by Hugh Thomas
2. FD, vol. III, p. 526.
3. Spriano, p. 87.
1. There is a study of this office by Eduardo Comín Colomer: El comisariado politico (Madrid, 1973).
2. George Orwell, ‘Notes on the Spanish Militias’, in Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, ed. by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London, 1968), vol. I, p. 320.
3. On 15 October, García Escámez also entered Sigüenza by a sudden attack, north-east of Madrid. The militiamen hid in the cathedral and nationalist guns shattered part of that admirable building before they surrendered.
1. He had been promoted general after Talavera.
2. Azaña, vol. IV, p. 818. See Largo Caballero, p. 187, for a different account.
1. Álvarez del Vayo, The Last Optimist (London, 1950), p. 173.
2. Largo Caballero, p. 186.
1. See Carlos Semprún Maura, Révolution et contre-révolution en Catalogne (Tours, 1974), p. 110f, for a hostile critique by an anarchist.
27
1. Krivitsky (p. 110) speaks of ‘three high republican officials’ reaching Russia late in August. There is, surprisingly, as yet no other evidence for this visit but I incline to believe Krivitsky’s testimony, even if his details are sometimes wrong.
2. For whom, see Radosh, 120–21 and 315.
1. Letter to the author, July 1964. See G. Prokofiev in Bajo la bandera, p. 373. These pilots flew ‘most of September’ in Spain.
2. A German agent reported three Russian ships passing through the Dardanelles carrying 500 tons of war material and 1,000 of ammunition in September. See the files of the German military attaché at Ankara (annex to Report No. 4238 of the German military attaché, Ankara, 7 February 1938, and Annex 2 to Report No. 7238 of 4 April 1938) which purport to be statements derived from a German agent with access to Turkish records of the amount of Soviet aid through the Dardanelles. (D. C. Watt discovered these documents, see The Slavonic and East European Review, June 1960, pp. 536–41.) The German consul-general in Barcelona reported, on 16 September, that a reliable source told him that thirty-seven aircraft had been landed by Russians in Spain by boat a week previously (GD, p. 89) but no one saw them in the air until October. See Gisclon, p. 123, for apparent confirmation of this. The French chargé in Turkey, however, reported that, from 15 August to 15 September, ‘only four Russian or Spanish ships carrying 30,000 tons of oil to Spain were seen’ (FD, p. 567).
3. See Howson, 137–39.
4. Other evidence, however, suggests that Stalin was not in Moscow on that day.
1. Ibarruri, p. 301.
2. Krivitsky, p. 111.
3. For the meeting, see Krivitsky, pp. 110–13. Orlov subsequently defected to the US, where he hid till Stalin’s death and then gave evidence in various spy trials of the 1950s, as well as telling the Senate internal security sub-committee that his role in Spain had been to advise on ‘intelligence, counter-intelligence and guerrilla fighting’ (Hearings, part 51, 1957, p. 3422). He told Stanley Payne that he had been appointed to Spain on 26 August, and that he arrived there on 9 September. But for Orlov see Poretsky, p. 259, and also John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions (New York, 1993).
4. Uritsky was the 36-year-old son of the founder of the Cheka murdered in 1918. Umansky (whom Krivitsky wrongly calls Oulansky) was one of the group of Jewish communists from Polotsisk in what used to be Austrian Galicia who played such an interesting part in Russian secret diplomacy and about whom the widow of one (Ignace Reiss-Poretsky) wrote so evocative a book (Elizabeth Poretsky, Our Own People, London, 1969). Krivitsky was another such. Umansky (‘Misha’) makes numerous appearances in Mrs Poretsky’s study.
1. See Hernández, p. 42; Fischer, p. 350.
2. GD, p. 100.
3. FD, vol. III, p. 567.
4. Krivitsky, p. 100.
1. Speech of Pierre Besnard at the VIIth Congress of the AIT in Paris in 1937, qu. ‘Andrés Suárez’, El proceso contra el POUM (Paris, 1974), p. 22fn.
2. Cattell, Soviet Diplomacy, p. 44.
3. NIS, fifth meeting.
1. See also (for approximate confirmation of the figure) GD, p. 126; New York Times, 24 October 1936.
2. Kuznetzov in Bajo la bandera, p. 179; also Krivoshein in the same, p. 319. Some ships were Russian, most Spanish.
3. ‘I’ was the letter indicating ‘fast fighter’ in the Russian air force and these two fighters were accordingly the 15th and 16th in the series. ‘SB’ meant bomber, ‘R’ reconnaissance. Both the Chatos and Moscas were designed by Polikarpov.
