The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  The republican offensive across the Ebro naturally caused gloom in nationalist Spain. Defeatism was talked, even at Burgos. The falangists were murmuring against both Franco and Martínez Anido. Stohrer reported scenes between Franco and his generals, ‘who do not carry out attack orders correctly’. The Generalissimo was as alarmed by the Czech crisis as Negrín was elated. The possibility of a general war, and one which he might have to fight against France, caused him to send 20,000 prisoners to work on border fortifications, in the Pyrenees and in Spanish Morocco. No one told Franco the Führer’s intentions. German aid temporarily stopped in mid-September, due to their needs in central Europe. The Marqués de Magaz, nationalist ambassador in Berlin, was admittedly assured, on 19 September, that there would be no changes in German policy to Spain, even if war did come.1 But, a week later, Franco was still angry. Were Spanish ports needed by Germany for supply?2

  The General Assembly of the League, meantime, assembled, for the last time, as it turned out, at Geneva. Negrín and Alvarez del Vayo once more put the Spanish case. They left behind them the war at its grimmest. For, after the capture of Corbera, the battle of the Ebro had become an exercise in endurance. The front remained stationary, though active, until the end of October. Negrín himself (unknown to the communists, as to the Basques or Catalans) now embarked upon a new project of compromise. On 9 September, when ostensibly in Zurich with his conference of physiologists, he secretly met an emissary of Hitler (probably Count Welczeck, the German ambassador in Paris) in the Sihl forest outside Zurich.3 But there was no possibility of compromise while Franco was in power. Ten days later, Mussolini, nevertheless, concluded that a mediated peace in Spain was inevitable, and that he would thus lose his ‘4 billion lire of credit’.4

  The Duke of Alba, the nationalist agent in London, was told at the Foreign Office that the French would take no action against Spain in a general war if Franco were to declare himself neutral. Otherwise, if war came, there would be an immediate attack on Morocco and across the Pyrenees. Franco made the declaration desired of him.5 ‘Disgusting!’ remarked Ciano, ‘enough to make our dead in Spain turn in their graves!’1 In pursuance of the same policy, the Generalissimo also announced, as a sop to France, that no German and Italian units would be permitted within eighty miles of the French frontier. Franco was usually realistic.

  The conference of Munich followed. The fate of Czechoslovakia is well known. As for Spain, Mussolini (roaming the room with ‘his hands in his pockets’, as Ciano described him, ‘his great spirit always ahead of events and men … He has already passed on to other things’) told Chamberlain that the swift withdrawal of 10,000 men would ‘create the atmosphere’ for the start of the Anglo-Italian Agreement. He added that he was ‘fed up’ with Spain where he said (untruthfully) that he had lost 50,000 men, and was weary of Franco, who had thrown away so many opportunities of victory. Chamberlain, delighted with his success in ‘solving’ the Czech problem, suggested a similar conference to ‘solve Spain’. The two sides could be called on to observe a truce, while the four Munich powers would help to work out a settlement.2 News of this leaked, and caused the republic to fear that it was about to suffer the same fate as Czechoslovakia. Franco did not like the idea either.

  Hodgson, the British agent in Salamanca, told Stohrer, however, that Britain was intending to mediate in Spain.3 Stohrer had himself questioned whether compromise might now not be in Franco’s favour, when his troops were being ‘bled white on the Ebro’. But the Generalissimo himself, sitting next to Stohrer at dinner on 1 October, talked only of the Führer’s triumph at Munich. He was silent when the ambassador suggested that the ‘Czech method’ might be the model for the solution of other international questions.4 On 2 October, Negrín (distressed by Munich and the evidence it offered for the weakness of the old democracies)5 broadcast a speech declaring that Spaniards must come to an understanding with each other. He demanded publicly whether the nationalists desired to carry on war until the country was destroyed. The speech made clear to the world for the first time Negrín’s aspiration to seek a negotiated peace. But Hodgson’s attempts—aimed at ‘compromise, with the appearance of complete victory’—were as unfruitful as all similar proposals had been. On 4 October, Schwendemann, at the Spanish desk in the Wilhelmstrasse, admitted that Germany’s ‘negative aim’ of preventing a communist Spain could be achieved by compromise. So could their economic interests. But, he added, ‘a strong Spain leaning towards Germany’ could only be secured by Franco’s victory.1 On 6 October, Jordana repeated to Stohrer that a compromise would mean that the whole civil war would have been fought in vain. The republic must capitulate.2 A nationalist pamphlet published in Paris declared that ‘the civil war itself was caused by the attempt at mediation between the rival forces of Spain embodied in the republic’.3 Far from considering compromise, Franco was demanding from Germany shipments of 50,000 rifles, 1,500 light and 500 heavy machine-guns (one month’s German production of machine-guns), and 100 75-millimetre guns. These, he assured the Germans, would give victory. The Germans were willing, on condition of the formal recognition of all their mining rights. But the matter was not agreed until November.4

