The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  Franco had few political difficulties but his régime did have some with his allies. Admittedly, the Italians in Spain established good relations with the Spaniards. Common temperament and similarity of tongue made for frequent close associations, including illegitimate children and marriages. Nevertheless, the Mixed Brigades of Italians and Spaniards, much used after Guadalajara, all met difficulties from a reluctance of the Italians to give up pasta, and difficulties over language in commands.2 Ciano’s secretary, Anfuso, returned to Rome in mid-October to tell his master that the Italian troops in Spain were tired, and that Franco could hardly wait for them to leave, though he needed Italian artillery and aircraft. Ciano supposed that the Generalissimo ‘must be jealous of our success’.3 The arrogance of the Italian officers, however, especially in San Sebastián, angered all Spaniards with whom they came into contact. There was also a squabble in respect of the bill for the two submarines sold by Italy to Spain, which had not been paid.4 These difficulties, however, were smoothed over by the dispatch of 100,000 tons of Spanish steel to Italy.5 But Mussolini was still owed 3 billion lire for war material at the end of November, with no prospect for an early settlement of the debt.6 He told Ribbentrop on 6 November

  We have established at Palma a naval and an air base: we keep ships permanently stationed there and have three air fields. We intend to remain in that situation as long as possible … Franco must come to understand that, even after our eventual evacuation, Mallorca must remain an Italian base in the event of a war with France [so that]… not one black African will be able to cross from Africa to France by the Mediterranean route.7

  Presumably this assurance in respect of a European war assuaged the Duce. There was, indeed, now also a nationalist naval base at Palma, directed by Admiral Moreno, concerned with preventing Russian ships reaching Spain. The three nationalist cruisers were based at Palma, as were four destroyers bought in Italy, and the old Velasco; three gunboats, two minesweepers, the two submarines bought from Italy and the Italian ‘legionary’ submarines. This base in the coming year was able to assure General Franco an almost complete naval blockade of the republican coast. There were also in Palma some fifty aircraft: a squadron of Heinkels from the Condor Legion, an Italian group of Savoias and Fiat fighters, and a Spanish squadron.

  The nationalists had some difficulties too with their German friends. These were not personal ones, for the latter usually kept to themselves. The Condor Legion lived in a special train, which they moved from front to front to avoid having to mix with Spaniards. They might occasionally sally out to reserved tables in restaurants, or special brothels, but few of them knew Spanish. The instructors in military academies became better acquainted with Spain.

  Germany was now affording to the nationalists credit of 10 million reichsmarks a month, of which 4 million was for war materials, 5½ million for other exports, and 350,000 cash credits. There was no sign that the Spaniards were in any hurry to pay these debts. Also, German financiers were fearful lest Britain should buy the iron. The officials of HISMA and ROWAK, under Bernhardt’s influence, had been concentrating their attention on the Montana project, designed to guarantee to Germany a steady supply of Spanish minerals. The project aimed at German control of seventy-three Spanish mines. A new German ambassador, the Baron von Stohrer (who succeeded the unpopular Faupel), advised that German interest in Spain must be ‘the deep penetration’ into agriculture and mining. The former question solved itself since, whatever happened, Spain would have to find a market. The mines, on the other hand, were more difficult. Upon them, all German diplomatic, military, and cultural efforts had to be based.1 ‘The solution’, he added, ‘would have to be forced, if it could not be obtained by reasonable means.’ On 9 October, however, a decree issued by the Spaniards nullified all titles to mines obtained since the start of the civil war. The Germans anxiously asked the meaning of this. Nicolás Franco (who was still in office then) replied that only a fully fledged Spanish nationalist government could conclude so important a matter as the Montana project. Nothing now was done. Göring and Bernhardt became impatient.1 Impatience changed to suspicion when Britain, the rival in peace and the probable enemy in war, exchanged diplomatic agents with Franco—for commercial reasons: for Sir Henry Chilton retired, leaving the chargé in Valencia, John Leche, to be named minister with the republic. Sir Robert Hodgson (whose knowledge of Spanish and experience as an official agent in Russia in 1921 recommended him for the difficult post) went to Burgos on 16 November as agent.2 The British cabinet hoped that, in addition to looking after commercial interests, Hodgson’s mission would secure information about German and Italian military experiments.3 The Duke of Alba went to London in a complementary capacity. Eden did not want to receive Alba and only consented when the Spaniards demanded his reasons—which he did not give.4 (After some months, Alba and his staff became diplomats, at least legally: in March 1938, the Duke was excused from a legal requirement to take a driving test, on Foreign Office application.)5 Furthermore, in November, a British naval vessel, the Galatea, made a courtesy visit to Beigbeder, high commissioner of Morocco, and the red and gold flag was thus hoisted onto a British ship: a similar thing had also occurred in Palma. On 2 December, Stohrer complained to Franco that England had received concessions from Spain, and demanded an explanation, for Germany wanted the lion’s share of the ore of Bilbao and Asturias, as well as freedom to buy scrap. Otherwise, she would have to ‘re-examine her attitude’ to the Spanish nationalist government. Franco described the German allegations as ‘fabrications’, saying that he was surprised that Britain paid so little attention to Spain. The delay over the Montana project, said Franco, was due to his lack of copies of previous laws, of archives, and of trained officials.1 Still, the question of a formal contract was left to mañana.

