The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  The Republic could not go on paying for their weapons in gold and hard currency.8 By early 1938 the current accounts in gold in Paris and Moscow were running low.9 In April Negrín started to sell in the United States the silver of the Banco de España. This was bitterly contested by the Burgos government, which had engaged as its lawyer John Foster Dulles (later the US Secretary of State under Eisenhower), but their attempt failed. On 29 April Francisco Méndez Aspe, the minister of finance, signed the decree of authorization.10 That summer the government introduced regulations to requisition jewels and precious metals, and confiscate property of ‘declared enemies of the Republic’ for resale. All these sales of silver, jewels and other property raised $31 million, yet the Republic was spending $27 million a month, excluding the costs of Soviet arms shipments.11

  The only hope lay in approaching the Soviet Union again. In March, the Republic had been granted a credit of $70 million, negotiated by Pascua, the ambassador in Moscow, the previous autumn at 3 per cent interest, with half repaid in gold. This had forced a second despatch of gold to the Soviet Union. Now another credit was requested, this time for $85 million, mostly for purchasing Soviet arms. The Republic had to wait a long time for a reply and by then it would be too late.12

  Many requests for military assistance from the republican government were simply ignored by Stalin. When the situation became especially hard in the spring of 1938, appeals to the Soviet Union were ignored. ‘I passed Negrín’s request for help to the respective institution (the Politburo),’ wrote Litvinov on 29 April to Marchenko, the Soviet chargé d’affaires in Spain, ‘but no decision has been made so far.’13 Finally, Litvinov wrote on 7 August to Marchenko in Barcelona, ‘So far no decisions have been adopted on the requests from Ispanpra [Spanish government]. I think that the reason for this delay is that the answer is going to be negative.’14 Some arms shipments continued, but Stalin had lost interest in Spain because of the situation in Europe and in the Far East. It was quite clear that the republican government was going to lose and he had other priorities.

  As well as the huge cost of importing arms, the Republic had to buy oil, supplies of all sorts, and now food after the loss of Aragón’s agricultural regions. Chickpeas and lentils bought from Mexico became the staple of the republican zone’s diet. Food shortages were serious everywhere, but Barcelona had to cope with refugees from Aragón, in addition to those who had come earlier in the war from Andalucia, Estremadura and Castile, now a million in total.15 The scenes of peasants from the Aragónese collectives, herding in livestock and bringing their few belongings on carts as they fled from the nationalists, were even more pathetic than those in Madrid during the autumn of 1936. Food queues were worse than ever and women were killed and maimed during the bombing raids because they would not give up their places. The daily ration of 150 grammes of rice, beans or, more usually, lentils (known as Dr Negrín’s little pills) could not prevent the effects of vitamin and protein deficiency among those unable to afford black market prices. Children, especially the increasing number of war orphans (the Quakers reported that there were 25,000 in Barcelona alone), suffered from rickets. In 1938 the death rate for children and the old doubled.16

  The local population responded to the crisis with its customary ingenuity. Balconies in Barcelona were used for keeping chickens or breeding rabbits and the city woke at dawn to the crowing of the cocks. Pots too were used for growing vegetables, as well as many plots of ground all over the city. Pigeons had disappeared from the streets into casseroles, so had cats, which were served up as ‘rabbit’. Orange peel was sliced and cooked as ersatz fries, lettuce leaves were dried to make tobacco, but this was only tinkering at the edges.17 Mothers used to get up before dawn and walk up to twenty kilometres out to farms in the surrounding countryside in the hope of bartering something for food.

  Politicians and senior officials, however, did not seem to be losing much weight; a banquet organized in Negrín’s honour in Barcelona led to angry demonstrations of protest. On the whole the troops were much better fed than the civilian population, but they were very conscious of the way their families were suffering. Inevitably they became bitter at the scandals involving theft by the staff and supply services of petrol, rations and equipment for resale on the black market.

