The Spanish Civil War (62 page)

Wages differed from collective to collective, the criterion being the richer the collective, the better paid the workers. This was an ironic conclusion to the libertarian dream. On the other hand, in many places, a little oil, wine, bread, even meat, were free, along with rent, electric light (where it existed), the use of a barber, medical advice and medicine. Wages usually varied according to the size, or needs, of the family. As has been seen, money was abolished altogether in many places, but, in most of them, after a few months, either a replacement for it was issued, in the form of vouchers (
vales
or
bonos
), or it reappeared as a ‘usual wage’, as elsewhere. For example, at Graus (Huesca), wages were first paid in vouchers: at the end of a month, these were replaced by tickets divided into points; then, because of the town’s importance in the locality, at a crossroads, the peseta was reintroduced;
and finally, the committee issued a local currency for use within the village, varying payments according to needs.
¹

In a few places, especially remote ones where bad weather caused shortages in winter, collectivists were permitted to keep a few animals of their own: in Piedras Menares (Guadalajara), for example, this was eighteen chickens and three goats;
¹
in other places, communal dining-rooms were set up where bachelors could eat free, passers-by at the cost of a peseta.

Statistics sometimes point to a rise in production, as for example on the collective of Miralcampo, set up near Guadalajara on land previously belonging to the Conde de Romanones.
²
There were also some radical improvements dictated or made possible by the demands of war and, perhaps, by the desire of the collectivists to prove the superiority of their system to all others. Time and again, there were reports of new model pig farms, new mills, and new roads. Land was often farmed in a more rational manner than before the war, irrigation extended, intelligent changes of production begun, hygiene improved, and sheds built. Many collectives bought new agricultural machinery. Schools increased, and the thirst for education by both young and adults was partially satisfied, in converted convents or palaces, by new schoolmasters, themselves finding learning difficult.

For innumerable workers, the absence, death, or, in some instances, mere retirement of the old master class, of the priest, of the whole apparatus of traditional living, and of all the things that went with it, such as the subordination of women, sustained a persistent exhilaration, making up for such shortages as were caused by the war. Life in the small towns of Castile or Aragon had been limited. Now windows seemed open. The conquest of power by the workers had created problems, but much of the tedium of the old life had vanished, in a wealth of slogans, encouragements to harder work, revolutionary songs, old songs rewritten with modern words, radio broadcasts, and
committee meetings, which gave the illusion, at least, that there was a political life in which the participation of all was possible.

From the government’s point of view, the disadvantage of collectives was that they paid no taxes; and, though the anarchists said that they ‘judged it a sacred duty to take food directly to the front’,
¹
it arrived at irregular intervals, so that it could not be counted upon, and was often wasted. Nor, despite the presence of socialists in many councils of administration, could the collectives be counted upon to carry out governmental directives.

By December 1936, the chief officials of the ministry of agriculture, from the minister downwards, were communists. (Castro Delgado had moved from the Fifth Regiment to become director-general of agrarian reform, and the secretary-general was another communist—Morayta Núñez.)
²
This had the effect of causing many rural workers to assume that, though the master class was new, it was virtually the same as it had been before in all really important respects.

The fate of the collectives if the country had been at peace is difficult to estimate. For the very existence of the war and of the other revolutionary parties—perplexing though both seemed to the anarchists—must have been responsible for some of the success that the collectives had. The war sustained the sense of communal service. At the same time, the government’s and the communists’ backing of the small farmer meant that such people were usually certain of an ally in need, from the autumn of 1936 onwards: the local council of administration could not go too far in bullying individuals to make them join or conform. (The communist minister of agriculture made a number of speeches promising the private farmer that his interests would be served by the party, and the message was heard.)

