The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  14 October 1936. Dolores Ibárruri, ‘La Pasionaria’, who coined the slogan ‘No pasarán!’, making a speech.

  The captain of a Soviet ship (left) is welcomed by Companys (centre) and Antonov-Ovseenko (right).

  Mikhail Koltsov (right) and the Soviet documentary film-maker Roman Karmen (left) in the trenches before Madrid.

  The fighting in the Casa de Campo, November 1936.

  Refugees sheltering in the Madrid metro during an air-raid.

  International Brigade troops march through Madrid.

  Propaganda photo of a Soviet pilot with his ‘Chato’.

  Women in Málaga terrified by a nationalist air raid.

  The war in the north. Carlist requetés being blessed before going into battle.

  Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen (centre right looking at camera) with nationalist and Condor Legion officers.

  El Campesino making a speech.

  Juan García Oliver broadcasts an appeal for calm during the May events in Catalonia.

  6 May 1937. Assault guards brought in to restore order marching through Barcelona.

  General Pozas and communist officers take over the Catalan council of defence, May 1937.

  The Battle of Brunete, July 1937. Juan Modesto, the communist commander of V Corps.

  Republican wounded at Brunete with T-26 tanks in the background.

  The Falange, the Carlists, the Alfonsine monarchist Renovacíon Española and the remnants of other right-wing groups, like the CEDA’s Popular Action, were amalgamated by decree into one party under his direct orders.4 The party was to be called the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the National Syndicalist Offensive Juntas). As the choice of name indicated, the Carlists came off worst in this forced union, with a programme based on 26 out of José Antonio’s 27 points.5 But, as Franco had calculated, the Carlists were more obedient and less politically minded. The new uniform consisted of the Falangist blue shirt and the Carlist red beret. The fascist salute was officially adopted and the movement’s slogan was to be ‘Por el Imperio hacia Dios’ (For the Empire towards God). The Caudillo was proclaimed chief of the new party and his brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Súñer, was appointed executive head. (This produced a new Spanish word, cuñadismo, meaning ‘brother-in-lawism’, as a variant on nepotism.) Serrano Súñer, an intelligent and ambitious lawyer who had been a friend of José Antonio, had become a vice-president of the CEDA, then moved towards the Falange in the spring of 1936. He was captured in Madrid after the rising and held in the Model Prison, where he witnessed the killings in revenge for the news of Badajoz. This experience and the death of his two brothers made him one of the most intransigent advocates of the limpieza after he escaped from hospital (in circumstances which have never been satisfactorily explained) and reached nationalist territory in February 1937.6

  The suddenness of Franco’s coup increased its effect. By the time the announcement had been fully appreciated, anyone who wanted to object only exposed himself to the charge of treachery towards the nationalist movement. Hedilla, somewhat unimaginatively, believed that he could maintain a position of power as the head of the Falange and guarantee its independence. He refused to join the council of the new party and tried to mobilize his supporters. He was arrested on 25 April, and condemned to death a month later for ‘a manifest act of indiscipline and subversion against the single command of nationalist Spain’.7 On ˜er’s advice, however, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In fact, he served only four years, but it was enough to remove him from any position of influence during a critical period. The new puppet council appointed by Franco was no longer challenged, after the rest of the Falange was rapidly brought into line by dismissals and about 80 prison sentences.

  As commander of the most important formation in the nationalist army, the Army of Africa, Franco had started his climb to leadership from an advanced position. He had no effective rival and the very nature of the nationalist movement begged a single, disciplined command. As a result he had achieved supreme power in two well-timed stages: September 1936 and April 1937. With the first he became de jure leader; with the second, suppressing all potential opposition, de facto dictator. Now he was in position to tackle a long war and to construct his idea of what Spain should be.

