Franco’s International Brigades
Franco’s International Brigades fought on behalf of General Franco and the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War for a patriotic cause whose aim was to smash communism and the Spanish Red Terror. Foreigners were essential to Franco’s victory.
History
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These assorted adventurers and Christian crusaders were on the winning side. Men from Portugal and Morocco signed on for money and adventure. General Eoin O’Duffy organised 700 Irishmen in a modern Crusade; 500 Catholic Frenchmen fought in the ‘Jeanne D’Arc’ unit; and thirty British volunteers (among them pilot Cecil Bebb[1]), including aristocrats and working-class warriors, also took up arms.
Romanian Iron Guard militiamen died at Majadahonda and an Indian volunteer fought in the nationalist militia. There were Russians, Americans, Finns, Belgians, Greeks, Cubans, and many more.
Over Ninety thousand foreign volunteers fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War – at least two times the number who fought in the International Brigades in support of the Republican Government.
They were an unlikely collection of men and women: British adventurers and aristocrats, Peruvian poets, Finnish film stars, White Russian generals, Romanian fascists, French monarchists, Moroccan nationalists and devout Irish Catholics and the lone Welsh miner's son who left the valleys to fight for a communist-free Spain. Fighting alongside them were 15,000 German and 70,000 to 75,000 Italian soldiers from the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV).
See also
Gallery
External links
- The Spanish Civil War: A Successful Nationalist Revolution, Part 1
- The Spanish Civil War: A Successful Nationalist Revolution, Part 2
References
- ↑ Bebb flew General Francisco Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco in 1936, a journey which was to precipitate the onset of the Spanish Civil War. The German Luftwaffe later flew Franco's men from Morocco back to Spain.
