The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  Generalissimo Franco became trapped in an unimaginative strategy. The enormous expectations aroused in October for what German diplomats cynically called ‘the bullfight’,1 and the failure to take Madrid in November, created an obsessive determination. He insisted to Faupel, the new German chargé d’affaires, ‘I will take Madrid; then all of Spain, including Catalonia, will fall into my hands more or less without a fight.’ Faupel described the statement as ‘an estimate of the situation that I cannot describe as anything but frivolous’.2

  After Varela’s attacks had been checked and the bombing had failed to break the morale of the city, there were basically three options left. One was to try to encircle Madrid from the north-west, and at least cut off water supplies and electricity from the Sierra de Guadarrama. This was to be the first target for the nationalists. The other was to strike eastwards across the River Jarama from their large salient south of the capital. Republican territory around Madrid was like a peninsula, vulnerable at its base formed by the corridor of land along the Valencia road. This would be the second offensive. And with the central front curling back round the Sierra de Guadarrama and across the province of Guadalajara, there was the possibility of striking down at the Valencia road from the north-east. This would be the sector for the third nationalist offensive in March 1937.

  On 29 November 1936 Varela launched the first of a series of attacks on the Corunna road to the north-west of Madrid. The intention was to achieve a breakthrough towards the sierra, before swinging right to the north of the capital. This first attack, mounted with some 3,000 Legion and Moroccan troops, supported by tanks, artillery and Junkers 52 bombers, was directed against the Pozuelo sector. The republican brigade retreated in disorder, but the line was re-established by a counter-attack backed by T-26s. Both sides then redeployed so as to reinforce their fronts to the west of Madrid.

  The German tanks, however, do not appear to have been used very effectively by their Spanish nationalist crews. ‘Inexplicable tank operations,’ wrote Richthofen scathingly in his war diary on 2 December. ‘German panzer personnel drive the tanks up to the combat zone, then Spaniards take over. They take the tanks for a ride and fiddle around.’ He also observed the republican air force. ‘Red pilots avoid coming in range of our flak,’ he noted four days later.3 Richthofen, a cousin of the famous Red Baron air ace, was a hard, arrogant man, disliked by German and Spanish officers alike. He was to become infamous as the destroyer of many towns and cities: Durango and Guernica in Spain, then Rotterdam, Belgrade, Canea and Heraklion in Crete, followed by many cities in the Soviet Union, most notably of all, Stalingrad, where 40,000 civilians were killed.

  On the nationalist side General Orgaz was put in charge of the central front, where a renewed offensive began on 16 December, after a 48-hour delay due to weather conditions. Varela retained the field command with 17,000 men divided into four columns. The first objective, after a heavy bombardment with 155mm artillery, was the village of Boadilla del Monte, some twenty kilometres west of Madrid. It was captured that night and the general staff in Madrid, realizing that they faced a major offensive rather than a diversion, sent XI and XII International Brigades, backed by the bulk of Pavlov’s T-26 tanks. XI Brigade counter-attacked at Boadilla, only to find themselves virtually cut off in the village. The nationalists withdrew to take advantage of such a clearly defined artillery target and attacked again with their infantry. The International Brigades established defensive positions within the thick walls of country houses belonging to rich madrileños. They resisted desperately and on 19 December the slaughter was enormous on both sides. The next day Orgaz halted the offensive, having gained only a few kilometres. He lacked reserves and the republicans enjoyed numerical superiority.

  Karl Anger, one of the Serbs in XI International Brigade, described their arrival in the village of Majadahonda just south of the Corunna highway at the start of the fighting. ‘It was still an untouched little place, far from beautiful, a little dirty because of poverty, but warm, quiet and sweet, like a lamb. We filled it with our troops, services, guns, trucks, armoured vehicles, and all things that an army drags behind it during a campaign. Quiet Majadahonda became crowded, noisy and dirty, as if on a market day. On the first morning after our departure enemy aircraft started dropping bombs on the village. The inhabitants scattered, abandoning all their property. Livestock, pigs, unmade beds and unattended houses. On the first evening and first morning there still was life at Majadahonda. One could see mysterious silhouettes of young Spanish girls behind the poorly lit windows of houses. The next day the windows were already black, gaping–frightening holes in the shells of the houses. Only stray dogs, supply people and stragglers were left in the village, and also a woman who had gone mad. She screamed terribly on a moonlit night in an empty house, and the screams echoed frighteningly in the dead moonlit streets.’4

