We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  96 Herbert Matthews, ‘Rebels Intensify Bombing of Roads’, New York Times, 16 January 1939.

  97 Matthews, A World in Revolution, p. 97.

  98 Salter, Try-out in Spain, pp. 240–9.

  99 Herbert Matthews, ‘Figueras Capital of Loyalist Spain’, ‘Conflict to Go On’, ‘Toll of 500 Feared in Figueras Raids’, New York Times, 28 January, 4, 6 February 1939.

  100 Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 350–63.

  101 Herbert Matthews, ‘130,000 Refugees Enter France’, New York Times, 7 February 1939.

  102 Matthews, The Education, p. 192.

  Chapter 5: The Rebel Zone

  1 Kate Mangan to Sherry Mangan, 16 April 1937, papers of Charlotte Kurzke.

  2 Radio Nacional de España, Guerra civil y Radio Nacional. Salamanca 1936–1938 (Madrid: Instituto Oficial de Radio y Televisión, 2006), pp. 8–11, 65–7.

  3 Eugenio Vegas Latapie, Los caminos del desengaño. Memorias políticas 2: 1936–1938 (Madrid: Ediciones Giner, 1987), pp. 172–3; Ángel Viñas, La Alemania nazi y el 18 de julio (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1974), pp. 167–8; Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida, El antisemitismo en España. La imagen del judío (1812–2002) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2002), pp. 312–13, 361–2; María Cruz Seoane and María Dolores Sáiz, Historia del periodismo en España 3. El siglo XX: 1898–1936 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998), pp. 348–9, 426–7; Herbert Rutledge Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!: A Study of Journalism, Propaganda and History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 411, 498.

  4 ABC (Sevilla), 14, 18 August 1936; Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo, Mi vida junto a Franco (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1976), p. 190; Vegas Latapie, Los caminos, p. 173.

  5 Rafael Abella, La vida cotidiana durante la guerra civil 1) La España nacional (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1978), p. 109.

  6 Vegas Latapie, Los caminos, p. 175; Francis McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1937), pp. 104–7.

  7 Noel Monks, Eyewitness (London: Frederick Muller, 1955), p. 73.

  8 McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain, p. 107. The pseudonym given Bolín in McCullagh’s book was Bustamente.

  9 Arthur Koestler, Spanish Testament (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), pp. 26–8, 220; Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 415–16.

  10 ‘A Journalist’, Foreign Journalists under Franco’s Terror (London: United Editorial, 1937), pp. 8–12; Major Geoffrey McNeill-Moss, The Epic of the Alcazar (London: Rich & Cowan, 1937), pp. 309–15.

  11 Josep Massot i Muntaner, El desembarcament de Bayo a Mallorca, Agost–Setembre de 1936 (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1987), pp. 337–40; Georges Bernanos, Els grans cementeris sota la lluna (Barcelona: Curiel Edicions Catalanes, 1981), pp. 186–8; Jaume Miravitlles, Episodis de la guerra civil espanyola (Barcelona: Editorial Pòrtic, 1972), pp. 241–2; Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, p. 416.

  12 Webb Miller, I Found No Peace (London: The Book Club, 1937), pp. 325–7.

  13 H. R. Knickerbocker, The Siege of the Alcazar: A War-Log of the Spanish Revolution (London: Hutchinson, n.d. [1937]), pp. 172–3; Webb Miller, I Found No Peace (London: The Book Club, 1937), pp. 329–30; Herbert L. Matthews, The Yoke and the Arrows: A Report on Spain (London: Heinemann, 1958), p. 176.

  14 Luis Bolín, Spain: The Vital Years (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1967), pp. 196–7; Harold Cardozo, ‘Alcazar Chief “You Must Die” to Son’, Daily Mail, 30 September 1936. The story is deconstructed in Herbert Rutledge Southworth, El mito de la cruzada de Franco (Paris: Ediciones Ruedo Ibérico, 1963), pp. 49–56.

  15 Miller, I Found No Peace, pp. 336–7; Allen to Southworth, 17 January 1964, 7 August 1967, Southworth Papers, Museo de Guernica.

  16 ‘Denis Weaver Captured by Franco. “News Chronicle” War Correspondent taken with 4 Companions. Chauffeur Shot Dead’, News Chronicle, 27 October; ‘Britons Captured by Rebels’, Guardian, 27 October 1936; Denis Weaver, ‘Through the Enemy’s Lines’, in Hanighen, Nothing but Danger, pp. 98–115; ‘A Journalist’, Foreign Journalists, pp. 15–16; James M. Minifie, Expatriate (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976), pp. 70–5; Claude Bowers, My Mission to Spain (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), pp. 325–6. Some discrepancies between the published versions of Weaver and Minifie may be explained by the fact that the latter’s memoirs were completed after his death by his wife on the basis of taped reminiscences.

