The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  The republic, despite appearances, was not beaten. A show of working-class unity was once more patched up.1 On 18 March, the UGT and CNT had signed an agreement marking a further retreat from anarchism. Industry would be subject to central economic planning. Collectivization henceforth would be voluntary. The UGT agreed to try to persuade the government to cease trying to dissolve existing agricultural collectives, and to support workers’ control in those industries which desired it. Both unions agreed that their tasks were to promote greater production. In fact, collectivization was still everywhere giving way to state control. The government increasingly appointed ‘mediators’ as supervisors of those concerns still run by committees of workers. The economics ministry would then try to provide such concerns with the raw materials which they needed.

  The same degree of collaboration between the Catalans and the central government still did not exist: a letter from Companys to Negrín dated 25 April catalogued grievances. The leading one was that, though the enemy had penetrated Catalan territory, there was no Catalan in the supreme war council. The army fighting on the Catalan front was commanded by Castilians. Nor were documents relating to the conduct of war sent to the Generalidad (as they had been in the time of Largo Caballero). Companys demanded that the Catalan statute should be amplified to deal with war needs. He received no answer to this letter and matters continued as before.

  Administrative arrangements for the bisection of the republican territory, long feared, were now being put into effect. The International Brigades’ base at Albacete was transferred to Barcelona. A submarine mail service was established between Barcelona and Valencia, along with a passenger and freight service. Republican leaders regularly flew over the rebel lines. The consequences of the bisection were thus less serious than might have been supposed. Daladier’s new French government (which in April succeeded Blum’s second short-lived administration)1 also opened the canals of south France to enable the republic’s vessels to pass from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

  The collapse of the Aragon front had brought to a head yet one more crisis in the republic which had been grumbling for months. In some ways a problem in personal relations, the clash between Negrín and Prieto was a matter of temperament. But that in itself went to the heart of the divisions, ideological and political, which beset the uneasy republican coalition. The difficulty was that, by this time, communist policy, however effective in organizing professional Spain and the remains of the liberal bourgeoisie to fight against fascism, had drained much of the spirit from the republic: Orwell, writing in February 1938, had explained that, on his return to England after fighting with the POUM, ‘a number of people had said to me with varying degrees of frankness that one must not tell the truth about what was happening in Spain and the part played by the communist party because to do so would be to prejudice public opinion against the Spanish government and so aid Franco’. Orwell added that he did not agree since he held ‘the outmoded opinion that in the long run it does not pay to tell lies’.1

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  Yet the war was far from over. It is true that the recent nationalist advances had won huge tracts of valuable territory. In the Pyrenees, Generals Solchaga, Moscardó, and Yagüe had advanced as far as the river Segre and its tributary, the Noguera Pallaresa, which runs up to the French border. They had, however, to leave for weeks one republican division unconquered under Antonio Beltrán, nicknamed ‘El Esquinazado’ (the Dodger), in the Valle del Alto Cinca, near the frontier.1 The course of the river Ebro from the junction with the Segre to the sea presented a natural line of defence for Catalonia upon which the republicans swiftly improved by fortifications. At the mouth of the Ebro, the Italians, frustrated of their desire to be first of nationalist troops to the Mediterranean, were held up at Tortosa till 18 April. Though the town then at last fell, the Italian troops were good for fighting for a while. On the south side of the nationalist salient to the sea, their advance was also slowed. Here Varela sought to press down from Teruel across the dull plain of the Maestrazgo. A breach of the republican lines was made at the first assault. But the weather changed to continuous rain. This helped the defenders, who were also reinforced by new weapons, especially fighters and anti-aircraft guns—part of the consignment brought in from France. The advance was halted altogether on 27 April. On 1 May, in one more attempt to clinch the victory which had seemed so short a while ago to promise so brightly, General Aranda mounted a new assault twenty miles to the east of Varela and fifteen miles from the Mediterranean. In between Varela and Aranda, General García Valiño led a mobile force to press forward whenever the two flanks were held. But along all three lines of advance, the fighting was hard. The slow pace of the advance caused new political murmurings inside nationalist Spain. These were not staunched by news of a successful bombing raid by thirty-four bombers of the Condor Legion on the port of Cartagena which further damaged the republican fleet’s low morale.

