The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  At the instigation of his brother César, a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry, Casado agreed to enter into contact with nationalist agents of the Servicio de Información y Policía Militar (SIPM). It is not known exactly when these first steps were made, but on 1 February Casado contacted Franco Ricardo Bertoloty and Diego Medina.18 After telling them that it was necessary to fix the conditions for the surrender of the Army of the Centre, he sent a message to General Franco asking for assurance that the men with whom he was talking were authentic nationalist emissaries. He was prepared to accept as confirmation a letter from his contemporary at military college, General Barrón.

  The same day Casado met Generals Miaja, Menéndez and Matallana in Valencia. They agreed with his plans. On the following day, back in Madrid, he went to see Besteiro at his home and they agreed to set up an alternative junta to the government. A few days later Eduardo Val offered the support of the anarchists in Madrid in accordance with what had been agreed at the meeting in Paris.19 Casado also stayed in touch with the various British agents, such as Denis Cowan, the representative of Sir Philip Chetwode, president of the international commission who supervised the exchange of prisoners. Cowan met Besteiro on 16 February and Casado four days later. Casado also met Stevenson, the British chargé d’affaires, who offered British mediation to prevent reprisals if Casado surrendered the central zone or help in evacuating republicans, if it came to that.

  On 5 February Casado was approached by Lieutenant-Colonel José Centaño, who informed him that he had been the head of ‘Green Star’, a secret nationalist organization in Madrid, since the beginning of 1938. Casado asked him to obtain from Burgos Franco’s conditions for surrender and the letter which he had requested from Barrón. Franco himself dictated to Barrón the terms and these were sent to Casado in Madrid on 15 February via agents of the SIPM.

  Franco’s conditions were those of a conqueror. The republicans had lost the war and all resistance was criminal. Nationalist Spain demanded unconditional surrender, offering a pardon for those who had been ‘tricked into fighting’. Those who laid down their arms would be spared and judged according to the support they might give in the future to the ‘cause of nationalist Spain’. Safe conducts would be given to leave Spanish territory. After vague promises of humanitarian treatment, the letter finished with a clear threat: ‘Delay in surrender and a criminal and futile resistance to our advance will carry a grave responsibility, which we will exact on the grounds of the blood spilled uselessly.’20

  Negrín, of course, was extremely suspicious, but he did nothing to forestall the coup, probably because he was exhausted and it would clear him of responsibility for the final collapse.21 Whatever the case, on 2 March Negrín ordered Casado and Matallana to come to see him at Elda. There he told them that he was preparing to reorganize army commands. Both Casado and Matallana outlined their objections and left. They went straight to Valencia to warn Menéndez and planned to bring forward their coup.

  The next day, 3 March, Negrín published in the Diario Oficial a list of promotions and new appointments of communist officers: Francisco Galán was made commander of the naval base at Cartagena; Etelvino Vega governor of Alicante; Leocadio Mendiola military commandant of Murcia; and Inocencio Curto military commandant of Albacete. He promoted Modesto and Cordón to the rank of general, and Cordón was made secretary general of the ministry of defence. At the same time Miaja was moved to the symbolic position of inspector general, Matallana made chief of the general staff and Casado was also promoted to general. The conspirators were not taken in by the sops offered to them. In their eyes it was no coincidence that the communists were being given the active commands and control of the Mediterranean coast from where any evacuation would take place. Their worst fears that the communists would ensure their own escape and prevent that of their opponents seemed to be confirmed. The announcement of 3 March alarmed Franco as much as the conspirators, although for slightly different reasons. Communist command of the People’s Army implied a vicious struggle to the end.

  When Francisco Galán arrived in Cartagena on the night of 4 March to take over his command, a revolt broke out in various military units and in the fleet. Galán was arrested during dinner with his predecessor, General Bernal, who had received him with an air of normality. The fifth column took advantage of the situation and made an alliance with officers who wanted to save themselves as the war ended. Falangists and marines seized the coastal batteries of Los Dolores and the radio station, from where they broadcast appeals for help from the nationalists.

