The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  2 The nationalist squadrons were reorganized into 1st Hispanic Air Brigade under the command of Colonel Sáenz de Buruaga, with the fighter ace García Morato as chief of operations. The fighter squadrons had nine aircraft each and the bomber squadrons twelve (Sabaté y Villarroya, España en Ilamas, p. 17).

  3 GARF 4459/12/4, p. 268.

  4 Salas, La guerra…, pp. 282–3.

  5 Ibid., p. 280.

  6 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38; see also Ranzato, L’eclissi della democrazia, p. 553, for details of the row. The Italians suspected that Franco was hoping for an internal collapse of the Republic and was avoiding a military victory.

  7 Vicente Rojo, Elementos del arte de la guerra, p. 433.

  8 The main formations were the 11th Division (Líster), 25th (García Vivancos), 34th (Etelvmo Vega), 39th (Alba), 40th (Andrés Nieto), 41st (Menéndez) 42nd (Naira), 64th (Martínez Cartón), 68th (Triguero) and 70th (Hilamón Toral). In reserve were the 35th Division (Walter) and the 47th Division (Durán).

  9 RGVA 35082/1/95, pp. 33–58, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, pp. 444, 459 and 448.

  10 Ciutat, pp. 113–14.

  11 A. Vetrov, Volontyory svobody, Moscow, 1972, p. 178.

  12 RGVA 33987/3/912, p. 126.

  13 Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales, p. 298.

  14 Richthofen war diary, 15 December, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  15 BA-MA RL35/39.

  16 BA-MA RL 35/38.

  17 Herbert Matthews, The Education of a Correspondent, New York, 1946.

  18 Bernardo Aguilar, quoted by Pedro Corral, Si me quieres escribir, Barcelona, 2004.

  19 Zugazagoitia, Guerra y vicisitudes…p. 358.

  20 Corral, Si me quieres escribir, p. 160.

  21 Zugazagoitia, Guerra y vicisitudes…, p. 354.

  22 Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales…, pp. 298–9.

  23 Salas, La guerra…, p. 292.

  24 BA-MA RL35/39.

  25 Ibid.

  26 Salas, La guerra…, p. 294.

  27 Zugazagoitia, Guerra y vicisitudes…, p. 354.

  28 RGVA 33987/3/1149, pp. 211–26, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 484.

  29 BA-MA RL35/39.

  30 Crónica de la guerra de España, vol. iv, p. 442.

  31 R. de la Cierva, Francisco Franco, un siglo de España, p. 56. Rey d’Harcourt was treated very badly by Franco. The republican government gave orders that the colonel should be taken to the rear with the local bishop, Anselmo Polanco, and his chaplain, Felipe Ripoll. The three men were executed on 7 February 1939 by republicans during the final collapse of Catalonia.

  32 RGVA 35082/1/95, pp. 33–58, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 447.

  33 Corral, Si me quieres escribir, p. 213.

  34 BA-MA RL35/39.

  35 Seidman, A ras de suelo, p. 243.

  36 BA-MA RL35/39.

  37 Zugazagoitia, Guerra y vicisitudes…, p. 354.

  38 Palmiro Togliatti, Escritos sobre la guerra de España, Barcelona, 1980, p. 189.

  39 Stepánov, Las causas de la derrota, p. 108.

  40 ‘Count Rossi’ was a fascist whose real name was Aldobrando Bonaccorsi. Ciano put him in charge of the Balearic Islands, especially Mallorca. His crimes and reign of terror became infamous. Mussolini and Ciano wanted him to bring the local Falange under Italian fascist influence. See Ranzato, L’eclissi della democrazia, pp. 554ff.

  41 Delperrié du Bayac, Les Brigades Internationales, Paris, 1985, p. 331. Von Thoma had four tank battalions, each of three companies with fourteen tanks. See Blanco Escolá, Falacias de la guerra civil, p. 241.

