The Spanish Civil War (89 page)

The first nationalist counter-attack in this manner came on 6 August, when Delgado Serrano reconquered the northern pocket between Mequinenza and Fayón. The republic left behind 900 dead,
1,600 rifles, and over 200 machine-guns. On 11 August, Alonso Vega and Galera mounted a counter-attack against the Sierra de Pandols, the blue slate mountains in the south of the front. By the 14th, Lister had surrendered the high point of Santa Magdalena. On the 19th, another counter-attack was launched, by Yagüe, on the republican position on the north side of Mount Gaeta, with softer, undulating slopes, overgrown with ilex trees. This was also ultimately successful. On 3 September, an attack was made by the two army corps of Yagüe and García Valiño (the latter transferred from the Levante, and now in command of an ‘Army of the Maestrazgo’) composed of the divisions of Galera, Delgado Serrano, Arias, and Mohammed ‘el Mizzian’—the one Moroccan officer (he was a nephew of one of Spain’s once most truculent enemies) to rise to be a divisional commander in the nationalist army. Gandesa was partially relieved, and the nationalists also recaptured the village of Corbera in the cultivated valley between the Pandols and Mount Gaeta. In this way, the republic lost, after six weeks, about 120 square miles of the land which it had won.

But these bare statements give an inaccurate picture of the relentless battle fought in the August heat. All day and every day the nationalist aeroplanes, sometimes two hundred at the same time, circled over the republican lines, with hardly any interference from the inadequate anti-aircraft defences and badly managed fighters of their opponents. Many of their Moscas and Chatos were destroyed on the ground, many were damaged, and many pilots were either killed or wounded; by this time, most of the best Russian pilots had been withdrawn. Nor had the republican command integrated the air force with the army’s needs. The republican local command of the air had been eclipsed by the start of August. That more than cancelled the advantage gained from their possession of the high ground. During the counter-offensive, the nationalist aircraft dropped 10,000 pounds of bombs every day. But the republican engineers, who repaired the bridges under bombardment, were tenacious. This period of the battle was perhaps most remarkable for the difficulty found in hitting small targets: five hundred bombs were needed to destroy one pontoon bridge.

The republic was jubilant for some time after the Ebro attack. Even Azaña was for a time persuaded that the tide had turned. The crisis over Czechoslovakia also threatened a general European conflict, in
which the Spanish war would presumably have been subsumed, as Negrín wanted. These favourable events did not, however, prevent a damaging governmental crisis. Fifty-eight death sentences for espionage or sabotage were pending, and were matters for dispute within the cabinet. The condemned were members of the espionage ring of a falangist named Villalta, which had recently been broken. As a result, Negrín demanded that all courts dealing with espionage and other crimes relating to the war should be placed under the ministry of war. He also wanted that ministry to deal with port administration; and finally he wanted the outright nationalization of the war industries. Now there certainly was confusion in the arms industries, sometimes the fault of the workers, sometimes of the state organization.
¹
In addition, the activities of the SIM in Catalonia had led to complaints, by Companys and others, that this police force was breaking the Catalan statute. The inconclusive result of this controversy had led Negrín to the decree of militarization. As for the scheme for nationalization, many were, really, partially unemployed—more so than before 1936
²
—while many collectivized industries needed help: ‘collectivized factory requires capitalist partner’ ran an advertisement in a Barcelona factory.
³
Many ministers (most of the non-communists) opposed the policies of Negrín. The Basque and Catalan ministers in the central government, Ayguadé and Irujo, thought that they should resign. The crisis lasted many days.
⁴
The censorship prevented the reason for these two ministers’ attitudes becoming widely known: the most important newspaper in Barcelona,
La Vanguardia,
which defended Negrín, explained them as separatist plots. War commissars even let it be known that the
Generalidad
was backing a separatist revolt.
⁵
Then Negrín left Barcelona for several days, no one knowing where he was. He had decided to precipitate a crisis, fearing that Azaña was thinking of sending for Julián Besteiro, who had stayed on
in Madrid virtually as a private person, to form a government of mediation or surrender. For Azaña believed that, once a truce were reached, even if temporary, neither side would be able to resume the battle.
¹