The only possible conclusion is that the collective experience would have been a success or a failure depending on whether its managers were able, in peace, to accept the permanent existence of, and collaborate with, the state and private proprietors; and whether the state and the private proprietor could have brought themselves per
manently to accept such enterprises as these kibbutzim alongside conventional ventures. Some anarchists, such as Horacio Prieto, were beginning to see that the merger of, say, twenty-five or fifty grocers’ shops into one large collective store, as sometimes happened, was not necessarily a social advantage. The abolition of private locksmiths, shoemakers, furniture menders and cabinet makers often led to the disappearance of those crafts altogether. What would happen too to ensure that rich collectives handed over their excess produce for the benefit of poor ones, and how would the rural managements have secured the fertilizers, machinery, credit, and technical assistance which were needed by Spanish agriculture, whoever directed it? Thus, too many questions are unanswered to be able to say that these agrarian enterprises were successful. Yet it is evident that they articulated the enthusiasms of many poor, but dedicated, men and women. They deserved neither the contempt of the communists nor the brutality of the nationalists, even if the delusions of grandeur on the part of some of the anarchist leaders, such as Joaquín Ascaso, diminish the sympathy which might be otherwise felt for the idealistic autodidacts who worked in the system.

The battles around Madrid in the winter of 1936–7 were international events as much as they were Spanish. Yet diplomats spoke as if Non-Intervention could be made to work. Thus on 12 November, Maisky, the Russian ambassador in London (‘in a way a second loyalist ambassador in London’),
¹
had happily remarked, ‘after weeks of aimless wandering, our committee … has elaborated a scheme for the more or less effective control of the Non-Intervention Agreement’.
²
For, on that day, a plan of Lord Plymouth’s to discover breaches of the pact by posting observers at Spanish frontiers and ports was approved. Portugal, Germany and Italy argued that, before the plan could be put to the two Spanish contestants, control by air should be included. The near-impossibility of that suggested that these countries were concerned to prolong negotiations, rather than reach agreement. All this time, the German consul at Odessa, and newspaper correspondents at Istanbul, were reporting the shipment of arms from Russia.

The shipment of Russian military aid was, of course, noticed by consuls other than the German. On 15 November, Eden, in the House of Commons, bluntly announced that there were countries ‘more to
blame for the breach of non-intervention than Germany and Italy’. On 17 November, Eden was also faced with a new problem. The nationalists declared that they intended to prevent war material from reaching the republic and, to do so, would stop and search ships on the high seas. Now, under international law, British ships could carry arms to Spain from foreign ports, and demand aid from the Navy, if interfered with, unless the interference were to occur within Spanish territorial waters, where the Navy was not entitled to follow. The British government regarded the action of such merchant ships ‘contrary to the spirit, if not the letter’, of the Non-Intervention Agreement. The Navy did not want to protect merchant ships carrying on such a trade.
¹
If Franco were recognized as having belligerent rights in the civil war, interference would be legal. Though the British government would have liked to have made such an act of recognition (they believed that that would more easily keep Britain out of the conflict), the French opposed it. Eden wished neither to help Franco nor to offend France. But he would have liked ‘to show a tooth in the Mediterranean’. On 22 November, in the cabinet, most ministers argued for belligerent rights, while Eden opposed them. Eden won, and the cabinet decided to let the Navy protect British ships while carrying ordinary cargo, but to forbid British ships to carry arms.
²
Actually, on 20 November, the Admiralty had told British warships that both Spanish navies could stop and search merchant ships for arms. Eden did not get that order cancelled till 25 November. It was fortunate for the British government that this did not leak to the press.
³

Before this had been digested, Germany and Italy announced their recognition of the nationalists as the government of Spain. Franco received the news by describing Germany and Italy, with Portugal and nationalist Spain, as bulwarks of culture, civilization, and Christianity in Europe. ‘This moment’, he added with a, for him, unusual superlative, ‘marks the peak of life in the world.’
⁴

But the situation was dangerous, for, on 21 November, an Italian submarine had entered the battle and torpedoed the republican cruiser
Miguel de Cervantes
off Cartagena.
¹
On 27 November, the Italian ambassador in Paris told his American colleague, the unpredictable Bill Bullitt, that Italy would not cease to support Franco, even if Russia were to abandon the republic—‘Franco’s effectives being insufficient to enable him to conquer the whole of Spain’.
²
Mussolini was gambling all on a victory by Franco. He had just sent Filippo Anfuso, Ciano’s principal secretary, and the chief of military intelligence, Colonel Mario Roatta, to Franco, to suggest that Italy should send a division of Black Shirts to fight in Spain. In return, he wanted Franco to support Italy in her Mediterranean policy. Trade connections would be made as favourable as possible.
³
On 28 November, Franco agreed with this arrangement, and the Black Shirts began to be fitted out. At that moment, Italy had sent to Franco altogether some 50 light Ansaldo-Fiat tanks, 50 pieces of artillery, about 24 Fiat fighters, 19 Savoia 81 bombers, and some Romeo 37 light bombers.
⁴
The tank specialists, who had been in action from 21 October till 26 November, attached to the Legion, were now mostly withdrawn, leaving behind a rather demoralized group of Italian pilots under Captain Fagnani as the only Italians actually fighting for Franco, though what remained of the material was still there.
⁵

