The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  But there were some members of the British government who were perturbed: and Captain Liddell Hart, the military historian who was then a special adviser to the war office, wrote a memorandum to Hore-Belisha, the British secretary of state for war, on 21 March, in which he concluded that ‘A friendly Spain is desirable, a neutral Spain is vital … from a strategical point of view, the political outcome of the present struggle is not, and cannot be, a matter of indifference to us.’3 But what could be done? The question of volunteers in Spain had brought Eden’s quarrel with Chamberlain to a head, but seemed otherwise certain to remain unresolved—as France at least hoped that it would be. Halfway through this ‘Second Triumphal Year’,4 the Generalissimo would not mind losing the Italian infantry, said the Marqués de Magaz, his courteous ambassador in Berlin; but he did require the Condor Legion and the Italian ‘specialists’ (particularly the pilots in Majorca) till the end of the war. Mussolini as usual was worrying why his precious infantry was not used more, so he pettishly ordered the air force in Majorca to cease operations till it was.5 For this reason, Barcelona enjoyed, at the start of March 1938, peace from aerial attack. Bruno Mussolini, the Duce’s son, was then withdrawn from the air force engaged in Spain, after twenty-seven sorties. He had volunteered to take part, but withdrew, on Franco’s suggestion, when (it was falsely reported) special efforts had been undertaken by the republic to shoot him down.6

  On 16 March, Barcelona was again heavily bombed by the Italians. The German ambassador in Salamanca, Stohrer, reported the effects as ‘terrible. All parts of the city were affected. There was no evidence of any attempt to hit military objectives.’1 The first raid came at about ten o’clock in the evening. Six Hydro-Heinkels (flown by Germans) flew across the city at 80 miles an hour and 1,200 feet up. Thereafter raids by Savoias as well followed at three-hourly intervals until three o’clock in the afternoon of 18 March. There were seventeen raids in all. About 1,300 were killed and 2,000 injured.2 Ciano reported that, as with the raids in February, orders for the attacks were given by Mussolini and that ‘Franco knew nothing about them’. Stohrer reported Franco furious.3 The Italians now had three aerodromes on Majorca which depended on the air ministry in Rome and whose pilots were able to act independently of the nationalist high command.4 On 19 March, indeed, the Generalissimo asked for their suspension, for fear of ‘complications abroad’. This did not prevent Ciano from lying to the American ambassador in Rome that Italy had no control over Italian aircraft operating in Spain. Mussolini, thinking, like his own ex-General Douhet, that aircraft could win a war by terror, declared his delight that the Italians ‘should be horrifying the world by their aggressiveness for a change, instead of charming it by the guitar’.5 The republic had the fighters to repel these attacks, but internal rivalry and jealousy prevented them from making the most of their material. Demoralization was considerable until the fighters were withdrawn from the front and organized as a coastal defence force under Major García Lacalle.6

  The consternation abroad was considerable. Meetings of protest were held in London.7 The most eloquent protest was George Barker’s fine poem ‘Elegy for Spain’. Even Cordell Hull abandoned his customary caution to express horror ‘on behalf of the whole US people’. But indiscriminate raids on republican towns continued. The contribution which they made to the nationalist cause was probably not, however, worth the trouble which they brought. For instance, the petrol-storage station in Barcelona was attacked thirty-seven times before it was hit. Nor did the attacks interfere seriously with the loading and unloading of republican supply ships in Mediterranean harbours.

