End of the Spanish Civil War. With the surrender of the Madrid Republicans, after three years of bloody fighting, the Spanish Civil War ended. It all began in 1936, when General Francisco Franco launched a reactionary military uprising in Morocco, splitting Spain in two, with the Republicans on one side and the Nationalists on the other. The Republicans, which included Catalan and Basque patriots, as well as a restless fringe of left-wing radicals, suffered heavy losses. Franco appealed for help to the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, while the Republicans were supported by the USSR, which later abandoned them. Thousands of idealists from all over Europe and America flocked to the cause of libertarianism, forming the International Brigades. In early 1939, Catalonia surrendered to Franco, soon followed by Madrid. The conflict was the most devastating in Spanish history and cost the lives of a million people.
