The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  4. ‘In killing the revolution, the anti-fascist war was killed too.’ Thus M. Casanova, in Cahiers de la quatrième internationale (Paris, 1971), p. 5.

  5. Ciano, Diaries 1939–43, p. 15.

  1. Junod, p. 133.

  2. Cabanellas, vol. II, p. 1047; Cabanellas speaks of 10,000 shot between 26 and 31 January, 25,000 other executions later on. He gives no evidence for these figures. He may be right.

  3. Ciano, Diaries 1939–43, p. 34.

  4. Abella, p. 401.

  1. Ridruejo, in Sergio Vilar, p. 485.

  2. Cf. ‘El Tebib Arrumi’, qu. Catalunya sota …, p. 147. This book contains a full analysis of the persecution of Catalanism in 1939.

  49

  1. Azcárate MS.

  2. On 23 January.

  3. FDR papers, Hyde Park. The same point of view was urged in a book by Allen Dulles and Hamilton Fish Armstrong of Foreign Affairs (Can America Stay Neutral?).

  1. Ickes, p. 569.

  2. From an unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The Spanish Civil War, by H. J. Parry of the University of California, qu. Taylor, p. 195. There were three other polls of British opinion, collected by the British Public Opinion Institute, during the civil war. In January 1937, 14 per cent considered that the Burgos junta should be considered the true government of Spain, against 86 per cent who did not. In March 1938, 57 per cent considered themselves in sympathy with the government, 7 per cent with Franco and 36 per cent neither. In October 1938, the answers were much as in the previous March.

  3. So Martínez Barrio told Azaña, in Azaña, vol. III, p. 541.

  4. García Lacalle, pp. 494–5.

  5. GD, p. 844.

  1. Hills, p. 324, speaks of anger between Kindelán and the German military attaché, Baron von Funck, on this matter.

  2. They were soon off to Toulouse.

  3. Figures are discussed in Pike, pp. 213–14. Basing himself on the Mexican Embassy in Paris, De la Cierva gives a figure of 527,800 exiles from Spain between February and late April 1939. Azaña (vol. III, p. 534) has 220,000. Alvarez del Vayo (in Azaña, vol. III, p. 553) said a total of 400,000 crossed. Sir John Simpson, The Refugee Problem (London, 1939), has 270,000 soldiers, 170,000 civilians and 13,000 ill—a total of 453,000.

  1. Howard Kershner, Quaker Service in Modern War (New York, 1950), p. 24.

  2. La Dépêche (Toulouse), 3 March 1939, qu. D. W. Pike, Vae Victis! (Paris, 1969), p. 14.

  3. Regler, Owl of Minerva, p. 321. See Pike, Vae Victis!, pp. 216–17.

  4. Giuliano Pajetta had been the youngest commissar in the International Brigades. A young communist from Turin at fourteen, he had been arrested, fled to France and then to Russia and had been in Spain almost since the beginning. I met him in 1978. Such old warriors in Spain as Longo, Vidali and Togliatti also left Catalonia (Spriano, p. 271).

  1. The new republican ambassador in Paris, Marcelino Pascua (transferred from Moscow), tried to get Machado to Paris, but his attempt failed due to the gravity of Machado’s state (letter to the author from Marcelino Pascua).

  2. Regler, Owl of Minerva, loc. cit. For sympathizers with the republic, the care of the refugees was the last and most painful of the ‘causes’ of the Spanish war. See Nancy Cunard, Manchester Guardian, 17 February 1939, and Ch. XV of Nancy Milford, The Pursuit of Love.

  3. A. Toynbee, Survey, vol. I, pp. 397–9.

  4. Astorga’s method of maintaining discipline had been to shoot five people for every prisoner who escaped. See for an account Juan Pujol in Historia y vida, January 1975.

  1. Gorkin, Caníbales políticos, p. 237; and Pike, Vae Victis!, p. 53.

  2. Diario de Sesiones, No. 69, February 1939. See the description of the scene in Zugazagoitia, p. 508f.

  3. USD, 1939, vol. II, pp. 739–49.

  4. Alvarez del Vayo, The Last Optimist, p. 294; Azaña, vol. III, p. 554.

  1. Azaña’s account is in his letter to Ossorio, 28 June 1939, in Obras, vol. III, p. 552f.

  2. The General Cause, p. 178.

  3. Regler, Owl of Minerva, p. 325.

  4. Earlier tension between Rojo and Hernández Saravia is expressed in a note of a meeting between them published by R. Salas, vol. IV, p. 3345. Saravia had been quite isolated from his troops for over two weeks, being kept informed only by the fighter commander, García Lacalle, where the enemy was. See García Lacalle, p. 495.