  At this period of military crisis, the loathsome SIM came into its own in Barcelona. Designed to find spies, it also sought ‘defeatists’, defined as those guilty of profiteering, food-hoarding, or robbery. Summary trials before the special tribunals (tribunales de guardia) followed these charges. The SIM apparently also undertook a brief private murder campaign of vengeance against some of the PSUC’s critics in Barcelona, particularly anarchists. Forty people had been ‘taken for a ride’ before the government intervened to end this development. The special prisons of the SIM in Barcelona, especially that in the convent of San Juan, nevertheless remained full of strange tortures which might have been devised by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. A spherical room painted in black, with a single light at the top, gave a feeling of vertigo. Some cells were so small that one could not sit down. Such tortures were applied indiscriminately to nationalist and republican (or anarchist and POUM) prisoners, particularly the latter. ‘During the last year of the civil war,’ the then councillor of justice in the Catalan government, the erudite Professor Bosch Gimpera, recalled, ‘we spent a good deal of the time struggling against the military tribunals and the SIM.’1 Difficulties arose over the composition of the tribunales de guardia, since the presiding judge found himself without power vis-à-vis other members of the court, who always included a military officer and a member of the SIM itself. Many cases were held by these tribunales which should have been tried by the ordinary courts.2 The SIM did discover a number of genuine agents; in the spring of 1938, for example, they found a list of the Falange which operated in Catalonia. Three thousand five hundred persons were detained and, after interrogation which included torture, proof of espionage was detected.1

  On his return from Paris in March, Negrín found Barcelona heavy with gloom. The fountainhead of the defeatism was, as he expected, Prieto. Stretched in his armchair in the ministry of national defence, he would blandly announce to journalists and sycophants, in the tone of a victor: ‘We are lost!’ Prieto infected everyone with this pessimism, including the easily influenced but hard-working foreign minister, Giral, who expressed his gloom to the French ambassador, Labonne. (Admittedly, Giral was in close touch with Azaña, who was even more gloomy than Prieto was.) Almost before Negrín had returned, therefore, the French government was being informed by their representative in Barcelona that any war material which they might allow to be sent to Catalonia might fall into the hands of Franco—or Hitler. It required all Negrín’s skill to convince Labonne that he, at all events, was resolved to fight on. But what was to be done about Prieto?2 A cabinet meeting had been arranged for 16 March, the day of the worst bombing in Barcelona, at the Pedralbes Palace, under Azaña’s chairmanship. Before it began, Negrín spoke to both Prieto and Zugazagoitia, Prieto’s friend, the ex-editor of El Socialista, and minister of the interior, and begged them to support him if, at the meeting of the cabinet, anyone should mention negotiations. Both agreed to do so, thinking that the Prime Minister himself was going to propose mediation. Prieto suggested that republican funds abroad might be blocked so as to help those forced into exile after peace. Negrín hastily replied ‘all that is taken care of’.

  At a preliminary meeting of ministers before the cabinet, Negrín said that he understood that some of the ministers were for peace. No one replied. Giral, the foreign minister, said that Labonne, the French ambassador, had offered the members of the government a refuge at the French Embassy in the event of collapse. The republican fleet, Labonne had added, could sail to Bizerta or to Toulon. This last made everyone angry, for they thought that the French were thinking only of themselves, desiring to remove from the Mediterranean a potentially hostile fleet in nationalist hands. The ministers then moved into Azaña’s room. There, the angry noise of a great multitude could be heard moving towards the palace. A demonstration was being held to protest against surrender, and Prieto. Organized by the communists and supported by one or two prominent Negrinistas, including even Mariano Vázquez, the secretary-general of the CNT, the crowd carried banners on which were written ‘Down with the treacherous ministers!’ and even ‘Down with the minister of national defence!’ The gates of the Pedralbes Palace gave way, and a large Barcelona mob arrived beneath the french-windows of Azaña’s room. Prieto, the object of the crowd’s anger, could thus hear La Pasionaria, his particular enemy, haranguing her followers. Negrín persuaded the crowd to go
away, having reassured a delegation headed by La Pasionaria that the war would go on.1 Prieto later accused the Prime Minister of organizing this demonstration. Yet Prieto could not have made headway with negotiations. For the nationalists would only have accepted unconditional surrender. That would have included the freedom to exterminate the ‘absolute enemy’—the phrase used by Serrano Súñer to describe every shade of left-wing opinion, from liberal to anarchist.2