4. See García Lacalle, p. 561 (the improved model I-15B came in reduced numbers, in 1938); Sanchís, p. 30f.
5. See García Lacalle, p. 565; Sanchís, loc. cit.
6. The Katiuska had a range of 900 miles, a bomb capacity of 1,700 pounds and had the same rapid rate of climb as the Mosca. See Sanchís, loc. cit. This bomber had a crew of three, two mobile machine-guns, one fixed, all 7.62 mm. Its bomb load was six Russian bombs of 70 kg and four of 10. It was inspired by the American ‘Martin 139’ and known as such in the nationalist zone.
7. The Natashas were biplanes, 750 cv.
8. The Rasante, of 500 cv.
1. The Russian T-26 tank weighed 10.5 tons and had a 45 mm gun and two twin machine-guns; the TB-5 (used from late 1937 only) had a 45 mm gun and four twin machine-guns. It weighed 20 tons. The Panzers were 6 tons with two machine-guns, and the Fiat Ansaldos were 3.3 tons and had one machine-gun. See inter alia R. Salas in Carr, The Republic, p. 187; also Modesto, p. 235.
2. Franco’s ordnance factories copied them rather than the German equivalent.
3. See Radosh et al., 148ff., where Berzin appears as ‘Donizetti’.
4. See Martínez Amutio, p. 85.
5. Largo Caballero, p. 206; Prokofiev, in Bajo la bandera, p. 380f.
6. Known as ‘Kupper’ in Spain (Castro Delgado, pp. 457–8; Hernández, pp. 80–81).
1. Ehrenburg, Eve of War, pp. 146–7. See also Modesto, p. 237; Ibarruri, p. 346; Lister, p. 76; and José Luis Alcofar Nassaes, Los asesores soviéticos en la guerra civil española (Barcelona, 1971), passim; and the Soviet history of the Second World War (Istoriya Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny Sovetskogo Soyuza 1941–5), vol. I, pp. 112–13. According to El Campesino, Rokossovsky was charged with espionage in nationalist Spain—allegedly to discover for Stalin the character of certain German arms. Konev, under the name of ‘Paulito’, is said by El Campesino to have trained terrorists in Spain. Another Russian who directed sabotage and guerrilla war in nationalist territory (under Orlov, according to Orlov before the Congressional Sub-Committee in 1957) was Etingon (also known as Kotov). It was he who became the lover of the Barcelona communist Caridad Mercader del Río, and who picked out her son Ramón as a useful agent—later being used to murder Trotsky. Ehrenburg says Kotov ‘inspired me with a certain mistrust’ (op. cit., p. 231). Krivitsky speaks of a General Akulov who was organizing military intelligence in Catalonia (op. cit., p. 117); I suppose that Kotov and Akulov were the same.
2. R. Salas, vol. I, p. 533. De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. I, p. 399, has a tale of a Russian colonel (Krivoshein?) who is remembered in Archena for his help in restricting local repression.
3. See the memoir Master of Spies (London, 1975), p. 107, by the chief of the Czechoslovak military intelligence, Colonel Moravec, for an account of how Czechoslovakia helped 120 Russian officers through to Spain by giving them passports.
1. The total Spanish monetary gold was worth 2,367,000,000 pesetas (about $788 million). The quantity shipped to Russia was 1,581,642,000 gold pesetas worth ($500 million). The quantity sent to France in July was 470,000,000 pesetas worth ($155 million) to add to the 257,000,000 pesetas worth ($85 million) already there. See Appendix Three.
2. Largo Caballero, pp. 203–4. For some details, see Martínez Amutio, p. 52f.
3. Paz, pp. 386ff. and Azaña, vol. IV, p. 705. Díaz Sandino and Abad de Santillán visited Azaña in September and told him that the anarchists wanted the gold in Barcelona;
Díaz Sandino also suggested to Azaña that he should make himself dictator.
4. This is Prieto’s story, as contained in articles collected later in Convulsiones, vol. II, pp. 132–41; it seems more reliable than the versions put out by Araquistain, who was not there, or by Alvarez del Vayo, whose memory sometimes played him tricks (see Alvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle, pp. 286–7, and also Alexander Orlov in Readers’ Digest, January 1967, and his evidence to the Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee). See Jackson, p. 318, fn. 8, for a suggestion that Prieto must have known and the article by the then Spanish ambassador in Russia, Marcelino Pascua, in Cuadernos para el diálogo, June–July 1968.
1. Martínez Amutio, pp. 58–9.
2. Orlov’s details. El Campesino said later that he escorted the gold to Cartagena. In 1956, the receipt for the gold given by Russia to Spain, and handed by Negrín’s heirs to the nationalist government, mentioned 7,800 boxes; either Méndez Aspe was right, or the Russian government accepted his figure, using the extra boxes for their own purposes.
