by Hugh Thomas
Casualties at Teruel are difficult to estimate. It seems that the nationalist relief army lost about 14,000 dead, 16,000 wounded and 17,000 sick during the fighting. Those within numbered 9,500 and were all dead or prisoners by February. Republican casualties are practically impossible to estimate but it would be surprising if they were less than half as much again as those of their enemies.1
Among those surrounded in Teruel were El Campesino and the 46th Division. They managed, however, to force their way out through the enemy lines. This bearded man of action later claimed that he was left in Teruel to die by Lister and Modesto, his rivals among the communist commanders. He also reported that Teruel itself was starved of ammunition by General Grigorovich, and allowed to fall, in order to discredit Prieto.2 Lister, on the other hand, alleged that El Campesino fled the battle.3 This dispute, no longer military but political, rumbles on across the years, and is difficult to resolve. El Campesino had a bad memory, but his communist rivals often had bad consciences.
The fighting in early 1938 was accompanied by bombing raids on Barcelona. On 6 January, Prieto proposed an agreement banning the aerial bombardment of rearguard towns on both sides. The nationalists replied that Barcelona would be bombed unless its industries were evacuated. Then Seville and Valladolid were bombed by the republicans on 26 January. These raids were against Prieto’s instructions, being ordered by Hidalgo de Cisneros.4 They caused a nationalist raid on Barcelona on 28 January, killing 150. This air attack was launched by Italians from Majorca without consulting any Spanish commander. With satisfaction, Ciano read a melodramatic account of the raids: ‘I have never read a document so realistically horrifying. Large buildings demolished, traffic interrupted, panic on the verge of madness, five hundred wounded. Yet there were only nine Savoia 79s, and the whole raid lasted one and a half minutes.’1
There was also now a new burst of submarine activity in the Mediterranean, carried out by the two nationalist submarines bought from the Italians. On 11 January, the Dutch merchantman Hannah was sunk. Two unsuccessful attempts were made on British ships on 15 and 19 January. On 1 February, the British ship Endymion, with a cargo of coal for Cartagena, was torpedoed and sunk, ten lives being lost, including that of the Swedish non-intervention observation officer on board. The Endymion was a known smuggler, having offered to carry coal to the nationalists also. But Eden told Grandi that the British Navy reserved the right to destroy all submerged submarines in its patrol zone. This had some effect, and, for a time, no further sinkings were reported. Sporadic aerial attacks continued on merchant ships. The Admiralty nevertheless established a degree of friendship with Admiral Moreno, the commander of the nationalist fleet, at Palma, who told them where the ‘legionary’ and the nationalist submarines were at work.2
The international scene, never still, was, meantime, changing fast in the spring of 1938. The indecision of the Non-Intervention Committee seemed the only constant. Lord Plymouth, in reply to Franco’s suggestion that belligerent rights should be granted after 3,000 ‘volunteers’ were withdrawn, proposed it after the withdrawal of three-quarters of them. But Plymouth was not inclined to be hasty. The German representative Woermann (Ribbentrop’s understudy) described the work of the committee in late January as
unreal, since all participants see through the game of the other side, but only seldom express this openly. The non-intervention policy is so unstable, and is such an artificial creation, that everyone fears to cause its collapse by a clear ‘no’, and bear the responsibility. Therefore, unpleasant proposals are talked to death, instead of rejected. It proved tactically clever to bring up belligerent rights at the same time as volunteers [he added], since that made it possible to drag out the discussion again and again.1
Woermann thought Britain was interested in the volunteers’ scheme only because it seemed the best way of removing Italy from the Balearics. Volunteers, he comforted his superiors, could not be withdrawn before May—and further delays would always be possible. Thus, with justified bitterness, the English communist Edgell Rickword satirized the committee in his poem ‘To the Wife of Any Non-Intervention Statesman’:
Permit me, Madam, to invade,
Briefly, your boudoir’s pleasant shade:
Invasion, though, is rather strong,
I volunteered, and came along.
So please don’t yell or make a scene
Or ring for James—to intervene.
