The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  2. Les Événements survenus, p. 219; FD, p. 130f, and FO, 371/205/27.

  3. Pierre Cot, op. cit., pp. 345–6.

  4. De los Ríos convinced Blum with an eloquent description of the young militiamen fighting fascism in the sierras. Blum wept (Azcárate, p. 257).

  1. Cot, pp. 353–4.

  2. Pike, pp. 44–6, 48.

  3. See Companys’s letter to Prieto, 13 December 1937, qu. Peirats, vol. I, p. 136.

  4. GD, p. 36.

  5. Ibid., p. 38.

  6. Ibid., p. 37.

  1. Traina, p. 50.

  2. USD, 1936, vol. II, p. 474.

  3. Ibid., p. 488. The first ‘incident’ for America arising out of the civil war was the accidental nationalist bombing of the US destroyer Kane while en route from Gibraltar to Bilbao to evacuate American citizens there. No damage was done and an evasive apology from Franco was forthcoming (Taylor, pp. 61–2).

  4. This prohibition was first contingent on similar action by Italy, Germany, Russia, and Portugal; but it was implemented conditionally on the 19th (Eden, p. 403).

  5. GD, p. 45.

  1. Ciano, Diplomatic Papers, pp. 31–2.

  2. GD, p. 60.

  3. The crew of the Junkers had already been released. The aeroplane itself was destroyed in a nationalist air raid.

  4. C.O.S. 509 of 24 August 1936: ‘A hostile Spain or the occupation of Spanish territory by a hostile power would make our control of the straits and use of Gibraltar as a naval and air base extremely difficult’.

  5. USD, 1936, vol. II, p. 515.

  6. Izvestia, 26 August 1936.

  1. The republic had recognized Russia in 1933, but the rebellion of Asturias prevented an exchange of ambassadors. The exchange of ambassadors had been planned ever since February 1936, but only now occurred.

  2. For Antonov-Ovsëenko, see Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed (London, 1954), p. 221, and The Prophet Unarmed (London, 1959), pp. 116–17, 160–61, 406.

  3. For the arrival of Kuznetzov (afterwards admiral and supreme commander of the Russian navy), see his memoir in Bajo la bandera de la España republicana, a collection of Russian memoirs, published Moscow, 1967. For reports by all these, see Radosh et al., 22 and passim.

  4. Walter Krivitsky, I Was Stalin’s Agent (London, 1963), p. 98. See also Elizabeth Poretsky, Our Own People (London, 1969), pp. 211–12. Berzin was born Ian Pavlovich Kuzis.

  5. Ilya Ehrenburg, Men, Years and Life (London, 1963), vol. IV, p. 110. He had been in Spain earlier in the year.

  1. Koltsov, pp. 9, 59. Koltsov speaks of the arrival on this day of a ‘Mexican communist, Miguel Martínez’, pseudonym for Koltsov himself. Koltsov was probably Stalin’s personal agent in Spain, with on occasion a direct line to the Kremlin.

  2. For life in this hotel, see the brilliant Ch. 18 of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  3. General Warlimont’s affidavit to US military intelligence in 1946 (UN Security Council Report on Spain, p. 76).

  1. Despite non-intervention, from this time the Foreign Office gave asylum to Spanish refugees from the ‘Red Terror’; and within a matter of weeks the Embassy in Madrid (under George Ogilvie Forbes) comprised seven buildings. The change in British policy towards refugees was due to the consequences of a refusal to give refuge to the Marquesa de Balboa, with her twelve-year-old son (who was later shot). For the rest of the war, the embassies in the Spanish capital remained the home of several thousand upper- and middle-class Spaniards, some active members of the Fifth Column, others terrified and broken, most hungry, cold and pale, due to the lack of fresh air. There were later some exchanges of these refugees for republicans in nationalist hands.

  2. Eden, p. 122.

  3. ‘Shakes’ Morrison, as he was known, was a conservative politician and had been chairman of a cabinet sub-committee since early August coordinating non-intervention.

  4. Non-Intervention Committee records in the Public Record Office, first meeting. Hereafter referred to as NIC. The Non-Intervention Committee was throughout serviced by the Foreign Office. Papers, documents, etc., were prepared by a British secretariat.

  1. Ribbentrop, p. 71.

  2. GD, p. 77.

  3. Kay, p. 95. Early in September, the crews of two Portuguese warships overpowered their officers and prepared to sail to join the republic. Salazar had them destroyed by gunfire.

  4. Ibid., p. 75.

  5. Ribbentrop, loc. cit. He added, in this apologia written in Nuremberg between the trial and the sentence, ‘I often wished that this wretched Spanish Civil War would go to the devil, for it constantly involved me in disputes with the British government’.

