People's Army of the Republic (Spain)
스페인 인민군
The regular army the Republican government reorganised from October 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. It merged the units that had stayed loyal after the coup with the militias of the parties and unions, using the mixed brigade as its basic unit and instituting political commissars. The communists' Fifth Regiment served as its model, and communist influence in it was strong. It reached its highest level of organisation in the Battle of the Ebro in 1938, where it was also broken, and it disappeared with the Republic's defeat in 1939.
In depth
The July 1936 coup split the Spanish army into loyal and rebel parts, and in the Republican zone the militias of parties and unions took over the fronts. With the government having lost effective control over the armed units, Francisco Largo Caballero's government replaced the War Ministry with a National Defence Ministry in October 1936 and began organising a "Regular Popular Army". Socialist and communist militias, the Fifth Regiment and the anarchist militias were rallied under one banner and given military training, and by the end of October men aged 20 to 45 were being conscripted. The first six mixed brigades were created on 18 October; the first was led by the communist Enrique Líster. The new army instituted political commissars charged with raising morale and ensuring cooperation with the officers.
The reorganisation showed strong communist influence under the Popular Front authorities. On the Aragon front and elsewhere, anarchists and the POUM resisted communist-led "militarisation" as an effort to make them abandon their militia model and depend on a single central power. In the Republican debate over whether the war or the revolution came first, the regular People's Army stood for the priority of the war. It reached its highest level of organisation in the Battle of the Ebro in the second half of 1938, but was broken in that battle, in which even the "baby-bottle conscripts" averaging seventeen and a half years were mobilised, and it was dissolved with the Republic's defeat in 1939.