The Spanish Civil War (119 page)

1.
As recognized by Azaña in
El eje Roma—Berlín y la política de No-Intervención,
in Azaña, vol. III, p. 469.

1.
An American official of this company in the 1920s, Philip Bonsal (subsequently US ambassador in Cuba), says that the Andalusian landowners with whom he dealt were horrified at this invention, since they supposed that it would have the effect of ‘allowing revolutionaries to talk to each other from city to city’.

2.
Qu. Richard Traina,
American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War
(Bloomington, 1968), p. 62.

3.
Survey of International Affairs 1937,
vol. II, p. 170. See also Robert Whealey, in Carr,
The Republic,
p. 213 and note on p. 235.

1.
GD,
p. 483. See Buckley, p. 203, for a picture of German economic interests, and Viñas,
passim,
for a masterly analysis in depth. Some pro-Nazi Spaniards, such as Professor Vicente Gay, had received help from Germany to assist publishing their books on, admittedly, ‘La Revolución Nacional Sindicalista’ (Viñas, p. 169). The right-wing press also received subsidies; for example, Juan Pujol accepted 3–4,000 pesetas to put the Nazi case in March’s
Informaciones.

1.
A detailed consideration of the total effect of foreign intervention in the civil war will be found on p. 913ff. and in Appendix Three. A good summary of recent research on this topic is Robert H. Wheale, ‘Foreign Intervention in the Spanish Civil War’, in Carr,
The Republic.

2.
Les Événements survenus en France 1936–1945, Rapport fait au nom de la Commission de l’Assemblée Nationale
(Paris, 1955), Témoignages I, p. 215. This was the account given of their tenure of office in France by the politicians of the thirties to a parliamentary commission of inquiry in 1946.

3.
The rising brought semi–civil war to many Spanish embassies and legations abroad. In Rome, the ambassador, Zulueta, was thus besieged by his rebel chancery. In the end, however, all countries respected diplomatic practice and left diplomatic premises in republican hands, till they changed recognition. But probably only 10 per cent of the diplomatic corps of Spain supported the government (Julio Álvarez del Vayo,
Freedom’s Battle,
New York, 1940, p. 261).

1.
Evidence of Luis Bolín. See Bolín’s memoirs, p. 165.

2.
New York Times,
21 July 1936.

3.
Kindelán to Jackson, in Jackson, p. 248.

4.
This derives from nationalist sources, deriving from documents discovered in Madrid after the end of the war. It may be seen in
Cruzada,
XXVIII, p. 99. The information appeared in 1937 in
I accuse France,
reprinted from
The Catholic Herald,
a pamphlet published in London by ‘A Barrister’. The fact of the meeting was confirmed to Julián Gorkin by Albert Vassart, a metalworker who had been French representative in the ECCI (the Comintern executive). But now see Radosh et al., 7–14.

1.
Stalin perhaps kept the idea of an arrangement with Germany in the back of his mind if Litvinov should fail to secure an effective alliance with Britain and France.

2.
It has been thought that a small number of red air force planes were shipped out of Odessa in July for Spain. This rumour derives from the memoir of one of the pilots, Achmed Amba,
I Was Stalin’s Bodyguard
(London, 1952), p. 27; also mentioned by Clara Campoamor, p. 174. No one saw these planes in the sky till later, however, and I think that it is improbable that they arrived before October. Amba, however, seems otherwise well informed.

1.
This would explain why Russia, and French communists, were so anxious that France would be drawn into the war on the side of the republic. Some support is given to this interpretation of Stalin’s policy by Litvinov’s reply to a question put by the French government as to what the Russian reaction would be to a general war arising from French intervention. While he admitted that the Franco-Soviet pact would impel Russian help to France if the latter were attacked by a third power, ‘it would be quite a different matter if war were to come as a result of the intervention of one of our countries in the affairs of a third’. (Statement made by Jules Moch, then sub-secretary of state, to Julián Gorkin.)

