QUestion: why didn't France intervene in the Spanish war?

The Spanish Civil war was a fight between autocracy and democracy with one side backed by the Nazi and Italy and the other by... well by the USSR but the Spanish wanted French help.

So, why didn't France intervene? A nationalist dictature with Nazi backing wouldn't have been a big French ally anyway and it would have been an easy gamble to back the Republicans with weapons and advisors, if they didn't intervene with actual troups.

So, why? Any idea?
 
The main reason was the Popular Front in France was terrified that if they supported the Spanish Republicans the French right would pull the same sort of coup in France.
 
And given what could have happened in 1934 if de la Rocque had given the go-ahead, can anybody really blame them for thinking so? It's easy for someone with the benefit of decades of retrospect to say "Oh, they din't have the spport, it could never have worked, so people were stupid to worry about it". But when you're living at the time and you're aware that a large organised mob of hard-right and far-right goons was surrounding your legislature and could have taken over if not for a single man being too principled a democrat/too timid (delete as appropriate) to take the plunge, surely you would take it seriously.
 
The French Popular Front was not just the Communists and the Socialists. It also included the Radical party, which despite its name was anything but radical, and which opposed intervention in Spain. Also, Blum had to be concerned about the reaction of Great Britain, whose support would be vital in any future showdown with Germany.
 
Basically what has been said. In a first moment Blum answered possitively to the spanish request for help, and even the first squad of planes was preparing to depart (which latter woud be the volunteer Malraux squad in the Republican Air Forces) But soon, his Radical allies threatened with breaking the government while the British ambassador warned France about the possibility of finding herself alones if the conflict internqtionalized. Meanwhile, a nationalist sympatizer in the spanish embassy leaked the initial agreement between the spaniah and french governments to the right-wing press, and this was the beggining of a very agressive press campaign against Blum's government including veiled and not so veiled threats of coup.

So, you have that scene of Blum appearing in a huge demonstration called by left-wing parties in Paris demanding weapons and help to the Spanish Republic, and crying during his speech saying "I have my hands tied"....
 
Would we have seen the same reaction if the fascist threat level had been increased. Lets say the war is not clearly going the nationalists way after the Anschluss or say after Munich? Obviously, they didn't want to support the loosing communists later
 
Would we have seen the same reaction if the fascist threat level had been increased. Lets say the war is not clearly going the nationalists way after the Anschluss or say after Munich? Obviously, they didn't want to support the loosing communists later

In fact, the Republicans askee themselves the same question, and tried during Munich to gather support amongst the countries in the "non intervention commitee" for a ten points peace plan, also known as Negrín Plan for the then spanish PM Juan Negrín. Problem was thst the Republic had just lost in the Battle of the Ebro and after the Ebro the fate of the Republc seemed clear. Bur I have always wondered if the republican offensive in the Ebro had been delated or simply not carried....

Again in early 1939 the Republic tried a last show of force with the double goal of relieving the pressure over Catalonia (where the nationalists were launching their final offensive towards Barcelona) and showing to the world the Republic was not yet defeated. It was the forgotten o Battle of Peñarolla, directed against the nationalist positions in Extremadura. It failed again with a depleted and demoralized army, but still in the first days of the battle the nationalists were in the brink of being routed...
 
France got slaughtered in the first world war, no one wanted to get into another war after that disaster.
 
The Rif War in the latter 1920s & the Ruhr occupation 1923-24 had very negative political consequences. ditto for the interventions in Russia, Turkey, & one or two other places 1918-1920. Intervention had burned France multiple times in the previous two decades. The few successes such as Poland were well overshadowed by the negatives.
 
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