  1. GD, p. 84.

  2. Lord Plymouth at meeting of the committee, 23 October 1936.

  3. Eden in the House of Commons, 16 December 1936.

  4. D. Cattell, Soviet Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War (Berkeley, 1957), p. 24. La Pasionaria, Marcelino Domingo, and Jiménez de Asúa also failed to convince Blum in an audience about this time (Ibarruri, p. 305). But others were persuaded; for example, Edith Thomas wrote:

  Pasionaria Pasionaria

  il n’est plus temps que les hommes t’aiment

  ils t’écoutent

  comme ils écoutent le vent chanter …

  1. Koestler, Invisible Writing, p. 323. Bing later went on to become a Labour MP and attorney general to President Nkrumah in Ghana. The Spanish republic said that they would accept ‘real non-intervention’. By this they meant no legislation in any country preventing them from buying arms. This was rather different from, for example, the Labour party’s view of non-intervention, which was that neither side should be able to get arms from abroad.

  2. NIC second meeting.

  3. Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 224–5.

  24

  1. Their followers were also influenced by a film of the Russian Revolution portraying the exploits of Chapaev, the guerrilla leader. As before the war, films made a great impression on the Spanish working-class—even Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, which was also shown in Madrid at this time. Success was also enjoyed by Groucho Marx, who was represented as the President of ‘Freedonia’ in the film Duck Soup. Looking like any Spanish politician, he remarked with a report in front of him: ‘A four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child.’

  2. For Madrid at this time, see Barea, pp. 569–70.

  3. Ibarruri, p. 297.

  1. Nenni, p. 146.

  2. See his interview of 25 August with Koltsov: ‘He is an imbecile, a disorganizer … capable of taking all and everyone to ruin. But still he is the only man … capable of heading the new government.’

  3. Ibarruri, p. 285.

  4. She and her son by a previous marriage went with Fanjul’s executor, to bury the general in the cemetery of Almudena. Both the son and the executor were murdered there (García Venero, Madrid, julio 1936, p. 364).

  1. For two opposing accounts, see The General Cause and Borkenau (p. 127); see also ‘Juan de Córdoba’, Estampas y reportajes (Seville, 1939), p. 105, for Serrano Súñer’s account of the events.

  2. See above, p. 361.

  3. For Azaña’s reaction, see his diaries, Obras, vol. IV, pp. 850–51, and Rivas-Cherif, Retrato de un desconocido (Mexico, 1961), p. 159. Azaña never recovered from these murders. Nor did he forgive the old ‘monarchist without a king’, Ossorio y Gallardo, who seemed to take such outrages in his stride: ‘I don’t justify anything. But this is in the logic of history!’ (Azaña, vol. IV, p. 625). It was Ossorio, however, who persuaded Azaña not to resign: ‘On the other side men are dying with your name on their lips’. Henceforward, Azaña remained less a President than the ‘prisoner of being a republican symbol’ (Azaña, vol. III, p. xxxviii).

  1. C. Lorenzo, p. 122.

  2. Hernández, p. 139; Azaña, vol. IV, p. 821.

  3. Azcárate, MS., pp. 6–9. Araquistain, the principal inspiration of Largo’s fatal turn to the Left before the war, was now himself t
urning to the Right.

  1. The other Republican Left minister (of justice) was Mariano Ruiz Funes, minister of agriculture under Casares Quiroga and Giral. The Republican Union minister was Bernardo Giner de los Ríos, minister of communications, and the Esquerra minister, José Tomás y Piera, labour and health. On 16 September, Julio Just (Republican Union, ex-radical), a Valencian, became minister of public works and, on 25 September, Manuel de Irujo (Basque nationalist) became minister without portfolio.

  2. See Castro Delgado (p. 545). For Cordón, see the engaging description in Martín Blázquez, p. 279. Cordón had been a regular army captain who had resigned under Azaña’s law of 1932. See Cordón, p. 257.

  3. Alvarez del Vayo, p. 203; Hernández, p. 47; Inprecorr, qu. Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil War (Berkeley, 1955), p. 56; Borkenau, p. 32; Martín Blázquez, p. 189. The communists also got the sub-secretaryships of education (Wenceslao Roces) and of health (Juan Planelles).

  1. It was at this point that the Army of Africa was joined by two ex-regular British officers, Lieutenants Nangle and Fitzpatrick. The former, who had been in the Indian Army, was a highly efficient officer. Fitzpatrick was a more romantic Irish soldier of fortune, who explained that he was persuaded to volunteer for Spain after seeing a photograph of militiamen seated on an altar dressed in priests’ vestments. Both were given commissions in the Legion—the first foreigners to receive commissions who had not risen from the ranks. Fitzpatrick kindly permitted me to read his unpublished reminiscences of his experiences in Spain.