2.
Togliatti himself (
Rinascita,
19 May 1962) and the ‘official’ historian of the Italian communist party, P. Spriano, vol. III, p. 215fn. say (the latter having investigated the matter with some care) that Togliatti did not reach Spain until June 1937. Hernández, on the other hand, speaks of him as well established by August 1936, and Justo Martínez Amutio,
Chantaje a un pueblo
(Madrid, 1974), p. 236, speaks of him as being in Spain in the winter of 1936–7. As will be seen, there were good reasons for Togliatti trying to establish ‘before history’ his absence from Spain till that date. Perhaps he merely visited Spain for a short time in 1936.

3.
See José Esteban Vilaró’s
El ocaso de los dioses rojos
(Barcelona, 1939); and Martínez Amutio, p. 317f. His real name was ‘Singer’. Gerö had been ‘instructor’ in the French communist party in the late 1920s and early 1930s. For a report, see Radosh et al., 414.

4.
See Hernández,
Yo, ministro de Stalín en España,
p. 33ff. This unpleasant work of the leading communist renegade from Spain is the most intimate but also the most controversial source of communist policy in Spain. Other Italian communists in Spain from this time on were Pietro Ravetto from Biella and, according to Spriano (p. 215fn.), an NKVD shadow for Codovilla, whose name was Codevilla!

1.
Martínez Amutio, p. 269f.

2.
Koestler,
The Invisible Writing,
pp. 198, 313. Muenzenberg, previously known as the ‘Red Hearst’ of Germany, was a journalistic genius. With his gift for gathering duchesses, bankers, and generals, as well as intellectuals, in support of one or other of his causes, he really invented the fellow-traveller. His assistant in Paris was Otto Katz,
alias
Simon, a Czech who was also his guard. By July 1936, Muenzenberg was already beginning to quarrel with his bosses in Moscow, who found him too independent.

3.
Qu. David Caute,
The Fellow Travellers
(London, 1973), p. 170.

4.
Hitler’s interview with Ciano at Brenner, 28 September 1940.
Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945,
Series D (London, 1961), XI, p. 214.

5.
Bolín, p. 168f.

1.
Evidence of Luis Bolín. See also
Cruzada,
X, p. 126.

2.
GD,
p. 4.

3.
See Viñas, p. 394f., and
Cruzada,
X, p. 127; cf. footnote to
GD,
p. 1. The letter did not appear in the files of the German foreign ministry and has not been published. Bernhardt described it to me in Buenos Aires in 1971. Mola also sent the Marqués de las Marismas and the Marqués de Portago to Berlin. The Germans could not believe that Franco’s and Mola’s emissaries did not know each other and later instructed Arranz to repair to a café where Mola’s men were also sitting. Only when the two Spaniards showed no sign of recognizing each other did they believe the lack of coordination between north and south in Spain. See, for this journey, José Escobar’s
Así empezó
… (Madrid, 1974), pp. 110–11.

4.
Testimony of Bernhardt. Langenheim was a mining engineer. See also Herbert Feis,
The Spanish Story
(New York, 1948), p. 280f., and Viñas, p. 364.

1.
Evidence of Señor de Cárdenas. Cf. too
French Foreign Policy Documents, 1936–1939
(hereinafter
FD
), vol. III, p. 52, which speak of a request for 20 aircraft, on 24 July. The other requests were named in the later list. See
FD,
p. 61.

2.
United States Foreign Policy (
State Department Papers,
henceforward referred to as
USD
), 1936, vol. II, pp. 447–9.

3.
For Léger, see
The Diplomats, 1919–1939
(Princeton, 1953), a symposium edited by Gordon Craig and Felix Gilbert.

4.
Sanchís, p. 11. Cárdenas summoned the head of chancery, Cristóbal de Castillo, to apologize for leaving him with such problems. Castillo said that he would himself be resigning within a short while, though he would delay a day or two to make matters difficult for the republic. Cárdenas remained a further week in Paris to do what he could to prevent the dispatch of war material to the republic, by putting his friends at the British Embassy privately in the picture.

1.
Les Événements survenus,
pp. 216–17. Eden said that it was his recollection that Spain was not discussed (Anthony Eden,
Facing the Dictators,
London, 1962, p. 406).