  Barcelona, already suffering such hardship, was also subjected to continual bombing raids by the Italian air force. The city had already been bombarded in February 1937 by the Italian fleet, then from March of that year the Italian bomber squadrons based on Majorca harried the city. The worst raids were on 29 May and 1 October. But in 1938 the attacks became more concentrated. In January they bombed the harbour areas and surrounding neighbourhoods, terrorizing the civilian population. Ciano was thrilled by the account of the destruction, which he found ‘so realistically horrifying’.18

  These raids prompted a retaliation by the republican air force on nationalist cities, causing several dozen deaths.19 A diplomatic attempt was made to have such actions suspended on both sides. The republicans ceased their raids when Eden promised to help. It was later revealed, however, that the British had made no attempt to do anything. Mussolini halted the bombing in February, out of pique with the nationalists for not allotting the CTV a sufficiently glorious role at Teruel. But during the advance to the sea he decided, without warning Franco, to relaunch the raids on a far more intensive scale.20 Ciano noted, ‘Mussolini believes that these air raids are an admirable way of weakening the morale of the reds.’21

  On the night of 16 March the Savoia-Marchetti squadrons from Majorca started an around-the-clock bombing relay to Barcelona. There were no anti-aircraft guns and republican fighters were not scrambled from airfields in the region until the afternoon of 17 March. The casualties were about 1,000 dead and 2,000 wounded.22 One bomb appears to have struck an explosives truck in the Gran Vía, causing a huge explosion. This gave rise to false rumours that the Italians were experimenting with giant bombs. Mussolini was greatly encouraged by the international reaction. ‘[He] was pleased by the fact’, noted Ciano, ‘that the Italians have managed to provoke horror by their aggression instead of complacency with their mandolins. This will send up our stock in Germany, where they love total and ruthless war.’23

  War weariness had set in on the republican side, exacerbated by cynicism at the behaviour of their leaders. More people came to persuade themselves that it was time to reach some sort of compromise with the nationalists, either directly or through international mediation. Already in October 1936, Azaña had entrusted Bosch Gimpera to make peace overtures via London, but this had been stopped by the ambassador there, Azcárate. The suggestion finally reached the Foreign Office via the French government. In May 1937 Azaña tried again when Julián Besteiro, went to London as the representative of the Republic for the coronation of King George VI.

  Few soldiers thought of the end of the war except in the despair and panic of retreat, because the Republic’s propaganda diet fed their hunger to believe in ultimate victory. Middle-class liberals and social democrats, on the other hand, were more aware of the implications of an extended war. Some like Martínez Barrio convinced themselves that they would suffer far more than the workers from Franco’s victory.

  By 1938 demoralization was particularly strong among Catalan nationalists, whose support for the Republic in 1936 had been more solid than that of the Basques. The unity of the Catalan left, Esquerra, had been severely stretched in 1937 and once the central government moved to Barcelona, Companys was ignored. The majority of the Esquerra had gravitated towards the communist insistence on discipline and respect for private property, but they had felt betrayed when Negrín’s government rapidly dismantled the Generalitat’s independence in the wake of the May events. They were also angry at the failure of their old trading partners, France and especially Great Britain, to help them. They became defeatist and swelled the silent Catalan centre, which had disliked both the nationalists and the revolutionary left. Most of them now longed for th
e end of the war, persuading themselves that the initial harshness of Franco’s regime would not affect them for long.

  The main antagonisms, however, broke out within the government, first between Prieto and the communists. His last venture with them in the re-establishment of state power had been Líster’s destruction of the collectives in Aragón; but from then on the tempo of minor and major quarrels built up rapidly. There was a dispute over whether a Messerschmitt 109 captured intact should be handed to the French or to the Soviet Union. But the greatest struggle was over the Communist Party’s infiltration of army commands.

  Prieto attempted to limit communist power in the army by first tightening up on the commissar network. He forbade proselytizing to hamper the communists and he replaced the philo-communist, Álvarez del Vayo, with one of his own colleagues, Crescenciano Bilbao. He also sacked many communist officers, including Antonio Cordón from the post of chief of staff of the Army of the East. He even ordered Francisco Anton, the young commissar-general of the Army of the Centre who was thought to be La Pasionaria’s lover, to transfer to a front-line position. Many of his instructions, including this one, were ignored because all communists were told by the Party that only its instructions should be obeyed. Prieto was also hated by the communists for revealing that the Party made money for itself out of the Republic’s merchant navy, which had been reorganized through British holding companies so as to beat the blockade.

