by Hugh Thomas
In this ill-named ‘battle of Guadalajara’, Mussolini’s Italians reported that they lost only 400 killed, but they were not very truthful, and the figure was probably higher. They may have lost as many as 3,000 killed, 800 prisoners-of-war, and 4,000 wounded. Moscardó’s losses were insignificant. The republic lost about 2,000 killed, 400 prisoners and 4,000 wounded.1 After the battle, apologists for the republic claimed it as a great victory over Mussolini. The novelist Ernest Hemingway, who arrived in Spain on 16 March, wrote, in a dispatch to the North American newspaper alliance: ‘I have been studying the battle for four days, going over the ground with the commanders who directed it, and I can state flatly that Brihuega will take its place in military history with the other decisive battles of the world’.2 Herbert Matthews, of the New York Times, reported that Guadalajara was to fascism what the defeat of Bailén had been to Napoleon.3 Militarily, it would be more accurate to see the battle as similar to that of Jarama and the Corunna road. A nationalist attempt to complete the encirclement of Madrid was thwarted at the cost of a loss of twelve miles. But the retreat of the Italians, and the proof that organized Italian units were being used by the nationalists, was of considerable propaganda value to the republic. The battle had been intended as an exhibition of how Mussolini’s Italians could carry out modern techniques of war. But, in fact, it was an object lesson of how a mechanized attack should not be launched. Many tanks were left immobilized for hours for lack of fuel. The Italians had not maintained fighting contact with their enemies and had sought to operate without air cover, and without anti-aircraft protection.4 The battalion commanders had no maps while even Roatta had only a Michelin road map (1 to 400,000 scale), whose lack of detail and topographical information made it inadequate.1
The role of the Russian advisers in this battle was considerable. Smushkevich (‘Douglas’) in the air, Pavlov with the tanks, Rodimstev with Lister, as well as Malinovsky, Batov and Meretskov: a galaxy of future ‘heroes’, even marshals, of the Soviet Union.
Guadalajara also had the effect of angering Mussolini so much that he declared that no Italians could return alive from Spain unless they won a victory. To von Hassell, he blamed his Spanish allies who, he said, had ‘hardly fired a shot during the decisive days’.2 The senior falangist still alive, Fernández Cuesta, remarked to Angel Diaz Baza, a friend of Prieto’s, sent to visit him in prison to talk of a compromise peace, that the Italian defeat at Guadalajara was the ‘sole satisfaction he had experienced during the war’.3 Nor was the discomfiture of their previously overweening Italian ally unwelcome to Franco and his high command. The gloom of Cantalupo, the Italian ambassador at Salamanca, became so great that he was soon recalled, after a posting of less than six months. There returned with him Generals Rossi, Coppi, and Nuvoloni, as well as the chief of staff, Colonel Faldella. But Roatta, more responsible than the others, remained in Spain, along with Bergonzoli, though General Ettore Bastico, a veteran of the Libyan and Abyssinian wars as well as the Great War, later replaced him as supreme commander in the field, and a well-known fascist leader of the 1920s, Attilio Teruzzi, came to reorganize the ‘volunteers’.
The battle also led the general staffs of Europe (notably the French) to conclude that motorized troops were not as effective as had first been suggested. The Germans were restrained from drawing this conclusion by their contempt for the Italians as soldiers.4
The presence of organized Italian divisions at the battle of Guadalajara was discussed at the Non-Intervention Committee. On 23 March, the atmosphere there had been excited by new reports that Italian troops had left in the Sardegna for Cádiz. Grandi said that he was unable to discuss the subject and, carried away by bad temper, added that he hoped that no Italian volunteer would leave Spain till the end of the war.1 This candour caused consternation. The next day, Maisky accused Italy of ‘ever-increasing military intervention’, alleging that there were 60,000 Italians in Spain in mid-February (there were about 40,000), and that a commission should be sent to examine the matter on the spot.2 Grandi’s speech was discussed, in the meantime, in the chancelleries. German diplomats displayed tact. They appeared to want the control agreement to begin. Cerruti, the Italian ambassador in Paris, assured Delbos that Italy had no intention of breaking up non-intervention. By the start of April, the committee had been preserved, though it was not yet being used.
