by Hugh Thomas
2. The International Brigades had rested during the early part of these operations. It was early in December that the British Battalion had received a visit from the Labour leaders Attlee, Ellen Wilkinson and Philip Nöel-Baker. A dinner was given, at which Attlee promised to do his utmost to end the ‘farce of nonintervention’, and Nöel-Baker recalled how Britain had sent 10,000 men to assist the Spanish liberals in the Carlist Wars. Henceforth, the No. 1 Company of the British Battalion was known as the ‘Major Attlee Company’. Attlee wrote back: ‘I would assure [the Brigade] of our admiration for their courage and devotion to the cause of freedom and social justice. I shall try to tell the comrades at home of what I have seen. Workers of the World unite!’ The singer Paul Robeson was a visitor too. As for those for whom ‘home’ meant France, the winter of 1937–8 was notable for the publication of Malraux’s magnificent novel L’Espoir. Azaña commented: ‘Ah, these Frenchmen! Only they would think of making a civil guard into a philosopher!’
1. R. Salas, vol. II, pp. 3050–51.
2. Save certain Russian actions near the Caspian in 1942.
1. See Martínez Bande, La batalla de Teruel (Madrid, 1974), p. 227.
2. El Campesino, Listen, Comrades (London, 1952) p. 11; Comunista en España, pp. 65–70. See Prieto’s review of this book reprinted in Convulsiones, vol. II, pp. 110–11.
3. Lister, p. 301.
4. Prieto, Yo y Moscú, pp. 197–200.
1. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, p. 72. Eden promised Azcárate to try to intervene with Franco against these raids (Azcárate, p. 209). While it presumed that this démarche was being considered, the republicans refrained from reprisals. But later, after Eden had resigned, Britain denied that she had taken any initiative in the matter.
2. Eden, p. 571. The captain of the Sanjurjo, who was responsible for the attack on Endymion, was relieved of his command on return to harbour.
1. GD, p. 564.
2. Ibid., p. 573.
3. NIS (c), eighty-third meeting.
4. Eden, p. 549f.
1. Feiling, p. 337; Eden, pp. 380–82; Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, p. 78.
2. Cervera, p. 226.
1. The Condor Legion now had two Messerschmitt 109 groups of four squadrons; two Heinkel 51 groups of two squadrons; a reconnaissance group of Heinkels and Dorniers 17, of three squadrons; four bomber groups of three squadrons of Heinkels 111 and Junkers 52. Fighters and reconnaissance groups were of nine aircraft, bomber groups of twelve. The tank corps under von Thoma now comprised four battalions, each of three companies with fifteen light tanks a company. This was accompanied by thirty anti-tank companies, with six 37-mm. guns apiece.
2. The now veteran American Major Merriman was killed in the retreat. Merriman was succeeded by the English Malcolm Dunbar. A Brooklyn art student, Milton Wolf, took over the Lincoln Battalion. The commissar of the British Battalion, Wally Tapsell, was killed near Belchite. He had been an outspoken critic of the changes of front in the communist policy towards Spain.
3. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, p. 87.
4. Martínez Amutio, p. 266.
1. Cf. Castells, p. 311f.
2. Julian Amery, Approach March, p. 92, recalls a macabre scene in the cemetery outside Huesca, relieved now by the nationalists, in which skeletons and decomposing corpses, along with freshly dead men, had been arranged in a dance of death to welcome the enemy. (Amery, a future English politician, visited nationalist Spain in the spring of 1938 as an undergraduate.)
1. It is hard to sort out the accusations of treachery, cowardice, attempted murder, which fill the works of anti-communist writers of this period—e.g., Peirats, vol. III, pp. 102f. and 251f. A number of commanders were bound to be dismissed in consequence of these defeats. A number of others were evidently shot, partly for political or even personal reasons. Several of the most discreditable occurrences happened in Andalusia, where there could be no excuse that the stress of defeat compelled it. Anarchists did not accept murders by communists without protest: thus the famous guerrilla fighter, Francisco Sabater (‘El Quico’), shot a communist captain and commissar as a reprisal for being placed in an exposed part of the front (Téllez, p. 17).
2. The nationalist pilots sometimes thought of air battles in the same terms as a bull-fight. Some would refer to the stage of actual battle by the bullfight cry ‘¡Al toro!’ The motto of the famous nationalist air ace, García Morato, was ‘Vista, suerte y al toro’—good eyes, good luck and at the bull.
1. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, p. 99.
2. De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. II, p. 354. The rumours are not confirmed. For another, less charitable view, see below, p. 912.
