The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  In the capital, the consequent gloom resulted in gathering support for Largo Caballero, now virtually king of Madrid. Nearly every day he and his foreign affairs adviser, Alvarez del Vayo, visited the Sierra to exhort and be welcomed by the militiamen. They wanted, however, to dominate, and not simply enter, the government. They and their followers coveted, too, a real proletarian administration. Even Prieto had complained in Informaciones that the reading of socialist newspapers was frowned on at the still old-fashioned ministry of the interior. Prieto himself might have been an alternative Prime Minister, in August as in June. The Italian socialist Pietro Nenni described him in shirt-sleeves, immersed in activity: ‘He is nothing; he is not a minister; he is a deputy of a parliament in recess. But yet he is everything—the animator and coordinator of government action.’1 Prieto had for a long time opposed the idea of his party taking over the government, still thinking it possible to influence Britain and France to help the republic if a middle-class government were maintained. Retaining his dislike of Largo Caballero, Prieto realized, however, that he was the only possible successor to Giral.2 He therefore suggested that socialist ministers should simply ‘guide’ the Giral government, as he himself was doing. The communists supported this policy.3 Largo Caballero believed that that would compromise the socialists, as he believed that their share in Azaña’s government of 1931 had done, and help the anarchists. He wanted, in fact, to lead the government himself.

  14. Division of Spain, August 1936

  By this time, the atmosphere in the republic had been sensibly altered by the death of many of the political prisoners in the government’s hands. In Barcelona, Generals Goded and Fernández Burriel were tried in early August. A retired officer who had become a lawyer was engaged to defend the two generals, who behaved with dignity. General Llano de la Encomienda and the civil guard general, Aranguren, bore witness against them. The two were shot for rebellion in the fortress of Montjuich. The liberal members of the republican government agreed to confirm the death sentence with reluctance: many of them had known Goded well. A few days later, General Fanjul and Colonel Fernández Quintana, the chief rebels of the capital, were also shot after a court-martial in Madrid, the former after being married at the last moment to a widow who had been a messenger during the preparations for the rising.4 They died before an appalling fate overcame their fellow-prisoners in Madrid. For, on 23 August, a fire broke out at the Model Prison.1

  Was this caused by the three thousand political prisoners imprisoned there who attacked their guards with mattresses to which they had set fire as part of an attempt at an escape? Or was it the work of common criminals in the prison, stimulated by CNT militiamen, who had been searching for arms? The fair-minded judge Mariano Gómez, who arrived shortly afterwards, thought that it was the first. But, at all events, the news that the political prisoners had rebelled spread in the city, at the same time as the ‘massacre of Badajoz’2 began also to be talked about. A crowd gathered, headed by militiamen on leave. They demanded that the building be stormed so as to massacre the political prisoners. Socialist politicians arrived to urge moderation. But the militiamen refused to listen. The prison staff fled. Forty prisoners were shot in the courtyard. Another thirty people were shot the next morning. The dead included such well-known ex-ministers as Manuel Rico Avello, Melquíades Álvarez, founder of the reformist party in 1912, under whose leadership many republican leaders had first ventured into politics, and Martínez de Velasco, leader of the agrarian party; as well as prominent falangists such as Fernando Primo de Rivera, brother of José Antonio, and Ruiz de Alda. Also killed in the Model Prison were Dr Albiñana, the leader of the nationalist party, Santiago Martín Bagüeñas, the police chief in Madrid until the Rising, General Capaz, and General Villegas, leader of the revolt in the Montaña barracks. Ruiz de Alda, shot by the ‘republicans’, had married a daughter of Admiral Azarola, who had been shot by the ‘fascists’ in El Ferrol; while General Capaz, commander of western Morocco, ‘hero of the Rif’, had come in July to Madrid precisely to avoid having to declare himself about the Rising. These murders appalled more than the ‘fascists’: Azaña and Giral were desolated, the former wishing that he too had died, the latter weeping.3 Where were the ‘normal forces of order’? The minister of the interior, General Pozas, did what he could; others, who might have been expected to be present (such as the new director-general of security, Manuel Muñoz) were noticeably absent.

  After these events, the ministry of justice established popular tribunals, intended to fill the gaps caused by the resignation, flight, or murder of the regular judicial authorities. These were composed of fourteen delegates from the popular front and the CNT, with three members of the old judiciary. Persons denounced to these tribunals were able to make some rough form of defence—though falangists were almost always shot, together, usually, with members of the CEDA or those who contributed to their funds. There continued to be miscarriages of justice: thus, a doctor, denounced by a patient who owed him money, was able to disprove the charge and secure the indictment of the informer; while an ordinary tradesman, nevertheless, only at the last moment managed to escape being castigated as a spy by a creditor. ‘Unauthorized’ executions nevertheless continued, with diminishing ferocity. Two brothers, the Duques de Veragua and de la Vega, descendants of Columbus, were shot by militiamen, who were afraid that the popular tribunal might acquit them. At the end of August, the government told everyone to lock doors at 11 P.M., abolished nightwatchmen (serenos), instructed concierges to allow no one to enter houses, and to telephone the police if ‘loud knocks indicate militiamen want to enter’.

