The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  The inhabitants of Irún began to flee across the International Bridge on the road to Hendaye. On foot, by wheelchair, by motor-car, by coach, by horse, with domestic and farm animals, with babies, with a few articles of furniture or pictures, the refugees fled to the frontier, impelled by panic, many in tears and penniless. The militiamen had hitherto been fed and urged on by their wives and families. Now they were alone, a rearguard who had nothing to defend. On 3 September, Beorlegui, having been visited the day before by the now anachronistic figure of Gil Robles, and commanding only 1,500 men, assaulted Irún. He was watched by spectators from the French side of the Bidasoa. The attack was not immediately successful. At two in the morning, however, the frontier village of Behobia was captured. Most of the defenders of Irún, including the committee in charge, fled to France before the sun rose. A detachment of anarchists from Asturias, together with some local communists and the French and Belgians, stayed last. The former set several parts of Irún ablaze. They also shot a number of the right-wing prisoners in Fort Guadalupe at Fuenterrabía, and then escaped, leaving the rest free to cheer Beorlegui the next day, as he occupied the ruined town. Beorlegui suffered a mortal wound in the leg in a final battle at the International Bridge, apparently from a group of French communist machine-gunners. As for the refugees, those who wished to continue to fight—560 men, including the French and Belgians—were sent off by train to Barcelona, where they attached themselves to the columns in Aragon. The rest were dispatched to camps in France.

  12. The campaign in Guipúzcoa, August–September 1936

  This campaign handed over to the nationalists about 1,000 square miles of rich farmland, densely populated, with many important factories; it was also a victory of incomparable strategic importance, since its loss cut off the Basque nationalists, the Santanderinos and the Asturians from friendly France. The nationalists could also now travel by rail from Hendaye to Cádiz.1

  Apart from their main strategic venture in the south of Spain, the nationalists mounted, in August, several forays to establish communications between Seville, Córdoba, Granada, Cádiz and Algeciras. The dashing son of a sergeant-major, General Varela, the ex-instructor of the Carlists,2 drove across Andalusia with a tabor of Moroccans and relieved Granada.3 Towns that briefly experienced the delights, or tortures, of libertarian communism were relieved, and much bloodshed followed. The massacres at Balna were especially numerous. The province of Málaga, though protected by mountains, was thus faced to the north as well as to the west by possible rebel advances. Varela was then ordered north to defend the nationalist position at Córdoba, threatened on 20 August by a republican attack under General Miaja, briefly minister of war on the night of 18–19 July, now leading a detachment of republican troops from Madrid, along with some militia-men of Andalusia, numbering about 3,000. The attack reached the gates of Córdoba, which, under the brutal nationalist Colonel Cascajo, might have fallen had it not been for the skilful use of Italian Savoia bombers. Then Miaja was beaten back, many men of the militia carrying rifles only for use against those stopping their flight.4 Miaja’s failure raised the question of his loyalty to the cause of the republic. Possibly, Miaja did not advance on Córdoba because Cascajo threatened reprisals on his family who were there,5 but more likely because he could not arouse his men to advance. It began then to be asked in Madrid, could any ex-regular officer be loyal?6 Certainly, there was spying on a large scale. Miaja’s adjutant, Captain Fernández Castañeda, was hoping to cross the lines and was doing his best to enable civil guards to escape from the republic (he himself did so in February 1937).1 Treachery, or at least ambiguity of loyalty, was indeed rife in Andalusia: ‘There was a man in charge of the trench diggers,’ recalled a schoolboy of the time, ‘who had been sent from Málaga for the defence of the village and he was made one of the youth leaders. You’d hardly believe it, he turned out to be a leading falangist when the nationalists entered.’2 The repression in towns where the republic had briefly triumphed was considerable: a landowner, Felix Moreno, in Palma del Rio, had 300 killed on 27 August in revenge for the killing of his bulls.

