How Were Tanks Used in the Spanish Civil War?

the Spanish Civil War is an interesting conflict because in many ways it's the first real war fought in Western Europe between the First World War and the Second World War and today I'd like to look at tanks during the Spanish Civil War also because this video is kindly being sponsored by world of tanks and because it's a really interesting topic to delve into because of course you have the First World War is the first time that tanks are used in combat these landship type vehicles as well as in the Second World War but then where does the Spanish Civil War fit in in this broader picture because of course it does sit right between these two conflicts and so the tank Doctrine and the tanks that are being used are a very interesting mix of both and would have an important effect on the later Second World War many people even say that Hitler tested the blitzkrieg in Spain that this was used but if this statement is true or not is something else that I'd like to look into about how the tanks were used during the Spanish Civil War I'd also like to give a quick shout out to my good friend Rob who really helped me out with the research for this video and created some of the absolutely stunning tank designs that are going to be featured later on you'll definitely be seeing more of him especially in my vlogs from Romania over the summer so stay tuned and a big mud suemez Lumos to my romanian friend there all right so the Spanish Civil War for those of you who don't know I've made lots of videos about it was a conflict in Spain in the 1930s between the second Spanish Republic and a nationalist rebellion I'll put cards and links up if you want to find out more so let's take a look at how our tanks used before the Spanish Civil War so in the First World War and later let's take a look at the pre 1936 tank Doctrine so land ships were the name of the game to begin with the first tanks essentially evolved from land ships which as the name suggests and as the etymology of tank is as well were these great big lumbering iron structures that went across the battlefields of the First World War now essentially the aim of the game for these and as time progressed onwards was to act as infantry support so you had the tanks they would be there to support the infantry and they would go through and drive through barriers and barricades and machine-gun posts so that was essentially the idea of the tank was to get across no-man's land and break through the enemy lines rather than having a vast armored column or using tanks altogether as would be done later on so let's take a look at the anglo-french tank doctrine of the time so tanks were designed to be the best infantry support so the name of the game was to try and create a vehicle that would be the best at supporting the infantry in obtaining their objectives and they also had howitzer guns and anti-tank weapons but they had wide trucks in the main again the idea was to be there to support the infantry and to break through hard points in an enemy's defensive line the Germans on the other hand had quite a different tank doctrine and this was for several reasons they'd lost the war which meant that they were much more eager to actually innovate and to change things with the tanks because well it hadn't worked for them in the First World War also because of the Treaty of Versailles it meant that the Jim government wasn't actually able to invest in tanks until much later on and so they didn't have the same doctrinal culture as the British in the French in the interwar period so they were able to innovate because they hadn't had that build up to seeing tanks in the same way as the British and the French did for it now that we've taken a look at the doctrines let's take a look at how the tanks actually got to Spain where the tanks that were being used in Spain came from so the Spanish Civil War wasn't meant to be a war which sounds like a silly thing to say but essentially it was meant to be a nationalist takeover the reason that it failed and became a civil war is because several militias and army units in several cities stopped the Nationalists from taking over and then you got the Civil War so the first tanks essentially came from the military depots of the Spanish army now these tanks had arrived in Spain during the RIF war which they fought against several North African factions together with the French so the tank that they got there was the Hinault ft which was a French tank from the first world war that they used and as well as the Schneider ca1 this was essentially a troop carrier a glorified on the troop carrier and these were of course very old they had been used in the first world war they weren't particularly bad tanks but by 1936 they were very outdated and they had of course arrived in Spain in 1919 quite a few of them had seen at active service as well so let's now take a look at specifically where the Republicans got them from because with these tanks it was the case that whether if the Nationalists took over city they would get the tank supply if the Republicans took over the city they would get the supply of tanks that were there which is very logical but there is a breakdown to be made between whether Republicans got most of their tanks and where the Nationalists got most of their tanks so the Republicans were supplied by two nations the USSR and the Polish state now from the polls they actually got more of the hano FTS these they had been given by the French I believe in trying to stop the Soviet invasion in 1920 in the 1920s and these of course were again these were older tanks but they they were of some use but they were already very outdated now they also created some of their own tanks called the true beyond and the through VI was very much based on the Hinault ft but they only actually made about 20 of these and the Nationalists also did try to make some of their own tank designs so native Spanish designs so to speak but it was mostly the Republicans because the Republicans at least at the start of the war were the ones who had most of the factories under their control which you of course needed to actually