The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  3. As a result of more careful analysis of each battle’s figure, I have scaled this down from my last edition. Jackson’s arguments appear convincing here (p. 526f.), and they coincide with De la Cierva (vol. II, p. 221f.). R. Casas de la Vega, Las milicas nacionales en la guerra de España (Madrid, 1974) calculates 17,015 killed or died of wounds out of a total of 160,000–170,000 falangist volunteers in the war.

  1. De la Cierva puts this figure at merely 50,000, 25,000 each, neatly enough (Historia ilustrada, vol. II, p. 221). I would like to think that he is right but I fear he is optimistic.

  2. I include here as war dead those who, like Julián Besteiro, or Miguel Hernández, died in gaol as a result of the war. Whereas Jackson has this figure of 50,000 above suggested, he gives a figure of 200,000 for post-war reprisals. See p. 899 above. De la Cierva, op. cit. (vol. II, p. 223) says 50,000 should be regarded as the maximum. Cabanellas (vol. II, p. 1112) ventures 300,000.

  3. Boletín Oficial del Estado, 4 August 1940, qu. Sarda, El Banco de España, 1931–1962, has 22,740 million pesetas among the republicans, 10,000 million among the nationalists (pesetas of 1935). The former high figure is at least partly to be attributed to the high cost of personnel in the republican army.

  4. Report of the Dirección General de Regiones Devastadas, 1943. This was some 8 per cent of the total houses of the country.

  1. Tamames, Estructura, p. 559.

  2. Tamames, La república, p. 357, prints these figures:

  3. Eight million hectares of wheat in comparison with 11 million in 1935. Of course in some areas specially hit, such as that in which the battle of the Ebro was fought, the losses were greater: Mezquida (vol. I, p. 162) gives, for example, figures showing that, whereas in 1935 there were 5.4 million vines in Gandesa, over 2 million had been lost by 1939. The vendimia took many years to recover its old production.

  1. Figures in Tamames, La república, p. 357. Thus, if 1929 represents 100:

  2. Sixty percent of pre–civil war Falange members are said to have been killed during the conflict (estimate by Payne, The Falange, p. 212).

  1. See above, p. 523.

  1. This is discussed on p. 547.

  2. C. Lorenzo, p. 236.

  1. A point made by Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos, p. 15.

  1. Cervera’s figures (Cervera, p. 422). Slightly different figures were given by Admiral Bastarreche in his contribution to the seminars in the University of Saragossa (Guerra de liberación, Saragossa, 1961, p. 422).

  1. R. Salas, vol. IV, p. 3422.

  2. FD, vol. VII, p. 377.

  1. Many instances of this are given in Alpert’s excellent thesis.

  2. Qu. Carr, Spain, p. 689. Matallana’s loyalties might be suspect; his tactics were sound.

  3. Even Azaña later commented (letter to Ossorio, 28 June 1939) that he was surprised that Franco did not go for Barcelona in March 1938 (vol. III, p. 537).

  4. See, on this subject, Tamames, La república, p. 341; Carlos Delclaux, La financiación de la cruzada (University of Deusto, unpublished thesis, 1950).

  1. See Appendix Three, for a full inquiry.

  1. La Pasionaria (in They Shall Not Pass, p. 348) says that ‘without the Soviet tanks and aeroplanes, the defence of Madrid would have been impossible’.

  2. The shipment is described in detail on pp. 828 and 837 above.

  3. For a contrary view, see R. Salas’s essay in Palacio Atard, Aproximación histórica a la guerra civil española (Madrid, 1970).

  1. De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. II, p. 326; Feis, loc. cit. Exact figures seem to be 3,471,383 and 1,504,239 respectively.

  1. See above, p. 330.

  2. 17 July–8 August 1936; c. 20 October 1937–January 1938; 16 March–13 June 1938; and in January–February 1939. Aircraft certainly crossed the frontier between August and October 1936 also.

  3. Eden, p. 403.

  4. See Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill.

  1. Prieto, Yo y Moscú, p. 140.

  2. B. Liddell Hart, The Soviet Army (London, 1956), pp. 316–17.

  3. Many mistakes nevertheless crept into the calculations of the British government in respect of the likely effects of an aerial attack on London deduced from the raids on Barcelona in March 1938. The officials worked out that seventy-two casualties might be caused by one ton of bombs. Later, however, in all the raids on Barcelona, an average of 3.5 persons per bomb was reported killed. This new casualty ratio was not substituted in the British home office plans for the earlier, more drastic figures (R. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, London, 1950, Official History of the War, pp. 13–14). I am grateful to the late Christopher Bennett for drawing my attention to this.