  A power struggle had also begun in republican territory during the winter of 1936 and the spring of 1937, although the winners, the communists, were never to achieve the same degree of power as Franco. They started from a very restricted base and their policies to centralize power were resisted by one of the major components of the republican alliance, the anarchists. At the same time the Valencia government was exasperated at its lack of control over independent regions, especially Catalonia and Aragón.

  In December 1936 the central committee of the Comintern had met on several occasions to analyse the course of events in Spain and the position of the Spanish Communist Party. On 21 December Stalin sent a letter, counter-signed by Molotov and Voroshilov, to Largo Caballero. Stalin first of all underlined the fact that the republican government had asked for Soviet advisers to help them, and that the officers sent to Spain had been told ‘that they should always remember that, in spite of the great solidarity which now exists between the Spanish people and the peoples of the USSR, a Soviet specialist, being a foreigner in Spain, can be really useful only if he stays strictly within the limits of an adviser and adviser only’.8

  He then went on to emphasize the Comintern line that Soviet aid to republican Spain was to safeguard democracy and insisted that the government followed the popular front strategy, which helped landowning peasants and attracted the middle classes. In fact, Stalin was interested in avoiding any embarrassments to his foreign policy, which on one hand wanted to evade provoking Nazi Germany, and on the other to seek a rapprochement with Britain and France. A parliamentary republic should Serrano Su ´n be maintained ‘to prevent the enemies of Spain seeing her as “a communist republic”’.

  Comintern agents were meanwhile instructed to construct a disciplined army, with a single command, to develop the war industries and achieve united action among all political groups. Codovilla was to convince Largo Caballero to bring forward this programme, a difficult task considering how bad relations were after the communists had taken over the Socialist Youth. The fall of Málaga and the arrival in Spain of the Bulgarian Comintern agent Stoyán Minéevich (‘Stepánov) were to put an end to such optimism. On 17 March Stepánov informed Moscow that the person ultimately responsible for the fall of Málaga was Largo Caballero because of his connivance with traitors on the general staff. The Comintern convinced Stalin that it was essential to remove Largo Caballero from the ministry of war and told the Spanish Communist Party to do everything necessary to ensure that “Spaak” [Largo Caballero] remained only as head of the government’.9

  The communist tactic was to block ministers from exercising control over the People’s Army. This they regarded as essential both in the interests of winning the war and in order to increase their own power. But the anarchists from the beginning had warned clearly that any attempt to impose non-anarchist officers on their troops would be met by force. Faced with such resistance, the communists solicited the support of regular officers. They approached the most ambitious, presenting themselves as the true believers in iron discipline and good organization. Experts in the manipulation of bureaucracy, they infiltrated their own members into key positions. They managed to place Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Cordón as head of the technical secretariat of the ministry of war, where he controlled pay, promotion, discipline, supplies and personnel. They also removed Lieutenant-Colonel Segismundo Casado from the post of chief of operations on the general staff because he had denounced their machinations and they replaced him with a member of their own party. A report to Moscow in March 1937 reveals that 27 out of the 38 key commands of the Central Front were held by communists and three more by sympathizers.10 Another report claimed later that ‘
the Party therefore now has hegemony in the army, and this hegemony is developing and becoming firmly established more and more each day both in the front and in rear units’.11

  The communists set out to remove General Asensio Torrado, whom they called the ‘general of defeats’, accusing him of incompetence and treason. The most prominent attack came from the Soviet ambassador, Marcel Rosenberg. Since January 1937, Rosenberg had been behaving like ‘a Russian viceroy in Spain’, continually harassing Largo Caballero, telling him what to do and what not to do. On one occasion the old trade unionist had thrown him out of his office. The irony of the affair was that on 21 February, while the communists were still calling for Asensio Torrado to be shot, Rosenberg was recalled to Moscow, where he was executed soon afterwards in the purges. Although Rosenberg’s successor, Gaikins, played a less dominant role, he continued to urge the fusion of the socialist and communist parties, a step to which Largo Caballero was now completely opposed. Strong-arm tactics became less necessary at such a high level, because the Party controlled most of the bureaucracy.