produce and make the tanks the Nationalists on the other hand received tanks from both Nazi Germany and from Benito Mussolini's Italy and they sent their own national designs which I'll get onto in a second so how did they use tanks then well to go back to the Republicans they received most of the pre-war tanks dogs because they were able to capture most of the military depots during the coup but whether this was a blessing or a curse not entirely sure because most of these tanks were French hulks they were you know most of them were from before 1920 and they were in pretty terrible condition they did actually use quite a few of these naida's during the urban fighting that went on in 1936 but by the end of 1936 all of the land ships were knocked out but I'll get onto some of the stories about that at the end of the video now the Econo ft that they used were a bit more effective they were useful enough in city fighting you could essentially put one in the street and that would block off a street from the enemy because it is a big metal thing with a big gun on it so in that sense it was useful but there were no replacement parts so after several months of fighting most of them would be knocked out of service anyway or would be lacking several key important features and tactically as well this was not gonna be very significant as a sort of static fortress that could move around very slowly from time to time it was alright but they were 20-plus years old and you know they weren't gonna be out maneuvering the enemy at any point so in it by late 1936 the game changes though because by this point the Soviet Union starts throwing its support behind the Republicans and that's when they send the t26 which really changes the tank game in the Spanish Civil War now this was actually the most widely used tank of the Spanish Civil War the soviets gave 281 t-26s to the republican government and while the Nationalists captured quite a few of these which I'll get onto later on most of the time this was being used by the Republicans and this is one of the most effective tanks that was around sort of Point Blank that was around throughout all of the 1930s as well as in the Spanish Civil War now by late 1937 the Soviets actually sent another design which was slightly different in character bt5 and this was perhaps the most effective tank of the Spanish Civil War although they only gave 50 of these so quite a few less than the t26 that was a very fast tank it was a cavalry tank so it was good at scouting and potentially out maneuvering the enemy it could reach speeds of up to 65 miles an hour which was an awful lot for a tank back then but that was on good roads and not necessarily in Spain a lot of the fighting in Spain was done in very mountainous hilly terrain that's not ideal for tanks which is one of the main reasons why we now think that this idea that Hitler tested the blitzkrieg in Spain is not entirely true because the terrain is very difficult it's very rugged I know the Soviets initially planned to crew all 50 of the tanks themselves but they didn't get enough men sent over Stalin was also doing all sorts of things with purges so he had lots of really innovative creative and effective generals and commanders who were working on tank doctrine and tanks and he had most of them got rid of out of the army which you know really could have helped the Republic out if they'd have sent those so eventually the crews became hybrids of Soviets and Spaniards which created all sorts of interesting things because the Soviets couldn't speak Spanish and for the beginning of the time that they were sending the BT 5s over the didn't have any interpreters either so it was an interesting situation also the Republicans were very short on spare parts and that was something that would be a huge problem for the Republicans their tanks were generally better but they didn't get the spare parts in and they needed Soviet engineers to keep the tanks in shape the they are Soviets often complained that the Spanish drivers would fry the clutch on the t26 and then of course they'd have to wait for spare parts to arrive from Russia which would take months and so it was actually a lot of hassle for the Soviet and the Spanish crews there were no problems with the interpreters and this would be one of the issues that plagued there are public in tankers for the entirety of the wall so what about the Nationalists then well as I said they were the rebels in the conflict and they received all of their tanks from either the Italians or from Germans or from captured Republican tanks which I've just covered so the main tank that they used was the C V 33 this was an Italian tankette design and these were supplied from Mussolini's Italy and they were operated completely by Italian crews from the corpo troop a voluntary which is the volunteer corps that was sent by Mussolini to Spain to aid the Nationalists it was the second most exported tank to Spain after the t26 with 155 of them being given to the Nationalists during the war now it had a dual machine gun of 800 millimeters which proved to be really effective against infantry but as soon as it came up against armor it was pretty useless now it could be quite a good infantry support vehicle which as again is is really what it was used for it had 10 millimeter sloping armor so it could deflect small arms fire so I was an infantry support against infantry it was good but as well that meant that it was it was light there so it could traverse the Spanish countryside quite well without using too much fuel but as soon as it came up against the armor it was pretty useless now there was actually another version of the CV 33 that instead of having a machine gun had a flamethrower attached and this was actually slightly smaller and faster and that meant it could sneak up on enemy positions so tactically quite a good tank and actually also in terms of effectivity it was also the most effective tank for the Nationalists in the early war because it was the only one that could actually destroy an enemy the way it achieved this was to sneak up on the enemy tank and then to completely douse it in flames and that what