We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  From there, Philby was able to get a job with the Anglo-Russian Trade Gazette, a journal run by British financiers who had business interests in pre-revolutionary Russia and assumed by Moscow to be linked to British Intelligence. Since there was no chance of its backers getting their money back from the Russians, the Gazette was failing and the owners decided to turn it into an Anglo-German publication with backing from the Third Reich. Philby was installed as editor and also joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, an organization of pro-Nazi financiers, members of parliament and figures from high society – mocked by Churchill as the ‘Heil Hitler Brigade’. This not only gave Kim credibility, but also allowed him to report to Moscow on the extent of British support for Hitler. Orlov, whose cover had been blown, left London and was replaced by the Hungarian-born Theodore Mally. Because Philby had never adopted a fully pro-Nazi line, he was about to be sacked by the German Ministry of Propaganda when he was told by his Russian controllers that he was being sent to the rebel zone in Spain under the cover of being a freelance pro-Nazi journalist: ‘I was told that my trip was very important to gather information but what was even more important was to gain a reputation and establish myself as journalist to obtain a more important job.’ It was hoped that not only would he be able to gather information for the Russians about German and Italian military and political contributions to Franco’s war effort, but also thereby to become attractive to British Intelligence as a potential informant.92

  Philby’s cover was that he would be a freelance, to which end, he had secured accreditation from the London Evening Standard and a German magazine called Geopolitics. Through the German Embassy, he was put in contact with Franco’s diplomatic agent in Cavendish Square, the Duque de Alba, who provided him with letters of recommendation, one of which was to Pablo Merry del Val who, at the time, was in charge of the censorship at Talavera de la Reina. Philby later recalled:

  My immediate assignment was to get first-hand information on all aspects of the Fascist war effort. The arrangement was that I should transmit the bulk of my information by hand to Soviet contacts in France or, more occasionally, in England. But for urgent communications, I had been provided with a code and a number of cover-addresses outside Spain. Before I left England, instructions in the use of the code were committed to a tiny piece of a substance resembling rice-paper, which I habitually kept in the ticket-pocket of my trousers.

  However, in fact, it was also intended that Philby might find a way to insinuate himself into Franco’s headquarters. In order to facilitate an assassination attempt on the Caudillo, he was to report on anything to do with security routines, and personnel as well as any gaps therein. He left London on 3 February 1937 en route for Seville. At first he reported to his Russian contacts on the military situation, armaments deliveries, troop movements and the location of airfields. The information was then passed on to the Republicans.93

  Although his cover held, in April 1937, he had nearly ended up in front of a firing squad in Córdoba, where he had gone after seeing a poster advertising a bullfight. He had been unable to resist the chance of combining a visit to the bullring with a trip to the front to the east of the city. Unfortunately, he had been misadvised about the need for a special pass to enter what was a restricted military area. He was arrested in the middle of the night by Civil Guards and taken to their headquarters. His luggage was minutely searched and he was questioned. He was worried that, when his clothing was searched, his secret codes would be found. When asked to turn out his pockets, he resourcefully spun his wallet across the table and, while his three interrogators scrambled after it, he managed to screw into a ball and swallow the code sheet.94