  The situation was very confused, with two rebellions mixed up–one of republicans who wanted peace and the other of secret nationalist sympathizers. In the middle of the revolt, on 5 March at eleven in the morning, five Savoia bombers flew in from the sea and began to bomb the naval base and harbour where ships of the republican fleet lay at anchor. Admiral Buiza, who was observing the rebellion in the streets of Cartagena, threatened that his ships would shell the port installations if Galán and other prisoners were not released. But before the nationalist air attack, guns of the coastal batteries had been seized by rebels. That event, and the danger that nationalist warships would arrive to assist the uprising, made the admiral decide to order the fleet to head for the open sea. Galán, released in the confusion, just managed to get aboard one of the ships at the last moment.

  The Condor Legion, informed of events, flew reconnaissance flights with Dorniers throughout 6 March to track the republican fleet. Relays of bombers also attacked shipping in the harbour of Valencia. They did not bomb Cartagena itself, however, in the belief that nationalist troops had already been landed by sea, when in fact they were still on their way.22

  At dawn on 7 March, troops loyal to Negrín and the communists in the form of the 206th Brigade arrived on the orders of Hernández. They seized back the radio station, crushed the rebellion in the city and were just in time to turn the coastal batteries on two nationalist ships loaded with troops, who were arriving to support the rebellion. The crew of the first of them, the Castillo de Olite, did not spot anything amiss and the shore batteries, firing at close range, sank her in a matter of minutes. Altogether, 1,223 soldiers died and another 700 were taken prisoner.23 But even though the rising was crushed, the republican fleet did not return to port. Franco sent an urgent message to Count Ciano, requesting that the Italian fleet and air force prevent the ships from heading to Odessa, but that was not Buiza’s destination. He was steaming for Bizerta, where the crews were interned by the French authorities. It was a futile escape. The warships were later handed over to the Nationalists.

  Meanwhile, at dusk on 5 March Colonel Casado, after rejecting the renewed appeals of Negrín, set up a National Council of Defence in the cellars of the ministry of finance. He appointed himself provisional president of the council and councillor for defence; Julián Besteiro took over as councillor of state; and Wenceslao Carrillo, the socialist father of Santiago Carrillo, as councillor of the interior. The other proto-ministers were left republicans, moderate socialists and anarchists.24 Another present at the act of inauguration was Cipriano Mera. He had brought one of his formations to Madrid, the 70th Division, whose men were already guarding the ministry, the military governor, General Martínez Cabrera, and the head of the SIM in Madrid, who had joined the plotters.

  At midnight the members of the council broadcast to the country via Radio España and Unión Radio de Madrid. Negrín, who was still having dinner at Elda with other members of the government, broke off his meal on hearing the tremulous voice of Julián Besteiro addressing his ‘Spanish fellow citizens’. Besteiro announced that the moment of truth had arrived. The Negrín government had neither legal nor moral authority, and the only legitimate power for the moment would be military power. After Besteiro had spoken, the manifesto of the council was read out, accusing Negrín and his associates of calling on the people to resist while they prepared ‘a comfortable and lucrative flight’. Later Mera and Casado spoke in a similar vei
n.25 There was, as Azaña observed, a strong element of parody in the fact that the justification for their rebellion was to forestall a communist coup.26 And there is no doubt that Casado was naive to think that Franco might be persuaded to come to an agreement, but Negrín’s plan to fight on when it was utterly hopeless would have led to even more useless bloodshed.

  As soon as the speeches finished, all those at the dinner table in Elda rushed to telephones to call Madrid. Towards one in the morning Negrín spoke to Casado, who confirmed that he had indeed risen in revolt against him. Negrín, fulminating uselessly down the telephone, stripped him of any position. Giner de los Ríos then called Besteiro, and Paulino Gómez and Segundo Blanco also spoke to Casado, but all these calls were nothing more than a dialogue of the deaf. By telephone and teleprinter, ministers tried to get in touch with other military commanders to evaluate the situation, but the replies were not encouraging. General Menéndez even warned that if General Matallana was not allowed to leave Elda he would send troops from Valencia to free him. Matallana left shortly afterwards.