  42 RGVA 33987/3/1149, pp. 211–226, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 485.

  43 RGVA 33987/3/1149, p. 230.

  44 BA-MA RL 35/40.

  45 Stepánov, p. 109.

  46 Skoutelsky, Les Brigades Internationales, p. 99.

  47 José M. Maldonado, Alcañiz 1938. El bombardeo olvidado, Saragossa, 2003.

  48 Tagüeña, Testimonio de do guerras, p. 107.

  49 ABC of Seville, 16 April 1938.

  CHAPTER 29: Hopes of Peace Destroyed

  1 On 30 June 1936, Spanish banknotes in circulation amounted to 5,399 million pesetas. In April 1938 they reached 9,212 million in just the republican zone (Joan Sardà, Banco de España, p. 432). Exacerbated by military disasters and the export of the gold reserves, the republican peseta had fallen catastrophically. At the end of 1936 it had depreciated by 19.3 per cent of its value and one year later by 75 per cent. By the end of 1938 it had lost 97.6 per cent of its original value. In December 1936 the exchange rate was 42 pesetas to the pound sterling. A year later, just before the Battle of Teruel, the exchange rate was 226 to the pound sterling, but after the nationalist campaign in Aragón it fell to between 530 and 650 to the pound. See also, A. Carreras and X. Tafunell, Historia económica de la España contemporánea, Crítica, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 270–1; ángel Viñas et al., Política comercial exterior en España(1931–1975), Banco Exterior de España, Madrid, 1979.

  2 The main arms-buying teams were headed by Dr Alejandro Otero Fernández (replaced later by Antonio Lara), Jose´ Calviño Ozores and Martí Esteve in Paris; Antonio Bolaños, Daniel Ovalle and Francisco Martínez Dorrién in Belgium; Carlos Pastor Krauel in Britain; A ´n Ordás, with Fernando de los Ríos, in Mexico and the US. They had to do business with traffickers such as Josef Veltjens, Prodromos Bodosakis-Athanasiades, John Ball, Jack A. Billmeir, Stefan Czarnecki, Kazimierz Ziembinski, Stefan Katelbach and others of their type. See Howson, Armas para España.

  3 The work by Professors Morten Heiberg and Mogens Pelt for their book, Los negocios de la guerra, has finally confirmed the details of an outrageous paradox which had previously just been suspected: Hermann Göring was selling weapons to republican Spain, while his own Luftwaffe fought for Franco.

  4 Morten Heiberg and Mogens Pelt, Los negocios de la guerra. Howson estimates that Göring received the equivalent of one pound sterling for every one of the 750,000 rifles supplied by Bodosakis.

  5 Colonel Ribbing’s report from Spain, General Staff, Former Secret Archive, Foreign Department, KA E III 26, vol., p. 20.

  6 The nationalist debt to Nazi Germany rose to RM 372 million, but it was paid off over a long period and mainly in kind, through raw materials from mining and other produce.

  7 Heiberg and Pelt, Los negocios de la guerra.

  8 Howson, Armas para España.

  9 See Chapter 19.

  10 In five shipments, $15 million worth of silver was sold. Another $5 million was disposed of in other ways.

  11 Viñas, Guerra, dinero, dictadura, p. 174.

  12 For the whole episode see Villas, El oro de Moscú; Viñas, Guerra, dinero, dictadura; Howson, Armas para España and Kowalsky, La Unión Soviética y la guerra civil española, The Republic paid for: 5 Katiuska bombers; 26 Tupolev bombers; 121 I-16 (Moscas); 25 T-26 tanks; 149 75mm field guns; 32 anti-aircraft guns; 254 anti-tank guns; 4,158 machine-guns; 125,050 rifles; 237,349 shells; 132,559,672rounds of ammunition. All the arms and ammunition which left the Soviet Union after August 1938 never reached the Republic. Most of it was handed over to Franco at the end of the war by the French government. See Chapter 35 below.