  Prieto attacked the communists’ control of his own SIM when he realized what a terrifying machine it had become, but he was too late. His measures against individuals within this state-spawned state enraged the communists and the Russian NKVD ‘advisers’, without lessening the secret executions and torture. The rare occasions on which the SIM was effectively challenged occurred at the front, when SIM agents seeking out dissidents were sometimes killed by ‘stray bullets’.

  Prieto combined this frenzy of moral courage and political decisiveness with a terrible pessimism, at times worse than that of Azaña and much less discreet. The minister of defence did not restrain himself from assuring the French ambassador, Labonne, that the war was as good as lost. His tendency to say in public exactly what he thought became a grave problem for Negrín. This was the beginning of the end of their friendship.

  Prieto had hoped that the seizure of Teruel would provide a position of strength from which to start negotiations with Franco, but like Negrín a few months later, and Colonel Casado at the very end of the war, he totally underestimated Franco’s obsessive desire to crush his enemies utterly and impose his vision of Spain on the whole country. The collapse of the offensive and its disastrous sequel in Aragón left him utterly demoralized.

  The communist press began to attack his policy of depoliticizing the army. In February, his cabinet colleague Jesús Hernández wrote an article in Frente Rojo denouncing him as a defeatist.24 As the communist attacks, including those of La Pasionaria, increased, Prieto told Negrín that he could not work with Hernández. Negrín raised the matter at the council of ministers, supporting Prieto, and the communists had to comply, for the time being.

  On 12 March Negrín went to Paris to meet French ministers, principally Blum, Daladier, Auriol and Cot. He was hoping to ask them to intervene in Spain with five divisions and 150 aircraft. The French military attaché in Spain, Colonel Morel, had already warned his government of the nationalists’ overwhelming air superiority and the need to provide the republicans with at least 300 aircraft to restore the situation. But the French government was alarmed by the Anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria, which Hitler carried out on the day Negrín reached Paris. They had no intention of intervening in Spain and risking a European conflagration. All that Negrín achieved was the agreement of the French government to open the border to allow through armament deliveries which had been held up.

  On 16 March, on his return, Negrín called a cabinet meeting at the Pedralbes Palace in Barcelona. It happened to be the morning before the major Italian air raids. Just before the meeting, Negrín insisted that Prieto and Giral, who had also expressed his fears of inevitable defeat, should both support him. The next day, however, Azaña expressed his own concerns and asked Prieto to voice his views on the weakness of the People’s Army, the critical situation in which the Republic found itself and the need to reach an agreement on ending the war. Prieto not only agreed, but painted a desolate and accurate picture of the opinions of the military commanders he had consulted. He went so far as to propose that the Republic should freeze its assets abroad to be ready for the needs of the future exiles. Negrín was completely undermined in his arguments with the president of the Republic, who considered him a ‘visionario fanta

  ´stico’ in his view that the Republic should fight on.

  At this tense moment the council was informed that a huge demonstration had assembled outside the Pedralbes Palace. This had been prepared several days before at a meeting between communist leaders–Mije, La Pasionaria and Díaz–and representatives from the other working-class organizations, including the CNT and the FAI.25 Negrín had been warned in advance of this demonstration to demand the resignation of ‘defeatist’ ministers. He left the room and went out to reassure the crowd that the struggle against the fascists would continue right up to the end. The demonstrators dispersed.