this will essentially do it's a bit grim is to cook the other tankers inside the enemy tank alive and that's how they would knock out an enemy tank in the early war period of course this is incredibly hard to achieve but this did occur several times and actually there are some quite fond and funny nicknames given to the Caravelle og which is what the CV 33 stands for and these include the Lapidus hardiness in Spanish which is the sardine tin which is what the Spanish crewmembers called this tank whereas the Italians called atop alena which means Mouse in Italian because it is a bit of a smaller tank yet but I thought that was a nice touch so anyway now let's take a look at the PZ one and if you're wondering what pz h stands for it is panzerkampfwagen which in german is the fancy and long word for tank but the piece at one was of course a german design that was given to the Nationalists in Spain and the first time that the Germans following the first world war got to test out their tank designs so the piece at one was the second-worst supply tanks to the Nationalists during the war after the Italians and it actually had a turret unlike the CV 33 it was economically practical for the crew and essentially as you can see the basic design is therefore how tanks would become used later on of course the Germans had a big hand in developing tanks going into the 1940s and so they built upon the design of the piece at one to create the later Panzers that are quite famous from the Second World War the armor was 13 millimeters thick and it could sustain small arms fire just at the CV 33 and I had a machine gun that could fire back with that was effective against infantry but it was low caliber so it wasn't gonna get through any enemy armor anytime soon so in this way it was actually inferior to the Soviet t26 and it couldn't go through the armor and it could quite easily be destroyed by the t26 is in PT 5 so that the Spanish Republicans were using I think it's fair to say that the peas add one was the favored design for the Nationalists during the war because it was bigger than the CV 33 which meant it was more useful as an infantry support vehicle and the turret gave it better battlefield awareness although because it was lightly heavier and because of these other features it did mean it was less economical so more fuel was needed and it could go less far in a day than the CV 33 all right so now let's take a look at the captured tanks that the nationalists managed to take from the Republicans because this is actually a very significant number given that the number of tanks that Republicans had throughout the war would be and I'm gonna put in a guess here around 500 from the figures I've seen they can't manage to capture about a hundred and eighty of these tanks which is you know it's shy of half but it's it's definitely a third which is my amazing maths coming out again so this is a really large number and so a lot of the Republican tanks the superior tanks a lot of the time we're being used against them towards the end of the war by the Nationalists now in late 1936 the Nationalists thought we really do need to get our hands on a tank that can actually destroy an enemy tank because there had been several tank battles by this point which I'm gonna get onto in a second so they were seeing about attaching a 20-millimeter autocannon to the top of either the cv 33 all the peas at one but eventually they chose the peas at one as the better candidate for this and so they created a tank that was called the PZ Duan Breda and I'm gonna get into this in just a second but first of all I would like to talk about today's video sponsor which is World of Tanks because the piece had one Breda you can actually play as in this game now in case you don't know World of Tanks is a free-to-play game that puts you in the gunner driver and spotters seats of over 600 tanks and they're all looking at the history and they're trying to create the most accurate tanks and how they would maneuver and where you can pierce the armor and tactically playing with tanks in these very large games and if you're a new player you can actually follow the link that's in the description below and sign up and if you do that and use the code tank tastic which i'll put on the screen at the end if you're not sure how to spell that is that you'll get 500 gold and seven days premium as well as getting 80 127 tank now the name might not sound very familiar but that tank is actually a prototype for the t-50 which was the replacement for the light tanks of the t26 and the bt5 which I've been talking about in this video so if you want to actually sort of step into the driver's seat of the things that I'm talking about in this video then I highly recommend taking a look at World of Tanks because then you can literally play along to some of the things that I've been talking about of course most of the tanks are from a slightly later period from the Second World War but it's a really fun game I used to play this game actually rather a lot as well and I really enjoyed sort of rolling around the map and shooting people up in tanks it's honestly a great fun so I would actually really recommend that you do this so do check out World of Tanks there is a link in the description below and as you can see you just need to go and use the invite code tank tastic to get in and get these great bonuses so give it a go World of Tanks guys I'd highly recommend it if you found this video interesting and thank you to all of Tanks for sponsoring this video there was a very particular issue to do with the PISA tuam breda with this 20-millimeter also cannons strapped to the top of the piece at one tank and this is that to do it they actually had to cut a huge hole into the front of the breda so they could actually see outside because obviously there's now this whopping great turret on top of it and this isn't an issue that you'll get if you play the tank in World of Tanks because there's no little infantry running around but during the Spanish Civil War what this meant was that a plucky Republican sniper could quite happily take out the driver and the crew through this great big hole at