The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  On 10 March, the Black Flames and Black Arrows reached Brihuega almost unopposed and occupied the old walled town. In the afternoon the Italian Garibaldi Battalion of XII International Brigade was moved up the road from Torija, and one of their patrols came across an advance group of their fellow countrymen fighting for the nationalists. The fascist patrol spoke to them, and went back to report that they had made contact with elements of the Littorio Division which was advancing astride the main road. Soon afterwards a fascist column led by Fiat Ansaldos came up the road from Brihuega assuming the way to Torija was open. An Italian civil war then began, later concentrating around a nearby country house called the Ibarra Palace. Making use of the propaganda opportunity, Italian communists led by Nenni and Nanetti used loudspeakers to urge the fascist militia to join their brother workers. Republican aircraft also dropped leaflets promising safe conducts and 50 pesetas to those who deserted, and 100 pesetas for those who crossed over with their weapons.18

  The next day the Black Arrows pushed Líster’s troops back down the main road, but the advance was halted by the Thaelmann Battalion with the help of tank support just short of Torija. On 12 March the republican forces counter-attacked. They were greatly aided by having a concrete runway at Albacete, where General ‘Duglas’ directed operations. Nearly 100 Chato and Mosca fighters, as well as two squadrons of Katiuska bombers, harried the Italians while they were pushed back in the centre by counter-attacks supported by Pavlov’s T-26 tanks and some of the faster BT-5s. The Legionary Air Force Fiats could not get off the ground to support them because of water-logged runways, and the Italian forces withdrew down the Saragossa road and back into Brihuega. General Roatta then proceeded to change the positions of his motorized divisions, a complicated manoeuvre which resulted in many vehicles becoming stuck in the heavy mud, where they were easy targets for the fighters.

  Líster’s 11th Division began to advance at dawn up the ‘French highway’, with its 2nd Brigade in the lead. It was cold, with snow and mud, which made movement off the road impossible. This produced traffic jams and chaos. Rodimtsev witnessed a furious argument over who had priority between a battery commander and a supply officer. ‘Artillery is everything,’ shouted the battery commander. ‘It determines the success of a battle and an operation.’

  ‘So perhaps you’ll start firing at the enemy with Italian spaghetti?’ retorted the supply officer. ‘Who’s going to bring you ammunition if we don’t?’ The artillery officer, still furious, told his men to push the supply wagons off the road, whereupon the supply officer drew his pistol.19

  XI International Brigade and El Campesino’s brigade retook Trijueque and advanced up the Brihuega road, dispersing the Italians they found. The inhabitants of Trijueque had been traumatized by the shelling and the air attacks. Fathers were pulling beams and rubble out of the way to find survivors. Among those killed was an eighteen-year-old heroine called Antonia Portero who, according to one Soviet account, had been leading a company. She was one of the first to enter Trijueque, but she was killed by an Italian bombing raid and buried in the ruins of a house.20 Karl Anger, who witnessed the scenes, also saw the arrival of Mikhail Koltsov, the leading Soviet journalist and plenipotentiary: ‘A car arrives. Koltsov climbs out of it and greets us silently, like in a house where someone has just died.’21

  But Koltsov’s morale soon rose when he saw evidence of the Italians’ rapid retreat. ‘The highway is jammed with Fiat tractors, which they used to transport guns, as well as huge Lancia trucks and cars. The road is littered with rucksacks, weapons and cartridges. There is lots of stuff inside the trucks…An excited young fellow is persuading the passing troops to take half a dozen hand grenades and as much sponge cake as they can. The soldiers fill their bags with grenades and cake without stopping their march.’22

  The next day, 13 March, the republican IV Corps started to prepare for a major counter-offensive, while the Republic’s own representatives protested to the League of Nations and the Non-intervention Committee with documentary proof from prisoners of the presence of Italian formations.23 The republican plan was straightforward. Líster’s division and all available tanks were to be concentrated on the Saragossa road, while Mera’s 14th Division was to cross the River Tajuña from the south-east bank and assault Brihuega. Franco’s chief of operations, Colonel Barroso, had warned the Italians that republican forces might attack their flank in this way, but he was ignored.

