The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  The British Battalion bore the brunt of Asensio’s and Sáenz de Buruaga’s assault on 12 February. They defended the so-called Suicide Hill for seven hours against artillery and machine-gun fire from Pingarrón high above them, with a ‘total lack of maps’, and with perhaps three-quarters of the battalion never having held a loaded weapon in their hands before. It was a brave performance.1 Nearly all the nationalist reserves were flung into the battle, while Lister, with his experienced 1st Brigade, arrived on the left of the British Battalion. A British volunteer, John Lepper, described the scene:

  Death stalked the olive trees

  Picking his men

  His leaden finger beckoned

  Again and again.2

  The battle continued the whole of the 12th. The International Brigades suffered heavy losses, including most of their officers. A mere two hundred and twenty-five out of the original six hundred members of the British Battalion were left at the end of the day.3 Wintringham, the battalion commander, was wounded, while Christopher Caudwell, a promising writer, was among the dead.4 One company of the British Battalion was tricked into capture by admitting to their trenches a group of Moroccans who advanced singing the ‘International’.

  It is easy to dwell on the exploits of the members of the International Brigades in this and other battles since their achievements are amply chronicled, and since the fact of their presence was so unusual. But militarily more important at the Jarama were the Russian aircraft and tanks, which held the ground and controlled the air. Russian direction of the republican artillery was also important. The divisions between Miaja and Pozas were responisble for some confusion, and only when Miaja was given equal rank to Pozas, as the commander of an army, were his reserve forces fully committed.1 Meantime, the legionaries and Moroccans, despite initiative and good leadership, were, by 16 February, driven into a defensive posture once they had captured the heights beyond the Jarama.

  On 16 February, General O’Duffy’s Irish nationalists reached the Jarama front at Ciempozuelos. No sooner were they in position than they observed a force advancing towards them. The Irish officers concluded they were friends, and went to meet them. Eight paces from the captain of the advancing troops, the Spanish liaison officer with the Irish saluted and announced: ‘Bandera Irlandesa del Tercio!’ The captain advancing drew his revolver, fired, and, in a few moments, the exchange became gereral. The Irishmen lost four killed, including the Spanish liaison officer. It then transpired that their opponents were indeed nationalists, from the Canary Isles. An inquiry was held, by which the Irish were held blameless and the Canary Islanders allotted all responsibility. But thereafter the Irish were quartered at Ciempozuelos, and they saw little further action.2

  Franco also had some difficulties with another ally: Italy. On 12 February, Roatta’s chief of staff, Colonel Faldella, had come up from Andalusia and suggested another great Italian attack, so that they could add to the glory gained at Málaga. A large new contingent of regular Italian troops had arrived in Spain, under General Bergonzoli, in early February. What now about a thrust from Teruel to the sea? Faldella saw Major Barroso on Franco’s staff, and, the next day, Franco himself. Franco complained bitterly:

  First, I was told that companies of volunteers were coming to be included in the Spanish battalions. I agreed. Then I was asked to form Italian battalions and I agreed. Next, senior officers and a general arrived to command them, and, finally, already formed units began to arrive. Now you want to gather all these troops to fight together, under General Roatta, when my plans were quite different.1

  Franco really wanted to distribute the Italians all over Spain. But he did not wish to antagonize Mussolini, so he again agreed. The Italians, volunteers and regular troops, would be allowed to form a single army under the name of CTV (Comando Truppe Volontarie) and fight on one front, though it would be to the north-east of Madrid, not where Roatta desired. Franco had still not given up hope of ending the war that winter by capturing the capital.

  On 17 February, meanwhile, the reorganized republican army mounted a counter-attack. One division pushed Barrón back across the Valencia road. Another, from the north, crossed the Manzanares west of Marañosa. But an air combat on the 18th in which the famous nationalist air ace, Joaquín García Morato, played a decisive personal part, had temporarily given the nationalists aerial control. Under García Morato, the Italian Fiat fighters were showing themselves as good as the Chatos provided they were flown with courage and imagination, and at least eight Russian fighters were brought down.2 At the same time, General Gal, the new divisional commander controlling the International Brigades, was unsuccessful in his attacks, on the 23rd and 27th, on the nationalists’ front between Pingarrón and San Martin.

