by Hugh Thomas
The Basques had raised forty-six infantry battalions, totalling about 30,000. Of these, twenty-seven were Basque nationalists (known as gudaris), eight socialists, the remainder mixed communists, socialist-communist youth, left republicans, and anarchists. This army was attended by a corps of almoners, composed of eighty-two priests, whose duties, unique in the republican army, were to celebrate mass, to watch the gudaris’ morality, to be present at the last moments of the dying, and to ‘form the minds of the conscripts in the christian tradition’. There were also about ten battalions of Asturians, who were unpopular with the Basques due to their thefts of cattle, their seduction of local girls and even occasionally their murderous behaviour: thus the priest of Abadiano was apparently shot by the Asturians as they passed through.1
Mola issued a preliminary ultimatum reminiscent of the Athenians’ threat to Melos: ‘I have decided to terminate rapidly the war in the north: those not guilty of assassinations and who surrender their arms will have their lives and property spared. But, if submission is not immediate, I will raze all Vizcaya to the ground, beginning with the industries of war.’2
On 31 March, this threat, intended to have psychological importance, began to be put into practice. Junkers 52s of the Condor Legion bombed the country town of Durango, a road and railway junction between Bilbao and the front. One bomb killed 14 nuns in the chapel of Santa Susana. The Jesuit church was bombed at the moment the priest was communicating the Body of Christ. In the church of Santa María, the priest was killed while elevating the Host. The rest of the town was machine-gunned. 127 civilians, including 2 priests and 13 nuns, were killed that day, and 121 died later in hospitals.1
Durango had previously been known as the town where Don Carlos had decreed, in 1834, that all foreigners taken in arms against him should be executed without trial. From 1937, it enjoyed the equally cruel renown of being the first defenceless town in Europe to be mercilessly bombed.
The same day, after heavy and well coordinated air and artillery bombardment, the nationalist Colonel Alonso Vega advanced on the right of the front to capture the three mountains of Maroto, Albertia, and Jarindo. North of Villarreal, in the centre of the front, violent fighting occurred in the suburbs of Ochandiano. This battle continued until 4 April. Forty to fifty aircraft bombed the town each day. The Navarrese nearly encircled it. Terrified of being cut off and so falling alive into the hands of the enemy, the Basques withdrew, leaving six hundred dead. Four hundred prisoners were taken. After 4 April, there was a pause in the offensive, due to heavy rain. Mola reorganized his troops for the next phase of the campaign, which had already seemed likely to be longer than he had at first prophesied. General von Sperrle complained.2
The Basques fortified their new positions, and made further adjustments to the ring of iron. The tactical use of aerial bombardment, however inaccurate, had caused much alarm, and increased hatred for Germany. More men were mobilized, and some further war material arrived, so that, by 10 April, the Basques had 140 pieces of artillery.3 The arrival of General Goriev, the outstanding Russian officer in Spain, as military adviser, with some other Russian personnel, did not, however, seem to improve matters, despite that soldier’s high reputation in Madrid.4
On 6 April, the nationalists announced that they would prevent food supplies from entering republican ports in north Spain.1 The British steamer Thorpehall, with a cargo of provisions for Bilbao from Santander, was accordingly stopped five miles offshore by the nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera and the armed trawler Galerna. Eventually, the Thorpehall was allowed to pass, since the nationalist vessels showed a disinclination to quarrel with two British destroyers, HMS Blanche and Brazen, which hastened to the scene.
This event raised in an acute form the whole matter of blockade. In the early part of the war, the republican government had declared a blockade of certain nationalist ports. The British had considered that the declaration applied to too large a territory and, ‘in order to be valid,’ blockade ‘had to be effective.’2 Thus, if a Spanish warship had stopped any merchantmen on the high seas, Britain would have regarded the action as incorrect. British ships would have to be protected against such interference. Britain furthermore only recognized a three-mile limit off the coast, whereas Spain insisted on six miles. The complexity of the situation was such that naval orders were amended so often as to place an intolerable burden on junior officers.
