by Hugh Thomas
The battle soon broke out again in the Tagus valley. Once more, the militia fought with grim courage. This time, they had even been persuaded to dig trenches. From these, however, they now refused to move, even when Yagüe sent forces on either side to outflank them. After a seven-hour battle, the militia were again forced to choose between retreat and encirclement. Once again, they chose the former, abandoning their defensive position at Santa Olalla, and also the larger town next to it, Maqueda, which fell to Yagüe on 21 September. One of the animators of the past month’s fighting, the Italian exile leader of the communist ‘October No. 11’ Battalion, Fernando de Rosa, one of the organizers of the socialist militia before the war, was killed.1 In Oropesa, a group of the joint socialist youth fought to the end, led by the communist Andrés Martín in the church.2 In all these battles, the professional skill of the legionaries, as well as the legend of their brutality, won the day, even though they were less numerous, and little better armed than their adversaries.
Now, however, a critical decision faced the nationalist command: should they relieve Toledo, which was now only twenty-five miles away; or continue to march on Madrid? The position of the Alcázar was now alarming. The defenders lived entirely in the cellars. They had run short of water and had to eat their mules and all but one of their horses. On 20 September, five engines full of petrol were set up in the Hospital of Santa Cruz, and the walls of the Alcázar were sprayed with the inflammable fluid. Grenades were thrown to set it alight. A defender leapt out of the Alcázar and pointed the hose at the militia. The defender was killed, and the hose turned back to the Alcázar. In the afternoon, the petrol was set on fire, but no great damage was done. In the evening, Largo Caballero arrived in Toledo, to insist on the fall of the Alcázar within twenty-four hours. At last, he permitted communist units under Major Barceló to enter the battle for Toledo: to no avail. The next day, Franco resolved to relieve the city. General Kindelán asked him if he knew that the diversion might cost him Madrid. Franco agreed that that was possible, but argued that the spiritual (or propaganda) advantage of relieving Moscardó was more important.3 He was right: though unsentimental, Franco knew the importance attached to symbols in Spain. On 23 September, Varela, brought in from Andalusia to take command because Yagüe had opposed the diversion to Toledo, set out, with columns under Colonels Asensio and Barrón, to advance on the city from the north. The besiegers meantime laid a new mine beneath the north-east tower. Assault guards poured into Toledo from Madrid, to make what they assumed would be the final onslaught. The mine was exploded on 25 September and the tower tumbled into the Tagus. But the rock foundations of the fortress itself could not be penetrated; and, while the government issued communiqués announcing the fall of the Alcázar, Varela was only ten miles away.
On 26 September, the Army of Africa cut Toledo’s road communication with Madrid. Escape for the republicans could only be to the south. In the morning of 27 September, the defenders at last saw the friendly army of Varela massing on the long barren hills to the north. At noon, an attack on Toledo from outside was launched. Once again, the training of the Army of Africa told immediately, although Toledo is easy to defend. The militia fled, taking with them, however, most of the contents of the arms factory. In the evening, the defenders of the Alcázar heard Arabic words in the street below. The relief had arrived. There remained only the blood-bath that as usual attended the rebel capture of a town. Lieutenant Fitzpatrick, riding in with the Foreign Legion, reported that, in reprisal for the discovery of the mutilated bodies of two nationalist airmen outside the town, no prisoners were taken on entering Toledo, and that the main street was running with blood down the hill to the city gates.1 Moroccans also killed the doctor and a number of wounded militiamen in their beds at the San Juan Hospital. Forty anarchists trapped in a seminary drank a vast quantity of anisette and set fire to the building in which they were hiding, burning themselves to death.2 Varela entered the city on 28 September. Moscardó, parading before his men, informed him, saluting, that he had nothing to report, using the phrase sin novedad (as usual) which had served as the password for the rebels on 17–18 July. The besieged came out into the open air for the first time for two months; Archbishop Gomá returned to his archiepiscopal see, escorted by Moors; and prayers were offered to ‘the subterranean Virgin of the Alcázar’.1
The military consequences of the relief of the Alcázar were, nevertheless, as Yagüe had feared. The republic were given time to reorganize before Madrid and were able, as will be seen, to secure substantial external assistance. Franco took his decision to divert to Toledo deliberately, however, and it is easy to imagine the obloquy in which he would have been held had he left Moscardó to his death.2 No doubt, the emphasis given to the ‘epic’ of the Alcázar in subsequent propaganda derived from a desire to leave the impression forever that the decision was the right one.