  17 News Chronicle, 29 October 1936.

  18 Geoffrey Cox, Eyewitness. A Memoir of Europe in the 1930s (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999), pp. 200–1.

  19 Cox, Eyewitness, p. 204.

  20 C. E. Lucas Phillips, The Spanish Pimpernel (London: Heinemann, 1960), pp. 70–80.

  21 ‘A Journalist’, Foreign Journalists, pp. 14, 17; Koestler, Spanish Testament, p. 220.

  22 Guardian, 22 February 1937; Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 54–5, 421–2.

  23 Koestler, The Invisible Writing, 2nd edn (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 382–9.

  24 Koestler, Spanish Testament, p. 34.

  25 Koestler, The Invisible Writing, pp. 389–93.

  26 Koestler, The Invisible Writing, pp. 400–9; David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler. The Homeless Mind (New York: The Free Press, 1998), pp. 120–3, 135–41; K. W. Watkins, Britain Divided (London: Nelson, 1963), pp. 46–7, 55–6. The book, written by Otto Katz, but published under the name of Emile Burns, was The Nazi Conspiracy in Spain (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937).

  27 Koestler, Spanish Testament, pp. 223–31; Koestler, The Invisible Writing, pp. 413–27, 443–6; Sir Peter Chalmers-Mitchell, My House in Malaga (London: Faber & Faber, 1938), pp. 269–89; Bolín, Spain: the Vital Years, pp. 247–9; Shiela Grant Duff, ‘A Very Brief Visit’, in Philip Toynbee (ed.), The Distant Drum. Reflections on the Spanish Civil War (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976), pp. 76–86; Cesarani, Arthur Koestler, pp. 123–35. In his account, Regler, Owl of Minerva, pp. 276–7, conflates the arrest of Denis Weaver in late October 1936 with that of Koestler. There was no Comintern campaign in favour of Weaver.

  28 Marcel Junod, Warrior without Weapons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1951), pp. 123–5.

  29 McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain, pp. 104–29; Monks, Eyewitness, pp. 79–84, 105–6.

  30 On Merry del Val, see RNE, Guerra civil y Radio Nacional, p. 50, and Judith Keene, Fighting for Franco. International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), p. 56; Peter Kemp, Mine were of Trouble (London: Cassell, 1957), p. 67; Alan Dick, Inside Story (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943), p. 109.

  31 Luis Moure Mariño, La generación del 36: memorias de Salamanca y Burgos (La Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1989), pp. 73–9; Luis Portillo, ‘Unamuno’s Last Lecture’, Cyril Connolly, The Golden Horizon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), pp. 397–403; Carlos Rojas, ¡Muera la inteligencia! ¡Viva la muerte! Salamanca, 1936. Unamuno y Millán Astray frente a frente (Barcelona: Planeta, 1995), pp. 134–9.

  32 Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Memorias de un dictador (Barcelona: Planeta, 1979), pp. 88–90; Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo, Mis conversaciones privadas con Franco (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1976), p. 431.

  33 Vegas Latapie, Los caminos, pp. 182–5; Ángel Viñas, Franco, Hitler y el estallido de la guerra civil. Antecedentes y consecuencias (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2001), pp. 178–89; Álvarez Chillida, El antisemitismo, p. 311. On Gay Forner and Arias Paz, see RNE, Guerra civil y Radio Nacional, pp. 25–33, 75–81.

  34 On Aguilera, see Paul Preston, ‘The Answer lies in the Sewers: Captain Aguilera and the Mentality of the Francoist Officer Corps’, Science & Society, vol. 68, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 277–312.

  35 Ministerio de la Guerra, Sección Personal, 21 November 1932, Legajo 416, Gonzalo Aguilera Munro, Archivo General Militar de Segovia. Michael Alpert, La reforma militar de Azaña (1931–1933) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1982), pp. 133–49.

  36 Informe sobre el Capitán de Caballería retirado, D. Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro, Ministerio de la Guerra, Sección Pers
onal, Legajo 416, Gonzalo Aguilera Munro, Archivo General Militar de Segovia (henceforth Informe GAM, leg. 416,AGMS).

  37 Informe GAM, leg. 416, AGMS.

  38 H. R. Knickerbocker, The Siege of the Alcazar (London: Hutchinson, n.d. [1937]), p. 136; Harold G. Cardozo, The March of a Nation: My Year of Spain’s Civil War (London: The Right Book Club, 1937), pp. 284–6.

  39 Frances Davis, My Shadow in the Sun (New York: Carrick & Evans), pp. 130–1, 165, 171; McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1937), pp. 111–12; Cardozo, The March of a Nation, pp. 220–1.