  Ten days later, at a meeting of the socialist party executive, on 26 March, in his own house, Negrín belittled the differences between Prieto and the communists. Zugazagoitia intervened. ‘Don Juan,’ he said, ‘masks off! At the front, our comrades are being murdered because they refuse to accept communist commands. As for Don Indalecio, look at the articles in the Frente Rojo and La Vanguardia by “Juan Ventura”, a nom de plume of the minister of education!’3 La Vanguardia, a republican paper which supported Negrín, had that day named Prieto an ‘impenitent pessimist’. Negrín answered that he needed both the communists and Prieto. The next day, Frente Rojo published another article by Hernández, suggesting Prieto’s dismissal. Zugazagoitia protested, at a cabinet meeting that night, that that had been published after the censor had struck it out. Hernández replied that a minister could not be censored by officials. Negrín calmed both the opponents.1

  Prieto’s prestige, along with his self-confidence, had diminished after the fall of Teruel, even though his friends assured him that that city had been abandoned by the communists in order to discredit him. The truth of these allegations may never be disentangled, though a conscious plot to abandon Teruel can be discounted. But the communists’ manoeuvre against Prieto had certainly begun some weeks before. On 24 February, Hernández’s first article appeared in Frente Rojo, denouncing ‘the defeatists’. The decision by the communists to launch a deadly campaign of propaganda against the defence minister must have been taken shortly before that.

  According to Jesús Hernández, the Bulgarian Comintern representative, Stepanov, had just been to Moscow. Russia, he said, was ready to send new aid to Spain, provided the mercurial Prieto were ousted. Thereafter, a policy of grim resistance to the end would have to be followed. Hernández argued that Prieto was the only man for that policy, since only he could gain the support of the communists, the CNT, and the UGT. But Togliatti said that Prieto had to be dislodged while Negrín would have to become almost a dictator.2 A number of speeches, by La Pasionaria, Miguel Valdés (a communist in Catalonia) and Hernández followed, attacking Prieto.

  On 28 March, a gloomy meeting occurred of the war council, a committee of the cabinet set up to run the war with generals, politicians and civil servants present. Prieto’s despondency seemed to affect everyone. Negrín assured the generals that they retained at least his confidence. The next day, while El Campesino was battling unsuccessfully for Lérida and the 15th International Brigade for Gandesa, the republican cabinet met in Barcelona. Again, Prieto (in Negrín’s words), ‘with his suggestive eloquence, his habitual pathos’, demoralized the cabinet, by falsely representing the conclusions of the previous day’s meeting of the council for war.1 On the night of 29–30 March, ‘a painful and violent struggle surged up’ within the mind of Negrín. Negrín visited the front often, often talked with soldiers, and knew that, whatever one’s private thoughts, defeatism like cowardice should never be shown. As a result, he decided to transfer Prieto from the ministry of defence, though if possible retaining him in the government.2 In the morning, Negrín telephoned Zugazagoitia, and asked him whether Prieto would like to leave the ministry. Zugazagoitia relayed the inquiry to Prieto who wrote a letter of resignation.3 The executive of the socialist party visited Prieto to consult him as to what course to follow, but he gave no lead. Another visit was from a commission of the CNT, composed of Horacio Prieto, Segundo Blanco, and Galo Díez (a veteran anarchist, now secretary of the CNT national committee). Horacio Prieto and Segundo Blanco were both leading exponents of CNT-UGT collaboration, which had been sealed in a joint statement of aims ten days before.4 They told Prieto that, despite ‘the enormous ideological differences which divide us’, they had no wish to see him removed from the ministry of defence.5 These three men were disillusioned with communist conduct; they believed that the war was lost, and that the peace should be made as soon as possible. A national anarchist meeting was soon held. All agreed that it was desirable to back Prieto and finish with Negrín; but opinions differed as to what to do next. Horacio Prieto had the candour to say that the republic was becoming a Russian puppet; that negotiations were essential; that Franco’s military superiority was assured and that, if nothing were done, he would soon be able to dictate his own conditions. Pandemonium followed. The ex-councillor in the Generalidad, Juan Domenech, rhetorically replied that the war should never end while a tree of Catalonia still stood and while there was a man of the FAI able to stand behind it. Mariano Vázquez, the friend of Negrín who was secretary-general of the CNT, agreed. Never had the movement seemed more divided. The meeting appropriately ended without a conclusion.1

