The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  The economic situation in nationalist Spain was a little less favourable than it had been a year previously. There was food for those who could buy it, but wages had not kept up with prices, despite the price control. Due to difficulties of transport, prices varied wildly from district to district. Inflation had brought prices up from a level of 164 in 1935 (with 100 in 1913) to 212 in 1938. Meat had increased some 80 per cent, vegetables, wine and oil nearly 50 per cent, and textiles about 40 per cent; wages had only risen about 20 per cent in general since 1935. Manufactured goods were almost non-existent, though production in essential industries had increased during 1938. The output of iron ore from Vizcaya, for example, reached 154,000 tons in 1938, in place of 115,000 in the last year of peace—a substantial increase too on what was produced in early 1937 under the Basque republic. Movement in the port of Bilbao increased by 50 per cent over peacetime.

  González Bueno, minister of syndical organization, had meantime set up a skeleton of new state unions (sindicales) throughout Spain. But ‘syndical’ control of labour and of the economy existed only on paper. The nationalist economy was, in the main, a banker’s one, with continuous governmental intervention, production stimulated by war, wages kept steady by terror. Share prices on the nationalist-held Bilbao stock exchange were rising; while, internationally, the nationalist peseta was quoted at 100 to the pound in late 1938, with the official rate still 42.50 (the republican peseta was then over 500 to the pound).

  The nationalist government, needing new war supplies badly, had, meanwhile, agreed to the German conditions for fulfilment of their latest request. German capital would be permitted to participate in Spanish mines to the extent of a basic 40 per cent. But 60 per cent would be permitted in one mine and 75 per cent in four others. These enterprises, grouped in the so-called ‘Montana’ project, of which the artful Bernhardt was still the chairman, concentrated on mines which were not working well at the time; the German interest in 1938 was an insurance against the day when Germany would not be able to make a direct exchange of weapons for ore.1 Bernhardt picked his Spanish partners well, so that he knew that they would accept German leadership. In Morocco, where the Spanish mining law did not apply, German participation was permitted up to 100 per cent. Spain agreed to pay all the expenses in Spain of the Condor Legion and to import 5 million reichsmarks’ worth of mining machinery. That would enable Franco to contemplate a new offensive immediately, and so strike the republic at the moment when they had exhausted their supplies. This aid was the consequence of the German sense that, after Munich, nothing which they did in the Spanish war would cause Britain and France to go to war. Had it not been for it, a compromise peace, or perhaps, a permanent division of Spain (such as divided Germany, Korea and Vietnam after 1945), might have been inevitable. The new aid admittedly did not arrive until the New Year, but the knowledge that it was on the way enabled the nationalists to act swiftly.1

  The nationalist army had doubled during the year to total over a million. All healthy men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-one were in uniform, and many more besides as volunteers. This host was organized in three grand armies—that of the south, and inactive, under Queipo; that of the Levante, the main inspiration of the next campaign, under Orgaz; and that of the centre, preparing for an attack on Madrid, under Saliquet.2 The two last generals were ‘Francoists’. Queipo alone was in any way likely to think independently.3

  On the republican side, the successful withdrawal from the right bank of the Ebro masked the destruction caused. After all, the nationalists had taken three months to win back what they had lost in two days. But discontent seethed. The anarchist historian, Peirats (then a second-lieutenant in the army), has described how the police now seemed to control the whole army, SIM agents being everywhere, their methods being characterized by a mixture of sadism and incompetence, some of their chiefs being quite new men: the SIM chief in the 199th Brigade, for example, who had powers of life and death in that unit, was only nineteen in late 1938.1 By this time, a million men had also probably been mobilized in the republic—since July 1936. The class of 1919, men aged forty, would soon be called to the colours (the nationalists had not had to go beyond the class of 1927).

  Thus 8 per cent of the Spanish population in late 1938 was either in the army, or a prisoner. If the peacetime history of the republic was the history of the nation’s ‘politicization’, the war was characterized by its ‘militarization’.