21. The battles around Madrid, November 1936–March 1937
Guadalajara ended the conflicts around Madrid. Apart from intermittent bombardment, the front was quiet for months. The international shadows over the civil war, however, grew daily longer, with more and more individuals and interests becoming implicated in the emotions of a country of which, in truth, they knew little. Thus the distinguished biologist J. B. S. Haldane arrived in Madrid to give advice on handling Mills grenades and gas attacks.1
The International Brigades now had their first rest from action. The volunteers had discovered in battle that ‘a war of ideas’ is much like any other conflict. In Spain, as elsewhere, there was confusion of orders, jamming of rifles at the critical moment, uncertainty about the whereabouts of the enemy and of headquarters, desire for cigarettes (or sweet-tasting things), fatigue, and occasional hysteria. One unknown member of the British Battalion had written:
Eyes of men running, falling, screaming,
Eyes of men shouting, sweating, bleeding,
The eyes of the fearful, those of the sad,
The eyes of exhaustion, and those of the mad.
Eyes of men thinking, hoping, waiting,
Eyes of men loving, cursing, hating,
The eyes of the wounded, sodden in red,
The eyes of the dying and those of the dead.
From the start, the wilder volunteers had met difficulties with the communist authorities, if only for drunkenness. But trouble was frequent.2 Those who wished to return home were not permitted to do so. Some complained that they had volunteered on the assumption that they could go home in three months’ time. But they had no documents to prove it. Here the principles of a volunteer army fighting for ideals conflicted with military requirements. The punishment for attempted escape was at least confinement in a ‘re-education camp’, for whose rigours idealistic, but easily disgusted, young men from Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian countries were ill-prepared. But there were desertions all the same. The Foreign Office in London negotiated a settlement which exempted British volunteers from the death penalty if they were detected trying to flee, but that was several times imposed on perhaps as many as fifty others.1 The communist leadership of the Brigades showed itself harsh to humanitarian needs, though the organizers, such as Marty in particular, lived well.2 Uniforms were so scarce that the British Battalion seemed almost in rags.3
While some Anglo-Saxons became disillusioned, Eastern European volunteers continued to flow into Spain, many through Tito’s ‘secret railway.’ Some were arrested on the way, since to volunteer for Spain was illegal in the non-intervention countries.4 The right-wing governments of the Balkans and East Europe made every effort to enforce this. Nevertheless, the recruitment continued; in the universities or slums of central Europe or the Balkans, Spain seemed an exotic arena with the liberty of the world in the balance; thus, while Tito continued to operate from Paris, the communist writer Djilas acted as controller in Belgrade of the flow of volunteers from Yugoslavia.5 Most of the volunteers received, of course, from their Brigade journals and other reading matter, a mainly communist interpretation of the war and of the troubles of the republic: the POUM thus appeared in this literature, if at all, as no better than fascists.
Stephen Spender, the poet who had been an active apologist for the republic, arrived at this time, in search of a former secretary, who had volunteered for the Brigades and who, being disillusioned, had tried to escape. For a time, it seemed that this man might be shot. In the style of a novel by Kafka, Spender dined with the commissars of the British Battalion who were his judges and who were persuaded to relent.1 The Candi
de-like story of young Coope also shortly engaged the attention of England. He was a boy of eighteen, who volunteered for the Brigades after hearing a speech by the labour politician, Ellen Wilkinson, but who later escaped from them via a ship which left him in Greece. The boy’s father went out to Spain to search for him and had to join the Brigade to do so.
The American battalions of the International Brigade were also visited by kind friends from home.2 At one bedside, in a hospital financed by American sympathizers, Ernest Hemingway comforted a casualty by literary talk.3 ‘They tell me Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis are coming over too’, said a wounded American, a would-be writer. ‘Yes,’ said Hemingway, ‘and when they come, I’ll bring them up to see you.’ ‘Good boy, Ernest,’ said the man in the bed. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Ernest?’ ‘Hell, no,’ replied Hemingway.4 This was a refreshing candour in the world of the International Brigades, where no one’s name seemed to be truthfully given—to deceive whom was never clear, unless it was the republican Spaniards, for whom these Gómezes, Pablos, Martínezes, speaking in Slav accents, seemed to be playing a sinister game rather than a ruse de guerre.
