Discuss with your table

Would you ever join a fight you did not start?

Under what circumstances do you volunteer to join?

The Spanish Civil War

This poster notified students of a noontime rally at the student union.

Two professors from the University of Kansas spoke at the rally, appealing to the students to support the Loyalist government in Spain.

Why the Loyalists?

Who were the Loyalists? What did they stand for?

Who were the Nationalists? What did they stand for?

What was the U.S. Government's official position

on the war in Spain?

Read excerpts from FDR’s Quarantine Speech 1937

In defiance of the U.S. State Department's order "NOT VALID FOR SPAIN" stamped on passports, African Americans and their white comrades had to

enter Spain illegally.

They sailed to France pretending to be tourists and then crossed the border into Spain.

After France closed the border to Spain in 1937, however, volunteers could reach Spain only by

climbing the Pyrenees Mountains at night.

Why did they go?

What is your take away from Canute’s Letter?

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/spain_cw.htm

Intervene or stay out? Like the conflict between Franco and the Republicans in the 1930s, the Syrian civil war poses a dilemma for Europeans – follow your conscience, or accept the diktats of Realpolitik. And every massacre alters the arguments.