The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  Matters were not helped on the republican side by the failure of the staff to provide maps. The International Brigades found that they had to draw them for themselves.31 The problems of command and control were also made far worse by the way commanders under pressure would claim to have reached a particular point when they were nowhere near it. (This emerged as a common failing in the Red Army later during the Second World War.) Some republican commanders, out of vanity, lied to their superiors deliberately. For example, El Campesino shamelessly exaggerated nationalist casualties in Quijorna, when it finally fell, to justify his initial lack of success. Líster, in his report, quadrupled the number of enemy defending Brunete and even claimed at one point that his troops had reached Navalcarnero, when in fact they were twelve kilometres short of it. When Mera’s 14th Division moved towards Brunete to replace the 11th Division, Líster claimed not to know that the village had been retaken by the enemy. Miaja’s chief of staff, Colonel Matallana, thought that Líster’s men were still occupying some small hills beyond it.

  Prieto, who was at Miaja’s headquarters when Mera complained that his orders did not correspond to the reality on the ground, became even more furious at the commander-in-chief’s protests that he had been misled. General Walter, in his usual scathing terms, reported that the reason why the 11th Division’s commanders ‘were so touchingly ill informed about the dispositions of their own battalions’ was because Líster had far too many officers on his staff.32 Yet Modesto, the commander of V Corps, may have been trying to save the reputation of the most famous communist formation from responsibility for the loss of Brunete. After the battle, Líster was ordered to ‘withdraw his division for retraining and reinforcements’, which was perhaps necessary after the 400 executions. Rodimtsev, his military adviser, was summoned to a suburb of Madrid to see ‘Comrade Malino[vsky] who wanted to know how things were’.33

  Nevertheless, the major factor in the disaster, as in the Segovia offensive, lay in the air superiority of the nationalists. Prieto rightly stated that the Achilles heel of the People’s Army consisted of ‘the commanders and the air force’.34 The whole of the Republic’s Brunete offensive managed to achieve an advance of only 50 square kilometres at the cost of 25,000 casualties, the loss of 80 per cent of its armoured force and a third of the fighter aircraft assigned to the front.35 The loss of equipment was particularly serious at a time when the blockade of republican ports was becoming much more effective. The nationalists suffered 17,000 casualties, but a much lower proportion were killed, and their losses in equipment and aircraft were far lighter.

  The first great offensive of the Republic, which had taken little pressure off the northern zone, perhaps a respite of five weeks, signified a major setback. The blow to morale, with the loss of many of their best troops, was exacerbated by the knowledge that the nationalists were soon to achieve parity in ground forces. Franco declared that the battle was over on 25 July, the day of Santiago, the patron saint of the Spanish army, and claimed that Saint James had given them victory. If at that moment he was tempted to exploit republican weakness around Madrid and attack again towards the capital, General Vigón took on the task of persuading him that it was essential to liquidate the northern zone first.36

  Flying in the face of reality, the communists declared to the world at large that Brunete had been a victory. In XV International Brigade, commissars told their men that it ‘had totally vindicated the active war policy of the Negrín government following the laissez-faire attitude of Largo Caballero’. The premature and wildly exaggerated claims about the operation’s success in the first two days had forced Miaja and his staff to persist at horrendous cost rather than admit failure. The communists defended the operational plan furiously, but such a concentration of slow-moving forces on a restricted front enabled the nationalists to profit from the vastly superior ground-attack potential of their combined air forces. With both Avila and Talavera airfields less than 30 minutes’ flying time from Brunete, they were able to establish a bombing shuttle and fighter sortie rhythm, which the advocates of the offensive must have seriously underestimated.