  Around four in the morning on 6 March Negrín, who had just been informed of the departure of the fleet from Cartagena, asked Colonel Camacho to send transport aircraft from Los Llanos. He then dictated a teleprinter message to the council in Madrid in which he deplored their action, describing it as ‘impatient’. This implied that he was already considering, or had actually entered into contact with the nationalists. He then asked that ‘any eventual transfer of powers be carried out in a normal and constitutional manner’.27

  Meanwhile, the recently appointed military governor of Alicante, the communist Etelvino Vega, had been arrested in the city by Casado’s followers. News of this was brought to Elda by Tagüeña. On hearing what had happened Negrín, who after the departure of the fleet from Cartagena had planned on Alicante as the last redoubt for evacuation, murmured to Álvarez del Vayo in German so that the others would not understand: ‘Ich, auf alle Fälle, werde gehen (I, in any case, am off).’28

  Negrín waited until two in the afternoon in case Casado replied to his signal, then gave instructions to his entourage to go to the airfield to await the aircraft from Los Llanos. From there Negrín, Álvarez del Vayo, Giner de los Ríos, Blanco, Paulino Gómez, González Peña, Cordón, Dolores Ibárruri, Rafel Alberti and María Teresa León left Spain on board three Douglas aircraft. During the flight to Toulouse, Negrín decided on a meeting of ministers in Paris for 15 March. It would be the day when the Condor Legion was able to write in its war diary: ‘08.00 First news from home: German troops march into Czechoslovakia.’29

  In a hangar at the same airfield the executive committee of the Spanish Communist Party met under the chairmanship of Pedro Checa. Those present included Uribe, Claudín, Líster, Modesto, Tagüen and Togliatti. Líster and Modesto, when asked about the possibilities of overthrowing Besteiro’s and Casado’s council by force, replied that this was out of the question. They then decided that Checa, Claudin and Togliatti would remain in Spain to direct the remains of the Party and prepare for an underground existence in the future.30 The others boarded the last aeroplanes just before troops loyal to Casado occupied Elda and the airfield. The three communist leaders assigned to stay in Spain were arrested, but later in Alicante they were freed and eventually they too escaped from Spain by air.31

  The National Council of Defence made a series of approaches to arrange peace, or at least to buy time so that republican forces could retreat towards the Mediterranean ports not yet taken by the nationalists. Negrín’s decrees of 3 March were annulled as well as the call-up of the classes of 1915 and 1916. All the promotions were also declared null and void, including that of Casado, with the idea of telling the nationalists that Negrín’s decisions were regarded as illegal.

  Colonel Prada was appointed commander of the Army of the Centre and communists, including commanders of its I, II and III Corps, were relieved. Communists were purged from other posts, the Party newspaper, Mundo Obrero, was closed and red stars were removed from uniforms. Communist power in republican Spain was at an end.

  The council, now headed by General Miaja, who had reached Madrid on 6 March, proceeded to order the arrests of communist commissars and militants wherever they were found. Mera’s troops carried out the order and went straight to the main communist centres. One commissar, Domingo Girón, managed to escape arrest at the headquarters of the Army of the Centre and warned Colonel Bueno, the commander of II Corps, of what was happening. Bueno it seems was ill, but his chief of staff, Major Guillermo Ascanio, marched on Madrid at the head of a column of troops. Daniel Ortega, another communist commissar, who had escaped the round-up by jumping out of a window, warned Tagüeña, who left Madrid.32

  Luis Barceló, the communist commander of I Corps, appointed himself commander of the Army of the Centre and the leader of forces opposing the Council. After setting up his command post in the Pardo Palace, he sent his men to Casado’s headquarters near the airfield of Barajas, where they arrested members of his staff, brought them back to El Pardo and executed them on Barceló’s orders. Meanwhile, the troops led by Ascanio reached the heart of Madrid, where they came up against the anarchists of the 70th Division and carabineros guarding the buildings occupied by the Council. Soon afterwards the bulk of Mera’s IV Corps arrived to support the defenders, and furious fighting began in the centre of Madrid between casadistas and communists. Julián Marías, working for Besteiro, described a mother sitting on a bench under the trees on the Castellana as her children played nearby and communist tanks advanced against one of the positions held by troops loyal to the Junta. ‘I did not know which was more admirable,’ he wrote, ‘the heroism or the insouciance of the Madrileños.’33 This struggle lasted until Sunday, 12 March, when Mera’s forces crushed the communist troops, who agreed to a ceasefire. Apart from the overwhelming superiority of the anarchists, Barceló had not been able to communicate with Togliatti or Checa to obtain instructions, because Casado’s supporters controlled the telephone network. In any case, the main outcome of the struggle, in which 2,000 had been killed, was a military tribunal that sentenced Barceló and his commissar to death.