  After Munich, Stalin had meantime despaired of being able to arrange an alliance with France and Britain against Hitler. From then on, Russia toyed increasingly with the only other solution open to her to avoid being involved in war: friendship with Hitler, at the democracies’ expense. It was a policy which Stalin had probably contemplated as a possibility, even at the most enthusiastic moment of the Popular Front.5 This change had an effect on the Spanish war. Russian spokesmen had suggested that they would be pleased to withdraw from Spain.6 Hence Stalin’s agreement that, before the final understanding in the Non-Intervention Committee on volunteers, the International Brigades should be withdrawn.1

  The role of the Brigades was now over. They had ceased to be effective propaganda for the republic, and the seasoned men who had been the early brigaders had mostly been killed, or had left Spain. A majority of those in the Brigades were now Spanish, some volunteers, but some of them men from prison, work camps, and disciplinary battalions. Several even of the officers in command of foreign volunteers were also Spanish. The 15th Brigade, for example, was led by the Spanish Major Valledor.2 Admittedly, Colonel Hans Kahle, leader of the first International Brigade in Madrid in 1936, was still in action, in command of a division at the front. But his troops, like those of his colleague, the equally experienced General Walter, were Spaniards. Even the Lincoln Battalion comprised a three-to-one majority of Spaniards.3 Thus Negrín was able, without military risk, to propose at Geneva, during the Munich crisis, the withdrawal of all foreign volunteers in republican Spain. He asked the League to supervise this step. In so doing, he demonstrated his contempt for the Non-Intervention Committee, and gave a fillip to the spirits of the League. The secretary-general of the League, the usually cold anglophile Avenol, was unable to repress his delight. ‘A master-stroke!’ he exclaimed, when meeting Azcárate in the corridors of the Palais des Nations. On 1 October, it was agreed that the League should supervise the withdrawal, through a commission of fifteen officers, headed by a general. Russia now diminished her propaganda appeals on behalf of the republic, but she continued to send military equipment, in diminished quantities. With the French frontier closed once again, it was difficult to make sure that any aid would arrive. The sea route (even that between Marseilles and Barcelona) was impracticable.

  The grim battle of the Ebro continued. Franco prepared his main counter-attack. On the republican side, ‘Resist—Resist’ continued to be cried by the commissars. The battle was still going on when the International Brigades were withdrawn. Their last action was on 22 September, when the 15th Brigade went into battle for the last time. The British Battalion once again suffered heavy casualties. The son of the American writer Ring Lardner, who had been among the last Americans to enlist, was killed in this battle.1 At a parade of farewell to the Brigades at Barcelo
na on 15 November, Negrín and La Pasionaria spoke words of thanks. La Pasionaria’s speech revived for a moment all the ideals of those who had cared so much for the Spanish cause in the heroic days. First, she addressed the women of Barcelona:

  Mothers! Women! When the years pass by and the wounds of war are staunched; when the cloudy memory of the sorrowful, bloody days returns in a present of freedom, love, and well-being; when the feelings of rancour are dying away and when pride in a free country is felt equally by all Spaniards—then speak to your children. Tell them of the International Brigades. Tell them how, coming over seas and mountains, crossing frontiers bristling with bayonets, and watched for by ravening dogs thirsty to tear at their flesh, these men reached our country as crusaders for freedom. They gave up everything, their loves, their country, home and fortune—fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, sisters, and children—and they came and told us: ‘We are here, your cause, Spain’s cause is ours. It is the cause of all advanced and progressive mankind.’ Today they are going away. Many of them, thousands of them, are staying here with the Spanish earth for their shroud, and all Spaniards remember them with the deepest feeling.

