University of Mary Washington Eagle Scholar Student Research Submissions Spring 4-28-2020 Paradise Under Siege: How the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Understood Spain, 1937 - 1939 Wyatt Lipscomb Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Lipscomb, Wyatt, "Paradise Under Siege: How the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Understood Spain, 1937 - 1939" (2020). Student Research Submissions. 351. https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/351 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by Eagle Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Research Submissions by an authorized administrator of Eagle Scholar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Paradise under Siege: How the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Understood Spain, 1937 – 1939 Wyatt Lipscomb HIST 485: Senior Thesis Dr. Allyson Poska April 5, 2020 1 On July 17, 1936, the Spanish military rebelled against the newly elected left-leaning Popular Front government, a coalition of liberals, socialists, and communists. The revolt caught the government off-guard; the rebellion swept across mainland Spain through provincial garrison revolts and, due to fact that the military led the uprising, it left the Republic with no soldiers, a destroyed command structure, and an environment of paranoia concerning which officers the government could trust.1 The divide between the rebel-held areas and the government held areas were largely along ideological lines. Alhough no area was completely pro-military