Meantime, the first German chargé to the nationalist government arrived at Burgos. This was General von Faupel, a corps commander in the First World War, then an organizer of the Freikorps, who had spent much of the 1920s helping to reorganize the armies of Argentina and Peru. He was a strong Nazi, a fluent Spanish speaker, having, since 1934, been director of the German Ibero-American Institute, and was much disliked by his foreign ministry. Hitler had told him not to concern himself with military matters, and he took one man with him for propaganda, and one for the ‘organization of the Falange’. From the start, he and his wife—‘gross, intelligent, and maternal’—were unpopular with the Spanish leaders.
¹
Faupel, on the other hand, found Franco ‘likeable’, but ‘incapable of measuring up to the needs of the situation’.
²
He was anti-religious, and hated the Spanish upper class—thinking that only a man of low birth could make a fascist revolution. Accordingly, his staff associated with, and encouraged, radical members of the Falange, particularly Manuel Hedilla.
³
Faupel wanted Hitler to carry out an anti-bolshevik crusade, in Spain and elsewhere; but Hitler said that Spain was ‘a convenient side-show which occupied the great powers and left Germany free to pursue her aims in the east’.
⁴

Faupel’s first report to Berlin (with General von Sperrle, the commander of the Condor Legion, agreeing) was to urge that Germany should either now leave Franco to himself, or send additional forces. One strong German and one Italian division were all that were needed.
⁵
A concentrated combat force of 15,000–30,000 could, he said, break through the republican lines in overwhelming strength and so win the war. Dieckhoff at the foreign ministry warned against this, arguing that more than one German division would be needed and that, if such forces were sent, Germany and Italy would incur the same odium as the French had gathered in Spain in 1808. Shortly too, Germany and nationalist Spain would have to consider the question of
payment. A protocol extending the existing commercial treaty to 31 March 1937, and undertaking new negotiations before then, was, in fact, signed on the last day of 1936 by Faupel and an official of the nationalist diplomatic office.

Before that, Delbos in France, fearing that Italy was about to attack Barcelona, and aware that German help to Franco might be paid for in minerals,
¹
proposed to Eden that they should ask Germany, Italy, and Russia for a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to cease the sale of arms to, and then mediate in, Spain. Delbos also asked for support from Roosevelt. US Ambassador Bullitt, on receiving the request, took the opportunity to warn Delbos ‘not to base his foreign policy … on an expectation that the United States would ever again send troops or warships or floods of munitions and money to Europe’.
²
The Non-Intervention Committee, meanwhile, agreed on 2 December (Portugal abstaining) to put Lord Plymouth’s control plan to the two Spanish parties.
³

On 4 December, France and Britain approached Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Russia on the subject of mediation. Eden suggested that the ‘six powers most closely concerned’ might call an armistice, send a commission to Spain and, after a plebiscite, set up a government under men who had kept out of the civil war, such as Salvador de Madariaga, whom Eden had learned to respect at Geneva; Madariaga had been the Spanish representative during the last years of the republic and had been a permanent official of the League.
⁴

There were thus now three Anglo-French plans for ameliorating the condition of the civil war; the control plan, the mediation proposal and a suggestion made by Lord Plymouth in the Non-Intervention Committee for giving priority to stopping volunteers going to Spain. On 6 December, while they were supposed at least to be considering these enlightened ideas, Mussolini, Ciano, and the Italian chiefs of staff met to plan the next stage in their aid to Spain.
⁵
The ubiquitous
Canaris was also present, to tell the Italians that the German government desired to cut down participation in Spain as compared with Italy. The German war ministry had decided against Faupel’s suggestion of sending complete units to Spain. Since Italy stood to gain diplomatically, surely it was up to Mussolini to give more help to Franco than Germany could afford. The next day, 7 December, Colonel Roatta was given the supreme command of all Italians in Spain, and a ‘Spanish office’ set up in the Italian foreign ministry to plan this new commitment.
¹
The two naval staffs of the dictatorships also met in December and agreed that Italy would operate for Franco in the Mediterranean, and Germany concentrate on the Atlantic.