  The communists’ obsession with propaganda, often at the expense of their men’s lives, contributed to the growing unrest within the International Brigades. The minor mutinies which broke out among the Americans, the British and the Poles of XIII International Brigade were described in reports back to Moscow as ‘unpleasant events’. Members of the Lincoln Battalion were forced back to duty at pistol point, while the British, who were down to 80 men, accused Gal of incompetence and only returned to the front when Walter Tapsell, their commander, was threatened with execution. The Poles, who had been at the front for several months without respite, decided to return to Madrid. The brigade commander, Vincenzo Bianco (‘Krieger’), attempted to crush the revolt by hitting the men and shooting one of them in the head. The International Brigade cavalry detachment, which had done nothing during the battle, was brought in to restore order and prevent anyone leaving the front. Meanwhile, Modesto had resorted to deploying machine-guns behind the line with orders to open fire on anyone who retreated on whatever pretext. The troops were angry about the enormous losses, above all because they suspected that most of them had served no purpose in a senseless butchery.37

  Soviet reports emphasize the appalling state in which the International Brigades found themselves after Brunete. They had suffered 4,300 casualties out of a strength of 13,353, and nearly 5,000 men were in hospital.38 International volunteers now formed around only 10 per cent of the strength of the XI Brigade. The rest were Spaniards who naturally resented being commanded by foreign officers who could not speak their language. XIV and XV Brigades were both reduced from four to less than two battalions. Gómez, the head of the International Brigade camp at Albacete, reported to the Red Army’s intelligence directorate in Moscow that the performance of the brigades at Brunete had been affected by ‘the systematic work of the fifth column’.39

  The degree of paranoia at this time of Trotskyist witch-hunting is almost incredible. Every blunder, of which there were many, was attributed to deliberate sabotage. General Walter was so convinced that the brigades had been infiltrated that, like Modesto, he set up machine-guns behind the lines to prevent battalions from surrendering to the enemy. ‘On the first night of the operation’, he reported to Moscow, ‘it was necessary to disarm and arrest the entire company of one of the brigade’s battalions. Eighteen men from it, led by a lieutenant and three noncommissioned officers, were shot by sentence of an army tribunal for organizing the company’s defection to the enemy. The divisional commissar and brigade commander (anarchists) were shot by Líster on the second night of the operation for refusal to obey a military order and for persuading the command staff to surrender. Moreover, during the course of 22 days, while the brigade was in the front line, up to twenty enemy agents were exposed and removed from the division. A good half of these were officers. The surrender of Brunete and the flight of many brigades were to a significant extent the result of panic sown by the “fifth column” that the fascists had spread around our forces.’40

  Morale in all cases was extremely bad, as General Kléber reported back to Moscow: ‘I have begun to worry a great deal about the state of the International Brigades. There is a lot going on there: the attitude of Spaniards towards them and of their attitude towards Spaniards; the questions about morale; the chauvinism of certain nationalities (especially, the French, Poles and Italians); the desire for repatriation; the presence of enemies in the ranks of the International Brigades. It is crucial that a big man be despatched quickly from the big house especially for the purpose of providing some leadership in this matter.’41

  A further report added that ‘the International Brigades are considered to be a foreign body, a band of intruders…by the vast majority of political leaders, soldiers, civil servants and political parties in republican Spain’. Meanwhile, the foreign volunteers felt ‘that they have been treated like a foreign legion ready t
o be sacrificed’, because they were always selected for the most dangerous attacks, and saw it as ‘a concerted effort to annihilate and sacrifice the international contingents’. Some International Brigades had been at the front ‘for 150 consecutive days’. In XIII International Brigade, Captain Roehr ‘committed suicide in battle because he could no longer accept the responsibility of demanding renewed effort from his exhausted men, and at the same time felt he did not have the right to demand rest for his men from his superiors’.42

  Another report to Voroshilov, passed on to Stalin, noted ‘a pessimistic mood and the lack of confidence in victory (the latter has especially strengthened since the operation at Brunete)’. Many Brigaders felt cheated. They had volunteered for six months and were not being allowed home.43 Most striking of all was the fact that the International Brigades had established their own ‘concentration camp’, called Camp Lukács. No less than 4,000 men were sent to this camp in the course of three months from 1 August.44

  25

  The Beleaguered Republic

  Although the ‘active war-policy’ of Negrín’s government had not started auspiciously, the new prime minister hoped that his cabinet’s moderate and disciplined image would succeed in persuading Western governments to change their policy towards Spain. He managed to impress Eden and Churchill, but the former had scarcely six months left before his resignation in protest at Chamberlain’s policy, while the latter remained ‘in the wilderness’ until after the end of the war.