  Then she addressed the assembled members of the Brigades:

  Comrades of the International Brigades! Political reasons, reasons of state, the welfare of that same cause for which you offered your blood with boundless generosity, are sending you back, some of you to your own countries and others to forced exile. You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy’s solidarity and universality. We shall not forget you, and, when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves again, mingled with the laurels of the Spanish republic’s victory—come back!1

  The parade heaved with controlled emotion: it was true, surely, as Pietro Nenni reflected, that, all unknowing, they had ‘lived an Iliad’.2 The crowds cheered beneath large photographs of Negrín, Azaña—and Stalin. Flowers were thrown. Slightly less than half the 10,000 volunteers then in the International Brigade began to leave by boat and rail for France, for home, wherever it might be. The League of Nations Commission, led by the Finnish General Jalander, the British Brigadier Molesworth, and the French Colonel Homo, counted 12,673 foreigners in the republican forces. By mid-January, 4,640 men of 29 nationalities had left Spain. Of these, 2,141 were French, 407 British, 347 Belgian, 285 Poles, 182 Swedes, 194 Italians, 80 Swiss, and 54 Americans. Another 6,000—Germans, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Hungarians—remained, knowing that their homes would not welcome them, to be engulfed in the catastrophe in Catalonia, perhaps to encounter hardships greater than they had known in the war.3

  One other commission was also in Spain during this, for democrats, distressing autumn. In October 1937, the republic had proposed to the British that they should negotiate the exchange of those Spanish civilians who desired to leave nationalist territory, for nationalist prisoners in republican hands. A commission led by Field-Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode, a hero of the First World War, latterly commander-in-chief India, was arranged to visit Spain to effect a general exchange of prisoners, though Chetwode was not allowed to set off till September 1938. The commission was not successful. It secured several small-scale exchanges, such as that of 100 British prisoners in nationalist hands for 100 Italians held by the republic. When Sir Philip returned to London at the end of the war, he claimed that he had persuaded the republic to stop executing their prisoners and that he had gained the remission of 400 death sentences by General Franco. The latter achievement appears genuine, the former less so, since the republican government had already promulgated a law banning executions.1

  On 30 October, the nationalist counter-offensive began on the Ebro. The point of attack was the one-mile-wide northern stretch of the Sierra de Caballs just east of Gandesa. For three hours after dawn, the republican positions were subjected to bombardment by 175 nationalist and Italian batteries, as well as over a hundred aircraft. A hundred republican fighters made no impression upon this aerial armada. Then the Army Corps of the Maestrazgo under García Valiño went into the attack. Mohammed el Mizzian, with the Navarrese of the 1st Division, captured republican positions abandoned during the bombardment. The battle on the heights of the Caballs continued all day, but, by night, these mountains were in nationalist hands, including nineteen fortified positions and the republican defence network. The nationalists claimed 1,000 prisoners and 500 dead, as well as 14 aircraft. The loss of the Caballs was a terrible blow to the republic, since the Sierra commanded the whole region.

  Worse was to follow. On the night of 1–2 November, Colonel Galera, an officer who had begun the war as a commander of Regulares, stormed the Pandols, the only high point remaining to the republic. On 3 November, advancing through the village of Pinell, he reached the Ebro. The right flank of the nationalist army had now achieved its objectives. On 7 November, Mora la Nueva on the riverbank fell. The nationalists launched a massive attack towards the hill known as Mount Picosa. In this sector, the republic had entrenched itself with skill. After the fall of Mount Picosa, the pressure of the nationalist armour convinced the republic that the battle of the Ebro was as good as lost. By 10 November, only six republican batteries remained west of the Ebro. With deliberation, the last republican defence points were abandoned. The hill village of Fatarella fell on 14 November, to Yagüe. The last stages of the conflict were delayed by the first snows of winter falling upon a battlefield which had earlier been rendered intolerable by the heat of summer. On 18 November, Yagüe entered Ribaroja, the last republican bridgehead. The intrepid Anglo-Saxon reporters, Hemingway, Buckley, Matthews, and Sheean, were among the last to cross the river, Hemingway rowing hard in a small boat.1

  Controversy reigns over the number of casualties in this battle. Both sides probably lost about 50,000 to 60,000, with deaths numbering 6,500 among the nationalists, and probably between 10,000 and 15,000 among the republicans. Both lost many aeroplanes, the republic between 130 and 150—which they could not replace.2