  Soon after midday Pavlov’s T-26s charged up the Saragossa road, with infantry clinging to the outsides and firing away from the rattling tanks. The Italians, who had been preparing to advance again, had no defensive positions and were caught in the open. The tanks even managed to ambush a convoy of Italian trucks. The Spanish infantry leaped off the tanks, which then proceeded to ram the lorries and crush some under their tracks. One group of tanks found a camp concealed in a ravine and began shooting it up. But the republican soldiers were tired after the long approach march the night before and heavy going in the mud. And as they neared Trijueque, they were repulsed by machine-gun fire. They also found themselves counter-attacked by Italians with flame-throwers attached to their Fiat-Ansaldo miniature tanks. An Italian infantry battalion then appeared out of an olive grove. Major Pando and Rodimtsev organized an all-round defence at the base of a small hill. Their machine-gun company, commanded by a woman, Captain Encarnación Fernández Luna, managed to hold off the battalion until Líster organized a counterattack with tanks and reinforcements. Rodimtsev and Pando ran over to the machine-gunners to hug their commander in gratitude, only to find her calmly combing her hair while looking into a fragment of broken mirror.24

  Meanwhile, Mera’s preparations for his part of the counter-offensive were not without problems. He had placed a battalion of carabineros by the river to guard a small bridge prepared for demolition by his dinamiteros, in case the enemy made a further attempt to advance, but the carabinero commanding officer blew it up despite his orders.25

  A serious setback was avoided only because Mera was helped by local CNT members acting as spies and scouts who were able to advise him of the best places to throw a pontoon bridge across the swollen river. At dawn on the morning of 18 March his division crossed the pontoon bridge and occupied the heights above Brihuega. Heavy sleet shielded them from the enemy’s view, but it also caused the general offensive to be delayed. Mera had no alternative but to keep the division lying in the wet with instructions not to fire, hoping that the Italians would not discover them.

  The weather did not start to clear until after midday; only then did the Chato and Katiuska squadrons become operational. Jurado gave the order for a general attack. Líster’s division advanced up the main road, supported again by T-26 tanks, and this force crashed into Bergonzoli’s Littorio Division, made up of regular troops. XI International Brigade also went on to the offensive. Karl Anger wrote excitedly of ‘the tap-dance of machine-guns’.26

  On the republicans’ right flank, Mera’s division had almost managed to surround Brihuega when the enemy became seized by panic and fled. The CTV was saved from an even greater disaster by the fall of darkness, the more orderly retreat of the Littorio division and the number of Italian trucks available for their escape. Even so, their offensive had cost the Italians 5,000 casualties and the loss of a considerable quantity of weapons and vehicles. Captured Italian documents stated that many of their supposedly wounded soldiers were found to have nothing wrong with them under their bandages.

  For the republicans, the end of the battle brought a moment of respite. Food was brought up on mules and wine was issued. Some of the men cooked paella in their trenches. Commissars issued three cigarettes to each man and trucks brought up new alpargatas to replace those shoes which had rotted in the mud and snow.27 Italian morale, on the other hand, was devastated and Mussolini was furious. Since Moscardó’s troops had suffered very few casualties, Franco’s officers refused to see the engagement as a nationalist defeat. They were scathing about their allies�
�� performance and composed a song to the tune of ‘Faccetta nera’ which went: ‘Guadalajara is not Abyssinia; here the reds are chucking bombs which explode.’ It ended: ‘The retreat was a dreadful thing; one Italian even arrived in Badajoz.’

  As the only publicized republican victory of the war, the battle became a propaganda trophy. The communists claimed that the town of Brihuega was captured by El Campesino’s brigade and even added several anecdotal touches. In fact, El Campesino arrived alone at dusk on a motorcycle and was fired at by outlying pickets from the 14th Division. He raced back to report that the town was still in enemy hands. Considering that Líster’s division was supposed to be advancing up the Saragossa road, El Campesino had no official reason for being anywhere near Brihuega. The communist version of events was dropped in later years after he was disgraced during his Soviet exile and sent to a labour camp.