25
The rebels had, by September, begun to imbue their movement with a heroic character which alone could justify the waging of war. Whereas their first communiqués in July spoke of the need for order and control of anarchy, people now talked of ‘a crusade of liberation’. To sustain a war effort, to ensure that work continued in the factories, to maintain morale, to justify executions, it was necessary all the time to make frenzied appeals to the past and to the spirit, and to excite civilian emotion through patriotic propaganda. Republicans of all complexions were denounced as ‘reds’. Churches which had been empty before July filled every Sunday, while the controversy over which flag and which cry—‘Viva la República’ or ‘Viva España’—was resolved in favour of the old ways. (In the early weeks of the war, nevertheless, Left and Right had the same war cry: ‘Viva España, y Viva la República’, Major Bayo said on landing in Majorca, just as did Franco in July.)1
On 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, the monarchist flag was formally substituted for that of the republic. This action, of such great importance for the Carlists, was a concession made to the Spanish monarchy; and Mola’s forces used the republican colours for some time longer. Nevertheless, in a solemn ceremony in Seville, Franco came forward on the balcony of the town hall, kissed the red and yellow flag many times and shouted across the packed square, ‘Here it is! It is yours! They wanted to rob us of it!’ Cardinal Ilundaín of Seville kissed the flag also. Then Franco went on: ‘This is our flag, one to which we have all sworn, for which our fathers have died, a hundred times covered with glory’. He ended with tears in his eyes. Queipo de Llano spoke next, and went into a rambling discussion of the different flags which Spain had had at different times. Finally, he compared the monarchist colours to ‘the blood of our soldiers, generously shed, and the Andalusian soil, golden with harvests’.1 He concluded with his customary references to ‘Marxist rabble’. During this speech, Franco and Millán Astray, the founder of the Foreign Legion (who had just returned from Argentina), standing nearby, found it difficult to suppress their laughter. Afterwards, Queipo said that his intense emotion had prevented him from developing his speech as he had intended. Next to speak was General Millán Astray, a man from whom there seemed more shot away than there was of flesh remaining. He had now but one eye, one arm, and few fingers left on his one remaining hand. ‘We have no fear of them,’ he shouted, ‘let them come and see what we are capable of under this flag.’ A voice was heard crying ‘¡Viva Millán Astray!’ ‘What’s that?’ cried the general. ‘No vivas for me! But let all shout with me “¡Viva la muerte!”’ (Long live death!) The crowd echoed this famous slogan. He added, ‘Now let the reds come! Death to them all!’ So saying, he flung his cap into the crowd amid extraordinary excitement.
Millán Astray was an austere, dedicated fighter with a strong sense of honour. He had fought in the Philippines and had suggested the foundation of the Foreign Legion after a stay with its French version. Reckless to the point of folly, the ‘glorious mutilated one’ had, after being the Legion’s first commander, resigned his commission in the heat of the Moroccan War
as a protest against the insubordination of the junteros but had returned to command in the days of victory. Chancing to be in Argentina in July 1936 and not having been consulted by Mola, Millán Astray was apparently in two minds as to which side to support when the war began. But Franco’s commitment decided him, and he remained throughout the war an influence on him, who relied on his judgement, though he never henceforth emulated his recklessness.