  1. Aznar, p. 202.

  2. Vázquez Camarasa left Madrid soon for Paris, disillusioned. For his future troubles, see Quintanilla, Los rehenes del Alcázar. He died in Bordeaux, in 1946.

  3. Recollections of Henry Buckley and Lord St Oswald.

  1. Ibarruri, p. 310.

  2. Iturralde, vol. II, p. 224.

  1. Tagüeña, p. 134.

  2. Ibarruri, p. 309.

  3. Kindelán, p. 123.

  1. Fitzpatrick MSS.

  2. Geoffrey Cox, Defence of Madrid (London, 1937), p. 54. This journalist (subsequently Sir Geoffrey Cox of Independent Television) was in Madrid at the time. Others have spoken of killings in this hospital. Certain unwounded militiamen took refuge in the hospital and so drew the fire of the Moors in that direction.

  1. John Langdon-Davies, Behind the Spanish Barricades (New York, 1936), p. 257.

  2. Kindelán, p. 23.

  25

  1. Martínez Bande, La invasión de Aragón, p. 267; Franco, qu. Cabanellas, vol. I, p. 621.

  1. In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Pilar refers to the republican flag as ‘blood, pus and pomegranate’, and to the monarchist flag simply as ‘blood and pus’.

  1. Bahamonde, pp. 36–8. Pemán’s speech appears in Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada, 1936–39 Supplement (vol. II, p. 1404).

  2. Del Burgo, pp. 158–9.

  1. Tamames, Estructura, p. 558.

  2. The shipments were legal under the terms of the US Neutrality Act of 1935. After the US Embargo Act (see below, p. 558), some shipments were made by declaring that they were bound for France. The Texas Oil Company was fined $22,000. It made no difference; 344,000 tons of oil were delivered in 1936, 420,000 in 1937, 478,000 in 1938, 624,000 in 1939. The bill of $6 million was paid, and credit renewed (Feis, p. 269). See also Joseph L. Thorndike Jr, Life, 1 July 1940. Apparently, Texaco’s decision derived from the action of an employee of CAMPSA, Juan Antonio Álvarez Alonso, who fled from Barcelona to Marseilles, where he found W. M. Brewster of Texaco (France) who put him in touch with Rieber, then in Paris. The CEDA government had changed their oil supplier from Russia to Texaco in 1935. (See Bolín, pp. 221–5, and Ramón Garriga, Las relaciones secretas entre Franco y Hitler, Buenos Aires, 1965, p. 164.)

  1. GD, pp. 84–9.

  2. USD, 1936, vol. II, p. 611. By the end of September, the Germans had carried 250,000 kilograms of war material and 13,500 troops from Morocco to Andalusia in Junkers and escorted these by Heinkel fighters; some 550 German troops were in Spain as opposed to some 400 Italians. See Whealey, in Carr, The Republic, p. 218, based on Luftwaffe papers. A big new arms operation from Hamburg to Spain began on 29 September under the name of ‘Operation Otto’.

  1. Franco established himself on 26 August in a palace at Cáceres as a headquarters. In a cool drawing-room in this hot Estremaduran city he worked with his aides and his brother Nicolás, as political adviser. On two occasions, when visiting the Army of Africa at the front, he had to leave his motor-car to take refuge from a marauding republican aircraft.

  2. Bahamonde, pp. 48–9. Cañizares, earlier a friend of Queipo de Llano, who had appointed him, quarrelled with him over the freedom of action to be allowed to the civil governor; he was not transferred till 1938. He was subsequently condemned to death by Queipo and only saved by Franco, with whom he had served in Morocco.

  1. García Venero, Falange, p. 182.

  2. There was an earlier meeting of surviving ‘jefes provinciales’ on 2 August.

  3. García Venero, p. 190f. The junta was Aznar, José Sáinz (New Castile), Jesús Muro (Saragossa), Andrés Redondo (Old Castile), and José Moreno (Navarre), and the secretary Francisco Bravo (Salamanca). José Sáinz, actually the senior falangist present, never accepted that Hedilla had been nominated. See Gumersindo Montes Agudo, Pepe Sáinz, qu. Southworth, Antifalange, p. 140.

  1. Gil Robles, p. 756. Actually, Mola told him to leave.

  2. Kindelán, pp. 50–53; Iribarren, p. 216. This meeting was not held on 12 September, as is sometimes said, probably because of a proof error in Kindelán’s book. Present were Generals Cabanellas, Franco, Queipo, Saliquet, Mola, Dávila, Orgaz, Gil Yuste and Kindelán, and Colonels Montaner and Moreno Calderón.