  The same day that the last republicans left the right bank of the Ebro, 16 November, the Anglo-Italian Agreement came into being, now that the 10,000 Italians, of whom Mussolini had spoken at Munich, had been withdrawn from Spain. The Italians remaining in Spain would be about 12,000 men of the Littorio Division, consisting of picked men, to be commanded by the temperamental and fascist-minded General Gambara. Berti, who had been a successful commander, and Piazzoni (the ‘Papa of the Black Arrows’) were withdrawn. There remained pilots, the tank corps, and artillerymen, as well as officers and NCOs to command four mixed divisions of Spaniards.3 Ten thousand returning men were welcomed at Naples on 20 October. King Victor Emmanuel and the populace greeted them without warmth. But Ciano soon forgot his consequent annoyance when he received from Franco, as a souvenir, a painting by Zuloaga of The Oldest Requeté, with a pleasant background of war and flames.1 Chamberlain now judged that the long-sought Anglo-Italian Agreement could come into force.

  A fortnight later, in the House of Commons, Eden recalled how Lord Perth had said, when the agreement was signed in April, that a settlement of the Spanish question was a ‘prerequisite’ for its entry into force. Now, Eden said, there had been no such settlement, only an arrangement at the expense of Spain. Such a remark was shown to be justified when, in the House of Lords, on 3 November, Halifax announced that Mussolini had ‘made plain that, whether Britain approved or not of his reasons, he would not be prepared to see Franco defeated’. The previous day, the Spanish Civil War had even flared up in the North Sea. Seven miles off Cromer, a nationalist armed merchantman, the Nadir, sank the Cantabria, a steamer used by the republic for food supplies.2 Eleven British ships, furthermore, had been attacked in republican ports during the month of November; yet now, on 16 November, here in Rome was Lord Perth ‘moved’, as the master-toady Ciano put it, at this last act in appeasing Italy.3

  48

  At the end of the battle of the Ebro, nationalist morale had naturally again risen. It was sustained by press, radio
and literary campaigns, which continued to drench the country in half-fascist, half-monarchist and wholly Catholic propaganda. The paintings of Sáenz de Tejada, for example, or Teodoro Delgado, seemed a right-wing parody of those staunch, clench-fisted, forward-looking workers and fighters seen on republican posters. Radio Nacional de España, directed by the falangist Antonio Tovar, had a different objective, since it was aimed at the secret nationalists or Fifth Column in republican Spain, as much as at the enemy.1 Expansively entitled journals such as La Ametralladora (The Machine-Gun), Jerarquia (Revist Negra de la Falange) (Hierarchy), or Vertice (The Vertex) published the cartoons, poems, stories, arguments, and drawings of the new régime’s new or rediscovered artists and writers, for a large audience. The purges of civil servants, schoolmasters, university professors and doctors continued, as more and more territory was captured. ‘The prisons’, wrote the German ambassador, Stohrer, ‘are overflowing as never before. In the prison here [i.e., at Salamanca], which is intended for forty persons, there are supposed to be about 1,800 at the present.’1 In September, the nationalists announced that they had taken 210,000 prisoners since the war began, of which 134,000 were at ‘liberty’—usually in the army, or some kind of ‘national service’. The rest were dead or in prison. There were bouts of executions of so-called spies, one running into several hundreds.2 The Falange and the clergy grumbled at each other, though they did not openly quarrel. The cult of José Antonio, begun on the second anniversary of his death (20 November 1938), had no effect on this. But despite his Jesuit training, Serrano Súñer had not successfully bridged the gap between these two departments of Spanish society. The final text, for instance, of the new Secondary Education Law of 20 September 1938 seemed an uneasy compromise between Falange and church: one hour a week was for ‘the patriotic formation of youth’, while there would be two hours’ religious teaching. Whereas Catholicism was declared ‘the essence of Spanish history’, of the two foreign languages which could be studied, one could be either German or Italian. But in general the Catholics, through their leadership in the ministries of justice and education (the Conde de Rodezno and Sáinz Rodríguez), won where religion was concerned: all secular rights were cancelled, the state was tied to Catholicism, and non-Catholic churches were given few facilities.3 A nuncio, Monsignor Cicognani, had come to Spain to replace the apostolic delegate, Monsignor Antoniutti, in June 1938, while the nationalist ambassador in Rome was the lawyer José Yanguas Messía, who had been foreign minister under Primo de Rivera. One more man of the old directorate thus found himself being used in the new tyranny.