  On 4 September, Azaña bowed to the inevitable, accepted Giral’s resignation as Premier, and asked Largo Caballero to form a government. Largo Caballero, the obvious choice for the succession, refused to take office unless the communist party also did so. He invited the anarchists to join: they refused. They were not ready to abandon their theoretical contempt for governmental power; instead, they wanted a national defence committee, with UGT-CNT representation only—power delegated from the collectives and regions directly—the full realization, that is, of the syndicalist state. That was unacceptable; debates within the CNT as to what attitude to have to these matters continued. Thus, at a meeting of federations of the libertarian movement of Catalonia, at the end of August, García Oliver, weary of talk, expostulated—‘Either we collaborate or we impose a dictatorship. Make a choice!’1 The archpriest of opposition to the idea of governmental authority was the crippled Manuel Escorza, whose only post was his membership of the peninsular committee of the FAI. Honest, implacable, inaccessible, bitter and ironical, Escorza dominated the discussions within the anarchist movement by sheer strength of will, as well as, as the communists pointed out, by his use of a private police force, which carried out to the full their master’s orders of ‘no quarter to fascists or neutrals’. While this spirit of a grand inquisitor lived on, the arguments of realism—that is, of alliance with the other parties—were difficult to put with success.

  On the other hand, the communists joined the central government. Their central committee had opposed this, but Moscow, however, gave instructions to join.2 The communists explained that civil war demanded unity against fascism and that the main tasks of the bourgeois revolution were already fulfilled. Accordingly, Hernández, editor of Mundo Obrero, became minister of education, and Uribe, a Marxist theorist, of agriculture. There were six socialists in the cabinet, including Prieto as minister of navy and air, and Alvarez del Vayo as foreign secretary. It would have been more appropriate to have given Prieto the ministry of war, but Largo wanted to control that more important ministry himself. It was also foolish to hand over the ministry of the interior, so important from the point of view of preventing murders, to so incompetent a man as Angel Galarza, though he had had experience as director general of security during the early years of the republic. Juan Negrín, a Prietista socialist, became minister of finance; he had been professor of physi
ology at the University of Madrid and had, though a deputy, distinguished himself in organizing the new university city outside Madrid. Luis Araquistain was given the post of ambassador in Paris, a post which included the presidency of the republican Arms Purchase Commission in Paris.3 The ambassador in London, López Oliván, a monarchist, gave up his charge to join the nationalists. He was replaced by Pablo de Azcárate, deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations, who, being a high-minded liberal, seemed the best person to represent republican interests at the all-important London Embassy.

  The republican cabinet was completed by two members of the Republican Left (including Giral, the ex-premier, as minister without portfolio) and one each of the Republican Union and the Esquerra.1

  Largo Caballero, at the ministry of war, was supported by a new regular central staff organized by Major Estrada. Colonel Rodrigo Gil, an artillery officer of the old school, of marked left-wing views nevertheless, became under-secretary. Communist influence in the war ministry increased, since Estrada was about to join that party, and the chief of the technical secretariat was Antonio Cordón, another new communist, who controlled supplies.2 Yet one more new communist, Major Díaz Tendero, the moving spirit in the pre-war UMRA, became the chief of a ‘classification committee’, whose task was to grade all officers in the republican zone by their political reliability: F for fascist, I for indifferent and R for republican were affixed to some 10,000 names; and all those with Rs were soon recalled to service. Similar reorganization, though on a smaller scale, came in the air force, where Prieto established a new general staff under Major Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, a regular air force officer and old collaborator of his, who had been in command of the air in Madrid since July.

  This ‘Government of Victory’, as it was named, was the first in the West to include communists in the government.3 Its purpose was to create strong government within the frame of republican legality. Largo Caballero, therefore, and the wing of the socialists who followed him, had, as a result of their experiences of the six weeks since the outbreak of war, greatly revised their political attitudes. Henceforward, there was little more mention in Largo’s circle of the need for revolution. The watchwords were compromise and mobilization instead, total mobilization of all classes, including if possible the bourgeoisie, against the enemy. Largo Caballero sought in power an attitude to authority very different from the mood which he inculcated in his followers before the war.

