by Hugh Thomas
Russia had not embarked on adventures of this nature previously. She did not have a Mediterranean fleet. The supply routes would hence have to be kept secret. Given the geographical problems, and Stalin’s own internal problems (if that is not too modest a word for the Purges, then beginning in the top ranks of the Old Bolsheviks), the scheme to assist the republic was a risky one, whenever the decision was taken.
The first cargoes to Spain from Odessa must nevertheless have been put on board at the end of September. Thus, the German chargé in Moscow, Tippelskirch, on 28 September wrote an interesting dispatch that an expert had noted that ‘in the Black Sea harbour of Novorossik, access to the harbour area has been more severely restricted since the summer …’ The same observer (presumably an agent of the German consul in Odessa) felt ‘… there was more than food in the heavy crates composing the cargo of the Neva which left Odessa for Spain … So far, however, it has been impossible to obtain reliable reports of violation of the arms embargo by the Soviet government.’2 Oil, yes. The republic had gone back to their old agreement with Russia (which the right-wing government had not renewed, in 1935) and Russia sent to Spain at least 30,000 tons of oil between 15 August and 15 September, 44,000 tons between then and 12 October.3
But Stalin continued to have misgivings about helping the republic. To the Russian technicians whom he sent to Spain he gave the order ‘stay out of range of artillery fire’.4 Russian supply ships must have left Odessa about 4 October at latest. Even at that date the decision may not have been firm, as a tale told by a French anarchist, Pierre Besnard, suggests: on 2 October, he reached Madrid with two representatives of an (unnamed) international arms dealing consortium. Besnard, Durruti and Largo Caballero met these two men and heard what they had to say; Largo promised to put the idea of buying arms from this consortium to the cabinet that afternoon. The cabinet agreed, and the next day, 3 October, the details were worked out, Durruti again being present. On 4 October, Durruti was telephoned by the Russian ambassador, Rosenberg, who asked him to call on him; he could not do so since he had to return to the front. Some days later, Besnard was told that the republican government could not go through with the operation which he had initiated: the Russians had complained.1
The appropriate diplomatic frame was soon made for this important new commitment. Thus in London, the Soviet chargé, Kagan, sent a note almost in the form of an ultimatum to Lord Plymouth, the new British representative on the Non-Intervention Committee. Alleging that Italian aircraft had flown legionaries to the Spanish mainland on 20 September, Kagan said, on 7 October, that, if such violations of the Non-Intervention Pact did not cease, Russia would consider herself free from her obligations under the agreement. ‘If there is an agreement,’ wrote Kagan, ‘we want that agreement to be fulfilled. If the committee … can secure that … well and good. If it cannot, let the committee say so.’2 The following day, 8 October, a Russian diplomat in Moscow told the American chargé that, unless the committee did show itself determined to bring about an immediate end of violations, Russia would withdraw, considering herself free to aid Spain with military equipment. This blunt change of policy infuriated the Foreign Office. ‘What’, they asked, ‘can Russia hope to gain by throwing over neutrality at this time?’ But the Russian action was supported on 9 October by the British Labour Party Conference, which passed a unanimous resolution declaring that Germany and Italy had broken their neutrality and calling for an investigation. That day, the meeting of the non-intervention committee lasted seven hours, the exchange of accusations between Kagan and Grandi astonishing the other diplomats. Lord Plymouth pointed out to Germany, Italy and Portugal the allegations of aid made by the Spanish government at Geneva. Kagan accused Portugal of allowing its territory to be used for nationalist operations, and demanded a commission to patrol the Spanish-Portuguese border. The Portuguese ambassador withdrew during the discussions of that proposal, which he considered insulting.3
Russia now considered her position to be legally clear. At least sixteen Russian and other ships passed through the Bosphorus in early October carrying arms for Spain.1 The first to reach Cartagena was the Komsomol, carrying tanks, armoured-cars and some artillery, together with a group of tank specialists, headed by Colonel S. Krivoshein.2 Perhaps, in all, a hundred tanks and a hundred aircraft arrived during these days, as well as a quantity of lorries, anti-aircraft guns, armoured-cars and other equipment, much of it new. The two types of Russian fighters sent to Spain, the I-15, a biplane known as ‘Chato’ or ‘snubnose’ in Spain, and the I-16, a new monoplane known in Spain as ‘Mosca’ (fly) (Rata to the nationalists), were the fastest in Europe, being in effect Russian versions of the American Curtiss and Boeing fighters.3 The Chato had a maximum speed of 220 miles an hour, and four machine-guns, as well as the capacity to drop small 25-pound bombs.4 The Mosca had only two machine-guns but was much faster, since its maximum speed was almost 300 miles an hour.5 It also had a new device for swift climbing, a retractable undercarriage and a highly charged engine. Two groups of thirty-one aircraft each of these fighters were soon in service in Spain, almost all of them flown to begin with by Russian pilots. There also soon arrived three other aircraft: the SB-2 two-engined bomber, known as the Katiuska, built in 1933, which, since it had been designed as an ‘interceptor’ and could travel 250 miles an hour, did not require an escort;6 the Natasha, another fast bomber;7 and the Rasante, a low-flying aircraft used for machine-gunning.8
These aircraft were faster and technically superior to the German and Italian equivalents, though the sturdy Fiat fighter was still sometimes able to outmanoeuvre the Chato, and the Junkers 52 remained a useful pack-horse for transport, though less so for bombing. The Heinkel 51s were of much less use henceforth.