  The Soviet military advisers nevertheless continued to exert pressure by saying to any Spanish officer who objected to their plans that they ought to ask their government whether Soviet assistance was still required. Such activity took place despite the statement in Stalin’s letter that Soviet personnel had been ‘categorically ordered [to] keep strictly to the functions of an adviser, and an adviser alone’. After the socialist newspaper Adelante published on 30 April 1937 an article ‘which contained provocative attacks addressed at the USSR and its leaders’, Voroshilov, in a coded telegram, gave orders to the chief adviser, General Stern. ‘Visit Caballero personally and declare, in response to his request for us to send our pilots, etc., to Spain, that considering this disloyal attitude, we not only cannot send them any more of our men, but we will also have to withdraw the men who are in Spain now, unless they disavow this provocative article in Adelante and punish the ones who are guilty for its publication, and unless they apologize to us.’12

  Largo Caballero’s position was also being eroded from within. He could no longer ignore the fact that his close friend, Álvarez del Vayo, the foreign minister, was an active Party supporter. The communist Enrique Castro described their attitude to the foreign minister when he said in a paraphrase of Lenin that ‘he is a fool, but more or less useful’. Largo Caballero tried to limit Álvarez del Vayo’s control over the appointment of commissars to the army. On 17 April he published a decree placing the corps of commissars directly under his orders.13 The communist press exploded in outrage. ‘Who can feel hostile to this corps of heroes?’ it demanded. ‘Who can show themselves to be incompatible with those forging the People’s Army? Only the declared enemies of the people.’14 Once hailed as ‘the Spanish Lenin’, Largo was now a ‘declared enemy of the people’. La Pasionaria gave a remarkable example of what Orwell later called double-speak. According to her, restricting the commissars would ‘mean leaving our soldiers at the mercy of officers, who could at a moment disfigure the character of our army by returning to the old days of barrack discipline’. Yet the communists were the chief advocates of drill, saluting and privileges for officers.

  Caballero’s attempts to prevent communist recruiting drives within the armed services also came to nothing. A Soviet officer reported back to Moscow: ‘As Largo Caballero has banned party work in units, we have taught our friends to carry out their party work under the guise of amateur creative activities. For example, we organized a celebration dinner on the eve of the [1 May] holiday to which representatives of the anti-fascist committee were invited, as well as those from the Party committee, the editorial office of Mundo Obrero, and the best commanders of other units of “friends” (Líster and others).’15

  The communists also set up a police school in Madrid, where students who refused Party membership were failed. The secret police was taken over by NKVD agents in the late autumn of 1936 and it soon became the communists’ most feared weapon. Even Wenceslao Carillo, the director-general of security, found himself powerless against them. Many of the Spaniards who were recruited for this work could hardly be described as ‘anti-fascist’, but they were given Party cards nevertheless. When the first Soviet ambassador, Rosenberg, made his comment about scum always coming to the top in revolutions, he failed to add that much of it was creamed off into the secret police afterwards. Meanwhile, the campaign to win over the paramilitary forces like the Assault Guard was helped by Margarita Nelken, a socialist member of the Cortes and another secret communist. This was the manoeuvre to which General Asensio Torrado had objected, earning the Party’s bitter enmity.

  On frequent occasions the communists in the police, stirred up by the paranoia of their NKVD controllers, arrested and interrogated members of other parties. Soon after the battle of Brihuega, Antonio Verardini, the chief of staff of Mera’s 14th Division, went to Madrid on a 24-hour leave. There he was arrested on the orders of José Cazorla, the communist councillor of public order, and accused of espionage and treason. As soon as Mera found out he left for the capital with Sanz, the commander of the 70th Brigade, and a lorryload of heavily armed soldiers. On his arrival he told General Miaja that if Verardini was not freed by the communists his men would free him by force. Miaja obtained his release immediately. Mera was to return to Madrid on a similar mission when the communist persecution of the POUM reached its height. On the second occasion he had heard that Mika Etchebehere, the woman militia commander, had been arrested for ‘disaffection to the Republic’. It was only by seeing the director-general of security that he obtained her release and had her brought to his headquarters so that she could not be snatched again.

