Republican Spain wins the Civil War

I don't think so, at least not in a Soviet style communism. If the government has won by January 1937, it means that it has been strong enough to beat the coup or the rebels failed strepitously. Either way, outside influence has been minimal, which means the communist are a marginal group (due to a heavy radicalized Spanish Socialist Workers Party, true) and more importantly, anarchosyndicalists haven't been beaten down by their supposed allies and are in fact in control of Catalonia, at least half of Aragon and probably huge swaths of Andalucía and Extremadura. The victorious government will have to stop the anarchists, who have begun their revolution (they had, in fact, as soon as february 16) and will not yield, and that can be a thorn in the Popular Front that sets the coalition apart (see the events or massacre of Casas Viejas '33), initiating yet another civil conflict in Spain.

Don't forget there is also the POUM and various Trotskyist aligned groups. Assuming it gets involved in WW2 and I can imagine that it would since it would be too much of a thorn to Hitler. Since Sure the Republic needs time to rebuild that doesn't stop it from being aligned with the Allies and providing them with cover and support against Hitler. Which obviously means the Nazis would at some point seek to neutralize the threat. Perhaps Portugal joins the axis in this scenario and Spain is invaded by Italy, Portugal, and Germany?

What I would be curious is to see how a POUM/CNT-FAI influenced Spain would play in the Cold War assuming that everything else roughly goes about the same as in OTL. By influenced I mean that it would be similar to your idea but perhpas with the POUM/Anarcho-Syndicalists ideas winning out in the Government, but still a democratic spain in contrast to the communism of the USSR.
 
Well, the POUM thesis were similar to those of the CNT anarchists (that the war and the revolution were one and the same, and the war could and would not be won without implementing the revolution), but it really didn't have much influence outside Catalonia and Valencia, while the CNT was hegemonic there and had a lot of support among the landless mases of Andalucía and Extremadura.

As I said, I think the result depends on how the government wins. If it manages to stabilize the situation ASAP and civil authority doesn't crumble as it did, there's a slim chance the liberal Republic survives (after the elections, the left republican "petitburgeois" parties were the ones that took the government, supported parliamentarily by socialists et al) until 1940, and then it depends on what the Germans do. It would need the socialist agitation that had begun to increase since the day of the elections to end, else the country can be thrown into a spiral of even more political violence and division that will surely lead to new coups by either conservatives and reactionaries or revolutionary leftists. I believe this to be the least probable outcome if even posible, it would need a POD waaay before the Republic is proclaimed, in 1898 at least.

If, as in OTL, the Republic crumbles and are the syndicalist militias the ones that stop the coup, the liberal Republic is dead. In the areas dominated by the CNT, libertarian communism will be implanted and tried to be exported to the rest of the country; in the socialist strongholds (the Cantabrian strip from Asturias to Bilbao, and Madrid), their militias will take power and clash with anarchists and right-wingers; in the northern half of the country (Old Castile, Leon, Galicia, Navarra, Alava) were the small conservative landowners predominate, whatever is left from the army and other security forces may step in under the pretext of stopping the red menace; in the Basque speaking parts of Basque Country and Navarra the nationalist ultraconservatives of the PNV will rule supreme. All in all, a disaster, and that's without considering the coming storm of WWII.
 
Yabbut until Hitler invades the USSR, he has to treat Spain as a friendly neutral. Can the Axis run over Spain at the same time as Barbarossa?

If he ignores Spain, that leaves a threat in the rear; if he attacks, the prep in France would blow the surprise. I.e. Spain will expect the attack, breaching Stalin's willful ignorance. There would be complications with Spain's offshore possessions: the Balearic Islands, Spanish Morocco, the Canaries, Rio de Oro, all of which Britain could grab (i.e. reinforce before the Axis could get there).

Stalin will treat the preparation in France the same way he treated the German buildup in the East in OTL: "It's all a bluff, it's all meant for pressure to get more concessions out of us, any reports to the contrary are British disinformation," etc.
 