3. Qu. Abella, p. 312.
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1. Zugazagoitia, vol. II, p. 82.
2. Álvarez del Vayo, The Last Optimist, p. 300.
3. Hitler used the ex-commander of the Condor Legion, Sperrle, as a physical menace at his famous interview with Schuschnigg.
1. Feiling, p. 347.
2. USD, 1938, vol. I, p. 163.
3. Robert Brasillach, Histoire de la guerre d’Espagne (Paris, 1939), p. 397.
4. Schuschnigg, Ein Requiem in Rot-Weiss-Rot, p. 37, qu. Churchill, Gathering Storm, p. 205.
5. This meeting is described in Maurice Gamelin, Servir (Paris, 1946–7), vol. II, pp. 322–8. See also Georges Bonnet, De Washington au Quai d’Orsay (Geneva, 1946), p. 77.
6. Their resolution was perhaps helped by the appearance of a news story that a military rising had taken place against Franco at Tetuán. This was the fabrication of the Comintern propaganda department in Paris carried out by Otto Katz and Claud Cockburn. The fraud aimed to give the impression that Franco might still be defeated and that, therefore, it was worth the French effort to open the border. (Claud Cockburn, Crossing the Line, London, 1956, pp. 27–8.) (I was grateful to Claud Cockburn for help here.)
7. L. Fischer, pp. 451–2, suggests that a crucial talk between British ambassador Sir Eric Phipps and Paul-Boncour tipped the balance. Phipps is said to have protested against the proposals to mobilize.
1. Les Événements, p. 253.
2. GD, p. 622. Ribbentrop succeeded Neurath as German foreign minister in February.
3. Basil Liddell Hart, The Defence of Britain (London, 1938), p. 66.
4. It had become customary in nationalist Spain to date public decrees and even private letters by the terminology Year I, Year II, after the rising of 18 July 1936, in the style of fascist Italy. (In Rome, 1937 was the Year XV.)
5. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, p. 80. Ciano was distressed: ‘Franco must exploit his success. Fortune is not a train which passes every day at the same time. She is a prostitute who offers herself fleetingly and then passes on to others.’
6. Rachele Mussolini, p. 71.
1. GD, p. 625.
2. Report of US military attaché, Colonel Fuqua (Claude Bowers, My Mission to Spain, New York, 1954, p. 376).
3. GD, p. 626.
4. See Cervera, pp. 317–18; and Kindelán, p. 19. The German Hydro-Heinkels of Palma were known as ‘Negrillas’, the Italians, Legionaries.
5. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, pp. 91–2.
6. For an account in Barcelona, see Horner, p. 160.
7. A public letter of protest was signed by a mixed group of eminent Englishmen, including both anglican archbishops, Cardinal Hinsley, the Lord Chief Justice, the chairmen of ICI and Lloyds, Lords Horder and Camrose, the headmasters of Rugby and Haileybury, Maynard Keynes, and many others. H. G. Wells gave his name to one of these protests. The nationalist agent, the Duke of Alba, wrote to him in astonishment that so great a writer should have such truck with the ‘rabble’.
1. In a letter to the author.
2. Bosch Gimpera, Memorandum No. 5.
1. See Peirats, vol. III, pp. 280 and 288. According to one report, the SIM had 6,000 agents in Madrid alone, with a budget of 22 million pesetas. The SIM shortly went into a period of disorganization—its chief, Colonel Uribarri, escaping to France with a good deal of m
oney. His extradition, though demanded, never occurred. His successor was Santiago Garcés, previously of the socialist youth, a confidant of Prieto, who had been in the murder-car at the time of the death of Calvo Sotelo. Another prominent member of the SIM, Maxim Schneller, head of its ‘Foreign Section’, seems to have been a double spy and fled to France (see Delmer, p. 356, where there is a description of a visit to the SIM’s prison ship, Uruguay, in Barcelona harbour).
2. Álvarez del Vayo, The Last Optimist, p. 301.
1. Other members of the delegation were Pretel (UGT); Vidarte (socialist); Santiago Carrillo (united youth); Serra Pamiés (PSUC); and Guerrero (FAI) (Ibarruri, p. 395).
2. The above derives from Prieto, Epistolario Prieto y Negrin (Paris, 1939); Prieto, Convulsiones, vol. II, p. 37; Alvarez del Vayo, The Last Optimist, p. 123; Zugazagoitia, p. 400.
3. I.e., Jesús Hernández. For confirmation of communist murders at the front, see Peirats, vol. III, pp. 102–30. The CNT and FAI sent a complaint on this question to Prieto on 25 March.