  13 AVP RF 18/84/144, p. 5.

  14 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

  15 Jackson, La República española…, p. 387.

  16 Ibid., p. 388.

  17 Rafael Abella, La vida cotidiana durante la guerra civil. La España republicana, Barcelona, 2004, p. 359.

  18 Ciano, Diarios, p. 87.

  19 Jackson, La República española…, p. 387.

  20 Sole Sabaté and Villarroya, España en llamas, p. 170.

  21 Ciano, Diarios, p. 109.

  22 During the course of the war, Barcelona was bombed 113 times by the Aviazione Legionaria, 80 by the Condor Legion, (40 times between 21 and 25 January 1939) and once by the Brigada Aérea Hispana. Altogether, these bombing attacks caused 2,500 deaths, 1,200 of them between March and December 1938 (Joan Villarroya, Els bombardeigs de
Barcelona durant la guerra civil, Barcelona, 1981).

  23 Ibid.

  24 He did the same thing in La Vanguardia under the pseudonym Juan Ventura, describing Prieto as an ‘impenitent pessimist’.

  25 Mije, La Pasionaria and Díaz for the Spanish Communist Party; Mariano Vázquez and García Oliver for the CNT; Herrera and Escorza for the FAI; Vidarte and Pretel for the UGT; Serra Pàmies for the PSUC and Santiago Carrillo for the JSU.

  26 To José Prat, under-secretary of the cabinet. Quoted by Miralles, Juan Negrín, p. 198.

  27 Prieto always maintained (Cómo y por qué salí del Ministeri de Defensa Nacional and in his bitter correspondence with Negrín collected in Epistolario Prieto–Negrín) that Negrín forced him out of the ministry of defence at the insistence of the communists.

  28 Those present included Negrín, Martínez Barrio as president of the Cortes, Lluís Companys as president of the Generalitat, Quemades of the Izquierda Republicana, González Peña of the PSOE, JoséDíaz of the PCE, Monzón of the PNV and Mariano Vázquez of the CNT.

  29 Negrín appointed Méndez Aspe (Izquierda Republicana) as minister of finance, González Peña (PSOE) as minister of justice; Paulino Gómez Sáez (PSOE), minister of the interior; álvarez del Vayo (PSOE, but pro-communist) as minister of state; Giral (Izquierda Republicana) and Irujo (PNV) as ministers without portfolio; Giner de los Ríos (Unión Republicana) as minister of communications and transport; Velao (Izquierda Republicana) as minister of public works; Blanco (CNT) as minister of education (in the place of Jesús Hernández, PCE); and kept Ayguadé (ERC) as minister of work and Uribe (PCE) as minister of agriculture.

  30 Eden, Facing the Dictators, p. 571.

  31 Ciano, Diarios, p. 221.

  32 Ibid., p. 117.

  33 These were presented to the council of ministers on 30 April 1938. He described them as part of his new programme ‘for the knowledge of his compatriots and as an announcement to the world’, to emphasize the national character of his political programme and as the basis of a future compromise between all Spaniards.

  34 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 5 May 1937, DGFp. 282.

  35 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 11 May, 1937, DGFp. 284–5.

  36 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 23 May, 1937, DGFp. 294.

  37 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 11 May, 1937, DGFp. 284.

  CHAPTER 30: Arriba España!

  1 Luis Suárez, Franco: la historia y sus documentos, p. 94.

  2 This first government was made up as follows: vice-president and minister for foreign affairs, General Gómez Jordana; minister of the interior and secretary-general of the council, Ramón Serrano Súñer; minister of justice, Tomás Domínguez; minister without portfolio, Count de Rodezno; minister of national defence, General Fidel Dávila; minister of public order, General Martínez Anido; minister of finance, Andrés Amado; minister of public works, Alfonso Peña Boeuf; minister of national education, Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez; minister of agriculture, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta; minister of organization and unions, Pedro González Bueno; minister of industry and commerce, Juan Antonio Suanzes.

  3 Preston, Franco, caudillo de España, p. 371.

  4 Carlos Fernández, El General Franco, p. 109.

  5 Callahan, La Iglesia católica en España, p. 302.

  6 Colonel Martín Pinillos, see Javier Rodrigo, Prisioneros de Franco.

  7 Coal and steel production underwent a ‘rapid recovery and by 1938 volume output surpassed those of 1935’. See J. M. Bricall, ‘La economia española, 1936–1939’inTuñón de Lara, La guerra civil española 50 años después, p. 377.