  During that spring of 1937 the communist police and the anarchist militia confronted each other in Madrid in an increasingly bitter struggle. The CNT exploded the greatest scandal by publishing the accusations of Melchor Rodríguez, the delegate in charge of prisons, who had put an end to the evacuation and killing of nationalist prisoners the previous November. Melchor Rodríguez revealed that José Cazorla, the communist in charge of public order, had organized secret prisons holding socialists, anarchists and republicans, many of whom had been freed by popular tribunals, to torture and execute them as spies or traitors. Largo Caballero used this on 22 April to dissolve the Junta de Defensa controlled by the communists and re-establish the authority of the Valencia government over Madrid. Nevertheless, there was little he could do to rein in the actions of the NKVD, known in the Soviet Union as ‘the unsheathed sword of the revolution’.

  The prime minister realized, however, that he could not reveal the dangerous growth of communist power without confirming the suspicions of the British government. At the same time he could count on fewer and fewer allies in his own cabinet. The moderate socialists, such as Prieto and Negrín, were considering the amalgamation of the Socialist Party with the Spanish Communist Party and agreed with the communist arguments that the fragmentation of power must be ended in order to win the war.16

  The liberal republicans of Martínez Barrio’s Unión Republicana and Manuel Azaña’s Izquierda Republicana followed a similar path to the moderate socialists in their opposition to Basque and Catalan separatism, and the revolutionary collectives of the anarchists. Lacking the support of liberals and social-democrats, Largo Caballero could only count on the four ministers of the CNT-FAI as allies against the communists and their plan to take over control of the army. Yet the anarchist movement itself was starting to suffer from a split between its reformist leadership collaborating with the government and its militants in Barcelona and in the militia columns.

  One radical group, ‘The Friends of Durruti’, was led by a former Catholic and separatist, Jaime Balius. Since March, the Friends of Durruti in its pamphlets and publications had been denouncing the ‘Stalinist counter-revolution’ and the ‘collaborationism’ of the CNT leadership. They claimed to be the guardians of the spirit of 19 July, and demanded a government made up uniquely of the U
GT and the CNT. But the basic problem was a deep frustration among the libertarian movement that it was losing all its influence and power. There was a deep regret that they had failed to seize the opportunity the previous July to establish libertarian communism in Catalonia.

  The change of atmosphere in Barcelona was remarked upon by observers who returned after a year’s absence. The camaraderie and the optimism were gone. Nightclubs and expensive restaurants supplied by the black market had reopened, while the bread queues started at four in the morning. The anarchists blamed the food crisis on Joan Comorera, the communist PSUC leader who was the Generalitat councillor in charge. Comorera had disbanded the food committees, which the CNT set up in July 1936, and ended bread rationing. The food distribution committees had certainly had their deficiencies, but these were overshadowed by the hoarding and profiteering which followed their abolition. The communists, meanwhile, blamed the anarchist agricultural collectives.17 Angry scenes outside shops were frequent. The Assault Guard often rode their horses into the bread queues or dispersed the women with blows from rifle butts.

  There had been many more serious developments to make the anarchists and the POUM feel threatened in Catalonia. In the winter the PSUC had set out to exclude the POUM from the Catalan government. The anarchists, who until then had regarded the Communist-POUM battle simply as a Marxist rivalry, began to realize that its outcome would affect them too. The Generalitat, now feeling that it had sufficient power to face down the anarchists, issued a decree on 4 March, dissolving the control patrols and the security council dominated by the FAI. At the same time it amalgamated the Assault Guard and the Republican National Guard into a single force under the command of the councillor for internal security, Artemi Aiguader. The decree also demanded the surrender of weapons.