[2] The Republican faction hardly received external support from the Allied powers of World War II, due to the International Non-Intervention Committee.

At the beginning of the war, Mexico, France, and Poland contributed large amounts of military material and advisers to the Republicans.

He sent some 28 million rounds of ammunition, 28,000 rifles, 70 antiaircraft guns, some 55 planes (mainly French) and food to Spain, and after the civil war gave asylum to thousands of exiled veterans and intellectuals from the Republican side.

The vast majority of these, an estimated 32,000 men and women,[6] served in the International Brigades, organized in close conjunction with the Comintern.

About another 3,000 foreign volunteers fought as members of militias belonging to the anarcho-syndicalist labor/trade union CNT and the anti-Stalinist Marxist POUM.

President Lázaro Cárdenas saw the war as similar to Mexico's own revolution, although a part of Mexican society and the people wanted a Nationalist victory.

[citation needed] Mexico's attitude gave immense moral comfort to the Republic, especially since the major Latin American governments—those of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru—sympathized more or less openly with the Nationalists.

But Mexican aid could mean relatively little in practical terms if the French border were closed and if Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy remained free to supply the Nationalists with a quality and quantity of weapons far beyond the power of Mexico.

Mexico furnished $2,000,000 in aid and provided some material assistance, which included a small number of American-made aircraft such as the Bellanca CH-300 and Spartan Zeus that had previously served in the Mexican Air Force.

Historian Hugh Thomas comments "had they been able to purchase and transport good arms from US, British, and French manufacturers, the socialist and republican members of the Spanish government might have tried to cut themselves loose from Stalin".

[17] In addition, the Soviet Union directed Communist parties around the world to organize and recruit the International Brigades.

President Albert Lebrun opposed direct assistance, but the left-wing government of French Prime Minister Léon Blum was sympathetic to the Republic.

[27] Although the half-hearted and largely ineffective support by France to the Republicans ended in December 1936, German intelligence reported to Franco and his faction that the French military was engaging in open discussions about intervention in the war.

[30] Except for a few crewmen who were put on guard duty on the ships, the Spanish Republican seamen and their officers were interned in a concentration camp at Meheri Zabbens.

From there some managed to go into exile or went to join the armies of the Allies to fight against the Axis powers,[32] while others ended up in Nazi concentration camps.