  Here the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, 450 strong, saw their first action. Their commander was Robert Merriman, twenty-eight years old, the son of a lumberjack, who had worked his way through the University of Nevada to a lectureship at the University of California. He had come to Europe on a travelling scholarship to investigate agricultural problems. Alone of the Brigades, a majority of the Americans was composed of students. Seamen were the next largest group.3 The Americans seemed innocent beside the rest of the Brigades. They did not come from war-torn cities now ruled by dictators, as did many of their comrades. Few of them had served in the American army. They were younger than most of those in other Brigades. Yet they fought with gallantry, without artillery cover, and quite as unprepared as the British had been a week previously. A hundred and twenty were killed, a hundred and seventy-five wounded. Among those killed was Charles Donnelly, a young Irish poet of promise.1 Well might the survivors later sing, to the tune of ‘Red River Valley’:

  There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama

  It’s a place that we all know too well,

  For ’tis there that we wasted our manhood.

  And most of our old age as well.2

  Henceforward, as had occurred in the battle for the Corunna road, each side was too strong to be attacked. Franco now tried to hasten the Italians to start their offensive to the north-east of Madrid in order to draw off the republican thrust, but they would not, or could not, hurry. Fortifications were, therefore, prepared. The battle of Jarama resulted in a stalemate, in which the republicans had lost land to the depth of ten miles along a front of some fifteen miles, but had retained the Valencia road. Both sides, therefore, claimed a victory but both had really suffered defeats. The republicans had more than 10,000 casualties (some 1,000 deaths, probably 7,000 wounded, some 3,500 sick), and the nationalists about 6,000.3 The differences between the republican commanders, the toughness of the fighting, the sure sign that, even with substantial Russian aid (which, for a time, was technically superior to that of the nationalists), the war would be long, caused widespread gloom.

  Franco’s Italian allies were now preparing, as planned, to attack Madrid from the north-east. Their goal was Guadalajara, the capital of the province of that name, thirty miles from Madrid. They hoped that Orgaz would continue the Jarama offensive, and, if possible, meet the advance from the north-east at Alcalá de Henares, finally encircling Madrid. The attack on Guadalajara was undertaken on the right by the Soria Division under Moscardó, the hero of the Alcázar, with 15,000 fresh Moroccans, and some Carlists. On the left, 35,000 Italians fought under Roatta.1 These were three divisions of fascist Black Shirts: the ‘Dio lo vuole’ Division, under General Rossi; the Black Flames, under General Coppi; and the Black Arrows, under General Nuvoloni. There was, too, the Littorio Division, a regular Italian army division, under General Bergonzoli. These were supported by 80 tanks and 200 pieces of mobile artillery, together with a chemical warfare company, a flame-thrower company, 8 armoured cars, 16 anti-aircraft guns, and 2,000 lorries. This force was accompanied by 50 fighters and 12 reconnaissance aircraft. The importance of the plan from Mussolini’s point of view was that all Italians would act together, so that the victory to be gained would redound to the Italian credit.

>   The start of the offensive was accompanied by a bizarre proposal from Mussolini to Franco, put by the secretary of the fascist party, Roberto Farinacci, that Spain’s troubles might, after the victory, be solved by the assumption of the Spanish throne by the Duke of Aosta, viceroy of Abyssinia, cousin of the King of Italy and grandson of the ill-fated Amedeo I of Spain.2

  Out of those fighting, the Littorio Division, though a regular unit of the Italian army, had been put together out of conscripted men, labourers who had desired to go to Abyssinia, many of them in their thirties or older, some not knowing where they were going—perhaps to take part in the crowd scenes of the projected film Scipio in Africa. All concentrated in the new town of Littorio, under regular officers.1 Though inexperienced as a unit, they had good equipment.