  The only explanation of this crisis is that Negrín, without communist encouragement, had determined to move Prieto from his ministry. He wanted Prieto to become minister without portfolio or of public works and railways. But Prieto refused these posts (he had always wanted railways to be controlled by the ministry of defence) and so left the government. He later explained that he left the ministry because he was weary of the communists. He described his arguments with that party over matters of strategy. He explained how certain shipping companies had been founded to purchase arms abroad, but were used for making commercial profits for the communists.2 The weakness of his argument was that he could not suggest that a social policy different from that of the communists would have been more advantageous. Indeed, until recently, his policy, and communist policy, had been close in outlook. He did not explain what stratagem, other than one of friendship with Russia, could have been followed when Russia remained the only sure source of war material and when Russia already had the gold reserves of Spain. Nor did he suggest what else could be done other than carry on the war if the nationalists should offer only unconditional surrender. After all, his own schemes for peace with Franco had made little headway. The truth seems to be that Prieto was exhausted by the war as well as by his own difficulties with the communists. His last service as a minister, however, was to dissuade Azaña from resigning also.3 He subsequently busied himself with journalism, seeking, through a variety of friends abroad, to negotiate with the nationalists.4

  The communists had their own crisis at this moment. The Russians wished the Spanish communists also to withdraw from Negrín’s government. The communist caucus assembled in its customary atmosphere of jealousy and cigarette smoke. Did Moscow want the republic to lose, demanded Hernández? The Bulgarian Stepanov replied that this move was aimed to convince English and French public opinion that the communists were not interested in the conquest of power in Spain. If, as seemed likely, European war came, a Russian alliance with Britain and France would thereby be easier to achieve.1 Moscow’s orders were, however, partially obeyed; Uribe remained at the ministry of agriculture but Hernández left the ministry of education to become commissar-general of the Armies of the Centre and South, a post of potential power. This superficial change in the cabinet was compensated for by the return of the communist apologist, Alvarez del Vayo, to the foreign ministry. Other communists also received important positions: for example, Carlos Núñez Maza became under-secretary for air; Antonio Cordón, under-secretary for war; Pedro Prados, chief of staff of the navy; Colonel Eduardo Cuevas, director-general of security; Marcial Fernández, director-general of carabineers; and Hilario Arlandis, who, almost alone of the first generation of Spanish communists, was still a party member, became director of the school for commissars, while the commissar-general, Bibiano Ossorio y Tafall, though formally a left republican, was a communist puppet.2

  Negrín, meantime, dropping the portfolio of f
inance, became minister of defence as well as Premier. The finance ministry went to his previous under-secretary, Méndez Aspe, a civil servant by career. The other socialists in the cabinet, apart from Negrín, were González Pena, minister of justice, and Paulino Gómez Saez, minister of the interior. The latter had always been a Prietista, but the communists maintained their hold on the police services. The Basque Irujo remained minister without portfolio and the Catalan Jaime Ayguadé stayed as minister of labour. The government was strengthened by the entry into it of Segundo Blanco, an anarchist leader who had escaped from Asturias, and took the unimportant post of minister of education and health. The anarchists agreed to this support of Negrín (as they had supported Largo Caballero in the heroic, now far-off, days of November 1936) because of the serious military danger: on 30 March, a FAI circular had urged all members to rally to the government in the hour of need. Actually, Blanco’s ministry did not loom large; and Blanco, previously a critic of Negrín and the communists, soon became very friendly with the Prime Minister. Blanco’s presence in the government may have helped to limit further communist persecution of anarchists at the front and elsewhere. Other posts went to republicans—Giral (minister without portfolio), Giner (transport), and Antonio Velao (public works). The ex–minister of the interior, Zugazagoitia, became secretary-general of defence, a nominal post: he would complain that to discover what was going on, he had to read the newspapers.

  Negrín, on Rojo’s suggestion, created, out of the remains of the armies defeated in Aragon, and in the moment for recovery that Franco’s turn southwards left to him, a new ‘Army of the East’ (Grupo de Ejércitos de la Región Oriental) under the command of Azaña’s loyal friend, Hernández Saravia, who had led the advance on Teruel. The word ‘Catalonia’ played no part in these large gatherings of men. Miaja was given the supreme command of the Army of the Centre (Grupo de Ejércitos de la Región Central).