  He returned to London in May 1937. After debriefing him, his controllers decided that he was completely unsuitable for ‘a wet job’ and recommended that he be relieved of the task of participating in any assassination plot against Franco. Instead, he was instructed to get hired as the correspondent of a major newspaper in order to get closer to British Intelligence. With help from his father, the immensely influential Arabist, Harold St John Bridger Philby, Kim got hired by The Times on 24 May to replace James Holburn, who had been covering the Basque campaign. He actually reached Spain in the last week of June 1937 after first revisiting the German Embassy. Once in Spain, he got considerable mileage out of his connection with Joaquim von Ribbentrop. Dazzled by such references, Bolín thought that Philby was ‘a decent chap who inspired confidence in his reports because he was so objective’, and, along with Merry del Val, considered him to be ‘a gentleman’. On New Year’s Eve 1937, during the battle of Teruel, he was a passenger in a car with three other correspondents eating lunch when it was hit by Republican artillery fire. The twenty-three-year-old Bradish Johnson of Newsweek, who had been in Spain for only three weeks, was killed instantly. Richard Sheepshanks, the star reporter of Reuters, was badly wounded, as was Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press. They were taken to hospital in Zaragoza, where they both died. The only one to survive was Philby, who suffered a minor head wound.95 It was a tribute to his status as much to his minor head wound that, on 2 March 1938, he was decorated by Franco himself with the Red Cross of Military Merit. He recalled later: ‘My wounding in Spain helped my work, both journalism and intelligence, no end – all sorts of doors opened for me.’ After being honoured by the Caudillo, Philby reported on the rebel advances from Teruel to the sea and then on the battle of the Ebro. He was one of the first correspondents to enter Barcelona with the occupying forces – all of which he found deeply painful – ‘the worst time of my life’.96 Nevertheless, far more than the correspondents who tried to cheat the censorship by taking reports out to France, it may be supposed that he did the Francoist war effort some damage.

  Had Philby’s real purpose been discovered, the warmth of Bolín’s welcome might well have embarrassed him. In fact, Bolín’s time as head of the rebel press service soon came to an end. After the removal of Millán Astray, and the conversion in January 1937 of the Oficina de Prensa y Propaganda into the Delegación para Prensa y Propaganda, under Vicente Gay, Bolín had been left in charge of the press. He survived too the removal of Vicente Gay and his replacement by Manuel Arias Paz. However, Bolín’s days overseeing the work of the correspondents were numbered after his bungled efforts to deny the bombing of Guernica.97 The furore over the bombing had coincided with Arthur Koestler’s release from prison with the attendant publicity about his arrest and Bolín’s part in it.

  Alarmed by the damage being done to the Nationalist cause, the Marqués del Moral, Frederick Ramón Bertodano y Wilson, the Anglo-Spanish co-ordinator of pro-Franco propaganda in London, hastened to Salamanca to warn Franco. Bertodano, like other Nationalist sympathizers, believed the story about Basque dynamiters, but was distressed by the damage being done to the Nationalists by reports about the bombing. He begged Franco to consent to an enquiry to allow the ‘truth’ to come out. Naturally, the Generalísimo refused and promised only to renew previous statements in other forms. However, the Marqués del Moral, together with another of Franco’s British propagandists, Arthur Loveday, had a meeting with Manuel Arias Paz, shortly after his appointment as Delegado de Prensa y Propaganda, and convinced him that Bolín was provoking the hostility of otherwise favourable British correspondents. It seems likely that the pressure of all three led to Franco removing Bolín, who was replaced immediately after on 18 May by Pablo Merry del Val, who was promoted from head of press on the Madrid front to head of relations with the foreign press in Salamanca and Burgos. Thereafter, the treatment of correspondents was somewhat improved, even to the extent of Franco himself receiving a group of them on 15 July 1937 to tell them how much freer censorship was in his Spain than in the Republican zone. Bolín was appointed ‘enviado especial de la Delegación en Inglaterra, Paises Escandinavos y Estados Unidos’, a post which involved him lobbying politicians and the media. In February 1938, he was named Jefe del Servicio Nacional de Turismo, which arranged sight-seeing tours of the rebel zon
e.98