  On 30 September, the six-monthly session of the Cortes was held, this time at San Cugat del Vallés. Attacks against Negrín were made, by the Catalan (Esquerra) deputy, Miguel Santaló, and the Basque ex-minister, Irujo. The former alleged that at the time of the August crisis, newspapers friendly to Negrín had misrepresented the decree which militarized the tribunals as being a decree affecting the harbour. Both he and Irujo pointed out that the republican government was bound, legally and morally, to consult the Catalans.2

  As for religious freedom, private celebration of mass had been permitted for some time. Two thousand priests were privately active in Barcelona in 1938, bizarrely protected by the SIM against the anarchists.3 There were, however, no priests active even privately in the central zone. Irujo proposed a corps of almoners for the army and suggested the opening of a church in Barcelona. He and the councillor for justice in Barcelona (Bosch Gimpera) again asked Father José María Torrent, vicar-general of Barcelona, to open at least one church; but Father Torrent refused to allow this. The vicar-general made further difficulties. It was difficult for him to collaborate with a régime which had been denounced as satanic by orthodox Catholics, and which had, at the least, failed to prevent the murder of so many of their brethren. On 17 October, a funeral procession, though, passed through Barcelona in memory of a dead Basque officer. Further unsuccessful efforts were made to try to secure the return of the archbishop of Tarragona, Cardinal Vidal i Baraquer. On 9 December, a commissariat of religion was finally set up, to provide priests for the armies, and Dr Jesús Bellido, professor of medicine in the University of Barcelona, became the commissar-in-chief. The outbreak of the Catalan campaign prevented this from being put into effect.1

  Food was very short in the republic. In Madrid, half a million persons lived, during the winter of 1938–9, on a daily issue of two ounces of lentils, beans or rice, with an occasional ration of sugar or salt cod. Lentils, the commonest food, were named Dr Negrín’s ‘little victory pills’. Average rations of republican troops had shrunk: from 12/3 pounds of bread a day in 1936 to less than a pound in 1938, just over a pound of meat to a third, and the ration of vegetables was also down.2 The republic had to buy much of its food from abroad and supplies were irregular, because of the continued bombing of supply ships. Sir Denys Bray, the British civil servant who headed the League’s mission on refugee relief, reported that the population of the republic were living on minimum rations, while even those were not being distributed. In Barcelona, where there were a million refugees in addition to the normal population, the problems were even worse. An International Commission for the assistance of child refugees, founded by the Quakers in December 1937, could help only 40,000 out of 600,000 child refugees, though they were being financed by seventeen governments.3 The cost of giving a third of these children one meal a day throughout the winter was estimated as nearly £150,000. Many diseases appeared, such as scabies and pellagra; and deaths from malnutrition doubled between 1937 and 1938.4 The Quakers’ mission did help to alleviate the worst tragedies. The nationalists, meantime, sought to point the contrast between the hungry republic and their own territory, by an air-raid of loaves of bread on Barcelona. (The republicans replied with an air-raid of shirts and socks, to demonstrate their alleged superiority in manufactured goods.) The work on the fields in the republic continued, but in many places at greatly reduced momentum: in Cuenca, for instance, only 14 per cent of the land reserved for cereals could be sown, due to shortage of hands.1 The wheat harvest reached 130 million bushels.2 Trifón Gómez, the rea
listic socialist who was commissary-general in the army, believed it to be less; but even what there plainly was, was quickly dispersed. Since the government was slow to pay, the peasants did not deliver their goods. Disorganization in the largely communist ministry of agriculture, as well as the collectives, who neither paid taxes nor cooperated with rationing, was thus largely to blame for what went wrong with the republic’s food supply.3

  Even in manufactured goods, the republic was in a bad position. The chief cause was the shortage of raw materials due to the blockade. But what about Spanish production, and, in particular, the output of the Catalan war industry over which there had been such argument? Despite all the communists’ efforts, the changeover from textiles and chemicals to armaments was difficult; one type of aircraft only was developed, a copy of the Russian Chato, of which 169 were built in 1938 though never used. Monthly arms production in December 1938 was 1,000 rifles and 10 million bullets; 700,000 grenades and 300,000 artillery shells; 80,000 mortar grenades and 100 mortars.4 Otherwise, all depended on Russia and elsewhere. Overall industrial production in Catalonia was only a third of what it had been in July 1936, and prices had risen 300 per cent since then. Between November 1937 and November 1938, there was an inflation of almost 200 per cent.5 A more telling statistic was the collapse of the use of electricity during 1938, itself a consequence of the loss of the hydro-electric plants. In September 1938, the last month for which statistics seem available, the industrial use of electricity was half that for September 1937, while that itself was probably half normal use.1 Only in one sphere, indeed, was the republic still able to preserve its optimism. This was education.