Within a short time the hundred or so new Russian aircraft in Spain would give the republic command of the air. Something similar happened in respect of the Russian tanks, sent to Spain at the same time. These ten-ton T-26 tanks were heavily armoured, cannon-bearing machines, of a more formidable type than the three-ton Fiat Ansaldos and six-ton Panzer Mark 1s against them, which had no cannon, only machine-guns.1 Russian anti-tank guns (45 millimetre, based on the Vickers two-pounder) were also superior to any German models then available.2
Russian personnel in Spain numbered five hundred by 1 November. They were field officers, pilots, tank specialists or flying instructors, with some translators. The head of the mission remained General Berzin (‘Grishin’) who, as has been seen,3 had arrived in Madrid in September. The head of the air force was Colonel Jacob Smushkevich (‘General Douglas’). Largo Caballero later accused him of operating independently of the republican ministry of defence from the airbase of Los Llanos, and of being disdainful towards those Spaniards who were not communists.4 His pilots included some, like Prokofiev, Kopets, and Schacht, who had been in Spain all September; and others who came now for the first time and who soon made themselves at home in the skies of Spain.5 The future Marshals Malinovsky, Rokossovsky and Konev were all soon in Spain, as was General Kulik, ‘the victor of Tsaritsin’ in the Russian Civil War, who became an adviser to General Pozas, in command in the centre of Spain.6 Most of these Russians acted as ‘advisers’ to the republican commanders in their command posts, others stayed with technical arms, or in the headquarters of the Russian mission. The adviser in Madrid was to be the military attaché who had arrived in August, General Goriev, described by Ehrenburg as ‘intelligent, reserved, and, at the same time, passionate—I could even call him poetical … everybody believed in his lucky star’.1 The Russian tank base at Archena, a watering-place twenty miles inland from Cartagena, near Murcia, surrounded by olives, had a Spanish local organizer, Colonel Sánchez Paredes, who recruited tank drivers from the taxi and bus drivers of Madrid and Barcelona.2 A fighter base and a bomber base for the Russians was established nearby at Alcantarilla. Other air bases were later organized at El Carmolí, near Madrid at Algete, and outside Alcalá de Henares, Some of these men came by sea, others
by land—some even across central Europe.3
These deliveries of men and materials were not made by Russia as a friendly contribution to the revolutionary cause. They had to be paid for. This was done by the shipment to Russia of most of the gold which hitherto had guaranteed the Spanish currency, Spain’s most valuable treasure. Spain had then the fourth highest gold reserve in the world. Some of this monetary gold had been sent to Paris to guarantee delivery of goods before the war, some in July. But most lay in the vaults of the Bank of Spain in Madrid.1 Much of it was in coin—Louis d’or, sovereigns, dollars, as well as gold pesetas. In September, it had seemed desirable for the republic to remove this treasure ‘to a safe place’. On 13 September, the cabinet gave authority to the new Prime Minister and finance minister, Largo Caballero and Negrín, to ensure this. The assumption apparently was that the gold would be taken somewhere in Spain; and it was taken by train to a large, well-guarded cave near Cartagena. Largo Caballero and Negrín, together with the latter’s civil service under-secretary, Méndez Aspe, soon decided that Russia was the safest place. Russia leapt at the idea, and Stalin’s chief secret policeman in Spain, Orlov, was apparently placed in charge of getting it to Russia. Britain and France, the most logical places for the gold reserve, were the staunchest proponents of non-intervention, and it seemed risky to take the gold there.2 It was not only the ‘fascists’ of whom Largo Caballero was afraid: Durruti had a plan to raid the Bank of Spain in early October, though he was talked out of it by Abad de Santillán.3 Nevertheless, Largo Caballero and Negrín apparently told neither the President, Azaña, nor any other minister of their new plans. Azaña was, understandably, furious when he was told that the gold had left Spain; and Prieto wished to resign in protest, being dissuaded by Azaña from an action with which he himself sympathized.4
Negrín shipped the gold to Russia on 25 October. It became a kind of ‘current account’, in Largo’s words, on which the republic could draw to pay for their arms supplies and other purchases, including oil, from both Russia and elsewhere. Spanish wine, sugar and fruit, with some other goods, also helped the republic’s balance in Russia. The details were arranged between Negrín and the Russian economic attaché, Stashevsky.1
