Read The Spanish Civil War Online

Authors: Hugh Thomas

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The Spanish Civil War (125 page)

30

1.
Zugazagoitia, p. 406.

2.
Hidalgo de Cisneros, vol. II, pp. 317, 361. Barea (p. 720) wrote ‘young officials of the various ministries … ambitious young men of the upper middle class who now declared themselves communists … because it meant joining the strongest group and having a share in its disciplined power’.

1.
C. Lorenzo, p. 155.

2.
Castro Delgado, p. 475.

3.
José Díaz,
Tres años de lucha
(reprinted Paris, 1970), pp. 289–90. The figure given by Díaz was 249,140, of which 87,660 (37.5 per cent) were industrial workers, 62,250 (25 per cent) agricultural workers, 7,045 (2.9 per cent) intellectuals and professional men.

4.
In Sergio Vilar,
Protagonistas de la España democrática, la oposición a la Dictadura
(Paris, 1968).

1.
Federación Catalana de Gremios y Entidades de Pequeños Comerciantes e Industriales. Figure given in
Frente Rojo,
21 October 1937, qu. Bolloten, p. 83.

2.
See Bolloten, pp. 192–3.

3.
José Díaz,
Por la unidad, hacia la victoria,
speech of March 1937 (Barcelona, 1937), pp. 50–51.

4.
Radek, Piatakov, and others were tried in Moscow between 23 and 30 January.

1.
La Batalla,
27 January 1937, qu. Bolloten in Carr,
The Republic;
and
La Noche,
qu. Payne,
The Spanish Revolution,
p. 289.

2.
For example, Nin appointed as state prosecutor in Catalonia a semi-
pistolero
named Balada, ‘who conducted trials as if he had been a slaughterman’. See Benavides,
Guerra y revolución en Cataluña,
p. 226.

3.
For this party, see above, p. 132.

1.
The Estat Catalá plot of November 1936 remains an obscure matter. See Benavides,
Guerra,
p. 244, where it is said that Reverter was executed on the ground of having had his mother-in-law shot. See Payne,
The Spanish Revolution,
and Martínez Bande,
La invasión de Aragón,
p. 296.

2.
See Azaña,
Obras,
vol. III,
Artículos sobre la guerra de España,
p. 508.

1.
Peirats, vol. II, p. 163.

2.
See below, p. 934.

3.
Borkenau, p. 185.

4.
See Juan López’s speech on 27 May 1937 (qu. Peirats, vol. II, pp. 248–52).

1.
Bosch Gimpera,
Memorandum No. 1,
sent to the author, 1962.

2.
Peirats, vol. II, pp. 262–3.

3.
See Bricall,
Generalitat,
p. 48. Bricall’s table gives 100 as January 1936, 98 as June, 63 for November, and 69 for December. Other tables in this study suggest a drop in the industrial use of electricity in Catalonia from 40 million Kwh in June to 33 million in December (30 million in March), though household use of electricity was less markedly down in January 1937 as compared with 1936 (10.7 million Kwh in January 1936, 9.7 million in January 1937).

1.
Diego Abad de Santillán,
After the Revolution
(New York, 1937), p. 121.

2.
Table in Bricall, pp. 116–17. Taking 1930 as 100, January 1936 was 161.5, June 162.6 and subsequent months were: July 165; August 167.9; September 172.9; October 182.3; November 191.1; December 197.6; January 1937, 209.7; February 227.1; and March 242.2. The spiral continued frighteningly throughout the year.

3.
For this debate, see C. Lorenzo, pp. 257–8.

4.
See Leval, pp. 277ff.

1.
Bricall indicates that the building industry, related to the wood trade, had dropped to 32 points in January 1937, in relation to 100 on the index in January 1936, and 69 in June.

1.
See
L’Oeuvre constructive de la révolution espagnole
(November 1936).

2.
Semprún-Maura, p. 94.

3.
Bricall’s figure (
op. cit.,
p. 79): with January 1936 as 100, the figures were 71 in June and 60, 42, 54, 58, 41, 56, 49 and 40 in subsequent months, to February 1937.