The German foreign ministry replied to Woermann with equal cynicism. German policy was to prevent a republican victory (not necessarily to secure a nationalist one). Its aim was to gain time, deferring ‘for as long as possible the time when we might have to commit ourselves to a fundamental decision’.2
Lord Plymouth, the indefatigable peace-maker, soon presented new ideas for the withdrawal of volunteers. The powers should choose between a proportionate and a numerical withdrawal. 20,000 or 15,000 men might represent a figure to be regarded as ‘substantial’.3 Grandi and Woermann commented politely. More important talks were now going on in London than these, between Grandi, Eden, and Chamberlain. It became clear that these were indeed three-sided. Relations between Eden and Chamberlain had been bad since the latter’s damper, in Eden’s absence in January, to President Roosevelt’s plan for a general conference for peace.4 Eden desired to make negotiations for an Anglo-Italian Agreement conditional on the withdrawal of at least some volunteers from Spain. Chamberlain thought that that would waste too much time. On 18 February, Grandi refused to discuss separately the volunteers in Spain. He suggested ‘general conversations’ in Rome which would also discuss British recognition of the Italian empire in Abyssinia. Chamberlain agreed. Eden did not. So the latter resigned, with his under-secretary of state, Lord Cranborne, on the 20th, to the delight of Ciano and Mussolini—and also (according to Ciano) of Lord Perth.1
Shortly afterwards, on 6 March, the republic received the unexpected encouragement of a victory at sea. The main nationalist fleet, led by the cruisers Baleares, Canarias and Almirante Cervera, were sailing past Cartagena, at midnight on 5 March, in convoy with some merchant ships, on their way south from Palma. The republican cruisers Libertad and Méndez Núñez, and the destroyers Lepanto, Sánchez Barcáiztegui, and Almirante Antequera, under the direction of Captain González Ubieta, came broadside against this overconfident nationalist force. The republican destroyers loosed torpedoes and left the scene. The Baleares was hit amidships and blew up. HMS Kempenfelt and Boreas, on non-intervention patrol nearby, picked up 400 out of the 1,000 who were aboard and took them to the Canarias. The nationalist admiral, Manuel Vierna, went down with his ship, accompanied by 726 officers and men.2
Franco was preparing his next offensive into Aragon. The attacking army would be commanded by Dávila, with Franco’s staff adviser, Colonel Vigón, as his chief of staff. Solchaga, Moscardó, Yagüe, and Aranda would command army corps, and so would the Italian General Berti. Divisions under García Escámez and García Valiño, now recognized as the outstanding younger commanders, would form the reserve. Varela, with the Army of Castile, would hold himself ready in the wings of the general attack, at Teruel. The Condor Legion also held itself in readiness. As for the German tanks, Franco wanted to parcel them out among the infantry—‘in the usual style of generals who belong to the old school’, von Thoma scornfully recalled. ‘I had to fight …’ he said, ‘to use the tanks in a concentrated way.’1 But the nationalists had nearly two hundred of them and, as it happened, tactics scarcely mattered.
The attack, preceded by heavy artillery and aerial barrage, began on 7 March. The best troops of the republic were weary after Teruel. Their material was exhausted: half the men lacked even rifles. The Aragon front was broken at several points on the first day. The republicans had anticipated a new deadlock as after Brunete. Their front line troops had had no combat experience. Yagüe advanced down the right bank of the Ebro, sweeping all before him. On 10 March, Solchaga’s Navarrese won back Belchite. The 15th International Brigade were th
e last out of that dead town which fell easily, despite fortifications specially designed by the Russian Colonel Bielov (‘Popov’), who turned out more of an NKVD specialist than an engineer.2 The Italians encountered momentary stiff resistance at Rudilla, and then, with the Black Arrows leading, broke through the line. ‘It is full speed ahead,’ crowed Ciano in Rome.3 Lister wanted to cover his own responsibility by shooting some of those who commanded troops falling back. Since they were communists, this matter came up, it seems, at discussions within the communist party. The sentences were carried out, an Italian communist, Marcucci (‘Julio’), killing himself in Madrid in protest or perhaps in fear that, by his complaint at the central committee, he would himself be killed.4 Aranda had to endure harder fighting, before breaking through, on 13 March, to capture Montalbán. The defence had, however, hardly begun. Rojo