1. Prieto, Yo y Moscú, p. 38.
2. Hernández, p. 159. This was scarcely a happy time in the world communist movement: Bukharin and his fellow victims, including Yagoda and Grinko, the commissar of finance who had received the Spanish gold in 1936, were tried between 2 and 13 March 1938.
1. Prieto, Yo y Moscú, pp. 39–40. Prieto said later he merely told the meeting the ‘fascists would inevitably reach the Mediterranean’.
2. Prieto, Epistolario, p. 24.
3. Qu. in Prieto, Yo y Moscú, p. 43f.
4. See C. Lorenzo, pp. 291 and 313. A liaison committee had been formed with Horacio Prieto president and Rodríguez Vega (socialist) secretary.
5. Ibid., pp. 176–7.
1. C. Lorenzo, p. 315.
2. Shipping companies created in England by the republican government were those of Howard Tenens Ltd, the Prosper Steamship Co., the Burlington Steamship Co., ‘Southern Shipping’, and the Kentish Company. The Mid Atlantic Company was formed to charter other ships and was run by a Basque nationalist and a socialist under the direction of the Spanish Embassy in London. Prieto’s son Luis was financial attaché. The Tyneside millionaire Billmeir (‘the best of the rogues I had to deal with’, said José Calvino, one of the leading republican buyers) was the hidden hand behind many such ventures.
3. Prieto, Palabras al viento, pp. 282–3.
4. See, for example, Amery, pp. 108–9. Prieto was offered the post of ambassador to Mexico. No doubt Negrín wanted him out of the way. Azaña was furious. That led to a major quarrel between the two, since Azaña desired to keep Prieto as a possible Premier. Prieto refused. See Azaña, vol. I, pp. 881–3. Eventually, much later in the year, Prieto agreed to be ‘special ambassador’ to the inauguration of President Aguirre Cerda of Chile. He went to Santiago, made brilliant speeches, and was in exile already when the war ended.
1. Hernández, pp. 166–8. On 18 March, Russia proposed a ‘grand alliance’ within the League against Hitler. This was rejected by Chamberlain.
2. Castro Delgado, p. 659.
1. This agreement and the negotiations leading up to it are described in full in Peirats, vol. III, p. 62f. A committee to coordinate UGT-CNT activities was set up under two anarchists (Horacio Prieto and Roberto Alfonso) and two from the UGT (Rodríguez Vega and César Lombardie). During April, the CNT gave other backing to the government, the ex-minister Peiró becoming commissar-general of electricity (op. cit., p. 124).
1. Though this mainly radical socialist cabinet stood to the right of those of Blum and Chautemps, it was supported by the socialists.
1. Letter to the editor of Time and Tide, 5 February 1938. Orwell had pointed out earlier that the war produced a ‘richer crop of lies than any event since the Great War of 1914–1918’. (‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’, in New English Weekly, 29 July 1937.)
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1. A local politician, Beltrán had been prominent in 1930 in the rising of Jaca and had been the left republican administrator of a state housing project in Canfranc. He had become a ‘communist’ in the war. See Prieto, Convulsiones, vol. II, p. 203, for his future adventures in Russia, his return to France with the maquis, his subsequent deportation to Corsica, his break with the communists, his work with US intelligence after 1945 in Spain, the US and Mexico, where, like many another Spanish hero of our time, he died in poverty, having quarrelled with his US masters. The Dodger’s nickname was inherited from his father and grandfather, famous Canfranc smugglers.
1. The text of this speech was published only in the Diario de Burgos, 19 April 1938. It is reprinted in García Venero, Falange. Yagüe was approached by Prieto in the spring of 1938 through Jakob Altmaier, a German journalist and socialist refugee, and an unnamed Austrian monarchist to try and secure a compromise peace. By the agreement, Franco and Negrín were to form a coalition government with Prieto, Gil Robles, and other ‘moderates’. There would be a plebiscite in two years on the monarchy. See Amery, pp. 108–9. Altmaier had been a socialist leader in Frankfurt during the revolution of 1919 and in World War II worked in British intelligence. See also Prieto, Palabras, p. 237, where it is implied that Negrín prevented him from negotiating as much as he might.
1. See Circular No. 17 of the FAI, issued 3 May. Qu. Peirats, vol. III, p. 118. The thirteen points were discussed at a cabinet meeting on 30 April. Segundo Blanco said the CNT should be consulted. Negrín decided that was impossible since the British Embassy had to receive the document the same day, and it was, after all, primarily a statement for foreign consumption (op. cit., p. 119).