  40 See safe-conduct issued Salamanca, 23 November 1936, Legajo 416, Gonzalo Aguilera Munro, Archivo General Militar de Segovia; Cardozo, The March of a Nation, p. 286.

  41 Sefton Delmer, Trail Sinister. An Autobiography (London: Secker & Warburg, 1961), pp. 143–91; Cox, Eyewitness, pp. 224–5.

  42 Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 268–76.

  43 Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 277–8; Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1941), p. 17.

  44 Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 274–8.

  45 Davis, My Shadow, p. 61 and passim.

  46 Edmond Taylor, ‘Assignment in Hell’, in Frank C. Hanighen, Nothing but Danger (London: Harrap, 1940), p. 56.

  47 Nigel Tangye, Red, White and Spain (London: Rich & Cowan, 1937), pp. 75–80; Nicholas Rankin, Telegram from Guernica. The Extraordinary Life of George Steer, War Correspondent (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), pp. 84–5.

  48 Cardozo, The March of a Nation, pp. 221–3; McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain, pp. 106–8.

  49 McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain, pp. 98, 110–11, 116; ‘A Journalist’, Foreign Journalists under Franco’s Terror (London: United Editorial, 1937), p. 30.

  50 Arnold Lunn, Spanish Rehearsal (London: Hutchinson, 1937), p. 43.

  51 Luis Moure Mariño, La generación del 36: memorias de Salamanca y Burgos (La Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1989), p. 69; Vegas Latapie, Los caminos, p. 175.

  52 McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain, pp. 112–13.

  53 Monks, Eyewitness, p. 68.

  54 Frances Davis, A Fearful Innocence (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), pp. 140–6; Davis, My Shadow, pp. 84–7.

  55 Taylor, ‘Assignment in Hell’, pp. 63–6.

  56 Davis, My Shadow, pp. 129–33; Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 70. Oddly, and presumably as a result of a lapse of memory, in her much later memoirs, Davis attributes the threat to Aguilera, Davis, A Fearful Innocence, p. 150.

  57 Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel (London: Davis-Paynter, 1972), pp. 653–4; Keene, Fighting for Franco, p. 67.

  58 ‘A Journalist’, Foreign Journalists, pp. 26–30. Cf. Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 52, 420, n. 62.

  59 Curio Mortari, Con gli insorti in Marocco e Spagna (Milano: Fratelli Treves Editori, 1937), pp. 19, 99–112, 223–60.

  60 Castejón column, Diario de la Manhã, 11 August; Correia broadcast, ABC (Sevilla), 9 August; interview with Franco, Diario de Lisboa, 10 August 1936.

  61 Leopoldo Nunes, La guerra en España (Dos meses de reportaje en los frentes de Andalucia y Extremadura) (Granada: Librería Prieto, 1937), pp. 127–33; O Seculo, 27 August 1936, reproduced in ibid., pp. 133–6; broadcast La Unión (Seville), 28 August 1936.

  62 RNE, Guerra civil y Radio Nacional, p. 46.

  63 McCullagh, In Franco’s Spain, p. 98.

  64 Il Messagero, 19 August 1937; Indro Montanelli, Memorias de un periodista (Barcelona: RBA Libros, 2002), pp. 32–3. The official line can be seen in Il Popolo, 27 August 1937, which proclaimed ‘il contributo di sangue italiano’ in a ‘splendida vittoria italiana’ (the tribute of Italian blood in a splendid Italian victory).

  65 Lunn, Spanish Rehearsal, pp. 40–1.

  66 Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 53–4; Tangye, Red, White and Spain, pp. 10–15, 67–8, 75–81, 154.

  67 Reynolds and Emily Packard, Balcony Empire. Fascist Italy at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), pp. 53–4.

  68 Packard, Balcony Empire, p. 54; Cowles, Looking for Trouble, pp. 90–4; Cardozo, The March of a Nation, pp. 296, 301; Dick, Inside Story, pp. 127–31; Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 50, 418.

  69 John Whitaker, ‘Prelude to World War: A Witness from Spain’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 21, no. 1, October 1942, p. 109.

  70 Cecil Gerahty, The Road to Madrid (London: Hutchinson, 1937), pp. 60–3.

  71 F. Theo Rogers, Spain: A Tragic Journey (New York: The Macaulay Company, 1937), pp. vii, xiii–xiv, 15–16, 20, 62, 67–8, 104–7.

  72 George Seldes, ‘Treason on The Times’, The New Republic, 7 September 1938.

  73 De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, pp. 258, 286.

  74 Constancia de la Mora to Jay Allen, 31 December 1939 (Papers of Jay Allen). This episode is recounted in more detail in Soledad Fox, Constancia de la Mora in War and Exile. International Spokesperson for the Spanish Republic (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006), Chapter 3.

