I would urge all to read Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell for some idea of how the Republican cause was slowly destroyed by their Stalinist 'allies'.
If Franco had lost, there would have been no avoiding a second civil war between the hard-line left and more moderate forces.
Personally I suspect that for the Stalinists to have lost such a conflict after mid-1937 the rest of the Republican movement would have had to make common cause with some of the recently defeated Nationalists, perhaps leaving Spain sufficiently moderate to avoid Hitler's wrath.
The worst is that if Hitler does decide to invade Spain then he probably delays Barbarossa by a year, during which time he takes Spain and Gibralter and quite probably shatters the British position in the Middle East and North Africa. Under those circumstances...
If Franco had lost, there would have been no avoiding a second civil war between the hard-line left and more moderate forces.
Personally I suspect that for the Stalinists to have lost such a conflict after mid-1937 the rest of the Republican movement would have had to make common cause with some of the recently defeated Nationalists, perhaps leaving Spain sufficiently moderate to avoid Hitler's wrath.
The worst is that if Hitler does decide to invade Spain then he probably delays Barbarossa by a year, during which time he takes Spain and Gibralter and quite probably shatters the British position in the Middle East and North Africa. Under those circumstances...