  His first task was to avoid defeat. To the alarmingly near Tagus front, Major (now Colonel) Asensio Torrado, one of the few africanistas to stay loyal to the government, was dispatched to meet Yagüe, and his own namesake, Asensio of the Legion. The Gastone-Sozzi Column of Italian volunteers was transferred from Aragon to the Tagus, together with a new group of French volunteers, the ‘Commune de Paris’ Column. Asensio Torrado attacked at Talavera. Disdainful of politics, lordly in manner, a complete professional officer, he brought order and discipline to the front, but he could not hold it. Though his men fought with courage and, this time, persistence, he could not manoeuvre to meet the fast-moving nationalist attack. As other republican commanders had had to do so often, he was forced to choose between retreat and encirclement. His men made up his mind for him. They streamed back past his headquarters, leaving behind much material. But no immediate nationalist onslaught followed this new republican retreat. The advance from Seville had wearied even the Army of Africa. The nationalist general staff expected that, the closer their armies drew to Madrid, the stiffer would be the resistance.

  In the pause while the main advancing column was reorganized, and Talavera established as a base of operations against Madrid, a newly equipped force under Colonel Delgado Serrano drove swiftly to the north to establish fighting liaison for the first time with the southernmost troops of Mola’s Army of the North, Colonel Monasterio’s cavalry force coming from Avila. A junction was made on 8 September at Arenas de San Pedro in the Gredos mountains. This cut off a large portion of republican territory to the west. The pacification of the area followed in the usual ruthless manner.1

  The following day, the defenders of the Alcázar at Toledo received the news by megaphone from a militia-post in a house across the street that Major Rojo, ex-professor of tactics at the Academy of Infantry, wished to call with a proposal from the government. Since Rojo was known to Moscardó and others of the defending officers, he was received, during a ceasefire. He proposed that, in return for the surrender of the Alcázar, freedom would be guaranteed to all women and children inside. The defenders themselves would be handed over to court-martial. Moscardó refused these terms. In return, he requested Rojo to ask the government to send a priest to the Alcázar during another ceasefire. Rojo promised to pass on the request and departed, after chatting with the officers of the garrison, who unsuccessfully beseeched him to remain with them.1 Then, during a three-hour truce, on 11 September, a suave priest, Vázquez Camarasa, who had escaped death in Madrid at the hands of the militia due to his liberalism, arrived at the fortress. Owing to the impossibility of hearing individual confessions, he gave a general absolution to Moscardó and the defenders. In a gloomy sermon, he spoke of the glory which the garrison would gather in the next world. He thus administered a kind of extreme unction to the defenders. Certain of the civil guards defending the Alcázar meanwhile talked with militiamen besieging them. The latter gave the defenders cigarettes and undertook to take messages to their families. Vázquez Camarasa left, and the siege continued.2 The republicans sought to end the resistance by burrowing under the walls from outside and planting a land mine under each of the two towers nearest the city. Civilians were evacuated from the city in preparation for the onslaught which was planned to follow the explosion. War correspondents were invited to Toledo, to watch the fall of the Alcázar, as if the occasion were certain to be a gala matinée.3 Largo Caballero (for whom the Alcázar had become an obsession) refused an offer from José Díaz and Enrique Lister, the communist chiefs, to send the Fifth Regiment to Toledo; presumably he thought that he could win this battle without communist help—an early indication that the communists might find ‘the Spanish Lenin’ as difficult to manage as the ‘moderates’ had done.1 On 18 September, the south-east tower was blown up, but the mine under the north-east one did not explode.

  Before the decisive moments, as they seemed certain now to be, at Toledo, the rebels had some important victories elsewhere. Thus, on 13 September, the Basques surrendered the summer capital of San Sebastián to Mola without a fight rather than risk the destruction of its beautiful avenues. They also shot certain anarchists who wished to set the town ablaze before the entry of the enemy. Political prisoners (including the wife of the nationalist Colonel Solchaga) were escorted away—a generosity which contrasted with the nationalist treatment of the conquered town; for a black list was then read out of those suspected of being Basque nationalists and these or their relations (if they were absent) were captured and sent off to be imprisoned or shot in Pamplona.2 But nationalist, particularly Carlist, tempers had been kept aflame by the discovery of the murder in the province of numerous prominent citizens such as Víctor Pradera and Honorio Maura, and mercy was silenced.

  This defeat left all Guipúzcoa in rebel hands. It also led Prieto, the new minister of the marine, to send the main republican fleet from Cartagena and other Mediterranean ports to northern waters, on 22 September. This was accomplished, and the action certainly prevented a rebel blockade of the northern coast. But otherwise it did little for the war. In the south, meantime, General Varela embarked upon a new Andalusian march, to the north of the mountains sheltering the long coastal plain of Málaga. Making for Ronda, Varela occupied pueblo after pueblo without resistance. Ronda fell on 16 September. Queipo de Llano also captured the important mines of Peñarroya. These victories were followed by brutal proscriptions.