From 1936 to 1939, Spain was the setting for a grim dress rehearsal for World War II. Nearly a million  lives were lost as the forces of the Spanish Republic fought the Fascist Rebels led by General Francisco Franco and supported by Hitler and Mussolini. 
Behind this explosion of violence lay centuries of hostility between the advocates of authoritarianism and democracy. The establishment of the Spanish Republic in 1931 only deepened this bitter conflict. At first the fight stayed in the political arena, but after a smashing liberal victory victory in the 1936 elections the opposition turn from ballots to bullets. Backed by the wealthy classes and the armed might of the Spanish regular army, Foreign Legion and Moorish troops, the rebels struck.

Against them were ranged the Spanish people, unarmed and untrained. Yet in the trenches at Madrid and on the battlefields all over Spain, the Republican supporters miraculously became an army. To their side from the rest of Europe, the United States and Russia came men willing to give their lives to stop Fascism.

The plight of Spain’s elected government was ignored by the world’s democracies. While Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini‘s Italy massively supplied Franco with tools of destruction, only the Soviet Union gave help to the Republic—at a dangerous political price. After three years of bitter and heroic struggle, the gallant and idealistic defenders of the Spanish Republic were vanquished by unequal weight of arms, and the stage was set for Hitler’s bid for world domination.

From the dust jacket