4.
Souchy,
Colectivizaciones,
p. 71.

1.
Bricall (p. 79) has January 1936 as 100, 67 for June 1936 and 85, 76, 96, 108, 70, 123 and 119 for subsequent months, these figures being kept up until the spring with its political crises. Chemicals were down by nearly 50 per cent in the winter of 1936–7 in relation to 1935–6.

2.
Peirats, vol. II, p. 261.

1.
Zugazagoitia, p. 197.

2.
Nenni, p. 171.

3.
Malinovski, in
Bajo la bandera,
p. 21.

4.
Azaña, vol. IV, p. 589.

1.
This letter was published for the first time in the
New York Times
on 4 June 1939, by the by then anti-communist Araquistain, ambassador in Paris, 1936–7. When this letter arrived in Largo Caballero’s office, no one could read the illegible signatures. Codovilla, the Comintern agent, was summoned. He could not read them either. It took a member of Rosenberg’s staff of the Russian embassy to decipher the names of Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov (Gorkin,
Caníbales politicos,
p. 85).

2.
This conversation was plainly heard outside the door by Largo’s staff. See Ginés Ganga, in
Hoy,
5 December 1942, qu. Bolloten, p. 273. See also Largo Caballero, p. 195.

3.
Prieto speech in Mexico, 1946, qu. Bolloten, p. 223.

1.
Prieto,
loc. cit.

1.
Largo Caballero, p. 225.

2.
See the letters quoted by Bolloten,
op. cit.,
p. 118. The Asturian united youth reached a working alliance afterwards with the anarchist youth.

3.
Figures in
Education in Republican Spain, 1938.

1.
Leval, p. 169.

2.
Libro de Oro de la Revolución Española,
qu. C. Lorenzo, p. 115.

3.
Leval, p. 296.

4.
Peirats, vol. III, p. 187.

5.
See the editorial of
Solidaridad Obrera
on 13 January 1937 (qu. Peirats, vol. II, pp. 116–17).

1.
Qu. ‘Berryer’,
Red Justice
(London, 1937).

2.
García Oliver’s speech, 27 May 1937 (Peirats, vol. II, pp. 252–8); see Cabanellas, vol. II, p. 1118.

1.
Interview with Kaminski,
Ceux de Barcelone,
pp. 68, 74.

2.
Report of Colonel Buzón Llanes, head of the 2nd section of the staff of the Army of the North, 21 November 1937, qu. Martínez Bande,
La guerra en el norte,
p. 247. The cheese was no doubt from Cabrales.

1.
Del Burgo, p. 700.

2.
García Venero,
Falange,
p. 151n.; see Southworth,
Antifalange,
p. 124, and Steer, p. 110.

3.
R. Salas, vol. I, pp. 369–70.

1.
This comment ignores the unsuccessful Basque offensive in Alava mounted by General Llano de la Encomienda in December: it was held off by Colonels Iglesias and Alonso Vega. For the Basque experiment, see Stanley Payne,
Basque Nationalism
(Reno, 1975).

2.
See for example ‘Auca de la Lluita i del Milicia’, No. 1, Edició del Comissariat de Propaganda de la Generalitat de Catalunya.

31

1.
For the creation of the Mixed Brigades, see Michael Alpert,
El Ejercito republicano en la guerra civil
(Barcelona, 1977). The Mixed Brigades were not numbered necessarily in order of completion but of commencement of organization: hence, at the end of December 1936, fifteen were in full service: the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th (International), 12th (International), 35th, 37th, 39th, 40th, 41st, 43rd, 44th, 50th and one unnumbered (E). Of these, four were commanded by militia leaders, the rest (except for the Internationals) by regular officers. The missing numbers were only contemplated. But soon militia commanders came forward.