This faery gold, as it later appeared to be, left for Russia in large boxes, being loaded onto four Russian steamers by sixty sailors who worked for three nights, while, during the day, they slept on the boxes containing it. The sailors were provided by the commander of the base at Cartagena, Captain Ramírez de Togores, without being told what they were doing. When the loading was finished, the under-secretary, Méndez Aspe, compared figures with Orlov. Orlov’s figure was 7,900 boxes, Méndez Aspe’s 7,800. The error was two lorry-loads, since each lorry had contained fifty boxes. Orlov did not tell Méndez Aspe of this divergence, since, if his count should prove to be correct, he might have had to be responsible for the lost boxes.2 The Russian ships were guarded by the republican fleet as far as Algiers.3 The arrival of the gold, or some of it, was seen by the German consul at Odessa who, on 6 November, noted the arrival of a grey ship of 4,000 tons, its name made illegible, which lay in Odessa roadstead without a flag, and which was unloaded at night.4 When the gold reached Moscow, the counting was made to last indefinitely—so that the four Spanish officials accompanying it remained in Russia as long as possible.5 When their families in Spain grew anxious, they were sent to Russia also. They were not allowed to go free till 1938. Marcelino Pascua, the Spanish ambassador in Moscow, a socialist, doctor by profession and until now director-general of health, could do nothing for these unfortunate officials.6 They were doubtless lucky not to have been turned to stone, as usually happens to human beings who enter the kingdom of giants. Eventually, they were allowed to go free—one being shipped to Stockholm, one to Washington, one to Buenos Aires. According to Orlov, Stalin celebrated the arrival of the gold with a banquet at which he announced, ‘The Spaniards will never see their gold again, just as one cannot see one’s own ears’,1 even though the official receipt said the Spanish republican government could re-export the gold when they liked.2
Meanwhile, on 21 September, the other part of Russia’s help to Spain was begun when an NKVD agent named Zimin visited Krivitsky in The Hague, and a meeting was held in Paris with that official’s colleagues posted in London, Stockholm and Switzerland. Zimin described the supreme importance of keeping Russia’s name from being associated with the Comintern arms traffic. The first move, he said, was to set up an organization for the purchase of arms throughout Europe. Krivitsky, who was himself wondering at this time whether he could break away from his Soviet service, arranged the financial capital and the offices, and guaranteed profits.3 Both he and Ignace Poretsky (Ignace Reiss), the NKVD chief in Switzerland, who worked with him on this matter, hoped obscurely that ‘a victory for the Spanish Revolution would help to overthrow Stalin in Russia’. Agents, at a price, were easily found. These resembled characters in a spy story. There was, for example, a Dr Mylanos, a Greek, established in Gdynia. There was Fuat Baban, another Greek, the representative in Turkey of the Škoda, Schneider, and Hotchkiss firms, later arrested in Paris for selling drugs. And there was ‘Ventoura. Of Jewish origin. Born Constantinople. Found guilty of a swindle in Austria. False passport. Lives with a woman in Greece. Domicile in Paris in a hotel in Avenue Friedland’.4 It is such persons as these who must be pictured, during the rest of the Spanish war, carrying out their profitable missions behind the backs of the dignified gentlemen of the Non-Intervention Committee and supplying expensive, sometimes obsolete, weapons to the republican government’s Arms Purchase Commission, with its headquarters in Paris, perhaps through the French communist party, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, or other agents.5
Around this Commission, a horde of unscrupulous profiteers clustered. Many of those involved became, in one way or another, corrupted whether or not they worked for the Comintern. Had the whole question of arms purchase been honourably carried on, many more weapons might have arrived in Spain, whatever happened to non-intervention. But perhaps the private arms traffic inevitably breeds corruption. A chain of import-export firms was nevertheless set up in Paris, London, Prague, Zurich, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Brussels, with an NKVD member as a silent partner controlling funds. Arms were produced from Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, Holland and even Germany; from the latter country, the astute Admiral Canaris even secured the dispatch, through communist hands, of defective war material to the republic.1 With the French frontier closed, the best way of transporting the arms was by sea, consular papers being secured from British, Greek, Latin American or Chinese governments, falsely certifying that the goods were for those countries.2
Meantime, a third element in communist help to the republic began. How precisely it originated is still a little obscure. Willy Muenzenberg, the propaganda chief of the Comintern in western Europe, visited Moscow in September.3 He supported a suggestion made by Thorez, the secretary-general of the French communist party, that some aid might also go to the republic in the form of volunteers raised internationally by foreign communist parties (though they would welcome non-communists) to add to those already in Spain fighting for the ‘cause of liberty’. At the end of September, the central committee of the Italian communist party met in Paris in the presence of French communist leaders and of Codovilla, the senior Comintern representative with the Spanish party. They agreed that ‘a column larger than that of Rosselli’ should be organized from Italian anti-fascists to go to Spain.1 In a day or two, the Comintern’s executive took the decision to form, under their authority, a number of international columns out of all the many who wanted, or could be persuaded, or be sent, to go to fight for the republic. Luigi Longo, the Italian communist youth leader of some years before, had spent much of August and September in Spain, and he was charged to make the appropriate arrangements with the Spanish government.2 Dimitrov, the Bulgarian communist who was secretary-general of the Comintern, is also said to have become enthusiastic for this ide
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