The new nationalist action exacerbated the complexity of the position of the British government. By international law, a blockade (including the right of search on the high seas) could be carried out by recognized belligerents. But because they did not wish to subject British merchantmen to search by Spanish naval vessels, Baldwin and his ministers were opposed to the recognition of the two Spanish warring parties as belligerents. The situation was further complicated by the fact that many foreign vessels flew British flags to try to avoid detention and secure protection. As the British cabinet were aware, many merchantmen were ‘virtually blockade-runners who took the risk for the high freights’.1 But the nationalists now had command of the seas. If, therefore, belligerent rights were granted, it would be nationalist naval vessels which would mostly be doing the intercepting, and British merchantmen which would mostly suffer. But if belligerent rights were not accepted, British ships would be entitled to ask for the aid of the Royal Navy if they were interfered with (outside the Basque territorial waters). How much less trouble, therefore, it would be if there were no British merchant ships going to Basque ports at all!
This last reflection, perhaps made subconsciously, probably disposed the captain of HMS Blanche and the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet to conclude that the nationalist blockade was effective. Sir Henry Chilton reported the same from Hendaye. There were similar reports: not only was the nationalist navy outside Bilbao able to prevent the entry of all merchantmen; but Basque territorial waters were mined. Thus (reported Chilton and the Navy) it would be dangerous for British merchant ships to try to enter Bilbao. Inside the three-mile limit, of course, the Royal Navy had no right to protect merchantmen. So the Admiralty instructed all British merchant vessels, within a hundred miles of Bilbao, to repair to the French fishing port of St Jean de Luz, and to await further orders. The following day, Chilton was told by Major Julián Troncoso, the nationalist military governor of Irún, on instructions from Burgos, that Franco was determined to make the blockade effective. The voyage of four British merchantmen known to be bearing food cargoes and now at St Jean de Luz would, in particular, be prevented by force. Meantime, more mines would be laid across Bilbao harbour.2 This determined statement reached London on the morning of Saturday, 10 April. It caused Baldwin to summon the cabinet for Sunday. Back from their weekends, then came to London, among others, Duff Cooper, secretary of state for war, Sir Samuel Hoare, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, and Eden, the Foreign Secretary. As a result, the Board of Trade ‘warned’ British ships not to go to Bilbao, and intimated that the Navy could not help them if they tried to do so. The Admiralty also sent the battleship Hood, pride of the fleet, to ‘somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bilbao, in order that the British forces in that region might not be inferior to those of General Franco’. Baldwin explained, to an angry House of Commons on the following Monday, that there were risks against which it was impossible to protect British shipping.1 The government was concerned less with the abstract principle of the freedom of the seas than the important matter of the 60,000 tons of iron ore which normally Britain imported from Basque ports.2 In fact, the ports themselves of northern Spain were free of mines and there was reason to suppose that they would continue to be, for mines would hinder the nationalists’ own use of the ports in the event of their victory. But the approaches to the ports had been mined.
Throughout the following week, there was uproar in Westminster. All that spring, Spain had been an incessant topic for question-time and for debates on foreign affairs. Eden and his lieutenant, Cranbor
ne, had been hard pressed both by labour and liberal sympathizers of the republic and by the handful of conservatives who supported the nationalists. Had the government heard of the arrival of new Italian divisions at Cádiz? How many Russians were there at Madrid? How many British volunteers had been killed? To these questions, the government had professed ignorance of exact information. They had also been carrying on secret negotiations with the nationalists so as to ensure for themselves the produce of British-owned mines in the rebel zone.3 Now the British interest in Spain reached a climax. Eden defended non-intervention, in a speech at Liverpool:
A broad gain remains. The policy of non-intervention has limited and bit by bit reduced the flow of foreign intervention in arms and men into Spain. Even more important, the existence of that policy, the knowledge that many governments, despite all discouragement, were working for it, has greatly reduced the risks of a general war.4