  In that dangerous year of 1937, Soviet officers were to disappear into camps much sooner than El Campesino. Stalinist spy mania was reaching a peak. Suspicions in Spain and suspicions back in the Soviet Union fed upon each other. Regimental Commissar A. Agaltsov reported to Moscow in 1937 that the ‘fascist intervention in Spain and Trotskyist–Bukharin gangs that are operating in our country are links of the same chain’.28 And some of the Soviet military advisers who returned from special mission in Spain accelerated the ‘mincing machine’ of the purges. G. Kulik, the commander of III Rifle Corps, wrote on 29 April 1937 to Voroshilov: ‘One cannot help asking oneself, how could this happen that the enemies of the people, traitors to my motherland, for whose interests I have fought at the front in Spain, could have managed to receive leading positions?…As a bolshevik, I don’t want the blood of our people to be shed unnecessarily because of the career makers, hidden traitors and mediocre leaders of troops, whom I have seen in the Spanish army. I consider it necessary that a careful review is conducted of all our commanders, in the first place, high-ranking ones, both in the army and in headquarters.’29 Stalin’s purge of the Red Army was under way.

  The failure of the Guadalajara offensive was excellent for morale, but it was not the turning point which the Republic and its supporters abroad tried to portray. Herbert Matthews of the New York Times even wrote that ‘Guadalajara is for fascism what Bailén was for Napoleon’.30 From a political point of view, however, some argued that ‘Guadalajara aroused the enthusiasm of all anti-fascists…and represented a hard blow for the prestige of fascism and Mussolini’.31 Yet, paradoxically, Mussolini’s desire for vengeance to wipe out the humiliation only tied him closer to Franco’s cause.32 As the Wilhelmstrasse put it, ‘The defeat was of no great military importance, to be sure, but on the other hand it had unfavourable psychological and political reactions which needed to be stamped out by a military victory.’33 Mussolini replaced Roatta with General Ettore Bastico and devoted even more money and armaments to the war at a terrible cost for Italy.

  The only certain consequence for the nationalists was that Franco had to abandon his obsession with entering Madrid quickly and to adopt a longer-term strategy. After the casualties suffered at the Jarama, German advisers were able to argue more strongly for a programme of reducing vulnerable republican territories first. For a number of reasons the most attractive target was undoubtedly the northern republican zone along the Bay of Biscay.

  20

  The War in the North

  The isolated northern zone along the Cantabrian coast was the logical military target for the nationalists after four unsuccessful attempts to cut short the war by capturing Madrid. The German advisers put strong pressure on Franco to change his strategy. A longer war would deflect attention from Hitler’s plans in Central Europe, but they were also interested in obtaining the steel and coal of the region for their accelerating armaments programme. In any case, Franco had finally realized that he could not muster sufficient troops to mount a decisive offensive around the capital where the Republic had the advantage of interior lines as well as numbers. The only way to improve the ratio of forces was to crush a weaker sector first in order to release troops for the tougher objectives in the centre. As both the Aragón and Andalucian fronts could be reinforced by the republicans fairly rapidly, the beleaguered northern zone was the obvious choice.

  The northern zone had been left untouched by the centralization carried out by Largo Caballero’s government. The councils of Asturias and Santander still reflected the union-based organization which followed the rising, while the Basques regarded themselves as autonomous allies of the Republic. Although Basque volunteer units had fought at Oviedo, and Asturian and Santanderino militia helped in Vizcaya, the northern regions were not united, except in their objection to a centralized republican command. The Basques, in particular, rejected the idea that the ‘Army of Euzkadi’ should simply be part of the Army of the North, commanded ultimately from Valencia. Largo Caballero then agreed to this without telling General Llano de la Encomienda, the army commander.

  On 1 October 1936 the statute of Basque autonomy had come before the Cortes sitting in Valencia. It took effect four days later. On 7 October the municipal councillors of the region met in the Casa de Juntas in Guernica, ‘the sacred city of the Basques’, in accordance with their ancient customs. The purpose of this meeting was to elect a president or lehendakari. The proceedings had been kept secret in case of air attack, and this small country town to the east of Bilbao was unmolested as José Antonio Aguirre, the 32-year-old leader of the Basque Nationalist Party, swore his oath in the Basque language under the oak tree of Guernica.