The foreign-financed medical service, with their experienced and dedicated doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers, played almost as great a part as the International Brigades. Thus American medical aid had six hospitals in Spain, British medical aid, five. In these units, pacifists could serve the cause without a bad conscience, as could poets without military training. It was in one such unit that the best of the English poets of the day, W. H. Auden, served as a stretcher-bearer. But he went home ‘after a very short visit of which he never spoke’.1 Later, in June, a dependants’ aid committee was formed in Britain for the welfare of the families of British volunteers in Spain. This was organized by Charlotte Haldane. Her secretarial staff were all communists, but the body was sponsored by uncommitted persons such as the sixty-year-old Red Duchess of Atholl (then a conservative MP, who later ruined herself politically by her championship of the republic),2 Sir Norman Angell, Victor Gollancz, Professor Harold Laski, Sean O’Casey, H. G. Wells, and Sybil Thorndike; along with some social democratic labour politicians, such as Attlee or Emmanuel Shinwell.3 Meanwhile, the United States government, in search of the purest neutrality, promulgated regulations which prevented the gathering of funds for either of the two Spanish parties, unless these were for bona fide relief purposes. But none of the twenty-six bodies which registered under these arrangements was refused a licence, and much money was found.
22. Division of Spain, March 1937
What was the reason for the passionate interest in the Spanish cause by so many who knew little of Spain before 1936? Virginia Woolf, when her nephew, Julian Bell, went to Spain, wrote:
I keep asking myself, without finding an answer, what did he feel about Spain? What made him feel it necessary, knowing, as he did, how it must torture Nessa [his mother] to go?… I suppose it’s a fever in the blood of the younger generation which we can’t possibly understand. I have never known anyone of my generation have that feeling about a war … And though I understand that this is a ‘cause’, can be called the cause of liberty and so on, still my natural reaction is to fight intellectually; if I were any use, I should write against it … Perhaps it was restlessness, curiosity, some gift that had never been used in private life and a conviction, part emotional about Spain … I’m sometimes angry with him; yet feel it was fine, as all strong feelings are fine; yet they are also wrong somehow; one must control feeling with reason.1
The answer to Virginia Woolf’s question was that men such as Bell saw the Spanish war as a microcosm of European discontents, a way of fighting fascism, whether or no that dark cloud had reached their own land. Spain also assuaged a longing for action widely felt among the young for whom the civil war seemed, unlike the war of 1914–18, just.
35
On 22 March 1937, Franco put new plans to his air chief, General Kindelán. The front of Madrid would be reorganized defensively. Mola would embark on a campaign against the Basques, and would receive the bulk of the nationalist aviation and such artillery as could be spared.1 This plan represented a stern realization that Madrid could not immediately be taken, and that the war could not be won quickly, even though, as a result of a vast recruiting campaign, the nationalists under arms would soon approach 300,000 men.2 The republican northern territories were a tempting prize: not only were they politically divided and less well supplied than the centre, but they included the iron in the Basque country, and the coal in Asturias, as well as steel and chemical plants.3
In Mola’s army, an essential role was played by the newly organized Navarre Division, whose men had been active in Guipúzcoa the previous year. This division comprised 18,000 men divided into four brigades led by Colonels García Valiño, Alonso Vega, Cayuela and Latorre. They were by now a match for the other older shock units of ‘Foreign’ legionaries (among whom some ex-anarchists and leftists were to be found, proving their loyalty by exposure to danger).1 Many thought that Bilbao could be taken within three weeks of the start of operations. For Mola knew the deployment of his enemies, through the treachery of Major Alejandro Goicoechea, a Basque officer who had taken part in the building of Bilbao’s defences, the so-called ‘ring of iron’, and who had driven over to the nationalists in his motor-car early in March.2 No doubt he also knew something of the lack of contact and understanding between the Basques and the republican government in the centre: the Basques were, after all, fighting for independence, not for the revolution or for Spanish democracy. Furthermore, the ring of iron consisted of two lines about 200–300 yards apart, lacking depth and protection on the flank, and standing on the hilltops without camouflage.