named Caspe as its centre and there assembled all the International Brigades. But, even as he did so, news arrived of the Italian approach towards Alcañiz. Even where republican units fought effectively, they were obliged to fall back, due to the collapse of the units next to them. The rout appeared absolute. Desertions were frequent. Overhead, Heinkel 111s, with new Italian Savoias, bombarded the retreating republicans. These were protected by Messerschmitts and low-flying Fiats, with the help of Dornier 17 reconnaissance planes. Innumerable prisoners were taken, divisional commands were surrounded. General Walter narrowly escaped capture at Alcañiz. Marty came to the front, held a council of war of leading international communists but, despite some reorganization of commands (a Russian officer, Mikhail Kharchenko, took over the 13th Brigade), did nothing to stem the flood.1
On 16 March, three nationalist divisions, commanded by Barrón, Muñoz Grandes, and Bautista Sánchez from Varela’s Army of Castile, surrounded Caspe. In the south, Aranda captured Montalbán. On 17 March, Caspe fell, after two days of heavy fighting, in which the International Brigades, including the 15th, rallying, performed prodigies of valour. By now, the nationalist armies were seventy miles east of their starting-point eight days before. Before the natural defences of the broad rivers Ebro and Guadalupe, they allowed a pause for reorganization. But, on 22 March, the offensive began again, this time in the north, against those lines before Saragossa and Huesca, which had been held since August 1936 by the Catalan army. All the familiar fortifications were lost in a day. Generals Solchaga and Moscardó launched five attacks on the eighty miles from Huesca to Saragossa in one morning. Huesca was relieved at last.2 Tardienta and Alcubierre fell. The next day, Yagüe crossed the Ebro and captured Pina, that pueblo where in 1936 Durruti had been frozen away by the silent hostility of the inhabitants. All those revolutionary Aragonese villages which, at the beginning of the war, had given birth to such a varied political anthropology now changed hands. Pursued by machine-gun fire from the air, the inhabitants of these collectives fled east, where they joined an all-too-familiar stream, with their cattle, chickens, and carts carrying furniture. For, if deserters were now chiefly men who left the republic for the rebels, the refugees from rebel victories were countless. On 25 March, Yagüe captured Fraga, and then entered the golden land of Catalonia. At Lérida, the next town, El Campesino’s division made a brave and militarily valuable stand for a week. To the north, Moscardó entered Barbastro. Further north still, Solchaga was pinned down in the Pyrenees. As they wound their way through the valleys, his columns presented an easy target to republican artillery and aircraft. To the south, however, Aranda, García Escámez, Berti, and García Valiño drove across the high plain known as the Maestrazgo, in southern Aragon, before preparing to advance to the Mediterranean. The fronts hardly existed. There were isolated acts of resistance by one or other of the republican units, as well as confusion, breakdown of communication, suspicion of treachery. Anarchist commanders (such as Miguel Yoldi, of the 24th Division) found themselves starved of munitions. Others (such as Máximo Franco, of the 127th Brigade) were arrested, due to communist distrust of anarchist leaders. Marty travelled about from headquarters to headquarters looking for traitors: he could not prevent the virtual disintegration of the International Brigades. There were arbitrary executions, sometimes of officers in front of their men, but usually, as a certain Captain Joaquín Frau put it, the ‘terror from enemy attacks from the air was greater than that inspired by the pistols of our own officers’.1 In general, the campaign seemed lost. It is unclear where the rout would end. While superior artillery and good leadership played its part in these rapid nationalist advances, air superiority was the most notable cause of victory. The plains of Aragon provided easy landing fields. Aeroplanes thus could carry out the onetime functions of cavalry in driving republican units from their positions, as in a charge. From these battles, the Germans learnt much about the use of fighters for the support of infantry; the Russians more reluctantly did the same.2
31. The campaigns in Aragon and the Levante, March–July 1938
On 3 April, Lérida and Gandesa fell to the nationalist armies. One hundred and forty British and American members of the 15th International Brigade were taken prisoner. The remains of the Brigade had however, held back Yagüe for several days, permitting regroupment and some withdrawal of material.