  1. See above, p. 534.

  2. Historia y vida, January 1975.

  APPENDIX THREE

  1. On the basis of tons being metric tonnes, represented by 32,150 troy ounces fine. Converted on the basis of $4.8666 to the dollar, and the early 1936 rate for the peseta.

  2. Pravda, 5 April 1957. In 1939, the story was current that the republic owed Russia $120 million (see L. Fischer, p. 346). It will be remembered that Hidalgo de Cisneros obtained $85 million worth of arms in late 1938 after Stalin had told him that the republic’s credit was exhausted. See above, p. 845. Apparently, $35 million was paid soon, hence the outstanding bill of $50 million.

  1. This figure is obtained by considering the total gold reserve of $788 million, deducting the $48 million left in France, adding the $50 million allegedly owed to Russia, adding also the value of exports and allowing something for the valuables exported. It is not wholly clear how the money was physically spent, but Delclaux (La financiación de la cruzada, p. 75) gives this list of recipients of moneys from the Bank of Spain up till 1 January 1938: to Russia, 663 million pesetas; Mont de Marsan, 350 million pesetas; Fernando Shaw, Alfredo Palacios, Antonio Cruz Marín, all in London, respectively 11, 16 and 34 million pesetas; Gordón Ordás, the ambassador in Mexico, 64 million pesetas; de los Ríos, the ambassador in Washington, 175 million; Araquistain and Albornoz, both ambassadors in Paris, 194 and 210 million respectively; Mendez Aspe, the head of the Treasury, 400 million; and anonymous (!), 100 million.

  2. Figures in GD, p. 892. See also GD, vol. XI, pp. 329–30. See also Whealey in Carr, The Republic, p. 219, and Angel Viñas, ‘Los costos de la guerra civil’ in Actualidad Económica, August 1972.

  3. Southworth, Antifalange, p. 178.

  4. To Hitler in conversation (GD, p. 933). These thousand millions are of course billions in the US.

  1. Agreement of 8 May 1940.

  2. Delclaux, p. 65.

  3. This is done by Jesús Salas in his Intervención extranjera, p. 510.

  1. I am particularly grateful to Peter Robeson, of Baring Brothers, who kindly helped me on these sums and their interpretation.

  2. Manfred Merkes, Die deutsche Politik im Spanischen Burgerkrieg, 2nd edition (Bonn, 1969), has a total of 15,990 men sent to Spain including non-military personnel but leaving out those who went in mid-1937, for which he obtained no data.

  3. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, p. 126.

  4. Actually 593, according to Jesús Salas’s figures in his Intervención extranjera, p. 439. These figures take precedence over his own and his brother’s previous estimates (in, e.g., Palacio Atard, p. 201) or other estimates, e.g. Gomá or De la Cierva. The heavy Junkers 52 (bomber) and small Heinkel 51 (fighter) were the mainstay of the early days; the fast Messerschmitt 109 (fighter) were used in 1937. The medium-range Heinkel 111 was Germany’s most modern bomber. Other aircraft bought from Germany included 31 Dornier 17s (a bomber in its day faster than most of the world’s fighters), 33 HE-45s, and 20 HE-46s. Jesús Salas (La guerra, p. 209) tells us that five models of the famous Stuka (Junkers 87) went to Spain in 1937 but were not much used. One was in action at Teruel in February 1938 and one was apparently shot down in January 1939 (García Lacalle, p. 485).

  1. In the spring of 1937 there were some 35,000 Italians in
the CTV, perhaps 10,000 in the Legion, the Flechas and in the legionary air force. See Payne, Politics, p. 327; and Alcofar, CTV, p. 189. Higher figures were given at the time, because of the confusion caused by the units of Spaniards led by Italian officers and NCOs.

  2. Alcofar, CTV, p. 189; 3,785 are buried at the monastery of San Antonio, Saragossa, 372 in the cemetery of Puerto del Escudo, and there were some other isolated deaths. Cf. Belforte, p. 228, and Conforti, p. 416. But there were also some Italian airmen and others killed who were not part of the CTV.

  3. Estimate of Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini as a Military Leader (Reading, 1973), p. 9.

  4. R. Salas’s figure (op. cit., p. 3240) and J. Salas’s Intervención extranjera, p. 435, which I prefer to the announcement by the Stefani News Agency in 1941, qu. New York Times, 28 February 1941 (763 aircraft). Higher figures for the number of Fiat CR.32s have been given.