Privately, Eden ‘definitely wanted the republic to win’.5 On 14 April, Attlee moved a vote of censure. The British government, the greatest maritime power in the world, had given up trying to protect British shipping; yet the Basques had said that the mines in Bilbao harbour had been cleared, and that at night Basque armed trawlers (aided by searchlights) protected the port. Where did the government gain its information of the dangers? Did it do so from ‘those curious people, our consular agents, who seem so silent on the question of Italian troops landing’? Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, next argued that if British ships were to be allowed to go to Bilbao, there would have to be mine-sweeping. That would constitute ‘a full dress operation of war’. Sir Archibald Sinclair, the liberal leader, argued that the government’s acceptance of the nationalist blockade spelled intervention. The Germans, after all, he said, recalling incidents of the winter, had always looked after their ships. Churchill spoke next, and, reiterating his Olympian detachment from either side in the war, indulged in a daydream of mediation through ‘some meeting in what Lord Rosebery once called a “wayside inn”, which would give the chance in Spain of peace, of law, of bread and of oblivion’. Then indeed these ‘clenched fists might relax into the open hands of generous cooperation’. Harold Nicolson, for the National Labour party, described the refusal to risk British ships in Basque waters as a ‘bitter pill. It is not pleasant. It is a potion which is almost nauseating’, but it had to be accepted. The Labourite Philip Noel-Baker suggested that it was the first time since 1588 that the British seemed to have been afraid of a Spanish fleet. Eden ended the debate by saying that, if British merchant ships were to leave St Jean de Luz, and so disobey the Board of Trade, they would be given naval protection as far as the three-mile limit. ‘Our hope is that they will not go, because, in view of reports of conditions, we do not think it safe for them to go.’1
The masters of the merchantmen at St Jean de Luz were growing impatient. Their cargoes (for which they had been paid handsomely)2 were rotting. Three vessels, all commanded by Welsh captains named Jones (therefore differentiated from their cargoes as ‘Potato Jones’, ‘Corn Cob Jones’, and ‘Ham and Eggs Jones’), gained notoriety by pretended attempts to set out from port. ‘Potato Jones’, whose cargo concealed weapons and whose motives were material, gained a sudden, if unmerited, reputation, from a series of breezy answers to a reporter of the Evening News, as a rough salt in the Conradian tradition. But it was not he (he eventually delivered his goods in Valencia) who broke the Bilbao blockade. First, the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson, a restless apologist for Russia, and now the republic, sailed from Bermeo, near Bilbao, to St Jean de Luz on a French torpedo boat without mishap; and told the Manchester Guardian so. Then the Seven Seas Spray, a merchant vessel with a cargo of provisions from Valencia, sailed out of St Jean de Luz, at ten o’clock at night on 19 April, ignoring messages from the shore. Her master, Captain Roberts, turned a blind eye to the warnings of a British destroyer ten miles off the Basque coast. The captain of the destroyer told Roberts that he must proceed at his own risk, then wished him luck. In the morning, the Seven Seas Spray reached Bilbao, without having seen either mines or nationalist warships. As this vessel moved slowly up the river to dock, the captain and his daughter standing on the bridge, hungry people from Bilbao massed on the quay, and cried, ‘Long live the British sailors! Long live Liberty!’
The British Admiralty now admitted its former error. For the truth about Bilbao was as Attlee had described it in the debate: the blockade was ineffective.
Other ships moored at St Jean de Luz, therefore, set out for the Basque country. One of these, the MacGregor, while ten miles out, was ordered to stop by the nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera. The MacGregor sent an SOS to HMS Hood. Her commander, Vice-Admiral Blake (who had disbelieved in the story of mines), requested the Almirante Cervera not to interfere with British ships outside territorial waters. The Almirante Cervera replied that Spanish territorial waters extended six miles. Admiral Blake said that Britain did not recognize this claim, and told the MacGregor to proceed, if she wished. The MacGregor did so. A few yards short of the three-mile limit, the armed trawler Galerna fired a shot across the MacGregor’s bows. HMS Firedrake ordered the Galerna not to attack a British ship. From the coast, the Basque shore-battery loosed a salvo, and the Galerna withdrew. No further attempt was made to prevent British shipping from arriving at Bilbao, although the blockade continued.