  At the New Year, Franco received a personal message from Mussolini. The Duce wanted to continue to send Italian aid, but could it not be used in accordance with its quality—in engagements in which decisive results could be expected?2

  The Baron von Stohrer was, meantime, telling Berlin that, if Franco were to win by military methods, Germany would have to send not only more material, but many more technicians and officers with general staff training.3 Ciano was worried. ‘Either we strike the first blow,’ he mused on 14 January, ‘or skilfully disengage ourselves, and rest content with having inscribed on our banners the victories of Málaga and Santander.’4 By the end of the month, an air of frenzy had come over Ciano—preoccupied as he was with Hitler’s designs on Austria, and his master’s more distant ones on Albania. ‘We must’, he wrote, ‘get to the end of the Spanish adventure.’

  In Burgos, the German diplomats argued about their mines. Gómez Jordana told Stohrer on 25 January that he had to stand by old laws in dealing with the matter because ‘the mentality of the Spanish people is such that it tends to call members of previous governments to account for its actions … One never knows what might happen,’ he added, with the wisdom of an old monarchist. Sangroniz—this was before his appointment to Caracas—told the ambassador the next day:

  I want to tell you that it was not correct to arrange the matter as Germany wanted to do. It was a psychological error to alarm and, in a sense, mobilize the interested parties, and the entire Spanish administration, by the purchase of numerous mining rights. This aroused opposition, which would not have appeared if Germany had purchased only a few to begin with.1

  The Germans and Italians were not the only ones who, on the orders of their governments, as much as from their own will, came to nationalist Spain to fight. Some volunteers—there were probably 1,000 of them in the winter of 1937–8—came from Portugal and, from the ranks of the restless Right in the rest of Europe, others came too, anxious to fight against communism, or for religion, or monarchy, or the ‘immense salutary revolution’ that one of the characters in the French fascist Drieu la Rochelle’s novel Gilles saw the Francoist cause to be.2 These included French camelots du roi such as the Baron de la
Guillonière, who had enlisted with the Carlists and who died in Vizcaya; or Colonel Bonneville de Marsagny, who, with a number of White Russians, enlisted in the Legion; and one or two Englishmen or Irishmen, some remaining from O’Duffy’s ill-fated blue shirts, some volunteers on their own.3 The dedicated Priscilla Scott-Ellis went from England to nationalist Spain to work as a nurse.4 There were also volunteers from Spanish America. Finally, there were the Moroccans, whose role in the nationalist army continued to be important.