  50

  1. The real value was nearer the unofficial rate of 100 to the pound than the fixed one of 42. The vales, issued by municipalities, by Popular Front committees, and by the Generalidad in the early days of the war (nicknamed ‘pyjamas’, because they could only be used at home), were no longer accepted.

  1. Madariaga, Spain, p. 431.

  2. Alvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle, p. 275.

  1. GD, p. 835; Bruno Alonso, pp. 117–18. Captain Alan Hillgarth, British consul in Majorca (vice-consul, 1932–7, and future chief of naval intelligence), had been asked to arrange the surrender by the nationalists. The Foreign Office agreed with the request but stipulated that no German or Italian troops should be allowed on the island for two years. These conditions were kept.

  2. Guy Hermet, Los comunistas en España (Paris, 1971), p. 30.

  1. Saborit, Julián Besteiro, p. 410.

  2. A decisive part was played by the head of the spy ring, ‘Antonio’ (called after Antonio de Luma, a university professor). Professor Julio Palacios, an agent of ‘Antonio’s’, was instructed to make contact through intermediaries with Casado in January. (From an unpublished ‘Memoria’ by Palacios, qu. Martínez Bande (Los cien últimos días, 1972, p. 119). Colonel Bonel in Toledo also played an important part in negotiations between Madrid and Burgos.

  3. Martínez Bande, op. cit., p. 120.

  4. Zugazagoitia’s comment in his book, Historia de la guerra en España, p. 546.

  1. Ibarruri, p. 429. It was said that Casado was paid by the British government to try and bring the war to an end. This unlikely story seems disproved by the manner in which he was received when he arrived in Britain at the start of April. Broué and Témime (p. 261) suggest that Cowan initiated the plot. I feel that that was a survival of the old French respect for ‘l’intelligence’, which it has not always merited.

  2. The following account of the end of the war in Spain and the coup of Colonel Casado is pieced together from, chiefly, the narrative of Colonel Casado himself (confused and contradictory though it is, his second edition is different from his first), Castro Delgado, La Pasionaria, Bruno Alonso, Alvarez del Vayo, García Pradas (Cómo terminó la guerra de España), Wenceslao Carrillo (El último episodio de la guerra civil española, Toulouse, 1945), and Jesús Hernández. Also Negrín’s speech in the Cortes Committee on Paris on 31 March; Bouthelier (Ocho días) and Edmundo Dominguez (Los vencedores de Negrín). Martínez Bande’s Los cien últimos días de la república is a sober, careful account, as is usual with that author, and gives information about Casado’s contacts with Burgos. See also Mera’s memoirs, p. 193f., and most recently Así terminó la guerrade España by Ángel Bahamonde and Jaime Cervera (Madrid, 1999).

  3. Prieto recalls this in Convulsiones, vol. II, p. 83.

  4. Martínez Bande, Los cien últimos días, p. 82.

  1. Tagüeña, p. 304. Díaz had been in Moscow since November (Spriano, vol. III, p. 272).

  2. Pérez Salas, p. 232.

  3. Ibarruri, pp. 436–7.

  4. Peirats, vol. III, p. 353. He was an Argentinian.

  5. The instructions dated 10 February were signed by Mariano Vázquez of the CNT and Pedro Herrera of the FAI (ibid., p. 356). Cf. Juan López, Una misión sin importancia: memorias de un sindicalista (Madrid, 1972).

  6. Alvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle, p. 278f.

  7. Casado says this was 25 February. I accept Martínez Bande’s view that it was not. Mera confirms, p. 194.

  1. Tagüeña, p. 306.

  2. Ibarruri, p. 440. The other communists included Checa, Delicado and Isidro Diéguez.

  1. Ib
arruri, p. 427.

  2. R. Salas, vol. IV. pp. 3392–8, gives Camacho’s report. I accept the dating of Martínez Bande which dates this meeting 16, not 27, February.

  1. Casado, p. 121; cf. Benavides, La escuadra, p. 451.

  2. Attacks on Negrín’s way of life in this last stage of the Spanish republic were made by Casado (p. 135) and García Pradas (p. 34). Was he really surrounded by chorus girls, were there really crates of champagne? Or do these stories derive from the imagination of puritans?

  1. Kershner, p. 47.

  2. Martínez Bande, p. 121.

  1. These facts were related to the author by Azcárate. They are described on p. 221 of his unpublished memoirs. Cf. also Álvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle, p. 285.

  2. Feiling, p. 394.

  1. Martínez Bande (op. cit., pp. 124–6) quotes Centaño’s report. Casado in his book says that he only met Centaño in March and that his visit was a surprise. This seems not to have been true.