  The republic launched some other initiatives in August. The Aragon front was quiet, it is true, save from an attack on Huesca by Carlo Rosselli’s Italian anarchists and social democrats of the Giustizia e Libertá Column, which received a baptism of fire at Monte Pelato in the Sierra de Galoche on 28 August—a skirmish in which their commander, the lawyer Mario Angeloni, was killed.3 More important, on 9 August, a Catalan and Valencian expeditionary force, under an air force captain, Alberto Bayo, and a civil guard captain from Valencia, Manuel Uribarri, arrived at Ibiza in a requisitioned liner (the Marqués de Comillas), two destroyers, a submarine, and six aeroplanes. The workers rose against the fifty men of the garrison and the island was returned to republican control. The socialist who was so bad an adviser to Largo Caballero, Luis Araquistain, and the communist poet Rafael Alberti were thereby released from gaol. Some days later, after a quarrel with Uribarri, Bayo arrived on the south coast of Majorca. This expedition was carried out under the authority of the Generalidad, and the ministry of war in Madrid seems not to have known much about it.

  At dawn on 16 August, Bayo disembarked with about 8,000 men on the east coast near the small town of Porto Cristo, which was quickly occupied. But, after the success of the landing, the invaders passed the morning indecisively. In the evening, six 75 millimetre guns and four of 105 millimetres were also disembarked, along with hydroplanes from Barcelona.1 They established themselves about eight miles inside the island. Perplexity at their own success continued, so allowing the nationalists to gather themselves for a counter-attack. A small Italian air squadron which proudly called itself ‘the Dragons of Death’, of three Savoia 81 bombers, and a group of Italian Black Shirts, led by Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi, a fanatical fascist from Bologna with a red beard, known as the ‘Conte Rossi’, arrived in their support,2 together with three Fiat (CR32) fighters and some other aircraft. The Fiats, with Italian pilots (among them an excellent flier named Cerestiato), outclassed their republican opponents. Henceforward, republican bombers were unable to bomb Palma. On 3 September, a nationalist counter-offensive, led by Colonel García Ruiz, began. To begin with, the garrison had 1,200 men, 300 carabineers and civil guards together with a number of falangists, led by the Marqués de Zayas. This raised their total to 3,500. The Catalan expeditionary force, which had no medical service, field hospitals or adequate supplies, fled back to their ships. The invaders were demoralized by the aviation, but the decision to withdraw the bridgehead was taken unnecessarily. The retreat was covered, to some extent, by the deployment of the battleship Jaime I, outside the harbour of Porto Cristo, with some other republican naval vessels. The beaches were covered with corpses, but many militiamen managed to escape, leaving their arms. Some wounded billeted in a convent, however, were shot in the sight of the mother superior.1 Few prisoners were spared execution.

  13. The invasion of Majorca, August 1936

  So the expedition came to an inglorious end, though Barcelona Radio announced: ‘The heroic Catalan columns have returned from Majorca after a magnificent action. Not a single man suffered from the effects of the embarkation, for Captain Bayo, with unique tactical skill, succeeded in carrying it out, thanks to the morale and discipline of our invincible militiamen.’2 Thereafter, Majorca remained for some months almost the private fief of the ‘Conte Rossi’, who, dressed in his black fascist uniform, relieved by a white cross at the neck, roared over the island in a red racing-car, accompanied by an armed Falange chaplain. It was now that the murders of working-class Majorcans reached their height.3 Ibiza and Formentera, meantime, were abandoned. (The fate of Ibiza, a beautiful island, was appalling; the rebels first killed 55 in an air raid; the FAI then shot 239 prisoners; when the rebels finally returned, they shot 400.)1

  In Asturias, meantime, the two battles for the Simancas barracks in Gijón and for Oviedo also continued into August. Only when the former had been reduc
ed could the Asturian miners concentrate on Oviedo, where Colonel Aranda could not sally out of the town which he had held by such guile. His defence was made easier since Oviedo had been well equipped with armaments after the Asturias rising of 1934—particularly machine-guns. Aranda had at his disposal some 2,300 men, including about 860 volunteers, mostly falangists. The siege of the barracks at Gijón was rendered more difficult by bombardment by the nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera which lay off shore. The 180 defenders, on the other hand, were constantly lulled by broadcasts from Radio Club Lisbon, Corunna, and Seville into false expectations that relief was on its way. The water supply of the defenders gave out, and the nightly smacking of lips by Queipo de Llano on Seville Radio turned several of the besieged half-mad. Still, they did not give in. Here, as less dramatically at Toledo, the sons of the colonel in command, the fanatical Antonio Pinilla, and of his second-in-command, Suárez Palacios, were brought by the militia to demand the surrender of the barracks. Pinilla refused. Eventually, the barracks were stormed by the miners using dynamite as their main weapon. Pinilla ordered no surrender even until the last moment. Finally, on 16 August, this commander sent a Roman message by radio to the nationalist warships off the town: ‘Defence is impossible. The barracks are burning and the enemy are starting to enter. Fire on us!’ The demand was obeyed, and the last defenders of the Simancas barracks died in the flames.