What was the explanation of this curious incident in the history of shipping? Eden was no doubt telling the truth when he told the House of Commons, in passing, on 20 April, that ‘if I had to choose in Spain, I believe that the Basque government would more closely conform to our own system than that of Franco or the republic’. (In his memoirs, Eden later wrote that ‘from the early months of 1937, if I had to choose, I would have preferred a government victory’.)1 But the Admiralty and Sir Samuel Hoare, who desired to avoid all trouble with Franco, gave incorrect information to the cabinet. Some at least of the Admiralty’s information derived less from a careful examination of the facts than from the nationalist warships themselves. The Daily Telegraph of 20 April published an interview with a nationalist, Captain Caveda, who remarked how pleasant it had been to work with the British fleet ‘on questions arising from the blockade of Bilbao’. Sir Samuel Hoare seems to have been pleased to accept the false information and to act precipitately upon it.
On 20 April, a new nationalist advance began in Vizcaya. When the artillery and aerial bombardment had ceased, and the Basques came up from the shallow trenches in which they had sheltered, they heard the Navarrese machine-guns from the rear. Once more, as at Ochandiano, the cry was ‘we are cut off’. Many defenders retreated while they still could. Before the village of Elgeta, however, among the lion-shaped hills of Inchorta, good deep trenches had been dug. Led by the militia Major Pablo Belderraín, the Basques here held off the attack. But two CNT battalions withdrew. This defection completed the collapse. The Basque commanders now longed to retreat to the prepared trenches of the ‘ring of iron’. Constant bombing blocked roads and prevented movement. The general staff in Bilbao displayed a laxness that brought accusations of treachery. On 24 April, all the heights on that section of the front chosen for the offensive fell to the colonel in command of the 1st Navarrese Brigade, Rafael García Valiño. Belderraín had to fall back from Elgeta. An atmosphere of panic persisted. Artillery did not know where to fire. Trenches were evacuated. General defeat for the Basques thus seemed imminent six days after the renewal of Mola’s offensive. A new crisis now, however, followed: Guernica.
Guernica was a small town of the Basque province of Vizcaya, lying in a valley six miles from the sea and twenty from Bilbao. With a population of 7,000, it seemed at first sight to fit undramatically into a hilly countryside of friendly villages and isolated farmhouses. It had been badly damaged by the French in the Peninsular War. It had nevertheless been celebrated, since before records began, as the home of Basque liberties. For the ‘parliament of Basque senators’ used to be held before Guern
ica’s famous oak tree while, in the church of Santa María, the Spanish monarchs, or their representatives, used to swear to observe Basque local rights. (The oak was also a sanctuary for Basque debtors in the old days.) On 26 April 1937, Guernica lay ten miles from the front, and was crowded with refugees and retreating soldiers.
At half-past four in the afternoon, a single peal of church bells announced an air raid. There had been some raids in the area before, but Guernica had not been bombed. There were no air defences of any kind. At twenty minutes to five, a single Heinkel 111 (a new fast German bomber, with a metal frame, capable of carrying 3,000 pounds of bombs), flown by Major von Moreau, bombed the town, disappeared and returned with three other similar aircraft.1 These Heinkels were followed by three squadrons of the older spectres of the Spanish war, Junkers 52s—twenty-three aircraft—some new Messerschmitt BF-109 fighters2 and some older fighters, Heinkel 51s. The fighters were to escort the bombers but also to machine-gun at a low level all whom they saw. Incendiary, high-explosive and shrapnel bombs together weighing 100,000 pounds were dropped by several waves of aircraft. Forty-three aircraft altogether took part, the Junkers being led by Lieutenants von Knauer, von Beust and von Krafft.
The centre of the town was left destroyed and burning. The Basque parliament house (casa de juntas) and the remains of the famous oak, lying away from the centre, nevertheless remained untouched.3 So was the arms factory outside the town. Many people, perhaps as many as a thousand, were killed, though subsequent events make it impossible to be quite certain how many.1 Many others were maimed or injured in other ways. It is possible that some Italian aircraft joined in the last stages of the bombing.
This story was attested by all witnesses, including the mayor of the town, and the British Consul, as well as by foreign correspondents—principally English—who were in the Basque country at the time.2 But Luis Bolín, still the chief of the foreign press at Salamanca, said on 27 April that the Basques had blown up their own town.