  On 18 March, after the terrible bombing raids, representatives of the UGT and CNT signed an agreement submitting industrial planning to government control. It was probably the greatest concession the anarcho-syndicalists had made during the war. Promoted by Mariano Vázquez, it was the most explicit recognition of the state. On 29 March Prieto had a meeting with Negrín. He insisted that the war was lost and predicted the collapse of the Republic. Negrín was appalled. He said to a colleague, ‘Now I don’t know whether to tell my driver to take me home or to the frontier. That was how frightful Prieto’s report was.’26 According to Zugazagoitia, this report convinced Negrín that he had to ask Prieto to resign from the ministry of defence. He offered him a minor post in the government, but to the rejoicing of the communists, Prieto refused.27 Prieto, the Cassandra of the Republic, was to be proved right within the year.

  The departure of Prieto from government was strikingly reminiscent of that of his old rival, Largo Caballero. The anarchists also supported Prieto, despite their great ideological differences, out of a fear of the communists. The April government crisis created a bitter enmity between Prieto and Negrín, his former disciple, which was to continue on into exile.

  When Negrín informed the president of the Republic of the crisis, Azaña called a meeting at the Pedralbes Palace, and in the course of a long speech, full of sous-entendus, he made clear that they would have to give up hope of prevailing through military strength.28 He was already considering a government of capitulation headed by Prieto or Besteiro. Negrín confronted Azaña, insisting on his unshakeable determination to resist to the end. So did the communist leader, José Díaz, who blurted out with such vehemence that the president ‘was on the point of abusing his constitutional powers’ that Azaña was thoroughly disconcerted.

  On 6 April 1938 Azaña asked Negrín once again to form a government. It was supposed to be a ‘government of unity’, hoping to recreate the Popular Front, although it was described later as the ‘war government’. Negrín took on the role of minister of defence as well as his presidency of the council of ministers.29 The fact that only one communist remained in the cabinet had much to do with Stalin’s reaction, alarmed by the Sino-Japanese war and Nazi expansionism. The hope of reaching an accommodation with Britain and France still remained the chief reason for keeping the communist profile as low as possible. (In France too, Maurice Thorez had been ordered by the Comintern not to be part of the Blum government.) Stalin, however, was persuaded to allow Uribe to stay in the cabinet.

  Despite the government’s outward impression of political unity, the real power was wielded by negrínistas and, above all, communists. Antonio Cordón was appointed under-secretary f
or war; Carlos Núñez under-secretary for air; Eleuterio Díaz Tendero the head of personnel in the ministry of defence; Manuel Estrada the head of information; Prados head of the naval staff; Jesu ´s Hernández commissar of the Army of the Centre. All were members of the Spanish Communist Party. But Negrín also appointed a couple of prietistas, such as Játiva, who became under-secretary of the navy and Bruno Alonso, who was made commissar of the fleet.

  The communists may not have controlled all the posts in the armed forces, but they certainly held the key administrative ones, to say nothing of the main field commands, with Juan Modesto, Enrique Líster, Valentín González, Etelvino Vega, Manuel Tagüeña, General Walter and so on.

  The air force and tank corps were also completely under Soviet control, so every military operation required communist approval. Palmiro Togliatti, in a report back to the Comintern, argued that the Spanish Communist Party should ‘take over the whole apparatus of the ministry of defence and the whole of the army’. In the meantime the republican formations, which had been pushed back into Catalonia during the Aragón campaign, needed time to regroup and rearm, before they could hope to be effective in any way. The Aragón débâcle, following swiftly behind the enormous cost of Teruel, had virtually incapacitated the People’s Army, as Prieto had warned. Little could be done to delay the advance of the Navarrese and Moroccan Corps across northern Aragón, and the loss of the hydroelectric plants in the Pyrenees to the west of the River Segre brought Catalonian industry to a standstill.

  In the early part of 1938 the government of Neville Chamberlain (who had succeeded Baldwin in May 1937) took the policy of appeasement to such a point that Anthony Eden resigned as foreign minister on 20 February. This event confirmed the dictators in their belief that they had nothing to fear from Great Britain. Chamberlain’s insistence on an Anglo-Italian treaty, in the hope of drawing her away from the influence of Germany, demonstrated convincingly that Axis intervention in Spain would not be challenged, whatever Negrín’s government might propose at the League of Nations.