  Confident, ruthless, and contemptuous of the enemy, nationalist Spain was, however, challenged by the republic in the course of the winter of 1937, in a way no one had thought possible.

  43

  Where the new politicians among the nationalists were dreaming of fascist innovation inspired by the remote past, the old statesmen of the republic exchanged doomed memories. Where did it all go wrong, would it have been different if Alcalá Zamora had not been President, was it the fault of Lerroux? The nationalists were optimistic; pessimism was widespread in the republic.

  Azaña had been gloomy since the war began. By the autumn of 1937, he believed defeat to be inevitable and had begun even to discuss, with old collaborators such as Martínez Barrio, what ought to be done in such circumstances. Mexico might be friendly, but one could not imagine the emigration there of a million or two million republicans or socialists. France might close the frontier. ‘For lack of a far-sighted policy, are we to remain here, abandoned to the horrible reprisals of the rebels?’ Martínez Barrio believed that, for the working class, if all were lost, the defeat would be a temporary setback and, in one way or another, they would pursue their class interests: ‘For the republicans, it would be the end of everything, since one cannot imagine that, in twenty or even thirty years, a liberal republic will return to Spain; and thank God if we can find a corner of the world in which to finish our lives.’ It was all very well to speak of a Numantian spirit but, at the last minute, the ‘Numantinos’ would disappear.1 Azaña was looking for peace, but a real peace; ‘Because, one does not have to rack one’s brains to imagine a funereal peace reigning over Spain after the defeat of the republic, and the execution of the republicans.’ Thus Azaña spoke to Giral. All these politicians found themselves contemptuous of, but uncertain how to treat, the ‘unquenchable optimism’, as Giral put it, of Negrín. Azaña, Martínez Barrio, Prieto, perhaps all the ministers, except for Negrín and the communists, believed that the republic could now not win the war militarily, but they realized that they could not abandon those millions of Spaniards who supported the republic to their fate. The persecution after the end of the fighting in the north, Azaña and Martínez Barrio agreed, was a prefigurement of what would happen in the rest of Spain, if the republic failed to negotiate peace.

  Many older republicans were even gloomier: Nicolau d’Olwer, the first finance minister of the republic in 1931, now thought that what suited Spain best was a régime such as that of Primo de Rivera. ‘What would happen’, Pi y Súñer, the Catalan councillor for education, wondered nervously, ‘if the nationalists were to make a tremendous offensive with all their forces and enter Catalonia? Have the general staff envisaged that?’ Martínez Barrio thought that appeals to fight ‘to the last man and to the last peseta’, had less and less appeal. Everyone was tired of the war, thought Giral, a tireless foreign minister who brought efficiency to a ministry which Álvarez del Vayo had left in such disorder that, to begin with, Giral had had, he said, to look in the newspapers for details of the British control plan (Azaña reassured him such things were a ‘tradition of the house’).2

  Prieto too was weary of the war, of the politics of socialism, of his new enemies and his old enemies alike: ‘I don’t care if the two parties merge or not,’ he once told Hernández and Uribe, speaking of the socialists and communists, ‘because once the war is over, in whatever way, I have resolved, if I save my skin, I shall conclude my political life once and for all. I will take a passage in the first boat which sets out for the furthermost Spanish-speaking country.’1

  Negrín, with his ‘tranquil audacity’, alone had any hope. He believed that a compromise peace could only be achieved if there were a plainly visible possibility of victory. The French frontier was now open to the passage of arms, due, Negrín believed, to his own diplomacy. A good linguist and well-travelled man, he saw the salvation of the republic in Geneva, Paris or London. His association with Azaña was complicated, but the constitutional relationship was not easy. In the autumn of 1937, they seemed personal friends. The two agreed on policy towards Catalonia, and towards the CNT, but, while Negrín was the motor of the war effort, Azaña was only a gilded observer, his role limited to disputing with Negrín over nominations for appointments. Years before, when dining with Azaña and Araquistain, Negrín had said that Spain ‘required a dictatorship under democratic rules which would prepare the people for the future’.2 Now he had his chance to put this idea into effect. He governed by decree. Decrees had to be counter-signed by Azaña. That did not ensure the survival of democracy, for there was no means of challenging the government, save by the use of pressure groups. The occasional meetings of the Cortes were lifeless. The press, in Azaña’s admission, appeared written all by the same hand, usually ‘combative and untutored’.3