  I have visited [reported the brilliant French poet and flier Antoine de Saint-Exupéry], on the Madrid front, a school installed 500 metres from the trenches, behind a small wall, on a little hillock. A corporal was teaching botany. He was carefully peeling away the petals of a poppy. Around him were gathered bearded soldiers, their chins sunk in their hands, their brows knitted in the effort of concentration. They did not understand the lesson very well, but they had been told: you are brutes, you have only just left your caves we must save you for humanity. And with heavy feet they were hurrying towards enlightenment.2

  The survival of this ardent spirit, and much cultural activity due to the stimulus of war, led a French journalist, Raymond Laurent, to say: ‘You are fighting for the noble cause of humanity as much as for the security of France itself.’

  That view was no longer still held by the leaders of the POUM, who, except, of course, for the murdered Nin, were brought to trial in October 1938. Not long before, the real falangists who had been implicated in their affairs had also been tried. Thirteen of those, including the agents Golfín, Dalmau and Roca, were shot for espionage. When the POUM leaders came to the tribunal, however, the case against them collapsed. Republican ministers and ex-ministers, headed by Largo Caballero and Zugazagoitia, gave evidence in the POUM’s favour. Gironella, the young leader who had organized the POUM militia in July 1936 (as well as the POUM cavalry, barracks, anthem and band), addressed the prosecutor, to the general scandal, as Vishinsky. Arquer caused difficulties by insisting on testifying in Catalan. A real representative of Trotsky, Grandizo Munis, declared that the POUM were in no way Trotskyists. The judgement found the POUM to be true socialists, and absolved them of treason and espionage. Five leaders, including Gorkin and Andrade, were, however, condemned to various terms of imprisonment for activities at the time of the May crisis of 1937, and for other revolutionary activities prejudicial to the war effort.1

  A word should be spared to consider the personal aspect of the war; in the republic, men who a few years before were students, workers or agitators had risen to high positions. The old leaders—Azaña, Largo Caballero, Prieto, Martínez Barrio—had sunk in repute. The change in the status of this latter group affected private lives. Rumours circulated everywhere: so-and-so was drunk at his command post, so-and-so had left his wife and was living with a new woman. It is more odd that the upheaval was not greater, considering the change in status of so many. Some, like Cipriano Mera, had announced that, after the war, they would go back to their old professions—in Mera’s case, plastering.2 But many, even many anarchists, were proving themselves competent administrators, Negrín was a republican equivalent to Franco in the sense that, being of the generation of men unknown before the war, he could use this new personnel, without prior commitments.

  The German ambassador, Stohrer, concluded a general analysis of the Spanish situation at this time with the percipient comment that mutual fear was the reason for the continuance of the war. No prominent man on either side had any illusions as to what would happen to him if he were caught by his enemies. Franco had indeed told an American correspondent that he had a list (with witnesses) of a million persons on the republican side who were guilty of crimes. The German ambassador believed, nevertheless, that the opportunity for a negotiated peace might suddenly come.3 At the same time, Adolf Berle, the banker who had become assistant secretary of state in the US, was telling President Roosevelt how compromise might be achieved in Spain. He proposed an Inter-American approach at the forthcoming conference of South American countries at Lima. The plan was never carried forward, due to quarrels among the South Americans and to the cautious spirit of Cordell Hull. But Cuba, Mexico and Haiti declared themselves, for different reasons, in favour of an approach such as Roosevelt had contemplated.1

  In fact, the chances of compromise were still remote. The nationalists had even refused to countenance a proposal by Negrín in August that each side should suspend the execution of military prisoners for a month.2 Even on the question of the removal of volunteers (a touch-stone for his pacific intentions), Franco was unyielding. He would accept no such agreement unless he first were granted belligerent rights. In the meantime, with his new German arms assured, he was preparing a new offensive to follow the battle of the Ebro, just as the runaway Aragon campaign had followed the battle of Teruel.