At length, Negrín arrived at the house of Companys, and asked himself to dinner. He told Companys that he was tired of not receiving adequate backing in Catalonia, and that he had decided to retire from politics in order to attend a biology congress at Zürich. He would before that present his resignation to Azaña, recommending that Companys should succeed him as Prime Minister. Companys, taken aback, tried to persuade Negrín to stay at his post. Negrín said that he realized that he had failed to establish good relations with Catalonia and admitted that he lacked subtlety. The conversation ended indecisively. The next day, Tarradellas and Sbert, the two senior members of the Esquerra in the
Generalidad,
both went to see Negrín. They assured the Prime Minister that they desired to arrange matters amicably with him. But Negrín seemed resolved to retire, saying to Sbert, ‘Tomorrow you will see how all this can be arranged. I shall be very happy in Zurich with my biologists.’ This was a political sleight-of-hand by Negrín. Companys was not a viable successor: adroit political manager that he once had been, he had by then lost many of his old Esquerra friends to the PSUC, others to exile, while he himself had lost heart after the government had moved to Barcelona. He was a broken man.

Immediately afterwards, Negrín began telephoning around Barcelona, and formed a new ministry, leaving out Ayguadé and Irujo. For them, he substituted José Moix (a communist, though an anarchist until March 1933, when he had been expelled over an ideological dispute) and Tomás Bilbao (a Basque, member of a minority Basque party, Basque Nationalist Action, until then consul in Perpignan, and a strong
Negrinista
). The other ministers were the same as in April. Segundo Blanco, the anarchist, remained, though, in the eyes of his CNT comrades, he was already ‘one more
Negrinista
’.
²
Negrín next went to Azaña, giving him the list of the new ministry, saying that, since this was a partial crisis, he had not felt it necessary to consult him; but that,
if he wanted to reject the new ministry, he would have to bear in mind that Negrín had the army behind him (hundreds of telegrams had allegedly arrived from army commanders telling him of their support). He then submitted the decrees in his original programme, which had led to the crisis, to Azaña. Azaña rejected the one militarizing the tribunals, but accepted those approving the death sentences and nationalizing the arms industries. Thirteen out of the fifty-eight death sentences were carried out. The nationalization did not, however, alter the circumstances in the industries themselves.
¹
Surprisingly enough, Negrín did go to Zurich to his congress of physiologists; with results that will be seen later.
²

This continued compromise with the communists has damned Negrín. His personal secretary, Benigno Rodríguez, was a party member, having once been the editor of
Milicia Popular,
the organ of the Fifth Regiment. Yet, in August 1938, as before, the Prime Minister had had little alternative save to sup with the devil. His attempts to secure a mediated peace—which he had concealed from the communists—had been fruitless. The only victory that Franco would envisage was a total one. The only hope for the republic still seemed to be to continue to resist, until the general situation in Europe should explode. In the meantime, the most tenacious advocates of the policy of resistance remained the communists. There was no alternative to employing their services. Negrín did not take the communists into his confidence in his search for a negotiated peace. His political aim was that of Stalin himself—to be willing to play a double-game. To do this against the communists may be dangerous, but it might have been successfully achieved in so unorthodox a country as Spain.

Meantime, the republic had accepted the British volunteer plan in principle. But they made reservations. They wished, for example, the Moroccans in the nationalist army to be classified as foreign volunteers, that ‘technicians’ should be withdrawn first, and that non-intervention should be made watertight by aerial control. The republic also deplored the grant of belligerent rights under the plan.
The nationalists, for their part, demanded an immediate grant of belligerent rights, and the withdrawal of 10,000 volunteers from each side afterwards. But that could not be supervised internationally, since ‘foreign observers would usurp, in a humiliating way, the sovereign rights of Spain’. The Non-Intervention Committee’s secretary, Francis Hemming, was then sent off to nationalist Spain to persuade Franco to change his mind. The nationalist note, as it stood, amounted to rejection. Azcárate wrote a personal letter to Vansittart, pointing out the injustice of maintaining non-intervention at all, when Germany and Italy were party to Franco’s rejection of the volunteer plan. The French-Spanish frontier had been closed in June in order to help persuade Franco to accept the plan. Could it not be reopened? Vansittart never answered.
¹