  1. Sainz Rodríguez, p. 327.

  2. As he told Kindelán on 28 September (Cabanellas, vol. I, p. 652 fn.). Sainz Rodríguez recalls Franco often saying that Primo de Rivera’s error was to think of his régime as temporary (p. 333).

  1. See S. Payne, Politics, pp. 371–2.

  2. See Cabanellas, vol. I, pp. 654–5, for the best account. See also Kindelán (p. 54), and Dávila in La Voz de España, 1 October 1961.

  1. Gil Robles, p. 776, fn. 2.

  2. Cabanellas, p. 655. For the decree, see Díaz Plaja, pp. 249–50. For Mola, see Sainz Rodríguez, p. 248. A monarchist lawyer, Yanguas Messía, minister of foreign affairs under Primo de Rivera, drew up the decree in the end.

  3. Cabanellas, p. 658.

  4. Ansaldo, p. 78.

  1. See del Burgo, p. 267. Bizarre to say, the last Carlist Pretender of the old line was killed in a motor accident by an Austrian army lorry.

  2. GD, p. 107.

  3. Hoare, p. 145.

  4. The junta was formally Dávila (‘President’); governor general, Francisco Fermoso Blanco; secretary for war, General Gil Yuste; the presidents of commissions were Andrés Amado (finance); José López (justice); Joaquín Bau (commerce); Juan Antonio Suances (industry); Alejandro Gallo (agriculture); Romualdo de Toledo (education); José María Pemán (culture); Mauro Serret (public works); Nicolás Franco (secretary-general); and Francisco Serra (secretary-general of external relations). Sangroniz had been an official in the directorate general of Morocco in the 1920s.

  1. GD, p. 105.

  2. See account by the captain of the Canarias, Captain Francisco Bastarreche, La guerra de liberación nacional (Saragossa, 1961), p. 393f.

  26

  1. Abad de Santillán, p. 116.

  2. Leval, p. 126. Cf. Benavides, Guerra y revolución (p. 132), for a description and an attack.

  3. Peirats, vol. I, p. 216. Peirats, at this time editor of Acracia in Lérida, was one of the critics of the idea of participation.

  1. Toronto Star, 18 August 1936. Despite the fact that the journalist spoke of hearing ‘cannon roaring at the front’, this interview seems to have been held in Barcelona earlier. See Paz, p. 446. Durruti was shortly converted to the ‘discipline of indiscipline’.

>   2. About this time, Durruti visited Madrid (on a fantastic mission, see below, p. 435) and told a reporter: ‘I am against the discipline of barracks but also I am against the misunderstood liberty which helps cowards … In war, delegates have to be obeyed’ (Peirats, vol. I, p. 221).

  3. Peirats, vol. I, p. 227; C. Lorenzo, p. 147. The character of this organization will be subsequently examined. See below, p. 539.

  4. The Basque nationalist Irujo had joined the republican cabinet on 25 September (Lizarra, p. 99).

  1. This arose from a harrowing incident. Bilbao had been bombed on 29 September. The consequent fury of the people of the city had caused the murder of a number of the political prisoners kept in three small cargo boats in the harbour of Bilbao. Afterwards, the Basque government released 130 women as part of an exchange previously agreed through Dr Junod. But when Dr Junod first returned to Bilbao, he did so without those children whom he had promised to bring back from where they had been on holiday near Burgos. For the nationalists had gone back on their word. The church bells of Bilbao were ringing, the mothers and the families of the children thronged the quay, when HMS Exmouth sailed in empty. The disappointment nearly caused the lynching of Dr Junod. But later forty children were sent back. The full exchange however was never achieved.

  2. Aguirre, p. 29; evidence of Luis Ortúzar.

  3. C. Lorenzo, p. 162; Iturralde, vol. II, p. 228.

  1. Gregorio López Muñiz, La batalla de Madrid (Madrid, 1943), p. 5.

  2. Fischer, p. 353.

  3. Simone Téry, Front de la liberté (Paris, 1938).

  1. Jackson, p. 312.

  2. Koltsov, p. 293.

  1. USD, 1936, vol. II, p. 536. By this time the nationalists were represented in Washington by the ex-ambassador in Paris, Cárdenas, who arrived in the USA at the end of August and who had weekly talks at the state department with the under-secretary, James Dunn—a career diplomat who, seventeen years later as US ambassador to Franco’s Spain, finally concluded the US-Spanish bases agreement (evidence of Cárdenas).