This paper proposes that, under specific conditions, wars can shift family investments decisions toward more portable and less susceptible-to-confiscation assets, such as education. Empirical research on wars and education rarely captures such effects, as they tend to focus on highly disruptive conflicts where violence reaches entire populations and the destruction of civil life overshadows any adaptive responses that can favour investing in human capital. To test our theory, we examine the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a violent conflict that caused relatively limited disruption and did not specifically target educational infrastructure. We compare the educational attainment of individuals exposed to the war with that of cohorts from preceding and subsequent periods. Using a regression discontinuity approach, our results reveal that individuals who reached school age during the conflict exhibited higher completion rates for both primary and secondary education. The benefits were especially pronounced at the primary level for individuals from less-educated households. These findings support a new framework for exploring educational gains in conflicts that preserve civil structure, thereby allowing families to enhance children’s education. This framework is particularly relevant for studying contemporary, lower-intensity conflicts that, unlike total wars, may foster long-term educational benefits across generations.