  5. Stefani figures; which Alcofar (1972) criticizes (p. 190).

  6. Cantalupo and Belforte (p. 164) speak of 800 pieces. See Whealey in Carr, op. cit., p. 221; Forze armate, June 1939; and comment by R. Salas, vol. II, p. 2370, and J. Salas, Intervención extranjera, p. 490.

  7. Stefani News Agency in 1941. See slightly lower figures in J. Salas, Intervención extranjera, p. 490.

  1. Alcofar, CTV, p. 191.

  2 Belforte, p. 183.

  3. See Martínez Bande, La lucha,> p. 110, fn. 122; De la Cierva, Leyenda y tragedia de las brigadas internacionales (Madrid, 1973), p. 101; and Kay, p. 92. Apparently, the ‘Viriato’ Brigade of Portuguese volunteers offered by General Raúl Esteves, one of the founders of Salazar’s revolution, never set off as a separate unit but even so the Portuguese who did go were called ‘Viriatos’. In a previous edition I spoke of 20,000 volunteers from Portugal: this probably was an exaggeration. For the experiences of a Portuguese ‘flier’ with Franco, see José Sepúlveda Velloso, Páginas do diario de un aviador na guerra de España (Lisbon, 1972). General Spinola, famous in 1974 in Portugal, acted only as an observer in a mission; he never fought.

  4. See above, p. 747.

  5. These seem to have included only four Americans (the ‘electrical genius’ Stanley Baker, the pilot Patriarca, shot down over the republic in 1936, the son of Arthur Krock of the New York Times, and Captain Guy Stuart Castle) and perhaps twelve Englishmen (Captains Fitzpatrick and Nangle, who served in the Legion; Peter Kemp; a certain Patrick Campbell; Rupert Bellville, who fought with the falangists in Jerez in 1936; two deserters from the Royal Marines, ‘Stewart’ and ‘Little’; two other deserters, from HMS Barham, Wilson, who emigrated to Canada, and Yarlett, who died of wounds; and some other Englishmen who fought in Andalusia in the Legion). Half of these seem to have been at least partially Irish.

  1. The British consul general in Tangier estimated 70,000 Moroccans had gone to the war by June 1938. (See Halstead’s article on Beigbeder in The Historian, November 1974 and De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. I, p. 472.)

  2. These are Jesús Salas’s figures on p. 429 of his Intervención extranjera and pp. 3418–19 of vol. IV of his brother’s book. The commander of the Katiuskas, Colonel Leocadio Mendiola, said that there were only 62 of them and the commander of the Natashas, Major José Romero, said that there were only 93 of them. García Lacalle, in a letter to me, said that the overall figure was nearer 500, of which 300 were fighters, 220 bombers. However, I accept the Salas figures on the basis of their documentation.

  3. Many other figures can be found, even in R. Salas in Palacio Atard, p. 200. The republic built or assembled Moscas and Chatos in Barcelona; the nationalists found 200 of these in Barcelona, 100 in Alicante. See also Sanchís, p. 35; Gomá, p. 58; De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. II, p. 313. William Green and John Fricker, The Air Forces of the World (New York, 1958), p. 249, thought that Russia sent 550 I-15s, 475 I-16s, 210 2B-2s, 130 R-5 reconnaissance and 40 R-2s.

  4. Letter from Colonel García Lacalle, July 1964. One at least of these Grummans did good service as a pioneer in military aerial photography.

  1. See D. C. Watt, ‘Soviet Aid to the Republic’ in The Slavonic and East European Review, June 1960.

  2. The International Brigades, p. 123; cf. too Alpert, p. 309.

  3. I have taken these estimates from J. Salas’s Intervención extranjera (p. 476), and from Solidaridad de los pueblos con la república española (Moscow, 1972), though I think the figures of artillery may well be too high.

  1. Wintringham, p. 37; Rolfe, p. 8. Vittorio Vidali (Carlos Contreras) has given the figure as 35,000 (Il Contemporaneo, vol. IV, July–August 1961, p. 284). Soviet army archives, qu. Payne, Spanish Revolution, gives 31,237. Skoutelsky estimated 32,256 in the Brigades (p. 329). The analysis in the useful study by Andreu Castells, Las brigadas, is impressive; it leaves us with 59,380, but the evidence is weak: where does the writer’s figure of 15,400 Frenchmen come from? Why trust a Russian book better than an Italian one for Italian participation? The Spanish foreign ministry’s pamphlet, The International Brigades (published 1952), though presenting a great deal of interesting material, exaggerated with an estimate of 125,000—a figure (a guess?) which seems first to have appeared in Lizón Gadea, Brigadas internacionales en España (Madrid, 1940), p. 11. R. Salas, vol. II, p. 2144, also argues, implausibly, that the figures were 120,000. De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. I, p. 404, has 80,000. La Pasionaria and her colleagues (Guerra, vol. II, p. 234) says 30,000 to 35,000 and Delperrie de Bayac (p. 386) also has 35,000. Perhaps Salas and De la Cierva went wrong in including Spanish volunteers for the Brigades as if they were foreigners.