  Guadalajara in peacetime was a stagnant provincial capital commanding the gorge through which the river Henares runs swiftly down from the Guadarramas. The front was then held by the new republican 12th Division. It was broken at the first assault by Coppi’s Black Flames, a group composed of trucks and armoured cars, operating with the tactics later celebrated as the Blitzkrieg. At the same time, Moscardó broke through the republican lines on the Soria road. But in mid-morning, the temperature lowered, and rain fell. Sleet, ice, and fog followed. Many of the Italians were in colonial uniform, ready for the tropics. Their aircraft were unable to leave their improvised run-ways. The republican air force, in control of the air, on the other hand, destroyed the Italian morale almost at the start, General Smushkevich’s headquarters being nearby at Alcalá de Henares. The battle was indeed the occasion for ‘the most rapid and orderly concentration of forces ever carried out by the republicans’.2 The vile weather, as well as the fatigue of the men, prevented Orgaz from embarking on his attack in the Jarama valley. On the next day, the 9th, the Italian advance began again, despite bad weather. Coppi’s Black Flames entered Almadrones and then moved to the left flank to widen the gap in the republican lines, so capturing Masegaso. Nuvoloni and the Black Arrows took over in the centre, but the commander called a halt at night: a decision subsequently criticized, for it was crucial. Many of his men were either old or inexperienced in war, as well as being cold; and, as with all the Italian troops, the training had been bad. Moscardó, however, continued to advance and captured Cogolludo. The situation appeared for a time critical for the republic. This provided an opportunity for the communists to insist on the dismissal of another of their bêtes noires, Martínez Cabrera, republican chief of staff; he was replaced by Colonel Rojo, the chief of staff in Madrid. Though never a communist, Rojo was a competent technician, able to appreciate the military advantages of collaboration with the communist party. By the evening, a 4th Army Corps had been hastily assembled from the best republican regiments, under the overall command of Colonel Jurado, an able regular artillery officer. The 11th Division, led by Lister, and including the German 11th International Brigade, and El Campesino’s Brigade, was in the woods along the road from Trijueque to Torija. Along the Brihuega-Torija road, the anarchist Cipriano Mera established himself, with the 14th Division, which included Lukács’s 12th International Brigade, headed by the Garibaldi Battalion. A third republican division, the 12th, was in the rear under a regular officer, an engineer, Colonel Lacalle. The old, partly walled town of Brihuega (a collective with 125 participating families) lay halfway between the two armies. Here, in 1710, the French General Vendôme had defeated Lord Stanhope, in the last engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession. Here again, an international battle occurred.

  At dawn on 10 March, Brihuega fell to the advancing Italian Black Flames and Black Arrows under Colonel Enrico Francisci. Bergonzoli’s Littorio Division of regular troops followed as a reserve. At the same time, Moscardó, advancing down the banks of the Henares, had reached Jadraque. Roatta was exuberant. At noon, the Garibaldi Battalion—accompanied by the formidable trio of Vidali (Carlos Contreras) as inspector-general of the whole front, Luigi Longo (Gallo), holding the same position for the International Brigades, and Nenni, who commanded a company in the battalion—advanced along the road from Torija towards Brihuega. They had no idea that Coppi and Nuvoloni had already taken that town. Reaching the so-called ‘Palace of Don Luis’, they advanced on foot, accompanied by a motor-cyclist patrol. Three miles short of Brihuega, this patrol encountered a motor-cyclist from Coppi’s Black Flames who, hearing the Italian voices of the Garibaldi Battalion, asked if he were right in supposing that he was on the road to Torija. The Garibaldi motor-cyclists said that he was. Both groups returned to their headquarters. Coppi assumed that the Garibaldi Battalion’s scouts were part of Nuvoloni’s division. He continued to advance. Ilio Barontini, the commissar and acting commander of the Garibaldi Battalion, a Livornese communist, continued also.1 He established his men in the vineyards on the left of the road, where they made contact with the similarly far advanced 11th International Brigade. Coppi’s tanks now appeared. They were attacked by the machine-guns of the Garibaldi Battalion. The Black Flame infantry was sent in to attack. Two patrols of the opposing Italian forces met. The Black Flame commander asked why the other Italians had fired on him. Noi siamo italiani di Garibaldi came the answer. The Black Flame patrol then surrendered. But, for the rest of the day, the Italians fought a civil war of their own around a country house known as the Ibarra Palace. Vidali, Longo, and Nenni, meantime, arranged a propaganda campaign. Loudspeakers called out through the woods: ‘Brothers, why have you come to a foreign land to murder workers?’ Republican aircraft dropped pamphlets promising safe-conduct to all Italian deserters from the nationalists, with a reward of 50 pesetas. One hundred pesetas were pledged if they came with arms. Meantime in Rome, Count Ciano was assuring the German ambassador, von Hassell, that Guadalajara was going well. ‘Our opponents,’ he added, ‘are principally Russian.’1

