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Between July 1936 and April 1939, Spain suffered a bloody civil war as a coalition of Nationalists under Generalissimo Francisco Franco staged an insurrection against the Second Spanish Republic. Nationalist forces had won the bitter struggle, at a steep cost: Some 300,000 fighters killed on both sides, with another 200,000 civilians dead in the crossfire. Franco would rule Spain as dictator for the next 35 years.

But the Spanish Civil War had significance far beyond the Iberian peninsula. European observers watched the fighting closely, alternately portraying the conflict as a fight between dictatorship and democracy, as a class struggle, and as a struggle between communism and fascism.

It is not difficult to spot antecedents of the massive global conflict within the Spanish Civil War. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy furnished munitions and supplies to the Nationalists; the communist Soviet Union furnished support to the Republicans. Hitler used the Spanish Civil War to test new German military equipment and doctrine, and to provide his forces with combat experience for the war he had already planned to launch.

Though the United States remained officially neutral in the conflict, some 2,800 Americans made their way to Spain to fight on the Republican side, most famously in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Those returned veterans would become the subjects of the first serious scientific study of fear in battle, insights that would help the United States prepare its own troops to fight in the Second World War.

Orders for 262 Ju-87A-ls were placed immediately, and by 1937, three Stukas had been sent to Spain and were actively engaging in com­bat missions against Republican units. More Stukas were to follow. The precision with which the planes were able to strike ground targets impressed even the still-less-than­-optimistic Richthofen, and he or­dered the crews of the three Ju-87s to be changed often in order for as many flyers as possible to gain ex­perience in the aircraft.

Further Stuka successes in Spain continued to stimulate dive-bomber research and development. The Sudetenland crisis of 1938 caused the Luftwaffe to form additional dive-bomber groups, using older aircraft until more Ju-87s became available. These included the He-45, He-50, He-5l, and especial­ly the Hs-123, a plane that closely resembled the Curtiss Hawk and one that was used extensively by the Germans in the initial stages of the war.

Junkers factories increased their production, and soon, faster, more updated Ju-87Bs began to replace the older A models. This newer plane had a 1,150-hp engine, which resulted in a maximum bomb-carry­ing capacity of 1,000 kg. Despite a relatively short action radius of 125 miles at 180 mph, the planes were more than adequate for the ground-support missions they were re­quired to perform.

By the time hostilities broke out with Poland on September 1, 1939, the Luftwaffe had more than 300 Ju-87B and thirty Hs-123 aircraft ready for deployment as operational dive-bombers.

On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Nazis tested their new air force on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded.

Pablo Picasso exposed the horror of the bombing in his famous anti-war painting called Guernica.

Fullmoonn wrote: Sat May 02, 2026 12:01 am

spottybrowncow wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2026 11:58 am A miniature "regeneracy event?"

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-rev ... r-shooting

spottybrowncow wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2026 11:58 am A miniature "regeneracy event?"

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-rev ... r-shooting

China is America’s Military Equal Now And In Any Future Fight, Marine General Warns

Faced with the rapidly growing China threat, the U.S. has to start hardening its bases now, said Marine Lt. Gen. Stephen Sklenka.

The 'Kill anyone who's not Chinese' problem

I don't mean to pick on the Chinese particularly, but this is something any of several countries might try to do.

We began this chapter by noting that the Pentagon plans to deploy thousands of intelligent computer soldiers by 2014, and probably millions of them in the years to follow. The first robots will be carefully controlled by human overseers, in particular if the robot is about to kill an enemy soldier, but as the numbers of them grow and as they're involved in more complex battles, there will soon be large armies of computerized robots making their own decisions to identify and kill the enemy.

The robots that the Pentagon is planning will be very carefully designed not to become out of control killers, but the same care may not go into robot soldiers manufactured in other countries.

For example, the Chinese may decide to manufacture millions of robot soldiers programmed to recognize physical characteristics of a Chinese person. These robots may have some amphibious capability that allows them to swim across the Pacific Ocean to North America, or they may travel overland through Asia to Europe, programmed to "kill anyone you see who is not Chinese."

