The Spanish Civil War (43 page)

Recruitment of French technicians, as of pilots, followed. Specialized workmen, for example, were secured in France for the naval
repair workshops at Cartagena and Valencia. The French radical politician Senator Boussutrot organized recruitment of pilots (some to be paid the enormous sum of 50,000 pesetas a month). The lives of these men were insured at 500,000 pesetas, with, appropriately, an insurance company of which Boussutrot was director.
¹
At the same time, the four Fokker aircraft bought by Franco in England and held up at Bordeaux were returned whence they had come; and soon the imaginative André Malraux obtained the right to form and command in action an air squadron of foreigners. He collected some twenty aircraft, mostly Potez 54 bombers, but also the onetime private plane of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia, a few mechanics, an interpreter, a transport manager, and a dozen pilots. Some of these were idealists, such as the communist commissar Julien Segnaire, and some were mercenaries. Most were French, but there were a few Italians and later some Americans, Germans and an Englishman. The ‘Escuadrilla España’, as Malraux called his squadron, was first based in Barcelona, then moved to Barajas outside Madrid, being active on the front in August in Estremadura; the pilots lived in Madrid. Gaston Cusin, a trade unionist in the cabinet of the French Minister of Finance (Vincent Auriol), had organized by August a secret department of the French state whose aim was to help the Spanish Republic.
²

In the revolutionary columns on the ground there were also by August many foreigners, particularly German and Italian émigrés, communists and socialists, who had come to the ‘People’s Olympiad’ at Barcelona. Italian anarchists had been settled in Barcelona for many years, and some of them fought in the battle for the telephone
exchange there. An Austrian anarchist died in the battle for the Atarazanas barracks, and perhaps two hundred foreigners in all took part in the fighting in July in Catalonia. The Italians soon formed themselves into the Gastone-Sozzi Battalion,
¹
and the Germans, under Hans Beimler, a communist ex-deputy of the Reichstag, into the Thaelmann
‘Centuria’.
²
A number of French and Belgians formed a Paris Battalion. These men (and some women) were of no particular political grouping, though communists predominated. In late August, another Italian group, the Giustizia e Libertà Column, led by the leader of the group of Italian social democrats of that name, Carlo Rosselli, who had been active among Italian exiles in Paris since his escape from a fascist gaol, fought near Huesca. The first English volunteers in Spain were Sam Masters and Nat Cohen, communist ‘garment workers’ from East London who were bicycling in France at the time of the rising. In Barcelona, they organized a
‘centuria’
named after the English communist, Tom Mann. The first Englishman who went to the front was apparently John Cornford, a twenty-year-old communist research student in history at Trinity College, Cambridge, the great-grandson of Charles Darwin and son of a professor of ancient philosophy.
³
Surprisingly, for a communist, he joined a POUM column on the Aragon front, at Leciñena on 13 August. This was because he had brought no papers with him proving his ‘anti-fascist identity’, and was thus refused membership of the PSUC column.
⁴
The first English volunteer to be killed was a woman, Felicia Browne, a communist painter, shot in Aragon on 25 August. Previ
ously living on the Costa Brava, she had fought in the street-battles in Barcelona, whither she had gone to attend the People’s Olympiad. Altogether these early ‘volunteers for liberty’ in Aragon or Catalonia probably numbered 1,000–1,500.
¹

Meantime, in the international game of chess which marked the diplomatic background to the civil war, some new moves were being made. Philip Noel-Baker, a foreign affairs spokesman of the British Labour party, arrived in Paris. Blum told him that a nationalist Spain would be a military threat to Britain as well as to France. Noel-Baker suggested that the British cabinet should be so informed by the French. So Blum sent Admiral Darlan, the French chief of naval staff, to make an unofficial approach to Baldwin’s government,
²
which was, indeed, in need of accurate information. For the British Embassy in Madrid believed that it was only a matter of days before the capital would fall to the rebels; and hence the government were not going to devote much attention to the plight of foreign nationals. The consul in Barcelona, Norman King, forecast economic collapse; while the ambassador at St Jean de Luz wrote that the contest was one of ‘rebel versus rabble’. ‘The situation is beginning to resemble that of the French Revolution, except that the rifle and the revolver have taken the place of “the Guillotine”. The Scarlet Pimpernel is badly needed …’,
³
he added. Daily, meantime, from republican Spain, and especially from Catalonia, other appeals were sent out for help:

Workers and anti-fascists of all lands! We the workers of Spain are poor but we are pursuing a noble ideal. Our fight is your fight. Our victory is the victory of liberty. We are the vanguard of the international proletariat in the fight against fascism. Men and women of all lands! Come to our aid! Arms for Spain!
⁴