  8 Carreras and Tafunell, Historia económica de la España contemporánea, p. 267.

  9 Abella, La vida cotidiana…, p. 241.

  10 Luis Suárez, Franco: la historia y sus documentos, vol, iii, p. 67.

  11 Rojo, Alerta los pueblos, p. 40.

  12 8 September 1936, DGFP, p. 87.

  13 Richthofen war diary, 21 November, 1937, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  14 German ambassador in France to Wilhelmstrasse, 17 March 1938, DGFP, p. 621.

  15 Richthofen war diary, 17 January 1939, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  16 Ciano, Diarios, p. 166.

  17 Ibid., p. 167.

  18 Fraser, Recuérdalo tú…, p. 659.

  19 Jesús Salas, La guerra de España desde el aire, p. 332.

  20 Coverdale, La intervencíon italiana…, p. 317.

  21 XVI Corps under Palacios, García Vallejo’s XVII, Vidal’s XIX, Durán’s XX, and Ibarrola’s XXII, as well as Group ‘A’ under Güemes and Group ‘B’ under Romero, together made up the Army of Levante under Colonel Leopoldo Menéndez.

  22 Ciutat, Relatos y reflexiones, p. 199.

  23 Preston, Franco, caudillo de España, p. 387.

  24 Francisco Franco, Palabras del Caudillo, Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular, Madrid, 1943.

  25 ‘Spain arise! Long live Spain!’

  CHAPTER 31: The Battle of the Ebro

  1 Franco cracked down on anybody who favoured negotiation with the enemy. He saw it as treason to the nationalist cause. See Saña, Serrano Súñer, p. 91.

  2 V Corps consisted of the 11th, 45th and 46th Divisions; XV Corps of the 3rd, 3xh and 42nd Divisions; and XII Corps (commanded by Etelvino Vega) of the 16th and 44th Divisions.

  3 Each division in theory had 10,000 men with 5,000 rifles, 255 machine-guns, 30 mortars, four anti-tank guns, three artillery groups of nine field guns, and a battalion of engineers to organize the crossing.

  4 For the progress of the battle: see Francisco Cabrera Castillo, Del Ebro a Gandesa. La batalla del Ebro, Julio–noviembre 1938, Madrid, 2002; Julián Henríquez Caubín, La batalla del Ebro, México, 1966; J. M. Martínez Bande, La batalla del Ebro, Madrid, 1988; Lluís M. Mezquida i Gené, La batalla del Ebro, Tarragona, 2001; Estanislau Torres, La batalla de l’Ebre i la caiguda de Barcelona, Lérida, 1999; Gabriel Cardona and Juan Carlos Losada, Aunque me tires el Puente, Madrid, 2004; and above all, Jorge M. Reverte, La batalla del Ebro, Barcelona, 2003.

  5 The 50th Division was commanded by Colonel Luís Campos Guereta and the 105th Division by Colonel Natalio López Bravo.

  6 Francisco Franco Salgado, Mis conversaciónes privadas con Franco, pp. 262-3.

  7 Blanco, La incompetencia militar…, p. 476.

  8 Skoutelsky, L’espoir guidait leurs pas, p. 104.

  9 Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales, pp. 355ff.

