April 1, 1939, The Spanish Civil War Ends

Monument to the victims of the war,

known as the Valley of the Fallen, outside Madrid.

April 1, 1939: The last of the Republican forces surrender, ending the Spanish Civil War. But the path to World War II was now clear.

On April 14, 1931, the Spanish monarchy was overthrown by the Second Spanish Republic, a left-of-center government. On February 16, 1936, Spain's national election was won by the Popular Front, a coalition that included Socialists and Communists -- which, as non-ignorant people know, are not the same thing, and usually don't work together. This time, they did.

And that infuriated a lot of people in Spain, which had traditionally been a very culturally conservative country, dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. On July 17, 1936, the Army of Africa launched a coup d'état in the Spanish-controlled part of Morocco. This coup was soon supported by units all over Spain, but not in the major cities such as the capital, Madrid, or in Barcelona or Valencia.

The coup supporters, the traitors, called themselves the Nationalists, and received support from the fascist governments of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy. António Salazar, the fascist dictator of neighboring Portugal, stayed out of it.

The Republicans got aid from the Soviet Union, a Communist nation, and Mexico, which then had a leftward government, if not an outright Communist one. (They had taken in former Bolshevik hero Leon Trotsky after Joseph Stalin expelled him.) The fact that the Soviets were aiding the Republicans caused the United States, Britain and France to continue to recognize the Republican government of Spain, but also to refuse to intervene in the war.

Some people from those countries went to Spain, and enlisted in what became known as the International Brigades. An American group named themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Many liberals defied their own governments to support the Republicans, including American authors Ernest Hemingway and Lillian Hellman, British writer George Orwell, and French writer-philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Hemingway would write a novel about the war, For Whom the Bell Tolls. (Hemingway had met Picasso in Paris in 1922, before becoming famous, but last saw each other in 1924, before reconnecting following the liberation of Paris in 1944, and did not meet in Spain during the war.)

Hitler and Mussolini really, really wanted to win this war, to send a message to Communists all over the world. Hitler sent his air force, the Luftwaffe, to bomb Republican strongholds. And Mussolini sent troops to aid the Nationalist commander, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. This became known as "Franco's Italian Army."

Franco was quoted as saying, "I have four Nationalist columns approaching Madrid," a column meaning a formation of soldiers significantly longer than it is wide; "and a fifth column, waiting to attack from the inside." By this, he meant supporters, hidden, yet undermining the national government through various means, such as sabotage and misinformation. Thus the term "fifth columnist" was born, and was popular during the subsequent World War II to describe a Fascist sympathizer in the Allied nations. It wasn't used as much during the following Cold War.

The Basque Country, in northernmost Spain, suffered tremendously. The Luftwaffe bombed the town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, inspiring the most famous work of Málaga native Pablo Picasso. As Time magazine editor Walter Isaacson wrote, as part of an article that tried to sum up the 20th Century, "We bombed Guernica, and we painted the bombing of Guernica."

The painting is now in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

(Queen Sofia National Central Art Museum) in Madrid.

This is not an illusion: Picasso purposely painted it without color.

Madrid and Barcelona, the country's 2 largest cities, suffered the most. Once Barcelona fell on January 26, 1939, and was cut off from the capital, the Republican cause was doomed. Franco entered Madrid on April 1, and proclaimed victory.

Franco was not magnanimous in victory: He acted like a genuine Fascist, coming down especially hard on Barcelona, and its region, Catalonia, the region that had opposed him the hardest. The governments of Britain and France recognized Franco's government.

Leftists around the world wanted to know why the Western democracies did nothing. There were 2 reasons. One was the fear of provoking the Nazis, which had already manifested in the Munich Agreement the year before, essentially handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Third Reich. Nobody seemed to want a World War II, so they chose not to antagonize Hitler.

The other was the Catholic Church. Since the Republic was perceived as Communist, and thus atheist and indeed anti-Catholic, the Church went out of its way to convince Catholics all over the world to avoid aiding the Republic. And the Church still had a lot of influence in America and France in particular.

George Seldes, a leftist American journalist, was one of the last living people to have covered the war, and to the end of his life in 1995, he refused to call it "The Spanish Civil War." It was simply "The Spanish War." He saw the Western democracies betray their beliefs -- America: "All men are created equal"; France: "Liberty, equality, brotherhood" -- because they were afraid to have to fight for those beliefs for a 2nd time in 20 years. Seldes wrote, "Spain broke the heart of the world."

What's more, by not interfering, the Western democracies were essentially telling Hitler (who had already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia by April 1939) and Mussolini (who had begun building a "new Roman Empire" in Africa, with Libya, Ethiopia and Somalia) that they could do whatever they wanted, and the democracies wouldn't care.

And for what? On September 1, 1939, just 5 months later, Hitler invaded Poland, and Britain and France went to war with him anyway.

The name "Franco's Italian Army" would be revived in 1972, by Al Vento, owner of an Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh, who formed a fan club in honor of Franco Harris, the half-Italian, half-African-American running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who capped that season with a play known as "The Immaculate Reception," and eventually helped the Steelers win 4 Super Bowls on his way to a Hall of Fame career. Francisco Franco was still alive and in power when the fan club was founded, and while Vento and his members were not openly political, neither did they seem to have a problem with a name associated with Fascism, which some of its members had fought 30 years earlier.

By 1975, it had become clear that Franco was dying. And he didn't have a son to take over after his death, only a daughter. After the death in exile of King Alfonso XIII in 1941, his son, Juan, Count of Barcelona, was considered the heir to the Spanish government. But Franco believed that Juan would not be likely to continue his policies, but that his son, Juan Carlos, would. So Franco stripped Juan of his right to the throne, and proclaimed Juan Carlos the new heir.

Franco died on November 20, 1975. It was a big story on the American national news. A new TV show, Saturday Night Live, featured a "news" segment titled Weekend Update, and, for weeks, anchorman Chevy Chase would say, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

On November 22, Juan Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain. And while he was considerably more conservative than the Second Republic, he betrayed Franco -- who had, of course, betrayed the entire country -- and dismantled the Fascist state. In 1978, a new Constitution was ratified. Since then, Spain has had conservative governments, but never again a Fascist one. King Juan Carlos I abdicated in 2014, in favor of his son, King Felipe VI.

But the liberal/conservative divide is still seen in Spain, often in sports, especially the favorite sport, soccer: The most successful team, Real Madrid CF, was once run by allies of Franco; while the 2nd-most successful team, FC Barcelona, are considered the resistance team. The fact that both teams have achieved a significant amount of success through dishonest tactics shows that (Cliché Alert) maybe they're not so different, after all.

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April 1, 1939 was a Saturday. Actress Ali McGraw and Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro were born on this day.

The baseball season had yet to begin. Football was out of season. There was no NBA yet. But the NHL season was coming to a close, with the Stanley Cup Semifinals. In Game 6 of one series, the New York Rangers beat the Boston Bruins, 3-1 at the old Madison Square Garden. However, the next day, at the Boston Garden, the Bruins won Game 7, 2-1 in triple overtime, on a goal by Mel Hill. It was the 3rd time in the series that Hill had won a game in overtime, and he became known as "Sudden Death Mel Hill."

In the other series, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-4 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. This game also ended in overtime, and it was Gordie Drillon who scored the winner. On April 16, the Bruins beat the Leafs, 3-1 at the Boston Garden, in Game 5, to take the Cup.

And in English soccer, Arsenal lost to Yorkshire team Middlesbrough, 2-1 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.