How did other countries help francos forces?

The Republican side received little help from other countries. Only the Soviet Union sent fighting equipment such as tanks and advisers. The Western democracies - the U.S., England and France - remained neutral. An International Brigade of volunteers fought on the Republican side.

Franco's Nationalist army, on the other hand, was heavily assisted by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. At the beginning of the war, much of the Nationalist Army was isolated in Spanish Morocco. Mussolini and Hitler sent aircraft and crews to Morocco to transport Nationalist soldiers from there to Spain.

Franco was then further assisted by Mussolini's sending the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, a group of over 50,000 trained Italian Army troops and Fascist Blackshirts who fought heavily on the Nationalist side. Nazi Germany sent the Condor Legion, volunteers on detached duty from the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Wehrmacht (German Army). It included thousands of troops, scores of airplanes, tanks, battleships and other materiel. The Germans claimed to have downed over 300 Republican planes while losing only 70 themselves. In addition to supporting troop maneuvers the Germans planes were employed in the carpet-bombing of concentrated populations of civilians, killing untold thousands.