The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  In Barcelona the SIM had two main prisons, one in the Calle Zaragoza, the second in the Seminario Conciliar, although it also used other locations, such as the Portal de l’A

  ´ ngel, which held 300 people in the summer of 1937, the so-called ‘Nestlé dairy’, the Hotel Colón, one in the Calle Vallmajor and others. Interrogators worked ruthlessly to extract confessions which matched their conspiracy theories. In September 1937 the security organs in Barcelona reported that they had exposed ‘an espionage organization even larger than the one in Madrid. This organization, too, was set up by Catalonian Trotskyists. Its identifying sign was the letter TS and each one of its agents had a personal identification number. Documents that were found in the mattress of one of its members show that this gang had committed a number of sabotage acts and that it was preparing assassination attempts against some top leaders of the People’s Front and the Republican Army.’ It then went on to give a list of the republican leaders targeted for assassination, perhaps in the hope of encouraging non-communist ministers to support them.19

  Under NKVD direction, the SIM performed inhuman atrocities. The nationalists exploited and exaggerated this, creating a black legend. Yet although all documents were destroyed, there can be no doubt from oral testimony, and from the continual denunciations of Manuel de Irujo and Pere Bosch Gimpera, that the Soviets were applying their ‘scientific’ methods of interrogation. The SIM’s interrogation methods had evolved beyond beatings with rubber piping, hot and cold water treatment and mock executions which had been carried out in the early days. Cell floors were specially constructed with the sharp corners of bricks pointing upwards so that the naked prisoners were in constant pain. Strange metallic sounds, colours, lights and sloping floors were used as disorientation and sensory-deprivation techniques. If these failed, or if the interrogators were in a hurry, there was always the ‘electric chair’ and the ‘noise box’ but they risked sending prisoners mad too quickly.

  There are no reliable estimates of the total number of SIM prisoners, nor of the proportions, though it seems fairly certain that there were more republicans than nationalists. It was alleged that any critics of Soviet military incompetence, such as foreign volunteer pilots, were as likely to find themselves accused of treason as a person who opposed the communists on ideological grounds. The minister of Justice, Manuel de Irujo, resigned on 10 August 1938 in protest, although he remained in government as a minister without portfolio. Many other leading republicans were appalled by such judicial practices and above all by the SIM. Negrín simply dismissed critical accounts of SIM activity as enemy propaganda. Only in 1949 did he admit that he had been wrong to the American journalist Henry Buckley.20

  The communists had been remarkably successful in creating a large degree of control over the government, the bureaucracy and the machinery of public order, while retaining a token presence of only two minor ministries in the cabinet–a requirement of Soviet foreign policy. They had made themselves indispensable to the centrist politicians who had wanted to restore state power and who were now too involved in the process to protest. Nevertheless, a reaction against communist power was starting to develop, especially within the army.

  In the autumn of 1937 communist propaganda was making great claims about the progress of the People’s Army. It is true that there had been improvements at unit level. But few commanders or staff officers had displayed competence or tactical sense, and the supply organization was still corrupt and inefficient. Above all, damage to morale had been increased by events behind the lines. Communist preferment and proselytizing at the front had reached such levels that former communist supporters among the regular officers were horrified. Prieto was shaken when he heard that non-communist wounded were often refused medical aid. Battalion commanders who rejected invitations to join the Party found weapon replacements, rations or even their men’s pay cut off. Those who succumbed were given priority over non-communists. They were promoted and their reputations were boosted in despatches and press accounts.

  Co-operation was withheld from even the most senior non-communist officers. Colonel Casado, when in command of the Army of Andalucia, was not allowed to know the location of airfields or the availability of aircraft on his front. Commissars given recruitment targets to fulfil by the Party hierarchy went to any lengths to achieve them. Prieto later stated that socialists in communist units who refused to join the Party were frequently shot on false charges such as cowardice or desertion. After the battle of Brunete, 250 men from El Campesino’s division sought protection in the ranks of Mera’s 14th Division because of the treatment they had suffered for not becoming communists. Mera refused to return them when El Campesino arrived in a fury at his headquarters. General Miaja, though officially a communist, backed him against a Party member.