  The British government had continued to keep France in the noninterventionist camp by working on its fear of isolation in the face of Hitler. The Non-Intervention Committee, with eight countries participating, had approved on 8 March a new control plan to observe Spanish land and sea frontiers, and control the flow of arms and volunteers. Naval patrols were to watch the Spanish shores, with the Germans and Italians taking responsibility for the Mediterranean coastline.1

  The diplomatic charade of non-intervention received a severe shock on 23 March 1937, when Count Grandi, the Italian ambassador, openly admitted to the Non-intervention Committee that there were Italian forces in Spain and asserted that none of them would be withdrawn until the war was won.2 Even so German and Italian intervention continued to be ‘unrecognized’. The only practical step taken had been a measure on foreign enlistments, which meant that each of the signatories passed laws preventing private citizens from volunteering. This, of course, would stop those trying to join the International Brigades, while the Axis powers’ contribution of military units was ignored. In addition, the only effective control on importing war material proved to be the Pyrenean frontier, so again only the Republic suffered. Yet even this did not satisfy the nationalists. In Salamanca, Virginia Cowles encountered a great sense of bitterness against the British government, based on the firm belief that non-intervention was ‘a communist plot to weaken Franco by excluding foreign aid’.3

  The isolationism of the United States helped the nationalists, who were aided by many influential sympathizers in Washington. Roosevelt’s government had tacitly upheld the non-intervention policy from the beginning. Then, in January 1937, when aircraft were to be shipped to Spain by the Vimalert company of New Jersey, Congress introduced legislation to prevent it. The vote in both houses was overwhelmingly in favour of the ban, but a technical error in the Senate gave the Vimalert company time to load the aircraft and aero engines on the Mar Canta

  ´brico in New York harbour. The ship sailed on 6 January, just over 24 hours before the resolution became law. This Spanish merchantman took on more matériel in Mexico and then, disguised as British, made for Basque waters. The deception was no use, for the nationalist cruiser Canarias put to sea from El Ferrol on 4 March to await it. The Mar Cantábrico was captured on 8 March and all the Spanish seamen were executed. It is still not known who warned the nationalists of its route, but the German embassy in Washington DC had passed a considerable quantity of intelligence on the subject back to Berlin.4

  On 20 April the scheme to patrol ports and frontiers came into effect. Naval patrols furnished by Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy watched the coasts. The uselessness of the scheme was shown by the fact that not a single breach of the agreement was reported by the time it collapsed in the autumn. The incidents with the greatest potential danger in this period occurred on 24 and 29 May, when the port of Palma de Mallorca was attacked by Russian-piloted bombers from Valencia. On 24 May there were near misses on two Italian warships, the Quarto and the Mirabello, the German destroyer Albatross and the British destroyer HMS Hardy.

  On 29 May republican aircraft in another raid dropped a bomb which hit the Italian battleship Barletta, killing six members of the crew. The same day two direct hits were made on the German battleship Deutschland, killing twenty sailors and wounding 73. Hitler, on hearing the news, worked himself up into a fit of terrifying proportions. Neurath only just managed to persuade the Führer not to declare war on the Republic. Hitler instead ordered units of the German navy, including the Admiral Scheer, to bombard the undefended town of Almeria in reprisal. The local authorities there estimated that more than 200 shells were fired at the town, killing twenty people, wounding 50 and destroying 40 buildings.