On 10 December, to the annoyance of Soviet foreign minister Litvinov (who advised against taking the issue of Spain to the League) and of the French (who had not been consulted at all), his republican opposite number Alvarez del Vayo put the republic’s case before the League Council at Geneva. He could scarcely have expected that, after so many failures to take collective action, the League would be decisive over Spain; but at least the question was placed on the agenda. Alvarez del Vayo demanded that the League condemn Germany and Italy for recognizing the rebels. He pointed out that foreign warships were attacking merchantmen in the Mediterranean, that innumerable Moorish troops had been used, that the war in Spain was a general danger to peace, and that the Non-Intervention Agreement was ineffective. In the end, the Council urged the members of the League who were on the Committee in London to do their utmost to secure non-intervention, and commended mediation. Though Russia and Portugal declared their willingness to support any reasonable mediation plan, Germany and Italy, while offering support, said that they thought the idea unlikely to be accepted by either side. They were right: Spanish nationalist and republican newspapers both rejected mediation in editorials. The mediation plan was dropped, Eden and Delbos pressing forward instead their less ambitious schemes. The republic accepted the control plan in principle on 16 December, at the same time setting out their familiar views on non-intervention, and reserving their right to reject the plan after further examination. The nationalists replied,
on 19 December, by asking questions. These were considered by the Non-Intervention Chairman’s Sub-Committee on 22 December, in an atmosphere of apprehension at the possibility of general war.
¹

This alarm was caused by the news of the arrival of the first 3,000 Black Shirts in Cádiz, by the Spanish republic’s seizure of the German vessel
Palos,
bound for nationalist Spain, and by the nationalists’ sinking of a Russian supply ship, the
Komsomol.
In Paris, Delbos had a solemn talk with Welczeck. The French people wanted an understanding with Germany, he said.
²
The way to achieve that was collaboration in Spain. On Christmas Eve, 1936, the British and French ambassadors in Berlin, Rome, Moscow, and Lisbon insisted, over the heads of the Non-Intervention Committee, on the urgent need to ban volunteers from early in January. François-Poncet in Berlin added that the question had previously not seemed to France important enough to justify such an interference in personal freedom.
³
The prospects of these
démarches
leading anywhere were hardly helped, however, when Blum was assured by the Italian minister in Paris that a period of Italian-French friendship could begin only if he allowed Franco to win in Spain. But Mussolini, added the diplomat, perhaps with truth, hated Hitler and longed for an opportunity to break with him. An extension of this ‘positive appeasement’ was seen in the Anglo-Italian ‘gentleman’s agreement’ of 2 January 1937. This affirmed the independence of Spain and freedom of passage through the Mediterranean.
⁴
But the news of more Italian support for Franco put paid to any idea that this
agreement would mean much. ‘It seemed only too likely,’ Eden later reflected, ‘that Mussolini had used our negotiations as a cover plan for his further intervention.’
¹

‘Armed tourists,’ as Winston Churchill named them,
commisvoyageurs en idéologie,
in the words of Colonel Morell, the French military attaché in Madrid, were undoubtedly now flocking into Spain.
²
On 15 January, a second expedition of 3,000 Italian Black Shirts and 1,500 technicians arrived in Cádiz. The Duce wanted his Italians in Spain for the glory of Italy and, therefore, did not want them mixed up in Spanish units, as Franco did. Franco gave way, with reluctance, for a time. By mid-January, Italians in Spain totalled 17,000.
³
These troops received two sets of wages: 2 pesetas a day from Franco, 20 lire a day from Mussolini. In Rome, other wages were nevertheless mentioned as an inducement to volunteers: 25 pesetas a day and 20,000 lire insurance.
⁴
Recruitment centres for Spanish volunteers, meantime, were set up in the larger provincial cities of Italy, particularly in poorer places, such as Bari, Cagliari or Naples. (There were also secret communist recruiting agents in Italy, for the International Brigades.) Not only that, but officials of the Italian railways were sent to Spain to reorganize the railways conquered by Franco.