  Thereafter, the miners could lay close siege to Oviedo. Their military chiefs were a socialist miner, Otero, and a CNT steelworker, Higinio Carrocera. Aranda lacked supplies, but the besiegers lacked almost all material except for their infernal dynamite. So neither side made a move. Aranda had to hold a whole city with enemies within as well as without with less than 3,000 men. His own cool but jovial personality was the mainstay of the defence,2 but there also reappeared under his orders a captain of engineers, Oscar Pérez Solís, who had once been briefly secretary-general of the communist party though now a falangist, perhaps anxious in combat to purge himself of the indiscretions, bank robberies and murders which he had carried out for the communists ten years before.

  At Toledo, the battle was intermittent. The resistance of the Alcázar maddened the militiamen besieging it, but their incompetence defeated only their own commanders: who themselves varied from a regular general, such as Riquelme, to the socialist painter Luis Quintanilla. Rifle-fire went on all August from both sides. The well-trained defenders were good shots, and the militia made no attempt at an assault. Insults and boasts were exchanged through megaphones. Occasional bombs dropped made little difference to the defence of the ancient fortress, which had been thoroughly reinforced at the beginning of the century. The Catholic population of Toledo made the besiegers feel that they were surrounded by treason. The civilian authorities were, meantime, engaged in squabbling over the protection of the incomparable paintings in Toledo’s churches and in the El Greco Museum. Although the defenders in the Alcázar possessed all the ammunition that they needed, there seemed little hope of their relief. They were cut off from the rest of Spain. There was no electricity, and the saltpetre off the walls was used for salt. The rebels conducted themselves, nevertheless, with serenity. Parades were taken, and the one thoroughbred horse inside was looked after as if in a stud. A fiesta in honour of the Assumption was even held in the cellars of the Alcázar, with flamenco and castanets. Then, on 17 August, a nationalist aeroplane flew over them and dropped messages of encouragement from Franco and Mola and, more important, news. On 4 September came the fall of Talavera de la Reina, only forty miles away down the Tagus.1 The Alcázar received a message from the ‘young women of Burgos’: ‘The heroic epic which your valour for God and Spain has written on our glorious Alcázar will be the pride of Spanish chivalry for ever. Gentlemen cadets, we are señoritas radiant with joy and hope and, like you, we are the New Spain of the glorious dawn.’ (It was still widely believed that the Alcázar was held by cadets.)

  The proximity of the nationalists to Madrid was soon expressed most vividly. On 23 August, the airport at Getafe was bombed and, on 25 August, Cuatro Vientos, an airport even nearer. On 27 and 28 August, Madrid itself was raided. Hans Voelckers, in charge at the German Embassy, described the raid on 27 August as being by three Junkers 52s. ‘Please arrange,’ he asked Berlin, ‘that, as long as Lufthansa traffic continues, no Junkers raid Madrid.’ But, on 29 August, he had to complain again. Junkers 52s had dropped four heavy bombs on the war ministry, causing considerable damage and several deaths.1 There was rising anti-German feeling in Madrid. Voelckers urged that the German Embassy and colony should leave.

