces stationed there. The nationalist garrison at Mora del Ebro fought a fierce defensive battle with it’s 900 men against the 5th Republican Corps but eventually succumbed after being besieged by the larger armies of the corps. The point of the coup d’etat was meant for the military to seize control of Spain. In Madrid and Barcelona, together with other places, pockets of resistance groups sprang together to push back the nationalist forces, and the coup d’etat was unsuccessful. This forestalled the eventual victory of the nationalist army, and saw the coup d’etat morph into a full blown civil war. The nationalists were successful in their takeover in Spanish Morocco and used their geographic position to launch incursions over the Strait of Gibraltar into the southern tip of Spain. Germany and Italy were instrumental in aiding the nationalist forces, and what would be the first airlift in history happened as a result.