  Perhaps the most dramatic deterioration in morale after mid 1937 occurred in the ranks of the International Brigades, who in October had lost 2,000 men through a typhus epidemic.21 There had always been non-communists in their ranks who refused to swallow the Party line, but now even committed communists were questioning their position. At the beginning of 1937 the Irish had nearly mutinied after the Lopera débaˆcle, when they were prevented at the last moment from forming their own company. The American mutiny at the Jarama in the early spring had been successful, though that was seen as an aberration which had been put right. Some Italians from the Garibaldi Battalion deserted to join the liberal and anarchist Giustizia e Libertá column. During the Segovia offensive XIV International Brigade had refused to continue useless frontal attacks on La Granja and foreigners in a penal battalion mutinied when ordered to shoot deserters.

  The anger at futile slaughter was accompanied by a growing unease at the existence of ‘re-education’ camps, run by Soviet officers and guarded by Spanish communists armed with the latest automatic rifles. At these camps labour was organized on a Stakhanovite basis, with food distribution linked to achieving or exceeding work norms. The prisoners were mostly those who wanted to return home for various reasons and had been refused. (It was not known until later that several Brigaders in this category were locked up in mental hospitals, a typically Soviet measure.) One of the most sordid camps was at Júcar, some 40 kilometres from Albacete, where disillusioned British, American and Scandinavian volunteers were held. Some British members were saved from execution by the intervention of the Foreign Office, but those from other nationalities were locked up in the prisons of Albacete, Murcia, Valencia and Barcelona.22

  The persistent trouble in the International Brigades also stemmed from the fact that volunteers, to whom no length of service had ever been mentioned, assumed that they were free to leave after a certain time. Their passports had been taken away on enlistment and many of them were sent to Moscow by diplomatic bag for use by NKVD agents abroad. Brigade leaders who became so alarmed by the stories of unrest filtering home imposed increasingly stringent measures of discipline. Letters were censored and anyone who criticized the competence of the Party leadership faced prison camps, or even firing squads. Leave was often cancelled and some volunteers who, without authorization, took a few of the days owing to them were shot for desertion when they returned to their unit. The feeling of being trapped by an organization with which they had lost sympathy made a few volunteers even cross the lines to the nationalists. Others tried such unoriginal devices as putting a bullet through their own foot when cleaning a rifle.

  Comintern organizers were becoming disturbed, for accounts of conditions had started to stem the flow of volunteers from abroad. Fresh volunteers were shocked by the cynicism of the veterans, who laughed at the idealism of newcomers while remembering their own with bitterness. Some of the new arrivals at Albacete were literally shanghaied. Foreign specialists, or mechanics who had agreed to come for a specific purpose only, found themselves pressganged and threatened with the penalty for desertion if they refused.23 Even sailors on shore leave from foreign merchantmen in republican ports were seized as ‘deserters’
from the brigades and sent to Albacete under guard. On 23 September 1937, Prieto issued a decree incorporating the International Brigades into the Spanish Foreign Legion, which brought them under the Spanish Code of Military Justice. He also established a regulation that International Brigade officers in any one unit should not exceed Spanish officers by more than 50 per cent.24

  The greatest jolt to the attitudes of those in the International Brigades was the persecution of the POUM. Communist ranting against the POUM continued unabated. ‘We have in our country’, declared one Party orator late in 1937, ‘a long chain of very recent facts that prove that Trotskyists have long been engaged in these grotesque criminal activities and as the difficulties increase and decisive battles approach, they start, more and more openly, to popularize the enemy’s slogans, to sow the seeds of defeatism, mistrust and split among the masses, and engage more actively than ever in espionage, provocation, sabotage and crime.’25

  The Party’s version of events was so obviously dishonest that only those terrified of the truth could believe it. The majority, however, realizing that they had been duped, resented the insult to their intelligence. They had to hold their tongues while in Spain so as to avoid the attentions of the SIM. Then, when they did reach home they usually remained silent, rather than undermine the republican cause as a whole. Those who spoke out, like Orwell, found the doors of left-wing publishers closed to them.