2.
4,000 as a maximum.

3.
R. Salas Larrazábal, vol. I, pp. 528–30.

1.
Martínez Bande,
La invasion de Aragón,
p. 274, who published an unsigned report for the Catalan front; the
junta
of defence of Madrid on 12 December 1936 heard a report from Isidro Diéguez to this effect (see Alpert’s thesis).

2.
Orwell,
Selected Writings,
vol. I, p. 325. Orwell joined the army in Barcelona. A small detachment of English volunteers for the POUM had been formed in England by Bob Edwards, mainly of ILP members. Of these men twenty-five arrived in Barcelona on 12 January.

3.
Conscripts were twenty to twenty-five years old in 1936, volunteers often younger.

1.
Orwell,
Collected Essays,
vol. I, p. 523. Alpert comments, ‘perhaps dirt and scabies, or gonorrhea, from a quick trip to the city, were more characteristic than sodomy’.

2.
Peirats, vol. I, p. 283.
Acracia
was Peirats’s paper.

3.
Martín Blázquez, p. 296. The pay in 1937 of an ordinary soldier was 10 pesetas a day; of a second-lieutenant, 25; a captain, 50; a lieutenant-colonel, 100.

1.
C. Lorenzo, p. 188.

2.
Nosotros,
qu. Bolloten, p. 268. See also Fernando Claudín, ‘Spain, The Untimely Revolution’ in
New Left Review,
No. 74. The communist position is put in
Guerra y revolución en España 1936–1939
(Moscow, 1966), 3 vols. The anarchist case is to be found in Vernon Richards,
Lessons of the Spanish Revolution,
where the dilemma is summed up as ‘The “people in arms” won the revolution: the “people’s army” lost the war.’

3.
Lister had been appointed on 10 October and was succeeded in the Fifth Regiment by Modesto. The Regiment was dissolved on 21 January 1937.

1.
Each brigade was to be 3,800 strong, including three battalions of about 500 men each, four batteries of three or four cannon, 120 machine-guns, 104 mortars, a stock of 2,200 rifles, and a communications and engineer detachment. In fact, this design was rarely achieved: most Mixed Brigades only had one machine-gun company.

2.
Martín Blázquez (p. 299) was impressed with García Oliver’s competence in organizing the officer schools.

3.
Militias commanders were theoretically not able to rise above the rank of major.

1.
Guarner Memorandum, p. 5.

2.
Orwell,
loc. cit.

3.
He had been sentenced to life imprisonment for failing to defend the factory.

4.
Peirats, vol. II, p. 215.

5.
This was the estimate of the acute French military attaché,
FD,
vol. V, p. 597.

1.
Voronov (
Bajo la bandera,
p. 71) says 90 per cent. I think the figure was lower though only 14 per cent were with the republic in 1938. By the winter of 1936, the old artillery of July 1936 was being replaced by French, English, and German, and some Russian artillery, as well as some Russian anti-aircraft batteries. Subsequently schools of artillery were also opened at Lorca and at Barcelona. The Barcelona school was later still merged with the one at Lorca, to the anger of the Catalans.

2.
Hidalgo de Cisneros, vol. II, p. 123. Constancia de la Mora worked in the censorship department. See her
Doble esplendor
(Mexico, 1944).

1.
Manuel Benavides,
La escuadra la mandan los cabos
(Mexico, 1944), p. 376.

2.
Bajo la bandera,
p. 142.

3.
Russian officers who served with the republican fleet included S. Ramishvili (at Cartagena naval base); V. Drozd (with the destroyer flotilla); Nikolai Eguipko and Burmistrov, commanders of two submarines; V. Alafuzov, on the cruiser
Libertad;
N. Ostriakov (killed at Sebastopol) and I. Proskinov, both with the diminutive fleet air arm.