José María Pemán, a monarchist poet and writer, an old associate of Primo de Rivera’s and one of the literary apologists for the ‘movement’, followed Millán Astray by comparing the war to ‘a new war of independence, a new Reconquista, a new expulsion of the Moors!’ The final exclamation sounded odd in a city from which an expedition of Moroccan soldiers had some days previously set out for the north to conquer Madrid, and whose public buildings and leading generals were even at that moment guarded by Moroccans. ‘Twenty centuries of Christian civilization,’ continued Pemán, ‘are at our backs; we fight for love and honour, for the paintings of Velázquez, for the comedies of Lope de Vega, for Don Quixote and for El Escorial.’ While the crowd cheered him to the echo, he added: ‘We fight also for the Pantheon, for Rome, for Europe, and for the entire world’. He concluded this successful oration by naming Queipo de Llano ‘the new Giralda’.1 Though this last comparison of the coarse-mouthed general with the enchanting Moorish tower next to the cathedral of Seville went a little far even for the crowds who cheered the speaker, such is the ease with which human beings can be brought to believe their own propaganda that active supporters of the nationalists in the Spanish Civil War came to accept such comparisons as valid. We may laugh now at such expressions, but they articulated a real desire for recovery and rebirth. Thus Millán Astray in Pamplona a week later announced to a large crowd: ‘Navarre! Pamplona! with profound reverence, I salute you! You will be the Covadonga of the new Reconquista of Spain and of Faith! You will be the cradle of national heroism! You will be—Navarre!’2 Medieval names, shouted in an intoxicating manner, indeed for a time served the nationalists as a substitute for an ideology. As Millán Astray put it on another occasion: ‘Castile! Permit me to say good-bye with a “¡Viva Navarra!” which is the same as to say, “¡Viva España!”’
With a supply of military aid agreed from Germany and Italy after a week of war, the preoccupation of the rebels was how to secure raw materials such as oil, the small native supply of which from the Canaries was hopelessly inadequate. They had also to improvise a new state structure, an undertaking which the ‘reactionary’ bankers of Spain accomplished with the zest of institutional revolutionaries.
The republican possession of the Spanish monetary gold meant that the nationalists started the war with neither the backing for a currency nor the means of obtaining credit from abroad. The methods devised to deal with the situation were: a delay by the new authorities in paying interest on the national debt; a reduction of all superfluous costs of government; new duties to gain higher revenues—for example, a tax on civil servants’ salaries (these had to work one day a week free) and a tax on bequests. The rest of the war was financed by internal financial mechanisms (loans, subscriptions, other taxes) and foreign aid.1 Strict measures were imposed forbidding the export of national currency, fixing the peseta at the level which had obtained before the war. The only backing for this peseta was the expectation of a nationalist victory. The German agency HISMA, under Bernhardt’s direction, however, helped to stabilize the nationalist currency. The export trade of the mines of Andalusia and of Morocco, together with the agricultural produce of the Canaries and Andalusia, also assisted. In addition, the financiers of Europe and America not only expected the nationalists to win, but desired them to. The collapse of investments in Russia had occurred too recently to be forgotten. Thus the matter of oil was solved by the valuable long-term credit, without guarantee, accorded by the Texas Oil Company. Five tankers of the Texas Oil Company had been on their way to Spain at the time of the rising. They received orders from Captain Thorkild Rieber, the strongly pro-fascist president of the company (who visited nationalist Spain to talk with Franco and Mola in August), to deliver their goods to the nationalists. These shipments continued.2
Relations between the Spaniards and their German allies were not straightforward. For example, the director of military supplies, Major von Scheele, quarrelled with the nationalist air commander, General Kindelán, at the end of August. Von Scheele supposed that the republicans’ fast Breguet aircraft operating in Aragon would overwhelm the Germans, and Kindelán asked that the Heinkel fighters should be flown by Spaniards. Von Scheele replied that Spaniards would be incapable of flying them. The dispute had to be referred to Franco. There was also rivalry between the Nazi Bernhardt and the soldier von Scheele, since the former treated von Scheele as a mere employee of his own, leaving the impression that he, Bernhardt, was Hitler’s delegate to Franco. The latent quarrel between the Nazi party and the German army was thus exhibited on Spanish soil. A German official, Eberhard Messerschmidt, on return to Germany from a visit to nationalist Spain, on behalf of the Export Cartel for War Materials, meantime urged his foreign ministry that the time was ripe to extract pledges from Franco with regard to Germany’s ‘future economic and perhaps even political influence’ over Spain. He suggested a treaty to lay down a quota for deliveries of raw materials to Germany for a number of years. Bernhardt, anxious to ingratiate himself with Franco, opposed this. But Franco was later induced, against Bernhardt’s advice, to start delivery of copper to Germany from the nominally British Río Tinto mines as part payment for war material.1 Nor did the Germans see eye-to-eye with Franco ideologically. Captain Ronald Strunk, a German journalist and intelligence officer, later said that he thought Azaña’s policy of ‘the middle way’ superior to Franco’s so-called ‘saviour army’, since that presaged a return of the old order, with landowners and a strong church.2
At this stage, Italian aid was limited to the supply of Savoia and Fiat aircraft flown by Italian pilots, some Fiat-Ansaldo tanks and other minor items of material. These were assimilated into the nationalist forces technically as members of the Foreign Legion. With them there were as yet no serious disputes.