  A thwarted hope of triumph manufactures resentment. Franco was criticized by his comrades for not attacking Catalonia. Yagüe, speaking on 19 April at a falangist banquet at Burgos, commemorating the anniversary of the unification, praised the fighting qualities of the republicans and termed the Germans and Italians ‘beasts of prey’. He also said:

  In the gaols, comrades, there are thousands and thousands of men who suffer. And why? For having belonged to a party or to a syndicate. Among these men there are many honourable and hard-working people who, with a little kindness, might be incorporated into the movement. We must be generous, comrades, we must have a great soul and know how to forgive. We are strong and we can permit ourselves this luxury. I ask the authorities … to look again at these people’s dossiers and, in returning these men to their homes, return to them also benevolence and tranquility, so that we can banish hatred.

  He pleaded too on behalf of the unfortunate Hedilla and the old shirts in gaol, ‘the initiators of our movement’.1 This generous speech resulted in Yagüe’s temporary relief of his command of the ‘Army of Morocco’. He had hoped for a fascist ‘rejuvenation’ of Spain but, instead, the septuagenarian Martínez Anido controlled home affairs, the Italians were bombing Barcelona, and the war seemed to be going on forever. A fortnight later, the old shirts were antagonized anew by a decree which permitted the Jesuits to return, and which enabled them to behave virtually independently of any state sanction.

  It was in this atmosphere, superficially more hopeful for the republic, that, on 1 May, Negrín issued a thirteen-point declaration listing the war aims of his government. Negrín stipulated the need for absolute independence for Spain; the withdrawal of foreign military forces; universal suffrage; no reprisals; respect for regional liberties; encouragement of capitalist properties, without large trusts; agricultural reform; guaranteed rights of workers; the ‘cultural, physical, and moral development of the race’; establishment of the army outside politics; renunciation of war; cooperation with the League of Nations; and an amnesty. The programme, designed for its international propaganda value as well as a blueprint for mediation, was much more moderate than the programme of the Popular Front. Any constitutional politician of the lost age of innocence under the restoration could have subscribed to Negrín’s points. The CNT were not consulted beforehand, but the UGT-CNT committee of collaboration approved the statement warmly. The FAI did not, its ‘Peninsular committee’ (on which the cripple Escorza still exerted an influence) denouncing it as a return to the status quo before July 1936.1 Where now were the illusions lyriques, the uncompromising dreams of Durruti, Isaac Puente and the other leaders at the Saragossa conference of May 1936? Negrín’s government, at the end of April, was attempting to conciliate foreign capital, by decreeing the dissolution of the CNT’s hydro-electric combine and the return of the companies to their previous owners. (The companies, confident of Franco’s victory, ignored this.) But none of the points had a chance of winning approval from Franco, who had no intention of making concessions. While Franco lived, there was no cha
nce of securing the disappearance of the army from Spanish politics.

  It appears, nevertheless, that, almost from the time that he had become Prime Minister, Negrín, that subtle and elusive personality, had been attempting to achieve peace by negotiation. He had tried to make contact with the Vatican in August 1937.1 He had had meetings with the German ambassador in Paris, Count Welczeck, ex-ambassador to Spain. He also sought mediation through a cousin of Serrano Súñer. It is hard to blame Negrín for continuing the war when there was no alternative save unconditional surrender. From now on, Negrín placed his hopes in the outbreak of a general European war in which, he supposed, Spain’s troubles would be subsumed. Azaña, meantime, told Negrín that he had felt ‘since September 1936, a “dispossessed President”. When you formed a government, I believed, at first, I could breathe again, and that my opinions would be at least heard. It has not been so. I have to suffer in silence.’2 The two men continued to differ: Azaña continued to look backwards to speculate on where he had gone wrong in the early 1930s; Negrín, with no political past, continued to look forward. Negrín, with the day-to-day business of maintaining morale at the front, nerved himself to radiate optimism; Azaña, with little to do, could only bitterly reflect.

  Franco liked neither Negrín’s nor Yagüe’s ideas: ‘Whoever desires mediation’, he said, in a speech on 6 June, ‘serves the “reds” or the hidden enemies of Spain.’ He added, for good measure, that the war was the ‘coronation of a historic process of struggle of the fatherland against the “anti-patria”’, and to make peace now would ensure a new war later.3 A major press campaign was mounted in nationalist Spain against those who demanded mediation: ‘In the name of the destiny of Spain, its martyrs and heroes, the fatherland demands the unconditional victory of Franco.’