Some days before the Basque war began, a sea-fight occurred outside Bilbao which was a rehearsal of what was to follow. A merchant ship laden with war material for Bilbao was intercepted by the nationalist cruiser Canarias five miles from the shore. Three small Basque trawlers fought the cruiser until they had lost two-thirds of their crew and had been almost shot to pieces. Of this struggle, the English poet Cecil Day-Lewis, then a communist, wrote his celebrated narrative poem, ‘Nabarra’, beginning:
Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage
Of statesmen, the tyrant’s dishonoured cheque, or the dreamer’s mad
Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made
In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage
But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed.
Mola’s offensive began on 31 March. The attack was directed in the field by General Solchaga. The monarchist friend of Germany, General Vigón, was Mola’s chief of staff and the well-educated Colonel Martínez de Campos was chief of the artillery, with 200 guns.
23. The campaign in Vizcaya, March–June 1937
The Navarrese brigades were established between Vergara and Villarreal, on the borders of the two Basque provinces of Vizcaya and Alava. They were heavily armed. Together with them was a new unit, the Black Arrows, numbering 8,000 Spaniards with Italian officers, headed by Colonel Sandro Piazzoni. In support, 80 German aircraft were assembled at Vitoria, and another 70 Italian and Spanish planes at other northern nationalist aerodromes.1 The nationalist fleet, including the old battleship Jaime I, the cruisers Canarias and Almirante Cervera, and the destroyer Velasco, could establish, with many smaller vessels, an effective blockade.
The republican Army of the North was still commanded by General Llano de la Encomienda, the loyal commander of the army in Barcelona in July 1936. He was pessimistic of victory since, though his charge covered the republican forces along the Cantabrian coast, there was still no unity among the Basques, Asturians, and Santanderinos, nor even the pretence of it. The commissar-general of the army was the Asturian socialist González Peña: the commissar in the Basque country, the communist deputy Jesús Larrañaga; in Asturias, the anarchist Francisco Martínez; and in Santander, Antonio Somarriba, a socialist. Thi
s coalition did not work. Even the communist Larrañaga was at the mercy of conflicting opinions, since the Basques distrusted him as a communist, the communists as a Basque who at home, unlike Aguirre, spoke Basque. The inspector-general of the Army of the North, General Martínez Cabrera, the recently dismissed chief of staff in the centre of Spain, did not have a good name. Largo Caballero had privately assured the Basques that the Army of the North did not really exist and that he recognized the Basque army, the ‘army of Euzkadi’ which was nominally a part of Llano de la Encomienda’s command, as the main military organization in the north of Spain.1 Llano de la Encomienda had been forced to the humiliation of sending a telegram asking the Prime Minister whether that was indeed so. He moved his headquarters to Santander in February and had little thereafter to do with the day-to-day business of the campaign. His troops altogether theoretically numbered 150,000. In theory, too, he had over 250 pieces of artillery, but they were divided, with 75 in Vizcaya, 130 in Asturias and 50 in Santander. He had a few T-26 Russian tanks, and a few Renault tanks from France, but these were fewer than those of their opponents. Against the strong nationalist navy, the republic in the north could call on only two destroyers offshore and three submarines. The Basques had only about 25 to 30 aircraft. Republican bombers in the centre of Spain had too short range to help the northern battlefield and most were not moved. (Some fighters, however, were soon dispatched.) The equipment of the armies of the north was not as good as it might have been, considering that the republic controlled the arms factories of Trubia, Eibar, and Reinosa, the munitions and explosive plants of Galdacano, Guernica and La Manoya, not to speak of the several steel plants of Vizcaya. But levels of production had fallen, not risen, in the war.