  It is also important to understand the chaos which resulted in the driving sleet and the winter darkness. The International Brigades lacked intelligence on the enemy. They had no maps or compasses, and blundered around just managing to avoid attacking each other. A battalion would start digging its trenches, only to find later that they were completely out of line with the neighbouring units. Language problems within the International Brigades did not help. Anger, a Serbian within a German battalion, also indicates in his account the extraordinary mixture of nationalities and of motives within the International Brigades. ‘In Majadahonda we were joined by a young Chinese volunteer, the first Chinese to join us. On the next day, when we had just started thinking how to incorporate him better into our Serbian team, he was brought back with both his legs smashed to bits. We hadn’t even had time to learn his name.’ He went on to add that ‘in all the International Brigades, including the first [i.e. XI International] brigade, there was a number of former Russian White Guardists or sons of White Guardists’. These were the desperately homesick Russian émigrés hoping to earn a safe passage back to the Soviet Union.

  When nationalist reinforcements arrived towards the end of December, Orgaz prepared to relaunch his unimaginative offensive along the same axis. During the breathing space the republican general staff had redeployed their units in the Pozuelo-Brunete sector in a very uncoordinated manner and without attending to the supply of ammunition. When the nationalist offensive was relaunched on 3 January 1937 the republican right flank fell back in disorder. At first the republican troops on the left managed to hold Pozuelo, in a battle ‘which was the most complete chaos’. Koltsov said that ‘despite all their heroism, our units suffered from the confusion, stupidity, and perhaps treason in headquarters’.5

  Varela then concentrated most of his eight batteries of 105mm and 155mm artillery, together with his tanks and available air power, on the pueblo. The republican defence collapsed and the retreat of Modesto’s formation, based on the former 5th Regiment, became virtually a rout as men lost all sense of direction in the fog. General Miaja gave the 10th Brigade the task of disarming all those who fled. The only mitigating factor was the destruction of two companies of German light tanks with the 37mm guns of Russian armoured cars. The superiority of Soviet armoured vehicles in Spain later influenced the Wehrmacht’s development of heavier tanks.

  The ammunition supply was appalling. On average only a handful of rounds per man remained, while some battalions had run out altogether. The fault lay partly with Miaja and his staff for reacting so slowly to the problem, but mainly with Largo Caballero and officers in the ministry of war in Valencia. Largo Caballero replied to Miaja’s request for more ammunition with the accusation that he was simply trying to cover up his responsibility for the defeat.

  While the whole republican sector looked as if it were about to collapse, Miaja placed machine-guns at crossroads on the way to Madrid to stop desertion. He ordered in XII International and Líster’s Brigade. In addition XIV International Brigade was brought all the way round from the Córdoba front. On 7 January Kléber ordered the Thaelmann Battalion to hold t
he enemy near Las Rozas, telling them ‘not to retreat a single centimetre under any circumstances’. In a stand of sacrificial bravery they followed his order to the letter. Only 35 men survived.

  Once reinforcements arrived, the front line eventually stabilized. Both sides were exhausted and by mid-January the battle was over, the opposing armies having established themselves in defensive positions. The nationalists had overrun the Corunna road from the edge of Madrid to almost a third of the way to San Lorenzo del Escorial, but the Republic had prevented any encirclement of Madrid from the west flank. Each had suffered around 15,000 casualties in the process.

