John Hopkins

After he finally recaptures it in early 1938, Franco orders his troops to surge across the region.

It is an opportunity for his German and Italian allies to hone their blitzkrieg tactics.

Under the cover provided by an intense aerial assault, 10,000 troops cross the river Ebro.

By April, they have reached the eastern coast and slashed Republican territory in half.

Catalonia, on the northeastern tip of the country, is now cut off from the south-central zone around Madrid that the government still holds.

The situation has never looked more dire.

For several months from July 1938, the Republicans and Francoists engage in the longest and largest battle of the war.

Government forces make a desperate attempt to retake Aragon and reconnect the two halves of their territory.

Once again, Franco's German and Italian allies tip the scales decisively in his favor.

With no equivalent support, the Republican army cannot prevail.

This is driven home in September, when elsewhere in Europe the Munich Agreement is signed between France, Britain, Italy, and Germany.

The treaty permits the German annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, giving tacit British and French support to Hitler's expansionist agenda.

Demonstrating their commitment to their policy of appeasement, the move puts to bed any remaining hopes that these nations could help the Spanish Republicans to resist fascism.

As the Nazis move ever closer to executing plans to expand across Northern Europe, back down in Spain, February 1939 sees the fall of Catalonia and with it Barcelona.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees stream across the border into France, bombed by Franco's forces as they go.

Many who make it end up in French internment camps.

Once France is occupied by the Germans, a number of survivors are shipped to Nazi concentration camps, while great numbers of those who do return to Spain are killed by the Franco government.

By spring 1939, the destruction of the Second Spanish Republic is all but complete.

After Catalonia is lost, the remaining Republican leadership in Madrid is riven with indecision.

Some want to attempt to negotiate with Franco, though he has rebuffed all such efforts so far.