“Just Like at Madrid, Comrades!”
Lapham’s Quarterly: John Broich, associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, weighed in on what led a group of Spanish Civil War veterans to continue combat into World War II, such as dueling with tanks in Libya in 1942; in the hope of bringing representative freedoms to their country, these Spaniards unfortunately saw democracy abandoned following the defeat of Germany in 1945, as the Allies had no appetite for a war in the country’s difficult terrain. The emerging Cold War, Broich points out, made key figures and peoples even less eager to hand a democracy back to Spain’s leftist government—a threat to become a potential ally to the Soviet Union.