Discover if your British ancestors fought and died in the Spanish Civil War. Search more than 500 records of fatalities among the 4000 British men who fought.
Discover if your British ancestors fought and died in the Spanish Civil War. Search more than 500 records of fatalities among the 4000 British men who fought.
Each record is a transcript of the original.
The amount of information listed varies, but the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 records could contain the following information about your ancestor:
Name
Place of service
Regiment
Home address
Where died
How died
These records show 540 fatalities on the Spanish Civil War 1936 – 1939 register.
The Spanish Civil War was fought on opposing ideologies and became notable for both the passion of belief and the atrocities committed by both sides. There was a large number of foreign combatants on both sides.
The war broke out on 17 July 1936 after a coup by a group of generals in the Spanish Republican Armed Forces against the elected government. The coup was supported by a number of conservative groups.
Despite the fact that European powers signed a Non-Intervention Agreement in 1936 the governments of Germany, Italy and to a lesser extent Portugal, contributed money, manpower, munitions and support to the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco.
Similarly the governments of the Soviet Union, France and Mexico aided the “Loyalist” or “Republican” forces of the Second Spanish Republic.
The United Kingdom declared itself neutral. The government and establishment were strongly anti-communist and believed a win for Franco’s Nationalists was in the best interests of the country, a view shared by the British Ambassador to Spain, Sir Henry Chiltern, who worked to support the Nationalists. It became a crime to volunteer to fight in Spain but 4000 went anyway.
In 1939 the Nationalists prevailed and General Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years, until his death in 1975.