  2. Martínez Bande, op. cit., p. 126.

  3. Azcárate, loc. cit.

  1. Martínez Bande, op. cit., p. 128.

  1. Qu. Watkins, p. 118.

  2. The opposition, ever since they had decided in October 1936 that non-intervention was a ‘farce’, had actively supported the Spanish republic, and had had good relations with Azcárate at the Spanish Embassy.

  3. Later he handed over the Spanish Embassy in London to the Foreign Office who delivered it to the Duke of Alba. Similar scenes were taking place in other capitals.

  4. García Pradas, p. 82.

  1. Martínez Bande, op. cit., p. 128.

  1. Hidalgo de Cisneros, pp. 463–4; Álvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle, p. 291.

  2. Jackson, p. 474, is perceptive on this moment of ‘passivity’.

  1. Bruno Alonso, La flota republicana y la guerra civil de España (Mexico, 1944), pp. 136–7. Galán took over from Bernal on the night of the 4th.

  2. Ibid., pp. 141–3.

  1. Bruno Alonso, p. 146.

  2. Some 1,200 died.

  3. For this day’s events in Cartagena, see Manuel Martínez Pastor, Cinco de marzo 1939 (Madrid, 1971). There is also Luis Romero’s non-fiction novel Desastre en Cartagena (Madrid, 1971). Galán wrote an account in España republicana (Buenos Aires, March–April 1968).

  4. Ibarruri, p. 450.

  1. Antonio Pérez, a railway worker, was a socialist, a follower of Prieto. He had been a member of the executive committee of the socialist party. A rump of this body had met to discuss what to do, and had been forced (according to its vice-president Edmundo Domínguez) to back the council by a vote achieved by a packed meeting. Neither Domínguez nor the secretary of the UGT, Rodríguez Vega, had wanted to accept a post in the council, and so Pérez did—against his will.

  1. Saborit, Julián Besteiro, p. 411. The writer Julián Marías came forward to act as Besteiro’s secretary.

  2. Casada, p. 150. Mera had wanted to arrest Negrín and take him to Burgos!

  3. An echo of Casares Quiroga’s question, so long before, to General Gómez Morato: ‘What is going on in Melilla?’ (see above, p. 206).

  4. Alvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle, p. 224. There are other versions of this conversation. See García Pradas, p. 75.

  1. Hernández, p. 197. Iaborov’s fate, origin and character are unknown. Lister mentioned him in passing. He and his staff no doubt left that day, with their records.

  2. Castro Delgado, p. 731; Tagüeña, p. 312.

  1. Ibarruri, pp. 453–5; Tagüeña, p. 318.

  2. Tagüeña, p. 316.

  3. The manifesto is, it seems, printed in R. Salas, vol. IV, p. 3414. Togliatti’s authorship was attested by Ettore Vanni, Io, comunista in Russia (Bologna, 1948), pp. 6–18, qu. Spriano, vol. III, p. 272. Vanni was then the director of the Spanish communist daily of Valencia, Verdad.

  1. Lister, pp. 256–7. See, too, Castro Delgado, p. 733.

  2. Alvarez del Vayo, The Last Optimist, p. 316; Lister, p. 257.

  3. These were Colonels López Otero, José Pérez Gazzolo and Aflredo Buznego, and Commissar Peinado Leal (Martínez Bande, op. cit., p. 220).

  1. W. Carrillo in El Mundo (Mexico, 1 September 1944, qu. Bullejos, p. 226).

  2. For all this see Togliatti’s letter to the communist leaders abroad published in Histoira internacional (Madrid, February 1976).

  3. Martínez Bande, p. 212.

  4. Ibarruri, p. 455. Miaja may have suggested it.

  1. R. Salas, vol. II, p. 2318. Ramos Oliviera, vol. III, p. 392, says 1,000.

  1. Martínez Bande, Los cien últimos, días, p. 221. These telegrams went from Colonel Ungría in Burgos to Colonel Bonel, in La Torre de Esteban Hambrán (Toledo), who communicated with Centaño and other agents in Madrid.

  1. For this first interview, at the aerodrome at Gamonal near Burgos, see Martínez Bande, Los cien últimos días, p. 229. During the course of a conversation on 23 March, Colonel Ungría said that the professional officers in the republican army had prolonged the war; Colonel Garijo spiritedly replied that the republic had lost the war only because those officers had not been allowed to do as they wanted. Further, if the professionals had had a cause in which they really believed, it was doubtful if they would have lost.