On 3 April, Aranda’s troops saw the Mediterranean. A few days later, the Italians almost reached the sea at the mouth of the Ebro. They were held up at Tortosa by stiff resistance from Lister. Colonel Gastone Gambara, in field command of the Italians, reported differences with the Spanish. Ciano for once agreed that his countrymen were not blameless. ‘So often Italian officers show a stubborn and provincial intolerance, explicable only by their ignorance of the world,’ he remarked.1 To the north, the advance of the nationalists continued into Catalonia. By 8 April, Balaguer, Tremp, and Camarasa had fallen. This cut Barcelona off from her hydro-electric plants in the Pyrenean waterfalls. The effect on the declining industry of Barcelona was severe. The old steam-generating plants of the city had to be put back to work. But no attack on Catalonia was launched: Franco diverted his main effort towards the sea. This was a strategic mistake. His decision was perhaps taken to avoid an extension of the conflict, for his intelligence is said to have reported the likelihood of French intervention if ‘the Germans’ should reach the Pyrenees.2 Even so, Yagüe knew that there was nothing much between himself and Barcelona. It was a blow to him, as to others, to have to turn away from the enemy capital. Still, on Good Friday, Alonso Vega, leading the 4th Navarrese Division, took Vinaroz, a fishing town known for its lampreys. He was thus able to make the sign of the Cross on the shores of the Mediterranean. His men waded out into the sea in exultation. The republic was cut in two. García Valiño’s forces turned north and cut off numerous republicans in the northern Maestrazgo. By 19 April, Franco held forty miles of the Mediterranean. This series of victories, following the anxious moments over Christmas at Teruel, did suggest that, as Serrano Súñer said in a speech on 3 April, ‘the war approaches its close’.3
45
The collapse of the Aragon front caused Negrín to fly again to Paris to demand that the French government reopen the frontier, closed since January, when the premier, Chautemps, had formed a government without the socialists. Originally, Negrín had wanted to say that the republic was about to launch a great counter-attack which, if well supplied by French and other foreign arms, could sweep back the enemy. He was talked out of that idea by Prieto, who thought that he should tell the truth, and say that only an instant delivery of arms could stave off defeat.1
Negrín arrived in the French capital at an opportune moment.2 For France, like the rest of Europe, was shaken by Hitler’s rape of Austria on 12 March, when those Junkers 52s which had played such an important part in the early days of the civil war, flew again, to carry German soldiers to Vienna.3 On 10 March, Chautemps’s ministry had fallen, for no good reason save that the Prime Minister did not like foreign crises. Blum formed his second government, with the enlightened Joseph Paul-Boncour as his foreign secretary. Chamberlain noted that the new French gov
ernment was one ‘in which one cannot have the slightest confidence’.1 It was certainly weak. It was also outspoken. Even the cautious René Massigli, political director at the Quai d’Orsay, had gone so far as to call non-intervention ‘a farce’.2 Pierre Comert, director of information at the same ministry, was overheard to say, ‘We will avenge Austria in Spain’.3 (Hitler had, however, told Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, that if he did not yield to German demands, Austria would become ‘another Spain’.)4 At a meeting of the French national defence committee, on 15 March, Blum suggested that the French send an ultimatum to Franco. This would state: ‘If, within twenty-four hours, you have not renounced the support of foreign forces, France will … reserve the right to take all measures of intervention which she judges useful.’ General Gamelin pointed out, however, that the general staff did not have a separate plan of mobilization for the south-west of France. Daladier said that world war would follow any French intervention in Spain. Léger, still secretary-general of the Quai d’Orsay, warned that intervention would be a casus belli for Germany and Italy, while Britain would break with France.5
On 17 March, the French cabinet agreed to Negrín’s request to open the frontier.6 Blum wept in sympathy with the republic as arms, purchased from Russia, private adventurers, the Comintern, and some in France herself, began to flow across the Pyrenean frontier into Spain. But further steps were rejected.7 The idea that a French motorized corps might go to the aid of Catalonia was rejected by the chiefs of staff when they realized that such a step would be accompanied by general mobilization. Blum was assured by Colonel Morell, the French military attaché in Barcelona, ‘Monsieur le Président du Conseil! Je n’ai qu’un mot à vous dire: un roi de France ferait la guerre.’1 But Ribbentrop was right when, on 21 March, he told the Italian chargé in Berlin, Magistrati, that France would not intervene in Spain without Britain’s support. (He doubted that Chamberlain ‘was bent on a policy of adventure’.)2