Sir, – In his response to Fintan O’Toole on Sinn Féin voting against EU aid to Ukraine, I think it is Prof Geoffrey Roberts who misunderstands the international context of the Spanish Civil War (Letters, February 18th).
He seems to believe that the victory of the nationalist rebellion under Franco was a foregone conclusion and that intervention only served to turn this into a catastrophe. He draws a direct analogy with the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
But, contradictorily, he admits that Britain and France did not intervene in the Spanish Civil War. This led to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy weighing much more heavily in favour of Franco than could the USSR and the left-wing international brigades for the legitimate Spanish Republic.
We simply cannot know who would have won with no intervention. Like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Spanish Civil War inevitably had international repercussions. With the globe poised between two world wars, Britain and France (fearful of triggering 1914 all over again) influenced that outcome by refusing to intervene.
Fintan O’Toole is quite right that i
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