  2. For the second conference at Gamonal, see Martínez Bande, Los cien últimos días, p. 246f.

  1. Domínguez, op. cit.

  2. Spriano, vol. III, p. 272.

  3. Aznar, p. 845.

  1. Guy Hermet, Les Espagnols en France (Paris, 1967), p. 168.

  1. One who observed the entry of Franco’s armies into Madrid was the eldest son of the US ambassador in London, Kennedy. The young Joseph Patrick Kennedy had arrived in Barcelona in January, having written a doctoral thesis at Harvard on ‘Intervention in Spain’. When Barcelona fell, Kennedy left for Valencia and thence to Madrid, technically designated as press attaché to the US embassy in Paris. In Madrid, Kennedy was both arrested by an anarchist patrol and entered into contact with the Fifth Column. He remained in the capital until early April.

  1. British Foreign Office papers, P.R.O. The captain decided that Casado and his party were ‘fit persons for embarkation in one of HM ships’. He did not think that the 300 ‘armed communists’, who suddenly appeared on the quay, were so. Altogether the British Navy took off some 650. There were at least ten times that number left behind. Martínez Bande, Los cien últimos días, p. 287, suggests that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 at Alicante. (I am grateful to Michael Alpert for his help in framing this interpretation. See his article in Sábado Gráfico, April 1975.)

  2. Diáz de Villegas, p. 384. Another reaction was Mussolini’s comment to Ciano, pointing to an atlas open at the map of Spain: ‘It has been open in this way for nearly three years, and that is enough. But I know already that I must open it at another page.’ Ciano, Diaries 1939–43, p. 57. Italy attacked Albania the following week (6 April).

  3. Ev. of Don Álvaro de Orléans.

  51

  1. But Pétain’s biographer Maître Isorni (Philippe Pétain, Paris, 1972, p. 397f.) says Franco had ‘admired Pétain in 1935.’

  2. Ibid., p. 419. Pétain’s British colleague was Sir Maurice Peterson. See his Both Sides of the Curtain (London, 1950), pp. 153–235. He too had a difficult time.

  1. NIS, thirtieth meeting. At this meeting, Francis Hemming arranged to pay back to member governments a proper proportion of the surplus funds in the committee’s account; he arranged that he should be commissioned to write a survey of the work of the committee—a book which, however, never appeared; it was agreed that ‘no facilities ought to be given to outside persons’ to look at the committee’s documents—another provision which was not kept; the idea of an ‘old comrades’ association’, of those who had served in non-intervention patrol, was also approved—similarly without effect.

  1. Diario de Sesiones, 31 March 1939.

  2. The Spanish republicans were alleged by their enemies to have carried away enormous funds and money
abroad. Most of this, however, had been used for the purchase of arms.

  3. Bruno Alonso, p. 156.

  1. At least 70,000 in Barcarès, 40,000 in Argelès, 30,000 in Saint Cyprien. See Pike, p. 55. At Gurs, there were 7,000 ex-Brigade members.

  2. For a description, see Tagüeña, p. 300f.

  3. See Eugene Kutischer, The Displacement of Population in Europe, Studies and Reports Series D, no. 8 (Montreal, 1944, ILO), p. 44.

  4. See below, p. 922.

  5. This theme is well treated in Cabanellas, vol. II, p. 1119f.

  6. Hermet, Les Espagnols, p. 28.

  7. Pike, p. 68.

  8. Ibid., p. 72.

  1. Abella, p. 416

  1. See Georges Conchon’s brilliant novel, La Corrida de la victoire (Paris, 1960).

  2. For Miguel Hernández, see a vivid interview with his widow, in Triunfo (Madrid), January 1975.

  3. Ciano, Diplomatic Papers, pp. 293–4.

  4. Testimony to the author by Martínez Amutio, civil governor of Albacete till March 1939.

  1. Sergio Vilar (p. 227), quoting a communist, Miguel Núñez, who spent twelve years there.

  2. Catalunya sota …, p. 242.

  3. Astillara, La guerra de Euzkadi. Mera lists 500 by name executed in Madrid prison while he was there in 1941–4, p. 288.

  4. Charles Foltz, The Masquerade in Spain (Boston, 1948), p. 97.

  5. Santos Juliá, et al., p. 410.

  6. See, for the repression, Juan M. Molina, Noche sobre España (Mexico, 1958); Miguel García, I Was Franco’s Prisoner (London, 1972); Ronald Fraser, In Hiding. A lurid account is by the Paraguayan chargé d’affaires, Arturo Bray, La España del brazo en alto (Buenos Aires, 1943), and there is the graphically entitled 24 años en la cárcel (Paris, 1968) by Melquesidez Rodriguez Chaos.

  1. See Catalunya sota …, p. 242.

  2. The first edition of this book (1961) was, I think, the first to suggest that the accepted figure of a million dead was an exaggeration. Note that attempts to reach a figure by demographic analysis have given figures as far apart as 800,000 (Jesús Villar Salinas, Repercusions demográficas de la última guerra civil española, Madrid, 1942) and 560,000 (Pierre Vilar, Histoire, p. 117).