# Why did Americans only fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 1, 2008, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004 "2008-10-01T14:50:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004/21 "2012-06-08T06:40:02Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > But i’m not “confused.” I’m using the terms exactly as they have been used by some of the most respected scholars of the Civil War. You’re not, but the scholars you’re taking the word from are. They did not understand that the Nacionales, Viva España or not, weren’t and aren’t viewed as Nationalists, and that many of them (the whole Carlista part) weren’t even in it for “national unity” where “nation=Spain”; and that there is a whole section of the Republican side which went and goes by the name the scholars misused. The term Nacionales is a neologism and the scholars mistook it for the pre-existing word Nacionalista, which has a different meaning. It’s akin to confusing anarquista and anarcosindicalista: same root, but not the same thing. **clairobscur** , the veterans that are left are in their 90s and up: there are few left simply because there are very few people over 90 around. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004/22 "2012-06-08T12:11:14Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > **clairobscur** , the veterans that are left are in their 90s and up: there are few left simply because there are very few people over 90 around. Yes, I understand that. I just never had thought this out before. ---
**Author:** ![bardos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bardos/32/1069_2.png) [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004/23 "2012-06-08T13:41:31Z")
It’s just very post 1960s to use this vocabulary, I think, to lump the word “nationalists” together with “right wing”, put them in the same boat, since this has usually been the norm in the countries which had the communist/left wing insurgencies since the 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004/24 "2012-06-08T13:46:52Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > A few years back (well, more than a few), my ex-USA colonel FIL showed me an article that made him mad. It was because a congressman from NYC wanted to sponsor a bill that would give US survivors of the Spanish Civil War veteran’s benefits. As far as I know, the bill never passed. > Just as well, probably, all of these guys are dead now. More telling perhaps is that it took a NYC member to propose such a bill. The brigades could only be raised in New York, I imagine, because there really was no room for internationalist sentiment anywhere else. We were an isolationist nation not just in politics, but in culture, habit, and thought. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004/25 "2012-06-08T21:36:46Z")
The problem was that the war started as “protecting the Republic against the forces of tyranny and dictatorship” when Franco launched the coup. That created sympathy with a lot of people all across the civilized world. However, the democratic governments declined to get involved in someone else’s mess (Syria, anyone?). People originally volunteered to fight on the side of democratic values found the fight increasingly a proxy war between fascist Germany and Italy on the one hand, and the only nation willing to heavily support the Republic, Stalin’s USSR. Of course, with the helping hand came the ideological immersion. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004/26 "2012-06-08T23:46:34Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > You’re not, but the scholars you’re taking the word from are. You know, history is all about revision and new interpretations, and i’m perfectly willing to concede that these historians might have missed something, especially since my reading in Spanish Civil War historiography is that of an interested amateur, and i have not kept up with recent scholarship in then field. But i’m afraid i’m going to need a bit more than your word. Hugh Thomas’s 800+ page book is still considered standard reading, as is Paul Preston and any one of a dozen other books that i’ve read on the war. Furthermore, a quick search of the JSTOR scholarly journals database suggests that the terms “Republicans” and “Nationalists” are still the prevalent among Civil War scholars as a shorthand for the two main sides in the War. I seriously doubt that all of these scholars are “confused.” I’m sure that plenty of them recognize that not everyone who allied with Franco during the war and afterwards was a nationalist, and that plenty of them recognize also that there were those on the Republican side who went by the name “nacionalista.” But recognizing these nuances does not mean it’s wrong to use the term “Nationalists” to apply broadly to those who followed Franco and fought on his side in the war. Why don’t you try going to a Spanish Civil War conference, and correcting every scholar who does that. You’ll run out of breath, and everyone else will run out of patience, in about an hour. This use of “Nationalist” to refer more generically to those who sought to oust the Republican government even occurs in some of the Spanish-language work. For example, in the article, Francisco Cobo Romero and Teresa María Ortega López, “No sólo Franco. La heterogeneidad de los apoyos sociales al régimen franquista y la composición de los poderes locales. Andalucía, 1936-1948,” _Historia Social_, No. 51 (2005), one of the sub-headings is: > [@](#): > > Los efectos de la violencia politica in las retaguardias republicana and nacionalista. La encrespada animosidad anti-izquierda de las clases medias. In talking about the Republican and Nationalist rearguards, the authors make clear that they are discussing the two opposite sides of the war: the supporters of the republican government, and the supporters of Franco’s insurgents. These two professors are from the Universidad de Granada, and both specialize in the Civil War, and in the “dictadura franquista.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-americans-only-fight-for-the-republic-in-the-spanish-civil-war/466004.md?page=1)