The circumstances surrounding Taro's death are still a matter of dispute. She was apparently riding on the running board of Soviet General Karol Świerczewski's car during the Battle of Brunete when the collision with the AFV occurred. During the battle the Republicans lost so many of their best troops in the International Brigades that it was considered a strategic Nationalist victory.

Future German Chancellor Willy Brandt who knew Taro in Spain claimed that she had been murdered by the Soviets because she was not obeying the communist's rules about what could be published, as it all had to be considered as propaganda favorable to the views of Stalin. General Świerczewski regularly set up machine guns behind his soldiers to keep them from retreating, so he was certainly capable of killing someone who wasn't going with the program. I do not believe that Taro's photos of Republicans retreating at Brunete were ever published, so I'm not so sure that her cameras were taken care of.

Like most civil wars, the Spanish Civil War was not a simple good guy vs. bad guy conflict. The Republican side signed a deal with the devil when they accepted help from the Soviet Union and Stalin.