1.
See J. Trueta,
Treatment of War Wounds and Fractures
(London, 1939);
The Principles and Practice of War Surgery
(London, 1943);
The Atlas of Traumatic Surgery
(Oxford, 1947); and the life of Bethune by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon,
The Scalpel, Not the Sword
(London, 1954), p. 102f. Bethune died in 1949 running a mobile operating unit with the Chinese communists. The antibiotic came in only in 1943. See also Orwell,
Collected Essays,
vol. I, p. 323. Dr Manuel Bastos of Madrid had introduced the plaster cast and exposure by ‘window’ in Asturias in 1934.

2.
The benefit of the government’s move to Catalonia in late 1937 was considerable in this respect. Trueta’s work derived from that of Winnett Orr. Other important work in the civil war was done by d’Harcourt and Bofill, on frostbite and the use of sulphonamides in treatment, and also by González Aguilar in neurosurgical methods.

32

1.
Figures in report of the Institute of Agrarian Reform, May 1938, qu. Payne,
The Spanish Revolution,
p. 241; also Leval, p. 80; figures are chiefly from anarchist sources and, therefore, perhaps over favourable to them. Other sources include A. Pérez Baró,
Trenta mesos de collectivisme a Catalunya
(Barcelona, 1970). Andalusia must have had 1,000 collectives during the war but, shortly, republican Andalusia was limited to Jaén and Almeria. There had also been many more collectives in Estremadura.

1.
See Peirats, vol. I, pp. 317–19.

2.
Leval, p. 183.

3.
Except for some collectives in the Ebro and in the market-garden area of the Llobregat plain.

4.
Malefakis’s figure, p. 386.

1.
Campo Libre,
11 September 1937.

2.
Leval, p. 88.

3.
Campo Libre,
29 January 1938. Alcázar de Cervantes was the new name for Alcázar de San Juan.

4.
Leval, p. 134.

5.
Lister, p. 157.

1.
Campo Libre,
18 December 1937.

2.
Peirats, vol. I, pp. 321–2.

3.
Ibid.,
pp. 334–5.

1.
Souchy, p. 30.

2.
Instance quoted by Broué and Témime,
op. cit.

3.
Peirats, vol. I, p. 336.

4.
Ibid.,
pp. 311–13, 320.

5.
Campo Libre,
29 January 1937.

6.
Peirats, vol. I, pp. 333–4.

7.
Leval, p. 220. Some of the urban or industrial collectives imposed a six-month limit on their council’s duration. Leval gives an account of such a general assembly at Tamarite de Litera, Huesca (pp. 221–2). The meeting was held of 600 in the cinema, about 100 women, at 10
P.M
.

1.
Testimony of Jaime de Piniés, London, February 1973.

2.
Campo Libre,
9 October 1937. Figures in the ministry of agriculture’s publication
Economia Politica,
Publication 60, series C, No. 33. The 1936 figures take into account the production in the republican area only. The fact that the figures indicate a drop in production in Catalonia and the Levante suggests an intention of veracity, since this would hardly have been invented by a communist ministry of agriculture, with greater communist strength in those areas than in the centre and in Aragon.

3.
Campo Libre,
2 October 1937. The error of addition in the right-hand top column is in the original. A
fanega
is a measure equivalent to 1.6 bushels and an
arroba
is equivalent to either 11.5 kilos or 4 gallons.

1.
Alianza internacional de trabajadores.

2.
Campo Libre,
2 October 1937.

1.
Wages in selected collectives:

1.
Campo Libre,
11 June 1938.

2.
Ibid.,
30 July 1937. The basis for 1935 figures is not known: were they real figures or those kept for tax purposes? In this instance, quite possibly the former, since the Conde’s old manager and agent joined the new council of administration.

1.
Peirats, vol. I, p. 320.

2.
Castro Delgado (pp. 379–82) recalled that his three priorities on taking over the Institute for Agrarian Reform were to destroy the agrarian reform teams staffed by socialists; to force employers to accept that the rhythm of war was different from that of peace; and to enrol as many people as possible for the communist party.

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