3. Kuznetzov, in Bajo la bandera, p. 182f. Kuznetzov was permanently based in Cartagena.
4. GD, p. 128.
5. Prieto, Convulsiones, vol. II, pp. 131–3.
6. Martínez Amutio, p. 58.
1. Orlov, Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee, part 51, p. 3434.
2. New York Times, 10 January 1957.
3. Krivitsky, pp. 103–5; Poretsky, p. 150. Zimin is not otherwise identifiable.
4. This derives from a German foreign ministry note of 8 October 1938, to the Spanish nationalist foreign ministry, quoted in The International Brigades (a nationalist propaganda pamphlet of the 1950s), p. 43.
5. Fischer, p. 371. Araquistain remained president of this till December, when his place was taken by Alejandro Otero. Dismissed in December 1937 by Prieto, Otero lived on in Paris selling arms on his own account. In April 1938, he was to become sub-secretary of defence—an appointment which Peirats compared to making Al Capone chairman of the Bank of Spain (op. cit., vol. II, p. 147). The anarchists regarded Otero, socialist deputy for Granada and professor of gynaecology, as a profiteer pure and simple. On the other hand, when in charge of armament factories, he resolutely refused the SIM (the political police introduced into the republic late in the war), permission to enter those factories (Martínez Amutio, p. 327).
1. Though some genuine German material got through to the republic, and the nationalist ambassador in Berlin had to complain, that was not till 1938.
2. Krivitsky, p. 103.
3. See Jurgen Schleimann, ‘New Light on Münzenberg’, Survey, April 1965. Muenzenberg was only able to return to Paris through the personal intervention of Togliatti. In 1937, he finally quarrelled with his chiefs, and left the party, to be murdered mysteriously in southern France in 1940. He was succeeded in Paris by the Czech Bohumil Smeral (the first leader of the Czech communist party during the early 1920s), who had none of his qualities.
1. Spriano, vol. III, p. 94.
2. Spriano, p. 130.
3. See John Erickson, The Origins of the Red Army, in Revolutionary Russia, ed. R. Pipes (Harvard, 1968), p. 251f. I am particularly grateful to Professor Erickson for his help in following up this reference. Tito was active in the Yugoslav international group in 1919.
4. See ‘A. Neuberg’, Armed Insurrection (London, 1970), p. 90.
1. Jacques Delperrie de Bayac, Les Brigades Internationales (Paris, 1968), p. 76.
2. Emilio Lussu, ‘La Legione italiana in Spagna’ , Giustizia e Libertà, 28 August 1969, qu. Spriano, vol. III, p. 90.
3. Randolfo Pacciardi, Il battaglione Garibaldi (Lugano, 1948), pp. 17–19. For Pacciardi, see Radosh, p. 253.
4. Luigi Longo, Le Brigate Internazionale in Spagna (Rome, 1956), p. 44. Cf. also pp. 18 and 27.
5. See Tito’s declarations in Life, 28 May 1952, and Humbert-Droz’s Mémoires, vol. II, p. 182. When, after the secret assassination of Gorkíc and other leading Yugoslav communists in 1936, Tito became chief of the Yugoslav communist party, he supervised the dispatch of Yugoslavs. Tito denies having ever been in Spain but, in view of the surprising number of people who claimed to have seen him there, it seems possible that he visited the Brigades’ headquarters for one reason or another. His reluctance to admit this is no doubt explained by some aspect of the Gorkíc murder. Gorkíc himself also for a time organized the dispatch of volunteers for the Brigades from Paris. One group of volunteers were betrayed to the Yugoslav police just before leaving the Dalmatian Coast: Gorkíc was held responsible.
1. The fact that the Spanish republican government were under no illusions about the connection between the communist parties and the volunteers is attested by the advice of Spanish consuls to would-be volunteers to make contact with communist parties.
2. Nick Gillain, Le Mercenaire (Paris, 1938), p. 7.
3. Approximate figure worked out after questioning of survivors.
4. Many unemployed Frenchmen from Lyon were dispatched into the Brigades.
5. Krivitsky, p. 112.
6. See for example Elorza and Bizcarrando, pp. 136–37.
7. Miles Tomalin MS. (unpublished diary), p. 7.
1. Italian language broadcasts from Valencia were directed by the communist Velio Spano.
2. Artur London, a Czech, became vice-minister of foreign affairs before becoming one of the three victims of the ‘Slansky trials’ of 1949 to survive. See his L’Aveu (Paris, 1969), the film made of it by Costa Gavras, and also his conventional Espagne … (Paris, 1966).