  20. The battle of Guadalajara, March 1937

  The next day, the 11th, the battle began again. Mussolini’s commanders were favoured by an Order of the Day from Roatta instructing them to keep their men in the greatest exaltation. ‘This is an easy matter,’ went on Roatta, ‘if they are frequently spoken to with political allusions, and are always reminded of the Duce, who has willed this conflict.’1 The Black Arrows broke the front of Lister’s 11th Division, capturing Trijueque, and began to drive fast in their armoured cars along the road to Torija. The Thaelmann Brigade received heavy casualties and might have suffered a serious blow to morale had it not been for the presence of mind of Ludwig Renn, their chief of staff. Rallying, they held the road to Torija from Trijueque. That to Trijueque from Brihuega was also held all day by the Garibaldi Battalion. Roatta ordered a day’s rest. On the 12th, a storm permitted the republican bombers, rising from permanent runways, to pound away unmolested at the stationary Italian columns. The Black Shirts were machine-gunned from the air and bombed. Lister then ordered his division to counter-attack, a Russian officer, Captain ‘Pablito’, the future Marshal Rodimstev, being particularly active at Lister’s headquarters.2 General Pavlov’s Russian tanks attacked first, both T-26 and TB5 models—the latter, weighing 20 tons each, far more formidable than the 3-ton Italian Ansaldos. Trijueque was recaptured at bayonet-point by the Thaelmann and El Campesino Brigades. Many Italians surrendered. The republican attack continued along the road to Brihuega. The Garibaldi Battalion stormed their compatriots in the Ibarra Palace and captured it at nightfall. The following day, 13 March, the republican government telegraphed the League of Nations that documents and statements by Italian prisoners proved ‘the presence of regular military units of the Italian army in Spain’ in defiance of Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.3 General Roatta dispatched into the battle his other two divisions, Rossi’s Black Shirts and the Littorio Division, under Bergonzoli. These had been held in reserve to follow the initial breakthrough. Their use now meant that the original plan of Guadalajara had failed. Both attacks were beaten off. On the 14th, Pavlov’s tanks drove up the road beyond Trijueque and cap
tured much material. There was a pause in the battle for three days, on 15, 16 and 17 March. Roatta issued orders of the day, but made few preparations, preferring to complain of the continued inactivity of Orgaz on the Jarama.1

  On 18 March, the republicans on the Guadalajara front were put onto the offensive. The main thrust was led by Pavlov, who had sought to avoid the assignment, which had been insisted upon by Miaja.2 It was a bad moment for the Italians: Roatta had that morning gone to Salamanca to ask Franco to permit him to call off the Guadalajara attack. Franco refused and insisted that now the attack had begun, it should be continued. The plans that he suggested to Roatta all called for continuation of the offensive. Roatta had just accepted one such plan, when his headquarters telephoned to say that the republic was counter-attacking. At half past one, over a hundred republican aircraft (Chatos, Moscas, Katiuskas, Natashas) fell on Brihuega. Heavy republican artillery-fire followed. At two o’clock, Lister’s and Cipriano Mera’s two divisions, with seventy of Pavlov’s tanks, attacked, one in the west, the other in the east, aiming to encircle the town. They had almost achieved this when the Italians received orders to retreat. They did so, so fast that the action was almost a rout, down the only road still open. The pursuit continued for several miles. Moscardó also was ordered to retreat to Jadraque.3