  The brutality with which the Nationalists went about ‘managing’ the news of Guernica was illustrated by the treatment received by the first reporter to arrive after the rebels had occupied the town. This was the Frenchman Georges Berniard, of La Petite Gironde, who had previously been with the rebel forces at San Sebastián, Oviedo and Toledo. Now, on 29 April, however, he had flown from Biarritz to Bilbao, received permits from the Basque Republican authorities and then driven to Guernica without realizing that it was now in rebel hands. He was immediately detained at gunpoint, accused of espionage. When an officer asked who Berniard and his guide were, their captors replied: ‘They are communists who claim to be journalists.’ He was saved by the intervention of an Italian correspondent, Sandro Sandri, who vouched for him and thus gave him the time in which to swallow some incriminating letters. He was then handed over to Captain Aguilera, who accepted that he was probably not a spy, but accused him of contravening a rebel decree condemning to death any foreign journalist who, having once covered the Francoist side, was found in the company of the Republican forces. Berniard was taken to Vitoria, where he was told that he was to be shot at dawn. His chauffeur was shot, as were two Basque journalists who had been with him that morning in Bilbao but, tired of waiting for him to get the necessary permits, had impatiently set off to Guernica on their own. After thirty-six hours under arrest, Berniard was told by Aguilera that he would be freed on condition that he wrote an article thanking Generals Franco, Mola and Solchaga for their clemency. This he duly did when he returned to France. The fact that Malet-Dauban was still in solitary confinement under sentence of death may well have influenced Berniard and indeed other journalists to go along with the rebel line. That seems to have been the case of Georges Botto, Malet-Dauban’s replacement as Havas correspondent. Under Aguilera’s guidance, he wrote a story that sustained the rebel line that Guernica had not been bombed but burned by the Basques themselves.99

  The appointment of Merry del Val improved the day-to-day treatment of correspondents only as long as they did not ask awkward questions or try to send out embarrassing information. The German bombing of Guernica came into this category. Despite the removal of Bolín, the cover-up of Guernica would go on for many years and, in the short term, continued to involve all those in the press apparatus including Aguilera. This meant the close supervision of ‘untrustworthy’ journalists who tried to get near the ruins of the town and the expulsion of those who wrote unwelcome reports. It also extended to giving strong guidance to sympathetic journalists as to how their articles should be written.100

  After the excitement of the Basque campaign, Aguilera was transferred from Mola’s general staff to the Delegación del Estado para Prensa y Propaganda.101 It made little difference to his readiness to be directly involved at the front. He took part in the subsequent assault on Santander, again accompanying the Navarrese Brigades. He actually entered the defeated city two hours before any other Nationalist forces, accompanied by the correspondent of The Times, Kim Philby. He drove through thousands of Republican militiamen, still armed but utterly paralysed and dejected by the rapidity of their defeat.102 Shortly after, Virginia Cowles found herself in the recently captured city. Captain Aguilera offered to drive her to León, where she would be nearer Franco’s headquarters as he continued with his attack on Asturias. He had a pale yellow Mercedes on the back seat of which he kept two large rifles and ‘a chauffeur who drove so badly he was usually encouraged to sleep’. Wearing cavalry boots and spurs, a cap from which a blue tassel swung, he drove as if riding a racehorse. Since the roads were clogged by refugees and Italian troops, he would drive along cursing at other traffic. He occasionally complained: ‘You never see any pretty girls. Any girl who hasn’t got a face like a boot can get a ride in an Italian truck.’ He gave little sign of being on his best behaviour for a foreign correspondent. If anything, the brutality of his speech was inflamed by the presence of Miss Cowles, an attractive woman who looked a little like Lauren Bacall. On stopping to ask the way and asking someone who turned out to be German, he said: ‘Nice chaps, the Germans, but a bit too serious; they never seem to have any women around, but I suppose they didn’t come for that. If they kill enough Reds, we can forgive them anything.’103 ‘Blast the Reds!’ he said to Virginia Cowles, ‘Why did they have to put ideas into people’s heads? Everyone knows that people are fools and much better off told what to do than trying to run themselves. Hell is too good for the Reds. I’d like to impale every one and see them wriggling on poles like butterflies…’ The Captain paused to see what impression his speech had made, but she said nothing, which seemed to anger him. ‘There’s only one thing I hate worse than a Red,’ he blazed. ‘What’s that?’ ‘A sob-sister!’104

  In the wake of the embarrassment over Guernica, ever stronger guidance was given to sympathetic journalists as to how their articles should be written. Virginia Cowles reached Nationalist Spain just before the entry of the Italians into Santander on 26 August 1937. She found the atmosphere in Salamanca reeking of paranoia. She wrote later:

