Did democracies fail Spain while dictators intervened?

The short answer

• Versailles’ last physical restraint was psychological. Hitler had reason to doubt that the Rhineland restrictions would be enforced. The Abyssinian crisis had fractured the Stresa Front, Britain had reached a naval agreement with Germany, and French planning reflected the defensive outlook of the Maginot Line. France had no simple agreed plan for a limited response. Hitler also offered a legal justification: he called the Franco-Soviet pact, ratified in February, “encirclement” and claimed that it invalidated Locarno.
• France would not fight alone; Britain would not fight at all. France’s army could confront the German force, but ministers did not see the decision as a small military operation. Intelligence substantially overestimated German strength, and military leaders said action required general mobilization. With an election near, that was a grave political step. Britain, itself a Locarno guarantor, declined to support force; Foreign Secretary Eden proposed negotiation. French leaders would not accept the risks alone.
• Spain’s war was internal first, international second. The Republic established in 1931 attempted reforms of landholding, the army, regional government and relations between church and state. Each made enemies. Fear and division surrounded the Popular Front’s narrow election victory in February 1936, and Spanish generals planned their July rising for Spanish reasons. German and Italian support later strengthened Franco; Soviet aid and the International Brigades helped the Republic resist. Foreign powers changed the fighting without creating its original divisions.
• Non-intervention institutionalized the double standard. Britain and France feared a wider war, communist influence in Madrid and French internal division. Their arms embargo covered both the Republic and the rebels, but its consequences were unequal: Germany and Italy continued sending Franco aircraft, weapons and troops, while the democracies restricted assistance from their own countries. Léon Blum reportedly wept at the French decision. French aid nevertheless crossed the border intermittently later in the war.

What it changed

Belgium bolts, the Maginot logic breaks. Belgium watched Locarno fail and in October 1936 moved away from its French alliance, returning to neutrality. That made cooperation on France’s northern frontier harder to plan. In 1940 German forces would advance through Belgium, beyond the main fortified sectors of the Maginot Line. Belgium’s decision was one of several obstacles to cooperation against the later attack.

The Axis names itself over Spanish battlefields. German and Italian intervention in Spain gave the two governments a chance to work together in war. The “Rome–Berlin Axis” was announced in October 1936; Germany and Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact the following month. These agreements and cooperation in Spain brought revisionist powers closer, although their coalition was still taking shape.

Air terror is normalized before the war begins. The bombing of Guernica and Japanese attacks on Chinese cities in 1937 exposed an international audience to air attacks on civilians. European leaders already feared bombing, and these attacks gave that fear fresh force during the Munich crisis. “the bomber will always get through” captured the anxiety. Luftwaffe crews carried experience gained in Spain into the attack on Poland.