  Uncritical supporters of the Republic were forced to justify the Moscow line. Nevertheless, the attempt to export the show-trial mentality to Spain ignored the fact that, however authoritarian Negrín’s government might be, it was not totalitarian. As a result, the sealed maze of distorting mirrors that had replaced reality in the Soviet Union was not duplicated in Spain.

  PART SIX

  The Route to Disaster

  28

  The Battle of Teruel and Franco’s ‘Victorious Sword’

  Towards the end of 1937 the nationalists’ increase in military superiority became apparent. The occupation of the northern zone had indeed proved to be the essential intermediate step if they were to be assured of victory. For the first time in the war they equalled the republicans in manpower under arms (between 650,000 and 700,000 on each side) and the scales were to continue moving further in their favour. The conquest of the Cantabrian coast had not only released troops for redeployment in the centre; it had also yielded vital industrial prizes to the nationalists. The most important were the arms factories in the Basque country, the heavy industry of Bilbao, and the coal and iron ore of the northern regions (though much of the latter was taken in payment by Germany).

  The nationalist army was reorganized, with five army corps garrisoning the fronts, and the five most powerful, including all their elite formations, organized into an offensive Army of Manoeuvre.1 Although faced with this formidable war machine, the republican general staff and the Soviet advisers refused to admit that their ponderously conventional offensives were gradually destroying the People’s Army and the Republic’s ability to resist. They would not see that the only hope lay in continuing regular defence combined with unconventional guerrilla attacks in the enemy rear and rapid raids at as many points as possible on weakly held parts of the front. At the very least this would have severely hindered the nationalists’ ability to concentrate their new Army of Manoeuvre in a major offensive.

  Most important of all, it would not have presented large formations of republican troops to the nationalists’ superior artillery and air power. A blend of conventional and unconventional warfare would have been the most efficient, and least costly, method of maintaining republican resistance until the European war broke out. Nevertheless, the pattern of set-piece offensives continued until the Republic’s military strength was finally exhausted on the Ebro in the autumn of 1938. Propaganda considerations still determined these prestige operations and the principle of the ‘unified command’ was vigorously maintained by the communists, the government and regular officers, even though it had hardly demonstrated effective leadership.

  The inflexibility of republican strategy became even more serious at the end of 1937, when nationalist air support was increased. Spanish pilots took over the older German aircraft, especially the Junkers 52s, the Italian S-79s and S-81s, and four nationalist fighter squadrons were now equipped with Fiats.2 The Italian Legionary air force had nine Fiat squadrons and three bomber squadrons on the Spanish mainland, apart from those based on Majorca. Soviet intelligence was certain that Mussolini’s son, Bruno, who arrived in Spain in October, commanded one of the S-79 bomber squadrons supporting the CTV on the Aragón front.3 The Condor Legion replaced the Junkers 52 with the Heinkel 111 entirely. In addition, it had a reconnaissance squadron of Dornier 17s, two squadrons of Messerschmitt 109s and two with the old Heinkel 51. All told, the nationalists and their allies deployed nearly 400 aircraft.4

  The republican air force was inferior in numbers and in quality after its losses in the north and at Brunete. It was reduced to a few squadrons of Chatos and Moscas, and two squadrons of bombers.5 The nationalists’ main fighter, the Fiat, had shown itself to be rugged and highly manoeuvrable, while the Messerschmitt was unbeatable if handled properly. Finally, republican pilots, especially Soviet ones, did not seem prepared to take the same risks in aerial combat as the nationalists. Whole Mosca squadrons sometimes fled from the determined attack of a few Fiats.

  The Soviets, who had been withdrawing pilots for service in the Chinese–Japanese conflict, were handing over more and more machines to Spanish pilots who arrived back from training in Russia. Two of the Mosca squadrons were now entirely Spanish, while the four Chato squadrons had Spanish pilots. These biplanes were being manufactured at Sabadell-Reus, near Barcelona, but the replacement of Moscas was limited by the increasingly effective blockade in the Mediterranean. (The nationalists’ cruiser Baleares had sunk a whole convoy from Russia on 7 September.) The republicans did, however, receive a consignment of 31 Katiuska bombers, bringing their bomber force up to four squadrons of Natashas and four of Katiuskas.