  The international prospects in the spring of 1938, unlike the military situation in Spain itself, were increasingly discouraging for anti-fascists. Chamberlain was pressing on to anticipate further German demands in central Europe, particularly in Czechoslovakia. On 16 April, he achieved his Anglo-Italian Mediterranean Pact. Italy undertook to withdraw her troops from Spain once the war was over. Though only then would the pact come into force, the two countries agreed to guarantee the status quo in the Mediterranean. Perth, noted Ciano, was moved. He said: ‘You know how much I have wanted this to come about.’ ‘It is true,’ added Ciano, ‘Perth has been a friend—witness dozens of reports which are in our hands.’ (The Italian butler in the British Embassy used to copy British telegrams for the benefit of Mussolini.)1 Azcárate sent a protest to the Foreign Office expressing horror that the exchange of letters between Italy and Britain should accept Italian troops in Spain till the end of the civil war.2 Pravda denounced the Anglo-Italian Pact as giving its blessing to Mussolini in ‘his war against the Spanish people’. Even Churchill echoed the same, in a letter to Eden: ‘A complete triumph for Mussolini, who gains our cordial acceptance for his fortification of the Mediterranean against us, for his conquest of Abyssinia, and for his violence in Spain.’ The conservative opponents of Chamberlain came, during the next weeks, to be almost republican sympathizers.3

  There was no sign whatever that Italy had any intention of keeping the Non-Intervention Agreement any more than in the past. Three hundred more Italian officers went to Spain on 11 April. For her part, Germany concluded that an early nationalist victory would prevent action over the volunteer plan. The foreign ministry, therefore, instructed their London Embassy to agree to any ‘formula’ that they could think of for the withdrawal of volunteers. Hitler wanted to withdraw his troops in Spain. The Austrian air force needed guidance, and ‘our soldiers cannot learn any more’.1 Franco suggested that the Condor Legion might be withdrawn, provided that the aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, and other equipment were left behind for the Spanish pilots, whom the Germans had trained to fly. Alongside this mood of German restlessness, the republic was able to profit for a time from a new French mood in the spring of 1938. The new Prime Minister, the dour Daladier, told the American ambassador in Paris, Bullitt, that he had opened the French frontier as wide as possible for the Spanish republican benefit. Russia, he said, had agreed to send three hundred aircraft to Catalonia, provided that they were transported across France. Daladier did this in large lorries, even though ‘he had to cut down trees along the roads of Aquitaine to let the wings pass’.2 Twenty-five thousand tons of war material crossed the Pyrenean frontier in April and May. No progress, not surprisingly, was made in the discussion which Daladier’s foreign secretary, Georges Bonnet, had begun with Italy, on the model of Chamberlain’s. The talks were broken off when, on 15 May, Mussolini announced that he did not know what could come of them, since the two countries were ‘on different sides of the barricades’ in Spain. Bonnet, however, was cautious. He proved to be no friend to the republic.

  On 13 May, Álvarez del Vayo again appeared before the Council of the League and demanded that those countries which, in October, had resolved that non-intervention should be reconsidered if it were not shortly made effective, should now enact that reconsideration. Chamberlain’s new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, pressed for a vote. He was anxious to concentrate on the crisis in Czechoslovakia.3 His private secretary, Harvey, whom he had inherited from Eden, wrote: ‘neither he nor Chamberlain had such an abhorrence of dictatorship as to overcome their innate mistrust of French democracy, and its supposed inefficiency’.1 Some delegations at Geneva, such as those of China and New Zealand, who might on this occasion have supported Spain, did not have time to consult their governments. When the vote came, on the same day that the matter had first been raised, only Spain and Russia voted for the resolution calling for action. Britain, France, Poland and Romania voted against, while the other nine states of the Council abstained. The abstentions reflected the increasing sympathy felt for the republic, because of the worsening position in Europe.