the front of the piece at one breeder and so a lot of the Spanish nationalist crews simply refused to drive them and actually the German High Command of the Condor League yawn expressed serious doubts about the combat capabilities of this new tank but nonetheless it was the only one they had to match against the armor of the t26 and the vt5 and so the Nationalists continued to roll out the PZ Guam Breda into the combat are there any examples of actual tank battles during the Spanish Civil War well the first times they were being used was 1936 as I said during the initial coup and actually this was the last time that land ships were being used in active combat so these great big lumbering hulks from the first world war and the land ships in question the Schneider's were actually from 1916 so from 20 years earlier when these were used in the street fighting in Madrid and in Toledo both of which during 1936 actually there is an example of one of these landships being used in an attempt to try and take a building and so the Nationalists that counteract this actually went and created a big bundle of grenades they sort of taped it together with something and threw it at the land ship and the land ship exploded into a million pieces and this was actually the way the Nationalists dealt with these big land ships during the initial coup in 1936 in the street fighting was to get these great big bundles of grenades and to sort of blow it up in that way in this turned out to be so effective that actually the Republican army refused to crude the great big land ships but they did actually manage to give them off to these really radical communist militias that sprang up all over to fight against the Nationalists and they ended up crewing the land ships but a little effect in terms of tank on tank combat there's an interesting case study that can be made from late 1936 which is the Battle of Caesarea which occurred just outside of Madrid it was in the same attack on Madrid when the first Soviet drivers had come in and actually a Soviet mission that went out around the the capital encountered quite a few of the Italian tankettes also with a supporting companies from the corpo troop a and Spanish nationalist soldiers there and this battle actually turned into the favor of the Soviets quite quickly despite being outnumbered by the Nationalists and by the tankettes and there's a great example of when one of the t26 is was completely surrounded by tankettes and it run out of ammunition that it simply rammed through them and that kind of shows the different caliber of tank that was being used by both sides as well that was very significant during this battle was that the Soviet doctrine at the time was really quite advanced for the period and they were using tanks as massed armor whereas the Nationalists the CV 33s were being used as just infantry support and the results really speak for themselves so the Nationalists during the battle they lost just about 11 of the CV 33s and about 600 men according to Republican statistics whilst the Nationalists on the other hand also the Republicans lost three t-26s and just eight men so this was a resounding success for the Republicans although it should be said that later on the same t-26s ran into trouble because the Nationalists found out that if they lit up wine bottles and threw them at the t26 is they could cause damage to the tanks and to the tank crews inside them and they were forced to retreat which is also kind of a funny story in 1937 there's another battle during which tanks played a very important role this was the Battle of Guadalajara and during this battle they got put through people and Daddy tried to advance across very sort of boggy terrain very rugged terrain that they couldn't get across and this essentially led to them getting bogged down and shot up by the Republican artillery and by the tanks there and this was really a bad day for the Nationalists the Republican tanks again showing that they were superior to what the Nationalists had to offer in 1938 however it would be the Republicans turn to cross boggy ground just south of Saragosa during the Battle of the Ebro or the Fuentes de libro as it's sometimes called in Spanish this time it was the Beatty fives and the t26 is over the Soviets they were attacking strongly reinforced nationalist positions was also one of the first times that they used tanks as troop transports so they had their Republican troops that were going into battle a lot of them from the International Brigades they had sat on the tops of the tanks but they moved in too quickly and a lot of the the soldiers actually fell off and so the attack was not very well coordinated and it ended up being a real failure for the Republicans during which they lost a lot of Tanks in fact so many tanks were lost during the battle that they then handed them off to their reserves because they were no longer really an effective fighting force at that time all right everyone so I hope you enjoyed this video it's been quite a long one again a big thank you to rob for helping me out with the beautiful tank designs in this video as well as of course doing the research there I'm gonna make another video about how the tanks of the Spanish Civil War about how the lessons that were learned in the Spanish Civil War became important for the Second World War because there is often quite a lot made about that and I think it would be an interesting video as well as some other things about tanks in general during this period and about the Spanish Civil War I've got quite a few videos anyway so do feel free to check those out I'd also like to say a big thank you to all of my patrons for helping me out I really appreciate all your support and to all of you guys for just watching and supporting give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe and check out World of Tanks as well if you would be so inclined so thank you for watching I have been held it and this has been the history

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 192,304

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Id: Qs7yjQXgrUE

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019