  Negrín’s first priority was to end the geographical disunion of the republic. By late 1937, much had been done in this respect, but the civil governor of Cuenca could still complain that his province was like the Rif: ‘there are no roads, no telephones. I cannot get into touch with many pueblos. The province is roamed by columns of irregular militiamen.’ Two of this governor’s predecessors had fled their posts, afraid for their lives. A number of anarchist columns battened on the pueblos, making no contribution to the war. The governor began his tenure of office camping in an official residence from which all the furniture had been stolen.4 General Hernández Saravia found, if anything, a greater confusion a little to the north, when he took over the command at Teruel, with his new Army of the Levante.

  The greatest challenge to republican authority was still that offered by the Catalans, although the ‘normalization’ of life in Catalonia had gone on throughout the year: as councillor for the interior in the Generalidad, Antonio Sbert had gone far to re-establish good standards of public order, while Pi y Súñer (councillor for education) and Bosch Gimpera (councillor for justice but in charge of higher education) revived the rule of reason in their respective spheres, despite brushes with the central government. All sentences of death by any court were now reviewed by the government. Courts of justice, high courts, courts of appeal, the College of Lawyers, the College of Public Notaries, the Registry General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages were all operating. A restoration of bourgeois standards, such as had driven socialists and anarchists to revolution? No doubt, but now more and more people were realizing, too late, that the old, despised bourgeois republic was the best friend that they would ever have.1 Sentences given in 1936 were reconsidered, while the crimes of the early days of the war began also to be investigated, to the fury of the CNT, who found such prominent anarchists of the revolutionary summer as Eduardo Barriobero, Aurelio Fernández and even Sánchez Roca, García Oliver’s under-secretary when minister of justice, under interrogation and even in gaol.2 The communists also complained when the Catalan police interrogated members of the PSUC. Vidiella, the communist councillor for labour, protested that the police could not investigate such ‘revolutionary acts’. Nevertheless, they continued to do so, though communists found it easier to escape retribution than anarchists did.

  Still, Catalonia remained a state within a state. Azaña could not forgive the Catalans’ capture, when the republican government had been so weak, of so many undertakings which belonged to the Spanish state;3 and Negrín believed that the intervention of that Spanish state was essential if Catalan industry were to make its maximum contribution to the war effort. As it was, despite Companys’s subsequent assurances in a long letter of 13 December,
Catalan industry was well below the levels that it had attained in 1936.4 Even the metallurgical sector of industry, which had experienced a spurt forward in the winter of 1936–7, had fallen back in 1937–8 below that level which it had reached in the worst years of the depression. The overall index of industrial production in November 1937 was scarcely half that of June 1936.1 The figures in the war industries could not be compared with pre-war indices, but in almost every sector the production was less than it could have been, and in most instances far less.2 Shortage of raw materials and the irregularity of supply, as well as a market shrinking with every rebel victory, was responsible, while Comorera, the communist councillor for industry, had ensured that the Catalan government delegate played a bigger and bigger part in all factory committees. Negrín was, however, determined to settle the problem of authority once and for all and, with the support of Azaña, though against the arguments of the communists, decided to move the seat of government from Valencia to Barcelona.3

  This was done in the autumn of 1937, with deliberate lack of consideration for Catalan susceptibilities. Negrín requisitioned buildings of his choice as ministries, ignored Companys’s offers to provide accommodation, and avoided all contact, written or personal, with him. He even stopped Companys from going to the opera by denying him a seat in the presidential box at the Liceo. Negrín established himself in the Pedralbes Palace, while Azaña followed him back to the Catalan capital.