  There was some pressure upon the American government to end their embargo on arms to Spain. The columnist Drew Pearson remarked that ‘Washington has seen all kinds of lobbying … but seldom before has [it] seen people spend money to come from all over the country in a cause from which they would receive no material benefit’.2 The former republican secretary of state (and future secretary for war under Roosevelt), H. L. Stimson, and the ex-ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, signed a petition against the embargo. Einstein and other interested scientists joined the campaign. Resolutions were introduced in Congress proposing the end of the embargo by Representative Byron Scott and Senator Nye. On 3 May, the secretary of state, Cordell Hull, met his advisers in the state department to consider Senator Nye’s resolution.3 Hull and the officials agreed that they need not intervene to prevent the passage of the resolution. A planned ‘leak’ about this appeared in the New York Times on 5 May. Immediately, the new, Catholic American ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, telegraphed his alarm lest this measure should cause an extension of the civil war. The Catholics in the United States made passionate protests against help to ‘bolshevists and atheists’. Roosevelt, on a fishing holiday in the Caribbean, told Hull to delay and, when he returned to Washington, the decision to end the embargo was reversed. At the end of May, Hull told Senator Pittman that the Spanish Civil War was ‘more than a civil war’ and so could not be treated simply as such.1

  Litvinov was complaining in Geneva to Louis Fischer, still acting as arms purchaser for the republic: ‘Always defeats, always retreats.’ ‘If you gave them five hundred more aircraft, they could win the war,’ said Fischer. Litvinov protested that such a consignment would help Russia more in China than in Spain. He anyway had no aircraft. ‘I merely hand on diplomatic documents,’ he added. But he promised to ask his master. (This was a bad time for him: nearly all his ambassadors in the Russian foreign ministry had recently been arrested.)2 But, even if he had procured five hundred aircraft, it would have been difficult to get them to Spain. For, on 13 June, Daladier, under pressure from Britain, again closed the frontier.3 The months duri
ng which arms supplies could freely be brought to the republic were thus at an end, though, before the frontier was closed, Miles Sherover, the Polish-born businessman who was now purchasing agent in the US for the republic, and indeed general manager of the republican interests there, managed to ship substantial supplies through the so-called ‘Hanover Corporation’; most of these were lorries, cars and lorry engines.4 A month later, the first chamber of the French Court of Appeal decided that certain gold belonging to the Bank of Spain, which had been deposited in France at Mont de Marsan, belonged to ‘a private society’ and could not therefore be made use of by the republic. This was another reverse, though some material continued to pass.

  On the nationalist side, new Italian forces were being dispatched to Spain, from 1 June onwards. Ciano assured Millán Astray and a party of Spanish pilots visiting Rome that, ‘notwithstanding all committees, Italy will not abandon Spain until the nationalist flag is flying from the loftiest towers of Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid’.1 Given that mood in Rome, it was scarcely surprising that the British government soon had, reluctantly, to return to the ‘Spanish question’. On 18 May, the House of Lords had discussed the Anglo-Italian Agreement; the Foreign Secretary, Halifax, had said of the Italian undertakings: ‘We … do accept these assurances and believe that they will be honourably carried out.’2 But this remark was followed by further nationalist bombing of republican Spain. There were raids on Valencia and other Mediterranean coast towns, none of which had much in the way of anti-aircraft guns.3 On 2 June, Granollers, a town of no military significance, twenty miles north of Barcelona, was bombed. About a hundred people (mainly women and children) were killed. Halifax protested to Burgos and to the German ambassador in London, Dirksen, though he added ‘that he knew that this was a very delicate matter and he wished at all events to avoid creating any ill feeling in Germany’.4 Sir Nevile Henderson begged the head of the Foreign Ministry, Weizsäcker, to use his influence to secure an end of these attacks.5 Ciano was similarly approached by Perth. So was the papal secretary of state by the British minister to the Holy See. Ciano, bland as ever, promised to do what he could. (‘Actually,’ Ciano assured the new German ambassador Mackensen, ‘we have, of course, done nothing, and have no intention of doing anything either.’)6 Cardinal Pacelli explained that the Vatican was constantly using its influence in one way or another with Franco.7 Eventually, Britain proposed that a special commission should investigate such attacks, to see if they were really directed at military targets. None of the countries whom Britain approached (the US, Sweden, Norway, Holland) to share in the scheme was willing. Britain, therefore, sent two officers of her own to carry out the inquiry. Though they reported that the bombing must have been often aimed at non-military targets, nothing came of their conclusions.