What would be the purpose of such a project? In the case of the Chinese, whom we're simply using as an example, the strategy would be as following: Once the Singularity occurs, the computers will take control of running the world. They'll have no particular reason to kill all the humans, the reasoning goes, provided that there aren't too many of them. Thus, by killing off all non-Chinese humans, it's more likely that the Chinese race will survive the Singularity.

There's little doubt that such a war strategy will be tried by some country or other, though it may not have the desired results: when other countries figure out what's going on, they'll manufacture their robots to "kill only the Chinese" (once again, just using the Chinese as an example). Still it's a problem that will have to be addressed, and with the first deployments due in just a few years, it will have to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Humanoid robots hit mass production in China

China’s new factory can build 10,000 robots a year as automation scales fast

For years, humanoid robots felt like something you watched on social media. Impressive, yes. Practical, not quite. That line just got blurry.

A new factory in China is now producing humanoid robots at a pace that feels closer to car manufacturing. One robot rolls off the line every 30 minutes.

That adds up to about 10,000 units a year. This is not a prototype phase anymore. This is real production.

Chinese robot breaks human world record in Beijing half-marathon

Dozens of humanoid robots competed alongside 12,000 human runners, though some stumbled at the start or veered into barriers

When does a Crisis ERA turn into a Crisis WAR?

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this question has a specific answer: it's a point of time defined in generational theory and known as the "regeneracy." The regeneracy is the point in time where an event, or series of events (like the Pearl Harbor attack and the Bataan death march in World War II or the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War) unify a country or society behind its leader, and the survival of the country and its way of life become the highest priority, higher than the value of an individual life. This change opens the door to genocidal acts, since an individual human life has little value any more.

It's impossible to predict what event will trigger the regeneracy -- possibly a major terrorist attack on American soil, or possibly a major military defeat overseas -- but this event will end the political bickering, will unify the country once more, and will send the young Millennial generation off to war.

A certain "tipping point" occurs in every crisis war, when the public becomes so anxious, furious and outraged by acts (real or perceived) on the other side that the desire to win and to protect one's nation and way of life become more important than anything else. This point is called the "regeneracy," because the public forgets about political differences, and starts worrying about national survival. It's the time of regeneration of civic unity, and, in a sense, it's the time of regeneration of the entire nation.

In the American Civil War, it was the Battle of Bull Run that turned the war from a spectator sport into a serious war, and led to the bloody Battle of Gettysburg and Sherman's "scorched earth" March through Georgia. In WW II, it was the Bataan Death March that infuriated and united the country, and let to the Allies' saturation bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan.

April is historically marked by numerous tragedies, particularly in the third week, including the sinking of the Titanic (1912), the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1865), the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Columbine shooting (1999), and the start of the Rwandan genocide (1994). Other major events include the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the Chernobyl disaster (1986).
Significant Historical Tragedies in April:

April 12, 1861: The American Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter.
April 14, 1865: President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth (dying on April 15).
April 14-15, 1912: The RMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg, killing over 1,500 people.
April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed most of San Francisco.
April 19, 1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began, followed by brutal Nazi suppression.
April 29, 1991: A cyclone in Bangladesh killed an estimated 138,000 people.
April 19, 1993: The 51-day Waco siege ended in a fire that killed 76 people.
April 19, 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing destroyed a federal building, killing 168 people.
April 20, 1999: The Columbine High School shooting occurred in Colorado.
April 16, 2007: The Virginia Tech shooting resulted in 32 deaths.
April 15, 2013: Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon.

Other Notable Disasters and Events:

April 6, 1994: The Rwandan genocide began.
April 26, 1986: The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in Ukraine.
April 20, 2010: The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.
April 11, 1965: The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak killed 271 people in the Midwestern U.S..
April 16, 1947: The Texas City disaster, a massive ship explosion, killed over 500 people.
April 14, 1935: "Black Sunday," the worst dust storm in American history, devastated the Plains.
April 20, 1889: Birth of Adolf Hitler.