  I found it dangerous to make contradictions. One woman, the wife of an official in the Foreign Office, asked me how I dared walk along the streets of Madrid. She had heard there was so much sniping from the windows that bodies were piled up by the curbs and left to rot in the gutters. When I denied this her tone became hostile, and I later learned she had denounced me as suspect. Another man asked if I had seen the Reds feeding prisoners to the animals in the Zoo. I told him the Zoo had been empty for months, and his manner froze. Still another, Pablo Merry del Val, the head of the Foreign Press, admired a gold bracelet I was wearing: ‘I don’t imagine you took that to Madrid with you,’ he said, smiling. When I replied I had bought it in Madrid he was greatly affronted and from then on bowed coldly from a distance.105

  On a trip to Asturias accompanied by Aguilera, she got on the wrong side of him, provoking his wrath by suggesting that the Republicans had blown up a bridge not out of wanton destructiveness but to hold up the Nationalists. He took his revenge by leaving her sitting alone in a car for several hours. In turn, she refused to greet a senior officer. Apoplectic with rage, he said: ‘You have insulted the Nationalist cause. You will hear more of this later.’ After a report from Aguilera, Merry del Val refused her the necessary permits for her to leave Spain. Other journalists told her that there was a warrant out for her arrest. She managed to get to Burgos with the help of the Duque de Montellano, whom she knew, and then on to San Sebastián thanks to another friend, the Conde Churruca. There, by a subterfuge, the First Secretary of the British Embassy, Geoffrey ‘Tommy’ Thompson, managed to spirit her across the border into France.106 As Cowles’ case revealed, the treatment meted out to correspondents by Bolín and Aguilera was a far cry from the efforts of Arturo Barea, Ilsa Kulcsar and Constancia de la Mora to facilitate the news-gathering of reporters in the Republican zone.

  When the Francoists arrived in Barcelona, the foreign press was transported in a fleet of limousines. However, they were allowed to go nowhere unless accompanied by supervising officers. Cedric Salter, of the Daily Mail, had remained in the Catalan capital when the rest of the correspondents assigned to the Republic had been evacuated, confident that the right-wing and pro-fascist stance of his paper would protect him. Although he was treated contemptuously by the newly arrived conquerors, he was saved from major discomfort by a cable sent by the Daily Mail to Franco’s headquarters in Burgos. He was called for interrogation by Manuel Lambarri, who had by now been promoted to Colonel. Lambarri was outraged to read in the newspaper’s defence of its correspondent that he had reported the war ‘absolutely objectively’, something he regarded as deeply shocking. However, because Lambarri was under instructions to do nothing to displease the Daily Mail, Salter was to be sent to Burgos for a final decision on his fate. Once there, he was told by the urbane press chief, Pablo Merry del Val, that he could not work in Spain as a correspondent. There was, it seemed, a danger that he might repeat th
e sin of objectivity.107

  PART TWO

  BEYOND JOURNALISM

  6

  Stalin’s Eyes and Ears in Madrid? The Rise and Fall of Mikhail Koltsov

  In the summer of 1938, Mikhail Koltsov, one of Russia’s most successful writers and journalists, was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. It was a reward for a distinguished career which included an active, and indeed daring, role during the Spanish Civil War. His chronicles from Spain, published daily in Pravda, from 9 August 1936 to 6 November 1937, had been devoured avidly by the Russian public. During the spring and summer of 1938, his vivid diary of his Spanish exploits was serialized to enormous acclaim. He was at the apogee of his popularity. In the autumn of the same year, one evening at the Bolshoi, Stalin invited him to his box and told him how much he was enjoying the Spanish diary. The dictator then invited Koltsov to give a lecture to present the History of the Bolshevik Party, which he himself had edited. It was a notable token of official favour. Two days before the lecture, yet another honour came Koltsov’s way – he was made a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. In the late afternoon of 12 December, a beaming Koltsov fulfilled his promise to Stalin and gave a warmly received lecture at the Writers’ Union about Stalin’s book. Late that night, shortly after he arrived at his Pravda office, agents of the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Security) arrived and took him away. After interrogation and torture over a period of nearly fourteen months, Koltsov was shot. To this day, the precise reasons for the fall from grace of such a celebrity remain a mystery.