  2. L’Epopée de l’Espagne (Paris, 1957), p. 80. This booklet names the number of French members of the Brigades as 8,500. But one of its authors told me that he distrusted the sources of his own information and that the figure should have been higher. Skoutelsky (p. 332) estimated 8,962.

  3. Alfred Kantorowicz, Spanisches Tagebuch (Berlin, 1948), p. 15.

  4. This was Maciej Techniczek’s figure to Castells, with which I agree.

  5. Skoutelsky estimated 3,002. But Togliatti, in his history of the Italian communist party, says the figure was 3,354, of which 3,108 were combatants; 1,819 were communists, 310 socialists, republicans or members of the ‘Justice and Liberty’, and 1,096 non-party but ‘mostly recruited from our organizations’. Togliatti adds that about 600 Italians were killed (356 communists), 2,000 wounded, and 100 taken prisoner—presumably shot (Togliatti, Le Parti communiste italien, Paris, 1961, p. 102). The discrepancy between Togliatti’s and the Russian Military Archives’ figure, mentioned above, suggests the unreliability of the latter. Perhaps the Russian cut out the non-communists. Social origins suggested of figures known: 1,471 industrial workers, particularly from metallurgical industries, only 254 peasants, 69 professional people, including 19 lawyers. But of 1,412 combatants the social origins were not known. Sociological categories of this sort are anyway misleading; 102 combatants from Italy in Spain were over sixty, most were between thirty and forty-five years old. Considering only communists, the most ‘Garibaldine’ were Venetians: 309 from Venetia Euganea, 225 from Venetia Giulia; 145 were Tuscans. See Spriano, vol. III, pp. 227–9.

  6. Rolfe, p. 7. Skoutelsky gave 2,341.

  1. Rust, p. 210. Neal Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals (London, 1959), p. 56, however, says that there were 2,762 British volunteers, 1,762 wounded and 543 killed. He may be right, but no one else would give such exact figures.

  2. Tito, in his remarks to Life (28 April 1952). Dedijer, p. 108, gives the Yugoslav figure as 1,500 volunteers, 300 wounded, ‘almost half killed’, and 350 interned in France after the collapse of Catalonia.

  3. Clarté (Stockholm), No. 2 of 1956, p. 2.

  4. Wullschleger, pp. 39–42.

  5. Longo, p. 34. A recent study by I. Persiguer, Participación de polacos antifascistas en la guerra de España, in I. Maisky, Problemas de la historia de España (Moscow, 1971) speaks of 30,000 Slavs in Spain. This must be an exaggeration.

  6. Loi
s Elwyn Smith p. 200.

  7. See Istoriya velikoy otechestvennoy voyny Sovyetskogo Soyuza 1941–5, vol. I, pp. 112–13; this gave a figure of 557 Russian ‘volunteers’ as being in Spain presumably sometime in 1937, of whom 23 were military ‘asesores’, 49 instructors, 29 gunners, 141 pilots, 107 tank crews, 29 naval personnel, 73 interpreters and 109 ‘technicians’, signallers, and doctors. The number of Russian NKVD ‘specialists’ remains a mystery. But Largo told Azaña in 1937 that there were then 781 Russians in Spain (Azaña, vol. III, p. 477). See also Hidalgo de Cisneros to Bolloten, in Bolloten, p. 125. Lister says 2,500 (op. cit., p. 265). R. Salas, vol. II, pp. 2151–3, says over 20,000. See Alpert, pp. 287–9. Jesús Salas (Intervención extranjera), p. 453, guesses 12,000 without documentary evidence. De la Cierva, Historia ilustrada, vol. II, p. 314, has 5,000. La Pasionaria and her colleagues (Guerra y revolución en España 1936–1939, vol. II, p. 235) say 2,000, never more than 600–800 at a time.

  8. Jesús Salas, La guerra, p. 286.

  APPENDIX FOUR

  1. This belonged to the Basque millionaire Ramón de la Sota. Built at Troon in 1904, its 1,266 tons made it one of the largest private yachts afloat.