General Berti was now talking to Franco on Mussolini’s orders. The Italians in Spain numbered at that time 48,000. Italy was willing to do almost anything to help: either to send two or three more divisions to Spain, or 10,000 more men to make up for losses, or withdraw partially or totally. Franco chose a partial withdrawal.
²
So Mussolini decided to concentrate the Littorio and March 23rd Divisions into one large division and withdraw the other Italians. Britain’s attention could be drawn to this, and Ciano could argue that the Anglo-Italian Agreement should be put into effect.
³
But Mussolini was angry with the Generalissimo over the Ebro battle. ‘Put on record in your diary,’ Mussolini thundered to Ciano, ‘that today, 29 August, I prophesy the defeat of Franco … The reds are fighters, Franco is not.’
⁴

The republican offensive across the Ebro naturally caused gloom in nationalist Spain. Defeatism was talked, even at Burgos. The falangists were murmuring against both Franco and Martínez Anido. Stohrer reported scenes between Franco and his generals, ‘who do not carry out attack orders correctly’. The Generalissimo was as alarmed by the Czech crisis as Negrín was elated. The possibility of a general war, and one which he might have to fight against France, caused him to send 20,000 prisoners to work on border fortifications, in the Pyrenees and
in Spanish Morocco. No one told Franco the Führer’s intentions. German aid temporarily stopped in mid-September, due to their needs in central Europe. The Marqués de Magaz, nationalist ambassador in Berlin, was admittedly assured, on 19 September, that there would be no changes in German policy to Spain, even if war did come.
¹
But, a week later, Franco was still angry. Were Spanish ports needed by Germany for supply?
²

The General Assembly of the League, meantime, assembled, for the last time, as it turned out, at Geneva. Negrín and Alvarez del Vayo once more put the Spanish case. They left behind them the war at its grimmest. For, after the capture of Corbera, the battle of the Ebro had become an exercise in endurance. The front remained stationary, though active, until the end of October. Negrín himself (unknown to the communists, as to the Basques or Catalans) now embarked upon a new project of compromise. On 9 September, when ostensibly in Zurich with his conference of physiologists, he secretly met an emissary of Hitler (probably Count Welczeck, the German ambassador in Paris) in the Sihl forest outside Zurich.
³
But there was no possibility of compromise while Franco was in power. Ten days later, Mussolini, nevertheless, concluded that a mediated peace in Spain was inevitable, and that he would thus lose his ‘4 billion lire of credit’.
⁴

The Duke of Alba, the nationalist agent in London, was told at the Foreign Office that the French would take no action against Spain in a general war if Franco were to declare himself neutral. Otherwise, if war came, there would be an immediate attack on Morocco and across the Pyrenees. Franco made the declaration desired of him.
⁵
‘Disgust
ing!’ remarked Ciano, ‘enough to make our dead in Spain turn in their graves!’
¹
In pursuance of the same policy, the Generalissimo also announced, as a sop to France, that no German and Italian units would be permitted within eighty miles of the French frontier. Franco was usually realistic.

The conference of Munich followed. The fate of Czechoslovakia is well known. As for Spain, Mussolini (roaming the room with ‘his hands in his pockets’, as Ciano described him, ‘his great spirit always ahead of events and men … He has already passed on to other things’) told Chamberlain that the swift withdrawal of 10,000 men would ‘create the atmosphere’ for the start of the Anglo-Italian Agreement. He added that he was ‘fed up’ with Spain where he said (untruthfully) that he had lost 50,000 men, and was weary of Franco, who had thrown away so many opportunities of victory. Chamberlain, delighted with his success in ‘solving’ the Czech problem, suggested a similar conference to ‘solve Spain’. The two sides could be called on to observe a truce, while the four Munich powers would help to work out a settlement.
²
News of this leaked, and caused the republic to fear that it was about to suffer the same fate as Czechoslovakia. Franco did not like the idea either.