The government in Madrid were, however, also showing that they would not permit sentiment to come between them and their search for arms. On 2 August, Barcia, the republican foreign minister, asked a
German businessman, Herr Sturm, of the Independent Airplane Association of Berlin, if Germany could sell them pursuit planes and light bombers, with bombs of a hundred or two hundred pounds. Payment would be in any currency requested, even in gold.
¹
This request no doubt explains the continued politeness of the republican government at this time to Germany (the censorship even forbade the derogatory use of swastikas in cartoons), even though they must have known of the dispatch of war material by Germans to their enemies.
²
A German official, Schwendemann, who received the request, urged its dilatory handling, and not its straightforward rejection. A sea cargo of spare parts for aeroplanes and also lubricating oil for the engines, meantime, arrived in Morocco from Italy, on 2 August;
³
and, on 4 August, Admiral Canaris arrived secretly in Rome, to try to coordinate German and Italian aid to Franco. He had a long talk with his opposite number in Italian military intelligence, Colonel Mario Roatta. That meeting marked the real beginning of the military collaboration which led to the future Axis.
⁴
Italy agreed to provide petrol, and to give permission to land to German aircraft
en route
between Germany and Spain.
⁵

One other aspect of the internationalization of the Spanish Civil War should be noted. The 1930s were the great age of the foreign correspondent. From the end of July 1936, for two and a half years, the best-known names in journalism were to be found south of the Pyrenees. Distinguished writers were hired by news agencies to represent them at the Spanish war. The journalists themselves were to write about Spain much that was inaccurate and much that was brilliant. But many journalists also wrote articles which were intended not so much to be commentary, but as pamphlets aimed to help one side or the other. This was specially true of the republican side, for the nationalist press department had a harder task to excite enthusiasm. Among the republicans, journalists went into the lines, helped to train Spaniards in the use of machine-guns, and organized arms supply. It
was a correspondent of
The Times
who first pointed out to the Anti-Fascist Militias Committee that they could not win the war unless they found a way of feeding Barcelona.

No international action specifically caused the civil war, even if it is arguable that it would not have occurred had not the Left been oppressed by the fear of fascism, the Right by that of communism. No foreign power took the initiative to help either side. But those who were now drawn in, in one way or another, found it hard to disentangle themselves. Like Napoleon, they became bogged down in the quick-sands of Spanish politics. The final breakdown of the European order thus began in July 1936 in Spain.

Two campaigns soon altered the political complexion of Spain: the advance of the Army of Africa, commanded by Franco, northwards from Seville; and that of the Army of the North, under Mola, against the Basque province of Guipúzcoa.

The Germans supplied transport aircraft under Captain von Moreau to carry 1,500 men of the Army of Africa to Seville between 29 July and 5 August. Thereafter, 500 men were carried across daily. This was the first major ‘airlift’ of troops in history.
¹
Hitler later remarked that ‘Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junkers 52. It is this aircraft that the Spanish revolution has to thank for its victory.’
²
Five Italian Savoia 81 bombers, with some other aircraft and surface craft, also covered a convoy of merchant ships which ferried about 3,000 men with equipment from Morocco to Spain on 5 August, ‘the day of the Virgin of Africa’.
³
The republican fleet, far
more powerful than anything which the rebels could assemble, but incompetently led, retired to the harbours of Cartagena and Málaga. The republican seamen were overawed by the presence of two of Germany’s three battleships, the
Deutschland
and the
Admiral Scheer,
in the area. These victories of transport meant that a strong column could, therefore, be assembled at Seville, to march due north to cut off the Portuguese frontier from the republicans, and to join forces with the Army of the North.