  75 Carl Geiser, Prisoners of the Good Fight: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986), p. 22.

  76 Southworth, Conspiracy, p. 202, n. 84.

  77 George Seldes, The Catholic Crisis (New York: Julian Messner, 1939), p. 196; New York Times, 27 April 1937.

  78 New York Times, 30 April 1937.

  79 New York Times, 23 July 1937; Geiser, Prisoners, pp. 28–9.

  80 New York Times, 31 December 1937, 2, 5 January 1938; Matthews, The Education of a Correspondent, pp. 108–11; Seldes, The Catholic Crisis, pp. 196–7. The version by Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 199, is slightly inaccurate.

  81 Allen to Hemingway, 8 January 1938 (Hemingway Collection, JFK Library, Boston); Herbert L. Matthews, A World in Revolution. A Newspaperman’s Memoir (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), pp. 28–30.

  82 Geiser, Prisoners, pp. 96–7, 125–6, New York Times, 4 April, 29 May 1938.

  83 Bob Doyle, Memorias de un rebelde sin pausa (Madrid: Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales, 2002), p. 78; Cecil Eby, Between the Bullet and the Lie (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1969), pp. 252–6; Geiser, Prisoners, pp. 136–40; New York Times, 11 July 1938.

  84 Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty: Spain 1936–1939 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1982), pp. 188–91; Richard Baxell, British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The British Battalion in the International Brigades, 1936–1939 (London: Routledge/Cañada Blanch, 2004), pp. 125–6; Geiser, Prisoners, pp. 139–40.

  85 Geiser, Prisoners, pp. 172–3; New York Times, 9 October 1938.

  86 ‘A Journalist’, Foreign Journalists, p. 7.

  87 Pujol (Burgos), to Franco, 22 August 1936, Archivo de Palacio, Sección Burgos, Legajo 115.

  88 Bowers to Hull, 12 April 1937, Foreign Relations of the United States 1937, vol. I (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1954), pp. 279–80.

  89 Appendix to the Congressional Record, 11 May 1937; Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 52, 419–20, nn. 59, 60.

  90 Barry Faris, editor International News Service, telegram to Franco, April 1938, Archivo de Palacio, Sección Burgos, Legajo 115.

  91 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 58–62; John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993), pp. 131–8, 147–51.

  92 Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step (London: Odhams Press, 1947), pp. 220–1; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 159–64; Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 66–7.

  93 Kim Philby, My Silent War (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), p. xxiii; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 165–6.

  94 Philby, My Silent War, pp. xxiii–xxv; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 166–7.

  95 New York Times, 1, 2, 3, 12 January 1938; Packard, Balcony Empire, p. 56. The best account is by Judith Keene, Fighting for Franco. International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain
during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), pp. 74–6.

  96 Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 430, 494; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 168–76; Bruce Page, David Leitch and Philip Knightley, Philby. The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation (London: Sphere Books, 1977), pp. 71–5, 116–17; Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 67.

  97 Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, p. 499.

  98 Dez anos de política externa (1936–1947). A nação portuguesa e a segunda guerra mundial, IV (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1965), pp. 333–4; Del Moral to Duque de Alba, mayo de 1937, AGA, Exteriores, 54/6.803.I am grateful to Dr Hugo García for information regarding the role of Arias Paz in the removal of Bolín. The meeting with Franco in RNE, Guerra civil y Radio Nacional, pp. 48–9.

  99 Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 62–8, 334–7, 427.

  100 Southworth, Guernica! Guernica!, pp. 64–7, 334–5, 337.

  101 Informe GAM, leg. 416, AGMS.

  102 Informe GAM, leg. 416, AGMS; Kemp, Mine were of Trouble, pp. 99–101; General Sagardía, Del Alto Ebro a las Fuentes del Llobregat. Treinta y dos meses de guerra de la 62 División (Barcelona: Editora Nacional, 1940), p. 106.

  103 Cowles, Looking for Trouble, pp. 86–7.

  104 Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 90.

  105 Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 77.

  106 Cowles, Looking for Trouble, pp. 96–9.

  107 Cedric Salter, Try-out in Spain (New York: Harper Brothers, 1943), pp. 250–65.

  Chapter 6: Stalin’s Eyes and Ears in Madrid?

  1 Arkadi Vaksberg, Hotel Lux. Les partis frères au service de l’Internationale Communiste (Paris: Éditions Fayard, 1993), p. 151; Carlos García-Alix, Madrid–Moscú (Madrid: T Ediciones, 2003), p. 176. Mikhail Koltsov, Khochu letat’ (Moscow: Voengiz, 1931).

  2 On Soslovsky, see Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed. Trotsky: 1921–1929 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 113, 203, 421, 428–30. On the incident in the Bolshoi, see Pierre Broué, Staline et la révolution. Le cas espagnol (1936–1939) (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1993), p. 105.