2.
Winston Churchill,
The Gathering Storm
(London, 1948), p. 168. Churchill made his attitude very clear to the then newly appointed republican ambassador in London, Pablo de Azcárate, in October. On being presented to Azcárate by Lord Robert Cecil, Churchill turned red with anger, muttered, ‘Blood, blood, blood’, and refused the Spaniard’s outstretched hand. (MS memoirs of Pablo de Azcárate, made available to the author, Geneva, 1960.) Azcárate took over from López Oliván in August.

1.
Thomas Jones,
Diary with Letters
(London, 1954), p. 231.

2.
Eden, p. 401. By 24 July, nineteen ships, partly from the home fleet, partly from the Mediterranean fleet, were distributed around the Spanish coast.

3.
Eden, p. 400; also
FO
/371/215/24/224-5.

4.
CAB
23/85/130.

5.
FO
371/205/24/243.

6.
The diplomatic corps had left Madrid for the summer capital of San Sebastián before the rising. By 22 July they were all established, safe (after several adventures), in St Jean de Luz, the other side of the French frontier. The embassies in Madrid were in the hands of junior members of the diplomatic staff, or of consuls. There was, at this time, no German ambassador to Spain—none having been appointed since Count von Welczeck had left for Paris in April.

7.
USD,
1937, vol. I, p. 224.

8.
Qu. Dante Puzzo,
Spain and the Great Powers
(New York, 1962), p. 100.

1.
Auden changed the lines of this excellent poem in subsequent editions, to diminish its militant intent.

2.
Stephen Spender,
World within World
(London, 1951), p. 187.

3.
Philip Toynbee,
Friends Apart
(London, 1954), p. 85.

1.
Nancy Cunard and the periodical
Left Review
took a poll of English writers and asked them which side they ‘backed’. Only five—among them Evelyn Waugh, Eleanor Smith, and Edmund Blunden—were for the nationalists. Ruby Ayres, Norman Douglas, T. S. Eliot (‘I still feel convinced that it is best that at least a few men of letters should remain isolated and take no part in these collective activities’), Charles Morgan, Ezra Pound, Alec Waugh, Sean O’Faolain, H. G. Wells, and Vita Sackville-West were among the sixteen who declared themselves neutral. The remaining hundred writers committed themselves, many in passionate terms, in favour of the republic. These included Auden (‘The struggle in Spain has X-rayed the lies upon which our civilization is built’), George Barker, Samuel Beckett (who commented simply, in capitals, in the well-loved style of
Godot,
‘
UPTHEREPUBLIC
!’), Norman Collins, Cyril Connolly, Alesteir Crowley, Havelock Ellis, Ford Madox Ford, David Garnett, Louis Golding, Lancelot Hogben, Laurence Housman, Brian Howard, Aldous Huxley, Storm Jameson, Dr Joad, Harold Laski, John and Rosamond Lehmann, Eric Linklater, F. L. Lucas, Rose Macaulay, A. G. Macdonnell, Louis MacNeice, Francis Meynell, Naomi Mitchison, Raymond Mortimer, John Middleton Murry, Sean O’Casey, V. S. Pritchett, Herbert Read, Edward Sackville-West, Stephen Spender, James Stephens, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Rebecca West, and Antonia White.

2.
Orwell, p. 248.

1.
An excellent analysis is D. W. Pike’s
Conjecture, Propaganda and Deceit
(Stanford, 1970).

1.
Welczeck had been ambassador in Madrid until the preceding April. He had been a friend of King Alfonso, an anti-Nazi, a noted huntsman and a tireless man of the world.

2.
GD,
p. 4.

3.
Loc. cit.,
n.

4.
Op. cit.,
p. 7.

1.
Viñas, p. 395.

2.
Les Événements survenus,
p. 217.

3.
The following is based on a letter from de los Ríos to Giral, a copy of which was stolen from the house of the Spanish consul general, Cipriano Rivas Cherif, in Geneva, and sensationally published at the end of 1936. See
Il Messaggero,
10 December 1936. The letter may be seen in facsimile in Francesco Belforte,
La guerra civile in Spagna
(Milan, 1938–9), vol. I, p. 192. De los Ríos accepted its authenticity.

1.
Barroso, a friend of Franco whom he accompanied to London to George V’s funeral as ADC, subsequently joined Franco’s staff.