  The air raids caused the formation in Madrid of house committees in each block to organize listeners for the sirens which would be the signal to go down into the cellars. These committees also investigated the obscure texts of the government’s housing decrees, and tried to give protection against illegal arrests. They were really a special constabulary in which the socialists and communists took the lead. Local communist branches also organized groups to paint the street lamps blue and secure a black-out. At that time of the year, nevertheless, a black-out was hard to enforce, since closed shutters made the rooms within intolerably hot. People were told to avoid the rooms facing the street and stay in inner rooms with candles. These experiences would become only too common to those who lived in other parts of Europe at the time of the Second World War. But, except for the modest alarms from 1914 to 1918, these raids on Madrid were the first of their kind to occur.

  23

  While the republic was failing militarily, the diplomatic events of August marked as signal a defeat. On 3 August, Count Charles de Chambrun, the French ambassador at Rome, presented the French government’s non-intervention plan to Count Ciano, who airily promised to study it.1 Britain, on the other hand, accepted the idea in principle on its presentation, Eden giving his agreement from a holiday retreat in Yorkshire.2 The same day, the German pocket-battleship Deutschland put into Ceuta, and Admiral Rolf Carls, in command, lunched with Franco, Langenheim, Bernhardt, and Beigbeder. An escort of falangists cried, ‘Heil Hitler!’3 That ship and the Admiral Scheer had been ordered to Spanish waters from Wilhelmshaven on 24 July. The next day, 4 August, André François-Poncet, French ambassador in Berlin, put the non-intervention plan to the Baron von Neurath, the German foreign minister, who answered that Germany had no need to make such a declaration. Neurath added that he knew that the French had delivered aeroplanes to the republicans. François-Poncet replied by claiming that the Germans had likewise supplied the nationalists.4 In Moscow, the French ambassador made a similar approach to the Russian government, while, in Paris, the newly arrived republican ambassador, Alvaro de Albornoz, was again putting demands for Lebel rifles, Hotchkiss machine-guns, millions of cartridges, bombs, cannon, more Potez aeroplanes, and more Dewoitine fighters.1

  On 6 August, Ciano, having consulted Ulrich von Hassel, German ambassador in Rome, said that Italy agreed to the French plan. But he wanted to ‘check all fund raising’ for either side; to make the scheme cover all countries; and to establish a system of international control.2 That day’s Pravda announced that the Russian workers had contributed 12,145,000 roubles to aid Spain. But the Soviet government, like the Italian, agreed to the French non-intervention plan ‘in principle’, asking that Portugal should be asked to join the group of states subscribing themselves, and demanding that ‘certain states’—Germany and Italy—should cease aid.3 Nevertheless, on 7 August, François-Poncet was back at the Wilhelmstrasse (and Chambrun at the Palazzo Chigi) with a draft declaration of non-intervention, already accepted by Britain, Belgium, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia, which would renounce all traffic in war material or aircraft. Neurath argued that such a thing would be difficult without a blockade: and what about the activities of the Comintern?4 The same day, the British and French ministers in Lisbon asked Monteiro, the Portuguese foreign minister, to join the Non-Intervention Agreement. Monteiro, like Ciano, held his hand.5

  All th
is time, the French frontier was open and new bombers and fighters, not to speak of pilots, were reaching the republic. But, on 8 August, the French cabinet changed their policy. A communiqué announced that, from 9 August, all export of war material to Spain would be suspended. This was explained as being due to the ‘almost unanimously favourable’ reply that the government had received to its ideas for non-intervention. In fact, the previous day Sir George Clerk, the British ambassador, had spoken, without instructions, to Delbos in strong terms. How could he reconcile the dispatch of French aircraft to Spain with the holding-up of the four Fokker aircraft at Bordeaux bound for the rebels from Britain? If France did not ban the export of war material to Spain, a common front with Britain on this whole matter would be much more difficult.1 Furthermore, by this time, Admiral Darlan had returned from London. He had seen Admiral Lord Chatfield, who had told him that there was no point in making any approach to Britain about Spain, and, further, that Franco was a ‘good Spanish patriot’. The British Admiralty were also ‘unfavourably impressed’ by what they had heard of the murder of the Spanish naval officers. Nothing should be done which allowed the spread of communism to Spain or, even worse, to Portugal. Darlan, therefore, reported that there was no possibility of Britain looking favourably on French aid to the republic.2 Fear of offending England was the main reason why the French cabinet was thus brought, on 8 August, to reverse its decision of 2 August.3