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THE Spanish Civil War was, for military theorists, planners, and commanders, the most significant example of modern warfare in the period between the two world wars. Between 1936 and 1939, the Spanish Civil War saw the employment of large armies, a wide array of modern weaponry, and moderately large air forces equipped with the most modern aircraft, as well as the direct involvement in combat of three of the major powers: Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. It was not an event that any major military could ignore. The scale of combat made it one of the major wars of the twentieth century-with approximately 600,000 people killed during that conflict.1The war was well covered by the media of the time, and military observers and attaches were allowed to travel in Spain and pick up information from all combatants. The participating great power combatants, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, used the war in Spain as a testing ground for their equipment and tactics. With the threat of war looming ever larger on the European continent, many officers from France, Britain, and the United States studied the Spanish war closely for possible lessons that could be applied to their own militaries.
This article will examine the ways in which the major military powers studied the air operations in Spain and will outline the main lessons that they learned and applied to their own forces. This article will also emphasize the lessons that the major powers did not learn and will look for the reasons why. In examining how these nations studied the Spanish war and applied its lessons, I hope to reach some insights into the nature of military reform and how militaries adapt, or fail to adapt, their operational doctrine and equipment in the light of extensive study and evidence.
The process of analyzing the experiences of the armed forces participating in the combat in Spain was fairly direct. The commanders and staff of the German, Italian, and Soviet forces fighting in Spain sent numerous reports and personally recounted their experiences to the armed forces staffs of their own countries, where the lessons were debated and acted upon. For the major powers not directly involved in Spain (the United States, Britain, and France), the process...