Franco’s position on the nationalist side had been enhanced during August. Partly this was the result of the successes of the Army of Africa, and the preoccupation of Mola with less spectacular campaigns. Partly, however, it was due to the relations which Franco had established with Germany and Italy. Both nations, especially the former, gained the impression that ‘The Young General’ was at the same time able and likely to be influenced by them. Juan March also liked Franco and that helped. Canaris spoke of Franco as warmly as did Johannes Bernhardt.
For the time being, however, nationalist Spain was without a single command. That became more and more inconvenient and, by the end of August, several generals—especially the commander of the air force, Kindelán—were speculating as to how to overcome the difficulty.1 ‘Cantonalism’ had reached extremes in nationalist Spain almost as much as in the republic: for example, the new military governor of Badajoz, Colonel Cañizares, having put on the blue shirt of the Falange, refused to collaborate with Queipo de Llano, remaining almost independent in his fief for months.2 Would the Falange make the most of this opportunity? They did not, since they had not recovered from the blows that had fallen on them in July. They had been dragged into a rising with which many of the leaders were out of sympathy. Most of those leaders were now lost in republican Spain—probably dead. An army of new members were parading in blue shirts. These men and women often had little knowledge of the political ideas of José Antonio. Some were adventurers. Many were opportunists. Some came from the Left, and the then local chief in Segovia, Dionisio Ridruejo, calculated that the Left accounted for 20 per cent of new members. Jesús Muro, the provincial chief of Saragossa, had a bodyguard composed of onetime members of the CNT.1 In addition, there were in the Falange ex-radicals, ex-CEDA members, and many who had taken no political
position before.
On 29 August, the ‘provincial chief’ of Seville, Joaquín Miranda, a bull-fighter and ex-supporter of Miguel Maura, who had taken over nearly all the Andalusian parties, organized a meeting of the leading falangist survivors of the events of July.2 There were present Agustín Aznar, aged twenty-four, the head of the Madrid militia, who had directed the pernicious street-fighting in Madrid just before the war; and Andrés Redondo, brother of Onésimo, who, though not a falangist before the war, had assumed his brother’s mantle in Valladolid, and now called himself ‘territorial chief’ of Old Castile. This was followed by a meeting of the national council of the Falange at Valladolid on 2 September. There Aznar, Rafael Garcerán (José Antonio’s law clerk who had escaped from the Montaña barracks), and other associates from the old Madrid Falange successfully argued for a ‘provisional’ seven-man junta of command to be set up with Manuel Hedilla, provincial chief in Santander, as chairman.
Hedilla was honest, unimaginative and, it seemed, incapable of independent leadership. A former mechanic, he had had no formal education. He had some original ideas, and later would speak out against those of his colleagues who had murdered to settle personal accounts. Mola admired him for his resolution in Galicia at the time of the rising. Some saw in him a proletarian leader who might raise Spanish fascism towards the heights; Aznar and Garcerán saw him as an effective, temporary chief until José Antonio was freed—their main preoccupation. This desire to keep a seat open for the absent José Antonio was the main reason for the failure of the Falange to take hold of the state.3
Gil Robles made a brief visit to nationalist Spain and to the front. Narrowly escaping arrest by falangists in Burgos, he withdrew to Lisbon, where he spent the rest of the war in exile, conscious that his hour had passed, although, if he had remained in Spain, he could perhaps still have played a part, despite his enemies among the monarchists and falangists.1 ‘Gil Robles is to blame for everything’, José Antonio told the American reporter Jay Allen in his gaol in Alicante, and others also thought that.