  Prieto wanted the republican air force to attack all German warships in reply, which would have constituted a declaration of war. The communists were greatly alarmed and radioed Moscow for instructions. Stalin, not unexpectedly, was entirely opposed to Prieto’s suggestion, since provocation of Hitler alarmed him more than anything else. It was later rumoured that orders had been given to liquidate Prieto if he persisted. In the council of ministers, Giral and Hernández formally opposed the plan. Negrín and Azaña decided to send protest notes to the secretary-general of the League of Nations and to the French and British foreign ministries. But both the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay felt that the Germans had been justified in their response. A

  ´ lvarez del Vayo then demanded an extraordinary meeting of the League of Nations, but with no success.5

  On 30 May Germany and Italy withdrew from the Non-intervention Committee. Neville Chamberlain, who had become prime minister on 17 May, tried to calm Hitler with ‘definite and considered’ attempts to persuade Germany to return to the committee. The Germans, realizing that they could take further advantage of the situation, claimed on 15 June that an unidentified submarine had fired torpedoes at their cruiser Leipzig off Oran, and they demanded sanctions against the Republic. They used this incident as their justification for withdrawing from the naval patrol. The Republic denied any part in the event.

  The German and Italian policy on Spain was even more closely coordinated than that of England and France. Having recognized the Burgos regime the previous November, they recommended that belligerent rights should be granted to both sides so that non-intervention controls should no longer be needed. The British were opposed to the granting of belligerent rights, which would mean interference with British shipping. The French government (now led by Camille Chautemps, but still containing Blum and Delbos) knew that nationalist naval power, with covert help from Italian submarines, could blockade the Republic into surrender. Negrín visited Paris and received a sympathetic hearing. The French promised that they would not concede belligerent rights to the nationalists. But the British government suggested a compromise formula, which involved granting belligerent rights only when foreign troops had been withdrawn. This was then amended to ‘substantial reductions’, which led to haggling over figures and percentages.

  At the end of July the Italians began a random campaign of maritime attacks from Majorca, with ‘Legionary’ submarines and bombers. In August alone they sank 200,000 tons of shipping bound for republican Spain, including eight British and eighteen other neutral merchantmen. On 23 August Ciano made notes of a visit from the British chargé d’affaires in Rome: ‘Ingram made a friendly démarche about the torpedo attacks in the Mediterranean. I replied quite brazenly. He went away almost satisfied.’6 On 31
July the Italian submarine Iride fired torpedoes at the British destroyer HMS Havock north of Alicante. On 3 September Ciano wrote, ‘Full orchestra–France, Russia, Britain. The theme–piracy in the Mediterranean. Guilty–the fascists. The Duce is very calm. He looks in the direction of London and he doesn’t believe that the English want a collision with us.’7 It was not surprising that Mussolini made such an assumption. Lord Perth, the British ambassador, was later described (perhaps optimistically) by Ciano as ‘a genuine convert’, a man who had ‘come to understand and even to love fascism’. In any case Chamberlain, ignoring Eden’s advice, wrote to Mussolini directly in the friendliest terms, thinking he could woo him away from Hitler. Meanwhile, he had instructed Perth to start working towards a treaty of friendship with Mussolini. He was also to use as a personal envoy his sister-in-law, Lady Chamberlain, who proudly wore fascist badges and insignia.

  There were the beginnings of a small group in the Conservative Party and its supporters who were sensitive to the dangers of Chamberlain’s policy. Harold Nicolson, who was one of them, agreed with Duff Cooper that ‘the second German war began in July 1936, when the Germans started with their intervention in Spain’. He went on to say that ‘the propertied classes in this country with their insane pro-Franco business have placed us in a very dangerous position’.8 The only area where the Conservative government was prepared to display a semblance of firmness was in the Mediterranean, the sea lane to the Empire. Its main concern was that Axis bases should not exist on Spanish territory once the civil war was over.