This army ‘of Africa’, as it became known, was directed by Franco, who flew to Seville on 6 August, leaving Orgaz in command in Morocco. The column was led in the field by Yagüe, and, under him, Colonels Asensio, Delgado Serrano, Barrón, and Tella, with Major Castejón, all veterans of Moroccan warfare. Each of these officers commanded a
bandera
¹
of the Legion and a
tabor
²
of
Regulares,
with one or two batteries. The whole force (almost all carried across the Straits by air and about 8,000 strong) travelled in detachments of a hundred strong, in lorries commandeered in Seville by Queipo de Llano. Eight Italian Savoia 81s and nine German Junkers 52s flown respectively by Italians and Germans gave the nationalists local command of the air, while volunteers from the aeroclub at Seville were active in reconnaissance and liaison missions. (Two flying-club pilots caused one group of militiamen to abandon their position by bombing them with melons.)
³
On arrival at a town, the lorries would halt, and artillery and aircraft would bombard it for half an hour. The legionaries and Moroccans would then advance. If there was resistance, a regular assault would be made. The militiamen might fight bravely while their ammunition lasted, and thereafter panic, with no discipline to prevent a rout: no one told them to spread out to defend a village. Afterwards, bodies of those killed in the revolutionary atrocities would be found, and, in reprisal, the leaders of left-wing parties who had remained
would be hunted out and shot. Anyone would be liable to be shot who was carrying arms or whose shoulder bore the bruise of a recoil from a rifle. Few prisoners were made. The brutality of the Legion and the Moroccans was unexpected. The Moors—
los Moros
—had always been villains in Spanish fairy stories: they now became the focus of terror throughout south-west Spain. The Portuguese press reported that 1,000 were even killed at the small town of Almendralejo.
¹
An army of refugees fled before Yagüe’s army northwards. Everywhere the killing of ‘reds’ would be accompanied by a reopening of churches, masses, and baptisms of those born in the preceding month. In this way, Yagüe reached Mérida, with its magnificent Roman monuments, on 10 August, having advanced 200 miles in under a week. This was the kind of adventurous march in which Yagüe, by nature a
condottiere,
revelled. Hot-blooded, popular with his men, he in no way resembled the cold modern type of general on the German model whom his chief Franco was coming to admire. Four miles south of Mérida, the militia gave Yagüe his first real contest of the war. The battle was fought over the river Guadiana before the town. A thrust by Asensio gained the bridge. The committee of defence of the city were executed—at their head, Anita López, the soul of anarchist resistance. Yagüe thus established contact with the northern zone of rebel Spain—though not as yet with any body of men organized as a fighting force. He also cut off the frontier town of Badajoz. Towards this, he next advanced with Asensio and Castejón, leaving Tella with a small force to hold Mérida. On 11 August, the Mérida militia, which had fled from the town and was now stiffened by 2,000 assault guards and civil guards from Madrid, launched a counter-attack. Tella held this off, enabling Yagüe, with Castejón and Asensio and about 3,000 men, to concentrate on Badajoz, though it is possible that the attack was a strategic error: it might have been better to press on to Madrid. Defending the town was Colonel Ildefonso Puigdendolas (previously in command of the republican column which captured Guadalajara), with 8,000 inexperienced mili
tiamen. Just before the attack, Puigdendolas had to expend material, energy, and confidence dealing with a mutiny of the civil guards.

11. The advance of the Army of Africa, August–October 1936

The hot city of Badajoz is surrounded by walls and, from the east, whence Yagüe was advancing, is further protected by the broad river Guadiana. After a morning’s artillery bombardment, the attack was ordered in the middle of the afternoon of 14 August. The 16th Company of the 4th
Bandera
of the Legion stormed the Puerta de la Trinidad, singing, at the moment of the advance, their regimental hymn proclaiming their bride to be death. At the first assault, they were driven back by the militia’s machine-guns. At the next, the legionaries forced their way through, stabbing their enemies with knives.

The entry was made, although, of the assault force, only a captain, a corporal, and fourteen legionaries survived. At the same time, another column of legionaries assaulted the walls near the Puerta del Pilar. They made an entry there with less difficulty. The battle then continued in the streets. The two attacking forces met in the Plaza de la República beneath the shadow of the cathedral, and thereafter the town was lost. Hand-to-hand fighting continued until the night. Badajoz became a city of corpses. Battle and repression were indistinguishable since, once the town had been penetrated, there was no one to give orders either to continue or to cease fighting. Colonel Puigdendolas fled into Portugal. The legionaries killed anyone with weapons, including militiamen on the steps of the high altar of the cathedral. The bull-ring became a camp of concentration. Many militiamen were shot and even more carabineers, on Yagüe’s orders.
¹
These executions
continued into the next day, 15 August, and, at a lesser rate, for some time afterwards.
¹
There was another burst of repression when Salazar handed over refugees who had fled across the border. This conquest sealed off the Portuguese frontier from the republican government.

On 20 August, Yagüe began a new advance, turning east towards Madrid. Tella advanced through Trujillo to Navalmoral de la Mata, which he occupied on 23 August. To the east, the valley of the Tagus stretched out with no serious natural obstacles. All the revolutionary collectives formed after the occupations of farms in March (or earlier, after the Agrarian Reform) collapsed, without much fighting, though the collapse was followed by much killing. Asensio and Castejón advanced to the Tagus over the mountains of Guadalupe. Here the government’s Estremadura army, under General Riquelme, with troops from Madrid, met them. A section of Asensio’s column was nearly destroyed in the town of Medellín, by Malraux’s air squadron
²
in its first serious engagement: the squadron had brought together two or three Potez bombers, one or two Breguets and a Douglas. But the militia on the ground were no match for the legionaries and Moroccans, who outmanoeuvred them, forcing them to retreat hastily from their position, or risk being cut off. Even the aircraft were little prepared for modern war (bombs were pushed from the windows of fighters). Nine thousand men retreated, including 2,000 anarchists who refused Riquelme’s orders in battle and launched useless attacks in the San Vicente hills.

