John Hopkins

Some villages are entirely wiped from the map.

General Franco continues his lightning-fast advance northwards, towards Madrid, but in September he makes a diversion that cements his primacy.

The military academy in Toledo, based in a fortress overlooking the city, is under siege from Republican militias, and Franco intends to liberate it.

When Franco's forces overwhelm the militia's defenses and enter the city, Republicans are massacred, including doctors and women in the local maternity hospital.

It takes just a week, and when it's over, Franco takes the press around the rubble of the Alcazar in order to show off his victory.

While cameras whir, planes fly low overhead, their pilots performing fascist salutes.

The next day, Franco declares himself Generalissimo.

He is now the supreme political and military leader of the rebellion.

By October, the Republicans still control Madrid, which sits squarely in the middle of the country.

They're also holding out in much of eastern Spain alongside northern provinces like Catalonia and the Basque region.

But the Francoists are beginning to encircle the capital on three sides, and the situation looks bleak for the Republic.

But while the fascist side benefit from the assistance of sympathetic neighboring nations, the Republicans enjoy no such support.

The British government have a variety of reasons for promoting a policy of non-intervention.

One is their ideological distaste for the Second Republic and the belief that the left-wing government is merely a prelude to the kind of communist revolution seen in Russia in 1917.

Another is their fear of open war with Nazi Germany and the worry that the conflict will spill outside of the borders of Spain.

In 1936, their policy is still to appease the fascist dictators rising across Europe.

The lack of international aid, along with the loss of their army to the coup, leaves the Republicans in an increasingly precarious position.

The militias upon which they're relying to halt the Francoist march on Madrid are made up of a variety of volunteers, trade unions, socialist and communist political groups, and even some foreigners.

Women too begin volunteering to serve in these militias, fighting and dying alongside their male compatriots on the front line.

Mika Feldman, an Argentinian anarchist and Marxist living in Europe, is one such volunteer, opting to fight for a communist organization alongside her husband.