  The best nationalist divisions were assembled all along the line from the Pyrenees to the Ebro and the sea. These were, from north to south, a new ‘Army of Urgel’, under Muñoz Grandes; the Army of the Maestrazgo, under García Valiño; and the ‘Army of Aragon’, under Moscardó. Then came the Italian General Gambara’s four divisions. Farther to the south, there was the ‘Army of Navarre’, under Solchaga, and Yagüe, with the ‘Army of Morocco’. This ‘Army of the North’ was, as ever, led by the competent bureaucrat General Dávila and consisted of 300,000 men, being supported by 565 pieces of artillery. The nationalist air force had 500 aeroplanes, enough to command in the air.3 Franco himself established his headquarters (with its usual code-name ‘Terminus’) in the castle of Pedrola, north of Lérida.4 The offensive, planned for 10 December and postponed till the 15th, was finally decided for the 23rd.5 The apprehension was great that the attack on Barcelona would involve much fighting.

  The republican battle lines in Catalonia were commanded by Azaña’s old military secretary, Hernández Saravia. Beneath him were the Armies of the East and of the Ebro, under Colonels Perea and Modesto respectively. These forces numbered 300,000. Three hundred and sixty pieces of artillery were available, as were 200 tanks and armoured cars (mostly T-26 tanks which were beginning to seem very heavy and ineffective). But many of these items were in bad repair. Aircraft numbered barely 80, and most of the pilots, though enthusiastic, were inexperienced.1 The republican army in Catalonia also suffered from a shortage of ammunition and of faith in victory. Negrín himself was, as he confessed, ‘spiritually and physically’ tired.2 Rojo, chief of staff, on the other hand, believed that Franco needed months in which to prepare a general attack, and the republican leaders hence were toying, when attacked, with a plan to disembark a brigade at Motril, which would march to Málaga and raise Andalusia. This would be combined with another republican attack, in Estremadura. But both Miaja and his chief of staff, Matallana, now promoted a general, refused. The government in Barcelon
a had to accept this defensive insubordination. Possibly, the reluctance of Matallana derived from treachery.3 On the other hand, Rojo’s action in transferring thirty-six aircraft to the central zone weakened Catalonia.4 Before this, Negrín had sent the chief of the air force, Hidalgo de Cisneros, to Moscow for a replenishment of arms: 250 aircraft, 250 tanks, 4,000 machine-guns, and 650 pieces of artillery. The cost was to be the then huge sum of $103 million, though the republic’s credit in Russia apparently stood at less than $100 million. Hidalgo de Cisneros saw Voroshilov, Molotov and Stalin, and, despite Voroshilov’s comment, ‘Are you going to leave us without any weapons to defend ourselves with?’, the shipment was agreed. It was sent from Murmansk in seven ships, to Bordeaux. But it arrived late; and the French government did not hasten its onward shipment.1 Little of it had reached Barcelona by January.

  On 23 December, the attack began, after the nuncio had vainly requested a truce for Christmas in the name of the Pope.2 The assault was launched by the Navarrese and the Italians, across the river Segre, fifteen miles north of its junction with the Ebro at Mequinenza. The crossing made, the surprised defenders—a well-equipped company of carabineers—were deserted by their officers. The front was thus broken, at the first moment of contact. Higher up the Segre, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Muñoz Grandes and García Valiño also broke the republican lines. These breaches caused the abandonment of the line of the Segre. At Barcelona, the attack was at first thought a minor one, but soon Lister’s 54th Army Corps was thrown into the battle, to try to hold the attack. With headquarters at Castelldans, in the first line of hills east of the Segre, Lister maintained himself for a fortnight.