  Once peace was restored to the streets of Madrid on 12 March, the Council of National Defence met to prepare peace negotiations and organize the evacuation of the republican army. In the note sent to Franco, they explained that they had not been able to get in touch while crushing the revolt and restoring order. They wished to establish conditions for laying down arms and ending the war. But once again the insistence on national independence and the idea that Casado might have saved the country from communism was bound to irritate Franco deeply. They asked for no reprisals of any form against civilians or soldiers and a period of 25 days to allow anyone who wanted to leave Spain to do so. Casado and Matallana were appointed negotiators.

  On the next day, 13 March, Casado summoned Lieutenant-Colonel Centaño and entrusted him with the conditions to be passed to Franco. Six days later Franco replied in cutting and glacial terms: ‘Unconditional surrender incompatible with negotiations and presence in nationalist zone of senior enemy commanders.’33 Centaño advised Casado to appoint two other officers, and the Council decided to send to Burgos Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Garijo and Major Leopoldo Ortega. Despite the cold reception of his earlier message, Casado drew up another document addressed to the nationalists in which he emphasized the dangers they had run in taking on the communists and the risks they faced if they confounded the hopes which ‘everyone has placed in this Council’.

  On 21 March, agents of the SIPM informed Casado that the nationalist supreme command had agreed to the visit of Garijo and Ortega to Burgos two days later. The two officers went and were told that on 25 March the whole of the republican air force must be surrendered, and two days later the republican army must raise the white flag in unconditional surrender. When this was known, some republican commanders, feeling angered and humiliated, considered fighting on, but it was too late to reverse the
emotional process of surrender. Casado, meanwhile, sent another letter to Franco, but it too was doomed to failure.

  When 25 March arrived, bad weather and the problem of unserviceable aircraft made it impossible to hand over the air force. The two republican emissaries went back to explain the situation, but their nationalist intermediaries were ordered by Franco’s headquarters to send them away. Instructions for the final offensive were issued to nationalist commanders immediately.

  The next day, nationalist formations began to advance on all fronts. They encountered no resistance. The Army of the South signalled at 2 p.m.: ‘Many prisoners, including Russians.’34 ‘27 March 1939,’ wrote Richthofen in his personal war diary the next day. ‘Artillery begins at 05.50. No movement in the red lines. Our first bombing attack at seven o’clock very good. At the same time reconnaissance flights over red positions which had been bombed. Artillery gets going as never before in Spain. 06.00 Infantry moves ahead with tanks after Condor Legion has made bombing attacks in front of their positions. The reds have evacuated. Only a few people left in the front lines. But they all run away. Our fire magic has really worked. After a 24-kilometre advance the infantry runs out of breath. News that there are white flags and units are surrendering everywhere round Madrid. THE WAR IS OVER!!! End for the Condor Legion.’35 This declaration, not surprisingly with the impatient Richthofen, was a little premature. But by the next morning the republican fronts had suffered a spontaneous collapse. Soldiers embraced each other. Surrounded republican troops were ordered to pile arms, before they were marched off to bullrings or open-air camps. Others who were not captured at this time threw away their weapons and set off for home on foot.

  The Condor Legion wasted no time in sending ‘propaganda flights’ over Madrid during the morning. At four in the afternoon the last entry was made in the official Condor Legion war diary: ‘In the course of the day radio stations and transmitters in all provincial towns offer their submission and express their devotion to nationalist Spain and its Caudillo. The war can be said to be at an end.’36