2.
Les Événements survenus,
p. 217.

3.
Malraux had become world famous in 1934 with the publication of
La Condition humaine.
He may never have been a communist, but he provided the motive for thousands of young men to become so. I discussed this stage with Malraux at Verrières in 1972.

4.
Fischer, p. 334. Malraux believed then that Marxism was ‘the only organism capable of opposing fascism with force’. See Walter G. Langlois, ‘Aux Sources de l’Espoir’,
La Revue des Lettres Modernes,
1973, 5.

1.
Jean Lacouture,
André Malraux
(Paris, 1973), p. 227. Malraux went back to Spain in a Lockheed Orion belonging to the ministry of air in Paris on 25 July, as an informal observer for the French government, but also as a president of the World Committee against Fascism and War. Malraux was piloted by the famous French flier, Edouard Corniglion-Molinier.

2.
Azcárate, MS, p. 20. The effect of formal French non-intervention caused deep fissures throughout the second International, of which the French socialist party was one of the leaders. The split in, for example, the Belgian socialist party (which at this time had a share in the government of Belgium) lasted until 1940.

3.
Pedro Sainz Rodríguez,
Testimonio y Recuerdos
(Madrid, 1978), p. 232; Bolín, pp. 170, 171. Attilio Tamaro (
Venti anni di storia,
Rome, 1952–3, vol. III, p. 200) says that Mussolini refused to send aid when twice asked by Franco and only agreed when he heard that Blum was helping the republic. This was probably a factor, but not the decisive one.

4.
Luca de Tena, p. 251. I asked Don Juan once how far he and his family were concerned in the rising. ‘Up to here’, he said, drawing a hand over his neck. Of the aircraft, two later crashed (see below, p. 350). The French officials who investigated the crash alleged that one of the dead Italian pilots had received flying orders on 15 July. Apart from Mussolini’s aid in 1934, there is no evidence of Italian help before the rising; the papers on the dead pilot either contain a misprint, perhaps for 25 July; a deliberate forgery; or the pilot simply returned
from leave
on 15 July. Since the planes did not leave Sardinia for Morocco till 30 July, and since Franco had needed them from 19 July onwards, it is inconceivable that they were, as alleged, given flying orders before the rising. The document mentioning 15 July has never been published. It may never have existed.

1.
It was said that he bought a majority holding in the Savoia aircraft factory so as to be able to dominate the supply of bombers to Franco. See Fernando Schwartz,
La internacionalización de la guerra civil española
(Barcelona, 1971), p. 74. One can be sure that, whatever March did, he did it for profit.

2.
Paolo Monelli,
Mussolini
(London, 1953), p. 141.

3.
Eden, p. 424.

4.
Rachele Mussolini,
My Life with Mussolini
(London, 1959), p. 91; Bolín’s evidence.

1.
Roberto Cantalupo,
Fu la Spagna
(Milan, 1948), p. 62.

2.
Attilio Tamaro, vol. II, p. 200.

3.
Galeazzo Ciano,
Diaries 1939–1943
(London, 1947), p. 48.

4.
Ciano, p. 206. Throughout this time, an Italian spy in the domestic service of Perth gained possession of the telegrams between Rome and England by fitting a removable false back to the ambassador’s private safe. Ciano was thus able to act with unusual freedom in his relations with Britain.

5.
GD,
pp. 10–11.

6.
Viñas plays down Canaris’s role and he may be right to do so. Still, Canaris had been responsible for Spain placing her order in 1926 for submarines with a Dutch firm which was secretly financed by the German admiralty. Cf. F. Carsten,
The Reichswehr and Politics 1918–1933
(Oxford, 1966), p. 243. Franco later granted asylum and a pension to Frau Canaris after her husband’s death in 1944. According to Ian Colvin, Canaris advised Franco as to how to resist Hitler’s demands that Spain enter the world war (Ian Colvin,
Hitler’s Secret Enemy,
London, 1957, p. 130). See also Karl Abshagen,
Canaris
(London, 1956), p. 112. Canaris had first been in Spanish Morocco in 1916 where he had set up a supply base for German submarines, prepared a system of observation of allied ships in the Mediterranean and even allegedly directed risings against France.

