Following the Republican defeat in the Battle of the Ebro in late 1938, the Spanish Republic's situation became hopeless - all the more so since the appeasement dominating British and French policy, manifested in the Munich Conference and the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, clearly ruled out any possibility of their aiding Republican Spain. The Lincoln Brigade, like the other international volunteers, was evacuated from Spain - where a few months later the Spanish Nationalists, aided by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, gained their final victory and extinguished the Republic, imposing a harsh dictatorship under Francisco Franco which would last until 1975. Lincoln Brigade veterans were involved in the Second World War and in various left-wing struggles in later decades.