Asensio and Castejón joined Tella, therefore, at Navalmoral. After some days’ rest, the advance began again on 28 August, along the northern side of the valley of the Tagus. At Oropesa the Legion found that the bourgeoisie of the town had been assembled in the bull-ring to be killed by fighting bulls. They took a bloody revenge. Resistance was rare. The Army of Africa continued along the roads. The republican troops were unused to the battle conditions of this barren valley.
There were desertions. The militia refused to dig trenches, on the ground that such an action was cowardly. The government could not risk losing all their men in a general engagement and, therefore, retreated all the time. About now, furthermore, the appearance of Italian Fiat fighters of the so-called Cucaracha group, faster than anything possessed by the republicans, reinforced the rebels’ local control in the air.
¹
On 2 September, the columns of the Army of Africa reached Talavera de la Reina, where 10,000 militiamen were established, with as much artillery as could be spared (as well as an armoured train), in a fine defensive position on the slopes before the town. At dawn on 3 September, Asensio and Castejón advanced. The aerodrome and railway-station, some way out of the centre, were occupied. At midday, an assault was launched against the town itself, whose defenders by now had become thoroughly alarmed. In the early afternoon, after little street-fighting, Yagüe conquered Talavera. The under-secretary of war in Madrid, Hernández Sarabia, telephoned Talavera in the evening, to be answered by a Moroccan.
²
The last town of importance between Franco and Madrid had now fallen.

The completeness of this campaign of 300 miles in a month was a triumph for Franco, who had been criticized by some for selecting the western, longer route from Seville to Madrid, in place of the eastern, shorter and more normal one through Córdoba, La Mancha and Aranjuez. The success also consolidated Franco’s position against both Mola and Queipo de Llano.

The second main campaign of August was that in the north. In late July, as has been seen, because of shortage of ammunition, Mola had been near to despair; even to suicide, on 29 July, reported his secretary. At one moment, he was down to 26,000 rounds of ammunition. Then Franco told him by telegram of the arrival of German and Italian aircraft, and sent him 600,000 cartridges.
³
Mola’s plan, coordinated with Franco, whom he met in Seville on 13 August, was now to capture San Sebastián and Irún, thus cutting off the Basques from the French border at the western end of the Pyrenees. The columns of mainly Navar
rese troops operating there were placed under the overall command of their countryman, Colonel José Solchaga. On 11 August, Major Latorre had taken the old Basque capital of Tolosa. A socialist who had prevented the local anarchists and communists from destroying the electricity centre in the town was for his pains shaved, except for a ton-sure, and forced to run round the town crying, ‘
¡Viva Cristo Rey!
’
¹
On the same day, Colonel Beorlegui seized Picoqueta, a key ridge commanding the approach of Irún. Telesforo Monzón, a prominent Basque nationalist politician, travelled hurriedly to Barcelona to seek aid. But the
Generalidad
could spare only 1,000 rifles. The Basques, therefore, confiscated the gold in the local branch of the Bank of Spain and other banks at Bilbao and sent it by sea to Paris, to buy arms on its credit. The first commander of republican forces in Guipúzcoa, Pérez Garmendía, fell into Beorlegui’s hands; gravely wounded, Pérez Garmendía was briskly told by Beorlegui, an old friend, that it was fortunate he was about to die of wounds, since otherwise he would have been shot as a traitor.
²

The rebels moved some of their few naval vessels towards San Sebastián and Irún. The military governor, Lieutenant Antonio Ortega, in command at San Sebastián, threatened to shoot five prisoners for each person killed in sea bombardment, the prisoners in the town being many, and distinguished, due to San Sebastián’s position as the summer capital of the country. The rebel ships
España, Almirante Cervera,
and
Velasco
nevertheless began to fire on 17 August. The population hid, but four people were killed, and thirty-eight wounded. Ortega executed eight civilian prisoners and five rebel officers. The naval bombardment continued on the following days, without causing panic. Irún and San Sebastián began also to be bombed daily, Junkers 52s being prominent among the attackers. On 26 August, the land assault on Irún began. The number of men involved was small: about 3,000 Basques and republicans, and nearly 2,000 nationalists. Beor
legui was, however, supported by nearly all the artillery upon which Mola could lay hands. He had also a small number of light German Panzer Mark 1 tanks, armed with machine-guns, and armoured cars. The Basques, on the other hand, were strengthened by a number of French and Belgian technicians sent by the French communist party,
¹
and also by some anarchists from Barcelona. They had one regiment of artillery.