  Afterwards he named his government, which included four members of the Basque Nationalist Party, three socialists, two republicans, a communist and a member of the social-democratic Basque Action. The Basque Nationalist Party, or PNV, whose motto was ‘God and our old law’, controlled the ministries of defence, finance, justice and the interior.1 The programme of the PNV made superficial concessions to the left, with its social-Christian doctrine, yet also insisted on the defence of religious freedom, the maintenance of public order and upheld the Basque people’s sense of national identity.2 During its nine months of existence, the Basque government created the administrative structure of an independent state, with its own currency, its own flag–the red, green and white ikurriña and judicial system.

  Telesforo Monzón, the minister of the interior, was a young aristocrat who some 40 years later became the leader of Herri Batasuna, the political front of the ETA guerrilla organization. His first move was to disband the Civil Guard and the Assault Guard. Then he started to recruit his new police force among Basque-speaking supporters. They were heavily armed, selected for their height and dressed in shiny leather uniforms. This elite corps, the Ertzaña, under the sole control of the PNV, was hardly reassuring to some of their left-wing allies, particularly the anarcho-syndicalist CNT.

  Friction, however, came less from political than military differences. The CNT had shown in its furious assaults on the rebel-held buildings in San Sebastián during the rising, in its burning of Irún when it was almost surrounded by the nationalists and later in its intention to lay waste to San Sebastián before Mola’s troops occupied it, that it wished to fight a war to the finish. The CNT stated openly its preference for dying in the ruins rather than submitting to Franquist rule. The Basques, in line with the character of a mountain people, were content simply to defend themselves when directly attacked. They even had their symbolic Maloto tree on the border marking the point beyond which their forces should never advance. The Basque nationalists made it clear from the beginning of the civil war that, apart from their anti-fascist feelings, they were on the side of the Republic because it promised them autonomy. They proudly proclaimed their Catholic faith and attacked the anti-clericalism in other parts of republican territory. Nevertheless, their resistance to the military rising was supported by the great majority of their priests in spite of the unqualified backing of the Vatican and the Spanish Church for General Franco.

  The Basque national
ists also pretended that there were no class divisions in Euzkadi. This had been partly true of agriculture, where feudalism had been weak, but the seafaring side of Basque life, dominated by local shipping magnates, with international empires, was scarcely classless. And in the nineteenth century industrialization attracted cheap labour from Castile, Galicia and Asturias. It was from this non-Basque workforce that the memberships of the socialist UGT, the CNT and the Communist Party were largely recruited. Indigenous workers were represented by the STV, Solidarity of Basque Workers.

  The left believed fervently that the nationalists must be defeated. The Basque nationalists, on the other hand, seemed to know in their hearts that the republicans would be defeated. It may be that they learned the idea of being good losers from the English. At any rate, they treated their prisoners extremely well, sending many to France for release in the hope that this might induce the enemy to be a good winner. The nationalists made no reciprocal gestures to this attempt at ‘humanizing the war’, as Manuel de Irujo, the Basque minister in the central government, called it. They merely stepped up their campaign of hate, using such self-contradictory phrases as ‘soviet-separatists’ to describe the Basques.

  To have the Catholic Basques as enemies was an embarrassment to the nationalist crusade and Franco was later to attack ‘these Christian democrats, less Christian than democrat, who, infected by a destructive liberalism, did not manage to understand this sublime page of religious persecution in Spain which, with its thousands of martyrs, is the most glorious the Church has suffered’. The Archbishop of Burgos called Basque priests ‘the dross of the Spanish clergy, in the pay of the reds’. The professor of moral theology at Salamanca, having described ‘the armed rising against the Popular Front’ as ‘the most holy war in history’, said ‘all who positively oppose the national government in present circumstances, trying to weaken its strength or diminish its power or obstruct its role, should be considered as traitors to the fatherland, infidels to religion and criminals to humanity’.