EIGHTY years ago, with a military coup, the Spanish war — since known, not entirely accurately, as the Spanish civil war — began on the night of July 18 1936.

Foreign powers were involved in the battlefields from the beginning.

Germany and Italy, which were informed about the plans of the Spanish army leadership, immediately provided support, weapons and soldiers. The Western powers effectively aided this under the cover of “non-intervention.”

The second world war, in retrospect, did not begin on September 1 1939, but in reality in the summer and autumn of 1936.

Junge Welt took the event 80 years ago as the occasion for this supplement.

From our colleagues at Arbejderen in Copenhagen, the Morning Star in London and the Zeitung vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek from Luxembourg, we received contributions on the support of internationalists from their countries for the Spanish republic and the resistance against fascists in their countries.

The Soviet Union isn’t around any more. Since its downfall, there has been hardly any resistance to the belligerent nature of imperialism.

As we publish this supplement, our countries are still engaged in imperialist wars; but in mainstream politics and the media the opposite is maintained. “We have been living at peace since the Federal Republic [of Germany] was formed,” as the saying goes.

In fact, however, since the annexation of the German Democratic Republic in 1990, war has sprung again from German soil. It is justified by constant propaganda by which most campaigns involving our soldiers are not even referred to as wars, so that many people do not think of our countries as being at war.

This is even more true of the covert or less visible participation in the aggressive wars on Iraq, Libya, Syria or Ukraine. And, in particular, the plans for aggression against Russia, which were adopted at the Nato summit in Warsaw in early July 2016, are veiled.

The official resumption of the deterrence doctrine is accompanied by a renewal of the atomic armament of the military pact, referred to as “modernisation.” At the same time, the confrontation of the Great Powers is flaring up.

The situation in the Near and Middle East has reached such a degree of incalculability that a direct clash between Russia and the United States is possible at any time. The situation in Ukraine is similar.

And the civil war in Syria, as in Spain at the time, was also steered and stoked from abroad from the outset.

To this extent, what began 80 years ago is a current warning for the present. The Spanish war was the beginning of a catastrophe that, had it been prevented, could have stopped the world war.

• Arnold Scholzel is editor in chief of Junge Welt.