  10 Fraser, Recuérdalo tú…, p. 661.

  11 Jesús Salas, La guerra desde el aire, pp. 356ff.

  12 Miguel Mateu, personal testimony.

  13 Quoted by Reverte, La batalla del Ebro, p. 112.

  14 Castells, Las Brigadas…, p. 358.

  15 RGVA 33987/3/1149, p. 284.

  16 Legion Condor Lageberichte BA-MA RL 35/5 H 7202.

  17 Rolfe, The Lincoln Battalion, p. 131.

  18 Legion Condor Lageberichte BA-MA RL 35/5 H 7162.

  19 Reverte, La batalla del Ebro, p. 141.

  20 BA-MA RL 35/5 H7197.

  21 See Tagüeña, Testimonio de dos guerras, p. 230,

  22 Ramón Salas, El Ejército Popular de la República, p. 1974.

  23 Legion Condor Lageberichte BA-MA RL 35/5 H7175.

  24 Reverte, La batalla del Ebro, p. 219.

  25 Legion Condor, Lageberichte BA-MA RL 35/5 H7122.

  26 Castells, Las Brigadas, p. 359.

  27 Luís María de Lojendio, Operaciones militares de la guerra de España, Madrid, 1940.

  28 Ciano, Diarios, p. 168.

  29 Crónica, vol. v, p. 111.

  30 Boletín del V Cuerpo del Ejército del Ebro.

  31 Reverte, La batalla del Ebro, p. 564.

  32 Togliatti, Escritos sobre la guerra de España, p. 253.

  33 Stepánov, Las causas de la derrota…, p. 142.

  CHAPTER 32: The Republic in the European Crisis

  1 Azaña, Diarios completos, p. 1238.

  2 Ibid., p. 1240.

  3 Negrín to Rafael Méndez (Rafael Méndez in Indice, November–Dece
mber 1971).

  4 Azaña, Diarios completos, p. 1240.

  5 Thomas, La guerra civil española, p. 911.

  6 DGFP, p. 629.

  7 Ciano, Diarios, p. 180.

  8 Ibid., p. 183.

  9 Azcárate, Mi embajada…, p. 240.

  10 Colonel Ribbing’s report from Spain, General Staff, Former Secret Archive, Foreign Department, KA E III 26, vol. 1, p. 22.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Also in the United States, the FBI investigated US nationals who had served in the International Brigades, and later, during Senator McCarthy’s ‘witch-hunts’, Milton Woff, Alvah Bessie, Edwin Rolfe, John Gates, Robert Thompson, Irving Margollies and other members of the Lincoln Brigade were persecuted, with some imprisoned, while others found it very hard to obtain employment.

  13 Finally in 1952, André Marty was expelled from the French Communist Party.

  14 Ibárruri. Pamphlet published in Barcelona in 1938, quoted by Thomas, La guerra civil española, p. 916.

  15 Castells, Las Brigadas…, pp. 383–4. Many of those communists who fought in Spain played important roles in their home countries during and after the war: Pietro Nenni, who became minister of foreign affairs in Italy; Luigi Longo, vice-president of the Italian Communist Party; Charles Tillon, minister for air in France between 1945 and 1948; Rol-Tanguy, the communist leader of the Paris uprising just before its liberation in August 1944; Enver Hodja, the dictator of Albania; Walter Ulbricht, the leader of East Germany; Josip Broz ‘Tito’, the leader of Yugoslavia; Erno Gerö, ‘Pedro’, minister of communications in Hungary; Ladislas Rajk, minister of the interior in Hungary and a number of others. Many would be purged. In Stalin’s eyes, service in Spain signified foreign contagion.

  16 Colonel Ribbing’s report from Spain, General Staff, Former Secret Archive, Foreign Department, KA E III 26, vol. 1, p. 14.

  17 Zugazagoitia, Guerra y vicisitudes, p. 487.

  18 Gorkín, Arquer, Andrade, Escuder, Rebull, Adroher and Bonet.

  19 15 December 1938, RGVA 35082/1/221, p. 2.

  20 25 November 1938, RGVA 33987/3/1081, pp. 30–44, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 506.

  21 RGVA 33987/3/1081, p. 16.

  22 Ibid., p. 80, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, pp. 498–9.

  CHAPTER 33: The Fall of Catalonia

  1 The Army of the Centre had around 100,000 men, while the Estremadura front had 50,000 and Andalucia 20,000. The Army of Levante had 21 under-strength divisions and four and a half in reserve. At the beginning of December 1938 the People’s Army possessed no more than 225,000 rifles, 4,000 light machine-guns and 3,000 machine-guns (Ramón Salas, Historia del Ejército Popular).