  The two battles for the Corunna road, as they were sometimes called, proved a hard testing ground for French and other volunteers with the tank brigade. The French arrived with what Soviet advisers regarded as an insouciant manner. ‘From the very first days’, the report back to Moscow stated, ‘the French disliked the discipline here. They said, “What kind of life is this, one isn’t allowed to drink wine, or go to the brothel, and one has to get up early.” They particularly disliked getting up at reveille and going on 25-kilometre marches. But when we explained to them, they understood and proved themselves to be heroes on the field of battle. And when they came back from the battle, they declared, “We don’t regard ourselves as Frenchmen, we are internationalists and anti-fascists.”’ The report admitted that fighting conditions were terrible for the tank crews. ‘Men get very tired. After a day’s work, men leave the tanks as if drunk, most of them suffer from a shortage of oxygen in their tanks. In some cases they vomit, in some cases they are in a very nervous state.’6

  The Soviet woman commissar of the tank brigade’s medical unit described the far superior medical facilities provided for Soviet advisers in comparison to the terrible conditions in the makeshift hospital in El Escorial for Spanish soldiers. The tank brigade commander, presumably Pavlov, showed an unusual commitment to the care of his men–especially rare in the Red Army. It went beyond just getting trained tankists, who were badly needed, back into their tanks. The commissar’s work and observations also provide some of the very few Soviet accounts of battle shock cases.

  ‘Medical vehicles of International Brigades are rushing along the highway. Some of them are painted in a mosaic-like pattern of green–yellow–black–grey, they blend in with the general surroundings. Medical transport is a weak spot here. There are few ambulances and most of them are modified little trucks or assembled from odd bits and pieces. Most of them have enough space for only four stretchers. Two tanks are crawling up from a turn of the road. In the second one is the body of mechanic-driver Ulyanov, who was killed on the spot by a direct hit on his tank. Malyshev and Starkov were wounded.

  ‘The field hospital [for tankists and the International Brigades] is stationed in a big room in one of the houses in a forest nature reserve. Double mattresses with clean linen and blankets have been put on the floor. There is a stove, they feed firewood into it, keeping up the temperature which is important for those who had come back from the front. During the whole operation near Las Rosas there had been a severe fog, penetrating one’s entire system…Besides water and soap, the hospital has petrol and alcohol–to wash the tankists’ faces and hands…The doctor and I go to the main hospital, to look for our wounded men. The hospital in Escorial is overflowing with wounded…I take note of the types of wounds while passing through the wards and the hall where the wounded men are received. Most of the wounded men are infantry, wounded by artillery shells. Wounds from bullets–in the back and sides.

  ‘During the night of 14 January I found the corpse of a Frenchman in the room next to Starkov. He had been brought back from the battle unconscious, with a heavy wound. The nurse told me that he had shouted in French, “Comrades, look out! Shells are coming from the left.” He then started to sing the “Internationale” and died. He had no documents on him. The nurse and I did not have a camera to take a photo of this dead unknown comrade. Upstairs, in an empty ward, lies a dying Italian, wounded in the neck. In the ward next to him there’s a wounded Moroccan, with a heavy wound in his leg. He does not talk and rejects food…It is unbelievably cold in the hospital. We cover Starkov [whose leg had been amputated] with several blankets, dress him in warm underwear which we’ve brought from brigade headquarters. The brigade commander asked if he could get anything for Starkov. I asked Starkov and then informed the brigade commander that he would like to have a watch. The brigade commander ordered us to take Starkov his own watch…All the wounded tankists who are now in hospitals in Madrid are sent food on a daily basis from brigade headquarters: canned milk, cocoa, oranges, apples, chocolates, sausage, cookies…In Madrid we have found the full collections of works by Gorky and Chekhov. The wounded men are supplied with newspapers and magazines, commissars keep visiting them.

  ‘Types of wounds varied from day to day at the front field hospitals and also at hospitals in Madrid. In the wards and operation theatres, which I visited directly after the battles, I happened to see some Spanish infantrymen who were wounded in the back, rear, backs of their legs, and shoulders. At first aid stations at the front we sometimes came across cases of “self-inflicted wounds” among Spanish infantrymen, who, while seized with animal fear, had shot through their own arms and legs, in order to be taken to hospital.’