3. He appears in For Whom the Bell Tolls as General Goltz.
4. See Longo, pp. 42–9; Max Wullschleger, Schweizer Kämpfen in Spanien (Zurich, 1939), pp. 21ff. Albacete was within two hours’ drive from Archena, the Russian tank base.
5. Gillain, p. 18.
1. Gillain, p. 18. These volunteers were soon supported by a British Medical Aid group including doctors and nurses. This originated as follows: Isobel Brown, the communist moving spirit behind the British Committee for the Relief of the Victims of Fascism (one of Muenzenberg’s creations), was receiving many donations labelled ‘Spain’. She, therefore, inspired the creation of a British medical aid committee, with non-communist, but left-wing, doctors as figureheads which dispatched the medical aid unit to Spain under the leadership of a socialist, a contemporary of Cornford’s at Cambridge, Kenneth Sinclair Loutitt. The value of this and other medical units was considerable, since nearly all the army doctors of Spain were with the rebels. (As for the civilian practitioners, these seem to have been almost equally divided between the republicans and the nationalists.) See also All My Sins Remembered by Viscount Churchill (London, 1964). This peer led the British unit out to Spain.
2. Fischer, p. 367; Longo, p. 44. Longo later became secretary-general of the Italian communist party, a post he held from 1964 until 1969, when he became president of the party.
3. Guiseppe di Vittorio, a labour organizer from Apulia and active in Italy against Mussolini earlier, was from 1945 to 1958 secretary-general of the General Confederation of Italian Labour, the communist trade union. Longo’s nom de guerre was taken from the name of a famous and elegant matador, El Gallo.
1. Ehrenburg, Eve of War, p. 167.
2. Marty’s bodyguard was Pierre George, famous in the Second World War as ‘Colonel Fabien’. See Fischer, p. 366, and The International Brigades, pamphlet issued by the Spanish foreign ministry, 1953.
3. Fischer, p. 379.
4. Comment by Ernst Adam (London).
5. Kristanov’s identity was established for me by Victor Berck, to whom I am grateful also for other help.
1. Fischer, p. 366.
2. Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism (Oxford, 1949), p. 500n. Confirmed in Branko Lazitch’s Biographical Directory of the Comintern (Stanford, 1973).
3. Esmond Romilly, Boadilla (London, 1971), pp. 72–3.
4. Krivitsky, p. 116. See also Andreu Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales (Barcelona, 1974), p. 73f. According
to Castells, ‘Kléber’ came to Spain first in 1924!
1. He himself worked with an ambulance unit for a short while in 1937. It is unclear that he did much.
2. As earlier mentioned, Auden changed some lines in this poem in later editions.
1. Abad de Santillán, p. 175.
1. Philip Toynbee, p. 87.
2. There were, however, general relief funds which gave aid to both sides. The English General Relief Fund for Spain was supported by the archbishops of Canterbury and of Westminster, the chief rabbi, the moderator of the church of Scotland, and the free churches. It was formed in December 1936.
3. Spain! Why? (pamphlet by Nehru, London, 1937), p. 4. Nehru visited republican Spain in the course of the war.
4. GD, pp. 113–14.
5. Evidence of Johannes Bernhardt, Buenos Aires, 1971.
6. NIS, seventh meeting. Described in some detail by Ivan Maisky, Spanish Notebooks (London, 1966), pp. 45–57.
1. NIS (c), eighth meeting.
2. Ciano, Diplomatic Papers, pp. 60–61; GD, pp. 117, 122.
3. B. H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill.
28
1. USD, 1936, vol. II, p. 546; NIS, eighth meeting. There is an interesting account of this meeting by Maisky, who is particularly good on the fear of the fascist powers shown by diplomats of smaller nations. Ivan Maisky, pp. 58–63.
2. At the Labour Party Conference, held that year in Edinburgh, 435,000 votes (against 1,728,000) had been cast (in the Labour Party’s idiosyncratic method, the card vote) against the party line of support of non-intervention. The rebels included Sir Charles Trevelyan, Christopher Addison, Philip Noel-Baker and Aneurin Bevan. The conference was addressed with eloquence by Jiménez de Asúa and Isobel de Palencia (mistaken by Hugh Dalton in his memoirs, The Fateful Years: Memoirs, vol. I, 1931–45, London, 1957, p. 99, for La Pasionaria). Isobel de Palencia, republican minister in Stockholm, wrote an account too in I Must Have Liberty (New York, 1940), p. 246. The national executive restrained the general ardour of the conference, however, by dispatching Attlee and Greenwood to consult with Chamberlain (acting Prime Minister) and to urge detailed inquiry into non-intervention breaches.