Stalin will treat the preparation in France the same way he treated the German buildup in the East in OTL: "It's all a bluff, it's all meant for pressure to get more concessions out of us, any reports to the contrary are British disinformation," etc.
Yabbut he won't be able to enforce his opinion on Spain. And why would he think that preparations for an invasion of Spain are part of a bluff directed at the USSR? There are many obvious reasons why Germany would attack Red Spain in the course of war against Britain.
 
One of my continuing irritations is that timelines and discussions around the Spanish Civil War tend to concentrate on foreign interventions rather than the Spanish causes and dynamics that caused and drove the war. Foreign interventions were important, I would argue that the only crucial one was the early decision by Germany and Italy to support Franco and to transport the Army of Africa across the straits of Gibraltar to enable it to have a significant presence in mainland Spain almost immediately, (the navy at least initially went largely to the Republic).

I think a Nationalist early loss is entirely credible especially if certain things don't happen such as
a) Quiepio de Llano fails in taking Seville so that there is a large city with a strong Socialist/trade union presence in the South.
b) Calvo Sotelo is not assassinated, it did a lot to unify the right and also he would have been a political opponent to Franco, similarly if Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera is not executed but released he would lessen unity within the Nationalists
c) Had the republican general who was sent to Zarragoza been a bit more on the ball and willing to engage the local working class then that rising might have been avoided.
d) Aranda's coup in Oviedo where he convinced the local miners he was on their side and encouraged them to go South (to their death's) and then defended the citadel in Oviedo until relived which tied up troops in the North.
e) The death of General Sanjurjo (who was not the most competent figure) also conveniently cleared the way for Franco.

If all of those things had happened (and its not too unlikely that they wouldn't have, the revolt might have petered out?

My understanding is that forces at work within Spain was pushing for a civil war, or at least something to happen, if foreign intervention was at all responsible I think the German airlift had more effect than any other. Take it away and the Army of Africa cannot let a full civil war erupt, weighing on the right and Army's side. It should leave the right more divided and vulnerable but allow the left to splinter, the whole conflict becomes factional and battles are local, violent but more civil unrest than actual warfare. Italy and the USSR might still sell arms and send some advisers, but would this civil war just be a period of relative anarchy as the state ceases to function? Might the League of Nations core, Britain and France here, have an opportunity to invest peace keeping? With only a Fascist Italy and revolutionary USSR willing to fuel the flames I think the whole thing fizzles or invites some deeper reordering of Spanish society, in any event I might presume it is not quite the ravaging the civil war was.
 
It's an interesting point. The rising was launched without any promises of help from Italy or Germany as the plotters hoped to be universally successful, but through a combination of incompetence, poor timing and strong opposition from popular socialist and anarchist forces the rising failed across about 2/3 of the country and including the big cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Seville going to the Nationalists was the big surprise as there was a very strong socialist movement there. Also at least initially the Nationalists didn't control the navy.

But the political tensions in Spain in mid 1936 had reached such a point that some sort of political violence had become almost inevitable. The authority of the government was completely undermined by political violence, something had to happen.

In Spanish Morocco the result of the rising was never in doubt, the army was too strong. If the Army of Africa was blocked from coming over straight away I would guess they would have found a way and then perhaps initiated a modern reconquista. Franco had no problems with fighting a slow war, indeed there is a school of thought that he deliberately proceeded slowly so as to make the eventual nationalist victory all the more convincing.

Anyway my main point is that the essential dynamics of Spain in the thirties, with deep divisions over land distribution, the role of the army and the church in society, the role of organised labour and the weakness of centre political organisations, fuelled the outbreak of the war. But, and this is a big but, the instability of the international situation with Germany having achieved the challenge to the Versailles system by re-occupying the Rhineland, Italy having alienated the democracies over Abyssinia and Russia having moved to the popular front tactic, really set those three countries up for intervention in a way that might not have happened 5 years previous.
 
Again not necessarily true, just as Hitler was unable to get Franco to fight on his side, perhaps the allies wouldn't be able to get a republican/left Spain to fight with it.
Also the pyrenees present a huge obstacle to an armoured thrust. Not insurmountable but problematic, particularly for an army that had got to the end of its capacity.
 
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