  The Republic’s only aerial success had come during an intense series of strikes each side made against its opponent’s airfields. On 15 October during a further unsuccessful attack on Saragossa, republican fighters and bombers attacked the nationalist airfield near Saragossa, wiping out almost all the aircraft at dispersal. As a defensive measure against counterstrikes the republican air force made great use of dummy aircraft and switched their machines from one airfield to another.

  Having crushed the northern zone, Franco felt justified at mounting another offensive on Madrid at the end of 1937. His new strength more than compensated for the Republic’s advantage of having interior lines in this region. The nationalist Army of Manoeuvre was deployed behind the Aragón front for an assault south-westwards down the Saragossa–Madrid road, which the Italians had used as their centre line on Guadalajara in March. Varela’s Army Corps of Castille was on the left, the Italian CTV in the centre, the Army Corps of Morocco on the right, the Condor Legion and the Legionary Air Force in support, and the two Army Corps of Galicia and Navarre in reserve. But the nationalist alliance was undergoing a crisis, as Richthofen observed on 3 December, because of ‘incredible tensions between Spaniards and Italians’.6

  The threatened sector of the Guadalajara front was held by the Republic’s IV Corps, now commanded by Cipriano Mera. As had happened before the battle of Brihuega, Mera was helped by fellow anarchists who crossed the lines into enemy territory gathering intelligence. This time the information was far more valuable. Nationalist sources later said that Mera himself had crossed, disguised as a shepherd, and had read the operational plans in their headquarters. In fact, as Mera himself recounts, the spying mission was suggested and carried out by a young anarchist called Dolda who did not go near their headquarters. Reports from CNT members in nationalist Aragón, whom he visited secretly, warned of major troop concentrations from Saragossa to Calatayud. Dolda’s return via Medinaceli confirme
d his hunch that the nationalists were preparing for the biggest offensive yet and that it was to be directed at the Guadalajara sector. Dolda returned back through the lines by 30 November. He briefed Mera, who in turn informed Miaja.

  Rojo then shelved his plans for an Estremadura offensive towards the Portuguese frontier to split the nationalist zone in two. Instead, an attack to disrupt the nationalist Guadalajara operation was examined. The town of Teruel was chosen for a pre-emptive strike because it formed the corner where the Aragón front turned back north-westwards to run through the province of Guadalajara. One of the great dangers of this project was the proximity of Franco’s Army of Manoeuvre, which could be redeployed quite rapidly. Rojo, however, described the operation as an ‘offensive-defensive’ battle, aiming for a ‘limited destruction of the adversary’ and to obtain a ‘definite advantage for further exploitation’.7

  Rojo gave orders to transfer the Republic’s strike force to the Teruel front: XVIII Corps commanded by Enrique Fernández Heredia, Leopoldo Menéndez’s XX Corps and the XXII Corps under the command of Juan Ibarrola. In addition, XIII Corps and XIX Corps were brought in. Colonel Juan Hernández Saravia, the commander of the Army of Levante, was to direct the operation. In all, Rojo deployed 40,000 men.8 The tank force, in the inefficient Soviet manner, was split up among the attacking divisions and not concentrated.

  To begin with, Rojo felt that he could not count on the International Brigades because of the state they were in. Walter, who visited the British and Canadian battalions of XV International Brigade, found it ‘difficult to convey in words the state of the weapons and how dirty [they were], especially the rifles’. Walter was also disturbed by ‘petty squabbling and strong antagonism in the international units’ and by anti-semitism in the French detachments. He was unhappy, too, about the continuing arrogance towards Spaniards–which also came under the heading of ‘Kléberism’. ‘For more than a year,’ he wrote of the Germans in XI International Brigade, ‘German chauvinism has been persistently implanted and cultivated, and all of this time an openly racist nationality policy has been carried out.’ In too many cases the Spanish troops fighting in the International Brigades had not received proper medical attention and the internationalists did not share with them the rations and cigarettes which they received from home.9