In 1939, Generalisimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announced the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered.

Karl Marx would have correctly identified the event as the climax of irreversible historical processes which had played out across Europe of the Dictators for the previous twenty-five years. Put simply, Franco's rise to power mirrored his counterparts in Germany and Italy - a combination of his own bitter personal experience of the Army combined with national military defeat.

The tragedy for the Allied Powers was that a third Axis Power had been created through a strategic misjudgement. In restrospect, Britain risked inducing Spain to enter the Great War by imposing the trade blockade too strongly. Any confiscation incident could easily blow up into a major problem very quickly.

In 1939, on this day Spain without warning or provocation attacked the British outpost at Gibraltar, triggering the Second World War. Spanish Falangist dictator Francisco Franco had been planning this attack for years in revenge for his country's defeat by the Allies in the First World War; he was strongly encouraged to do so by his Axis partners Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, both of whom stood to benefit from a successful Spanish conquest of Gibraltar.

On this day in 1939, Britain declared war on Spain in reaction to the Spanish invasion of Gibraltar. The following day, Germany would declare war on the British.

On this day in 1939, a British expeditionary force under the command of Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery left Dover to relieve the besieged British colony at Gibraltar.

On this day in 1939, Bernard Montgomery's Gibraltar expeditionary force arrived at the besieged British colony and was immediately met with heavy Spanish resistance.

In 1939, Italian warplanes bombed the British outpost at Malta in support of the Spanish campaign in Gibraltar.

In 1939, France declared war on Germany and Spain and sent its Mediterranean fleet to support Field Marshal Montgomery's amphibious offensive at Gibraltar.