1. Azaña, vol. IV, p. 845.
2. Azaña, op. cit., p. 877. This conversation had been on 22 April, arising from Negrín’s desire for Azaña’s signature to forty-five death penalties. Azaña was reluctant. Negrín thought them essential to avoid paseos. Negrín reminded Azaña that he had himself regretted that he had pardoned Sanjurjo in 1932. (Negrín himself had been in favour of shooting Sanjurjo, though he had liked him; Azaña had disliked Sanjurjo but had supported his reprieve.)
3. Franco’s speech, qu. Abella, p. 328.
1. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8.
2. Azcárate, p. 153. The republican ambassador added that thereafter ‘shame and indignation’ at British policy caused the republic to keep relations with the UK to a minimum.
3. W. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 221. Churchill, for instance, was brought to have an amicable conversation with the republican ambassador, Azcárate, showing sympathy for the republic, after dinner at the Soviet Embassy. The conversion of Churchill to the republic was partly the work of his son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, who visited Barcelona in the spring of 1938. But Churchill’s ‘republicanism’ was always realistic. Thus, he told a Buenos Aires newspaper: ‘Franco has all the right on his side, because he loves his country. Also Franco is defending Europe against the communist danger—if you wish to put it in those terms. But I—I am English, and I prefer the triumph of the wrong cause. I prefer that the other side wins because Franco could be an upset to British interests.’ (La Nación, Buenos Aires, 14 August 1938.)
1. GD, p. 635.
2. USD, 1938, vol. I, pp. 192–3.
3. On 10 May, Ivone Kirkpatrick told Prince Bismarck, the German minister in London, that ‘If the German government would advise the British government confidentially what solution of the Sudeten German question they were striving after … the British government would bring such pressure to bear in Prague that the Czechoslovak government would be compelled to accede to German wishes.’ (GD, Series D, vol. II, doc. no. 1511.)
1. Harvey, p. 124. ‘My colleagues are dictator-minded’, Eden had often said.
2. New Orleans States, 9 May 1938, qu. Taylor, p. 169.
3. R. J. Bendiner, The Riddle of the State Department (New York, 1962).
1. Taylor, p. 174; Traina, p. 134f.; Bendiner, pp. 59–62; USD, 1938, vol. I, pp. 183–95. The German ambassador in Washington reported to Berlin that the British influence was the decisive factor
(GD, pp. 656–7). But Arthur Krock told me (9 January 1963) that, so far as he could recall, Hull or Welles gave him the information on which he had based this article, and that that was the policy his informant then wished to achieve. Ickes (vol. II, p. 390) says Roosevelt told him on 9 May that ‘to raise the embargo would mean the loss of every Catholic vote next fall and that the democratic members of congress were jittery about it and didn’t want it done’. This confirms the impression of Norman Thomas, with whom I discussed this matter in 1962. Jay Allen in The Christian Science Monitor later alleged that Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago telephoned Roosevelt on a later occasion to dissuade him from raising the embargo (Traina, p. 213). Krock’s son was apparently one of the few Americans fighting for Franco.
2. L. Fischer, pp. 468–70. Litvinov himself had, for many months, a suitcase packed ready to take with him to gaol, as his wife recalls.
3. Harvey, p. 157: ‘The French are getting increasingly restive as a result of having closed their frontier as a result of our urging,’ Harvey wrote on 2 July.
4. Traina, p. 168. Sherover had first made news by selling $60 million of Soviet American Security bonds between 1931 and 1935. He had been commercial agent for the republic since 1936. In conversation with me in 1975, Sherover confirmed that Roosevelt gave him to understand that it was the Catholic vote which affected him.
1. Ciano, Diaries 1937–8, p. 123.
2. Speeches on Foreign Policy, 1934–9 (London, 1940), p. 164.
3. Cf. Thompson, p. 122f.
4. GD, p. 684, Dirksen’s italics.
5. Ibid., pp. 684–5.
6. Ibid., p. 683.
7. USD, 1938, vol. I, p. 208.
1. USD, 1938, vol. I, p. 215. He had succeeded Vansittart on 1 January 1938.
2. Parliamentary Debates, vol. 337, col. 1011 (21 June 1938).
1. Parliamentary Debates, vol. 337, col. 1387 (23 June 1938).
2. Feiling, p. 352.
3. CAB, 27 (38), on 1 June.
4. USD, 1938, vol. I, p. 231. One reaction was Low’s cartoon of 16 June, in which he caused Colonel Blimp to remark: ‘Gad sir, it is time we told Franco that, if he sinks another hundred British ships, we shall retire from the Mediterranean altogether.’