1.
International Military Tribunal,
The Trial of the Major War Criminals,
Nuremberg, 1947–49, ix, pp. 280–81.

2.
Bernhardt to the author, Buenos Aires, 1971.

1.
Conversation with Johannes Bernhardt. A reconstruction in detail can be seen in Viñas, p. 350.

2.
Basil Liddell Hart,
The Other Side of the Hill
(London, 1948), p. 34.

3.
Hitler’s Table Talk,
ed. by Hugh Trevor-Roper (London, 1953), p. 320.

4.
Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Memoirs
(London, 1954), p. 59.

5.
Liddell Hart,
loc. cit.

1.
See Karl Bracher,
The German Dictatorship
(London, 1970), p. 323.

2.
Milch’s diary for 26 July in David Irving,
The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe
(London, 1974), p. 48.

3.
Captain Carranza, a retired army officer, was made a formal partner to Bernhardt. Viñas prints the original contract of the company. ROWAK was not founded till later.

4.
See Whealey,
loc. cit.,
p. 215 and reference there; for the Junkers, see José Larios,
Combat over Spain
(London, 1966), p. 27; cf. evidence of General Warlimont, submitted to US Army Intelligence, 1945 (
UN Security Council Report on Spain,
1946).

5.
Viñas’s dates.

6.
There also were dispatched to Spain at this time twenty 20 mm anti-aircraft guns, two short-wave stations, some machine-guns, bombs, anti-gas equipment, stocks of aviation motors and medical equipment.

1.
Liddell Hart,
op. cit.,
p. 98.

2.
These figures derive from the nationalist historian of the war in the air, José Gomá,
La guerra en el aire
(Barcelona, 1958), p. 66. One hundred and seventy transport ships apparently made the journey to Spain during the entire war, chiefly leaving Hamburg.

3.
Recollection of Johannes Bernhardt.

4.
GD,
p. 14.

5.
Ribbentrop, p. 60.

6.
GD,
p. 114.

7.
Ernst von Weizsäcker,
Memoirs
(New York, 1951), p. 112.

1.
GD,
p. 16.

2.
Adolf Galland,
The First and the Last
(London, 1957), p. 23.

3.
‘Wir werden weitermarschieren, wenn alles in Scherben fällt, Unsere Feinde sind die Roten, die Bolschewisten der Welt’.

4.
In his poem ‘The Flowering Rifle’. Campbell was caught in his house at Toledo by the outbreak of the revolution in that city. Narrowly escaping with his life (and that of his family), he later became one of the most ardent apologists for the nationalists, without, however, actually fighting for them. Southworth,
El mito,
p. 116f., makes a severe comparison between the version of ‘The Flowering Rifle’ published in 1939 and that of 1957.

5
Eden, p. 400. So Monteiro, Portuguese foreign minister, told Eden on 30 July, adding that he was afraid of a Spain too closely linked with Germany.

6.
The scheme was, however, examined and rejected. See Hugh Kay,
Salazar and Modern Portugal
(London, 1970), p. 86f.

1.
Eventually ‘several thousand’ Portuguese volunteers fought for the nationalists (Salazar, speech of May 1939, qu. Kay, p. 92).

2.
Iturralde, vol. II, p. 113.

3.
GD,
p. 53. Feeling against Portugal shortly became as strong as against Franco on the international Left. The novelist Louis Golding even agitated in England for a boycott on port.

4.
The source of this statement is the same as in fn. 4, p. 325.

5.
Nollau (p. 139) says that the Comintern executive (ECCI) set up a special committee on Spain composed of La Pasionaria, André Marty, Togliatti, André Bielov, and Stella Blagoyeva. The last two were cadre functionaries of the Comintern, possibly NKVD appointees: Stella Blagoyeva, a Bulgarian, finished her days as Bulgarian ambassadress to Moscow after 1945.

1.
A Jewish polymath of Hungarian extraction. He and his wife were both murdered, being then over eighty, by the Gestapo in 1944. For the meeting, see Langlois,
loc. cit.