  The woman commissar also recounted the case of a tank crewman called Soloviev, with a broken right arm, who ‘developed abnormal psychic reactions’, clearly a euphemism for battle shock or what we know today as post-traumatic stress disorder. Soloviev was evacuated on 15 January to the Palace Hotel in Madrid, the Soviet fortress base. His ravings were perhaps an interesting product of propaganda. ‘Soloviev would become extremely agitated, he would talk and talk of his recollections. He spoke incessantly about his training and his time in the Red Army, mentioned the names of commanders, sites of their camps, location of units, then turned to the Spanish Civil War, matériel and people dispatched on ships, and about anarchists and Trotskyists. On the order of the brigade commander, Soloviev was moved into a separate room…On 20 January he showed symptoms of sharp delirium: “Anarchists came here during the night, and they took me upstairs!” “Anarchists will slaughter us all, they came for me, they told me about it last night!” The brigade commander ordered us to evacuate Soloviev from Madrid. Although his fits of delirium have become more frequent, we evacuate Soloviev in one of the brigade’s ambulances. We take him to a hospital in Archena. In this hospital, he can be isolated from the outside world and will get the necessary treatment. While he was at “Palas Hotel” [sic], no strangers were allowed into his ward. Political workers from the brigade kept visiting Soloviev and controlling his state.’7

  It is important at this point to understand what fighting in the field was like for the militiamen who had now become part of the People’s Army. The majority were industrial workers who had little experience of the country. Even those who had done military service knew few of the old campaigner’s tricks for making life more bearable in general and more durable in battle. Their columns and new ‘mixed brigades’ were marched or driven out of Madrid in commandeered trucks. Maps were so scarce that they were seldom available at company level and few could read them properly when they were issued. Once at the position which they had been ordered to defend, the soldiers, equipped with little more than a rifle, ammunition pouches and a blanket, started to dig trenches with bayonets and bare hands. They did not bother with latrines, since that would only have meant more digging in the stony Spanish earth and visiting them involved a dangerous journey. In most cases they simply used their trenches, a practice which horrified International Brigaders, accustomed to the First World War idea of digging everything into the ground.

  The Castilian winter is renowned for the cold winds coming down off the sierras, and the militias froze in their trenches, often having little more to wear than their boiler suits and rope-soled canvas alpargatas, which rotted quickly. With mud everywhere it was impossible to keep
clean, owing to the lack of water tankers to bring up fresh water and the general scarcity of soap.

  In theory each battalion had a machine-gun company in addition to its three rifle companies, but only the International Brigades or picked communist formations had anything approaching the full establishment. Automatic weapons were the key to repulsing frontal attacks and the lack of them, and of experienced operators, put the People’s Army at a grave disadvantage. The Moroccan regulares became well known as the most effective machine-gunners in the war in addition to their other remarkable ability to use dead ground. The barren terrain in which they had fought the Spanish so successfully in the colonial wars had taught them to take maximum advantage of the slightest fold in the ground. Not only did this reduce their casualties enormously, but together with their reputation for knife work, it inspired a tremendous fear in republican troops. Their skill often enabled them to creep in between carelessly sited positions and take the defenders by surprise.

  Nationalist generals, most of whom proved as rigidly conventional as their republican counterparts, did not make full use of the regulares. The majority of the fighting was limited to set-piece offensives, which were often assaults across an open no man’s land, with attack followed by counter-attack. The only discernible difference from First World War tactics was the growing co-ordination between infantry and armour, together with the integration of artillery and air bombardment. This development, however, was almost entirely restricted to the nationalist side and their Condor Legion advisers.

  The new breed of republican commander emerging at this time was young, aggressive, ruthless and personally brave, but as utterly conventional and unimaginative as the old officers of the metropolitan army. The outstanding examples of this type, such as Modesto and Líster, were communists from the 5th Regiment. Some, like Manuel Tagüeña, became communists in the early months of the war, having started in Socialist Youth battalions which had affiliated to the 5th Regiment during the fighting in the sierra the previous summer. Their rigidly traditional approach to tactics and their military formality were strongly influenced by Stalinist orthodoxy. The purging of Marshal Tukhachevsky and his supporters who advocated the new approach to armoured warfare returned communist military theory to the political safety of obsolete tactics. In Russia saluting had been reintroduced and the 5th Regiment followed suit. The officers of XI International Brigade had even carried swords when marching up the Gran Víaon 8 November. The exhortation of the new republican brigades may have been revolutionary in language, but the manoeuvring was Tsarist.