2.
Hernández, p. 36.

3.
Report of 1936 TUC, quoted K. W. Watkins,
Britain Divided
(London, 1963), p. 153.

4.
F. J. Taylor,
The United States and the Spanish Civil War
(New York, 1956), p. 39f.

1.
Roosevelt was ignorant of Spanish politics: ‘I hope that if Franco wins, he will establish a liberal régime,’ he apparently told the subsequent republican ambassador, de los Ríos, over their first interview, in the summer of 1936 (Azaña, vol. IV, p. 630).

1.
See Allen Guttmann,
The Wound in the Heart
(New York, 1962).

2.
See Caute, p. 139.

3.
Savoia Marchetti 81.

4.
L’Echo de Paris,
1 August 1936. Cf. Bolín, p. 172. Bonomi said in his book that he received the orders to go to Morocco on 28 July.

5.
Note telephone call to Paris, 4 August (
FO
371/205/26/23); also, conversations with the late Francis Hemming.

1.
See Jean Gisclon,
Des avions et des hommes
(Paris, 1969), for an account of what happened to the seventeen Dewoitines flown to Montaudran.

2.
The exact number, and of what make, is difficult to be certain about. The figure of seventy is Pierre Cot,
The Triumph of Treason
(Chicago, 1944), p. 343. See also Lacouture, p. 229; Salas Larrazábal, vol. I, p. 436; Sanchis, p. 11; and
Les Événements survenus,
p. 219. The probable shipment was something like: 5 Bloch 210 bombers; 20 Potez 54 bombers (some being 540, some 543); 10 Breguet XIX reconnaissance planes; 17 Dewoitine 371 fighters; 2 Dewoitine 500 and 510 fighters; 5 Amiot bombers; and 5 Potez 25-A-2 bombers. Pike, pp. 44–6, has a list of 38 planes leaving Francazal (Toulouse) for Barcelona between 2 and 9 August; and 56 between 9 August and 14 October, from Montaudran, the neighbouring airfield owned by Air France. The latter included 6 Loire 46 fighters, and 1 Blériot Spad 510 fighter. There were probably more of the latter. Jules Moch,
Rencontres avec Léon Blum
(Paris, 1969), p. 146, speaks of another 13 Dewoitines going on 8 August.

3.
Jesús Salas, p. 83.

4.
A. García Lacalle,
Mitos y verdades: la aviación de caza en la guerra española
(Mexico, 1974), pp. 134–5.

1.
Jesús Salas, p. 64, prints a contract with one pilot. The average junior Spanish officer’s wage was 333 pesetas a month. Later, these huge sums for foreign aviators dropped by half, and, by the winter, volunteer pilots were paid 1,000 pesetas for every enemy shot down. The first 13 pilots were French (Darry, Valbert, Bernay, Thomas, Heilmann) but soon Englishmen appeared (Smith-Piggott, Doherty, Cartwright, Clifford, Collins) and later some Americans (Dahl, Tanker, Leider, Allison, etc.). All were mercenaries though most had, too, some political views.

2.
Pierre Péan,
Vies et morts de Jean Moulin
(Paris, 1998), p. 141ff. Malraux flew, though he had no pilot’s licence. His task was to galvanize and to inspire. Many of his men at the Hotel Florida in Madrid made a bad impression. See Lacouture, p. 230; the novel by Paul Nothomb (Julien Segnaire),
La Rançon
(Paris, 1952), whose author appears in
L’Espoir
as ‘Attignies’; Koltsov, p. 93; Pietro Nenni,
Spagna
(Milan, 1958), p. 196. A negative comment can be seen in Hidalgo de Cisneros, vol. II, p. 323f.

1.
Gastone Sozzi was an Italian socialist killed by the Black Shirts.

2.
Thaelmann had been a Hamburg harbour worker, whose hearty but semi-illiterate incoherence commended him to Stalin in the late twenties as a leader of the German communists. He was at this time in a concentration camp, where he was later murdered (1944). Beimler had been imprisoned in Dachau and had escaped by strangling his SS guard and walking out in his clothes.

3.
Cornford was accompanied (on a different part of the same Aragon front) by Richard Bennett, also from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a short while on the front-line, Bennett joined the Barcelona Radio Services and broadcast as ‘Voice of Spain’.