The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

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 confirmed 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

The nationalist forces defending the Teruel salient consisted of the 52nd Division which, even when supplemented with volunteers from the city, amounted to less than 10,000 men. Colonel Domingo Rey d’Harcourt, the commander, had established a line of trenches and strong points, supported by others situated on hills, such as La Muela, which dominated Teruel. General Rojo’s plan of attack was to encircle the town with the 11th and 25th Divisions attacking from the north-east towards the villages of Caudé and Concud, while the 34th and 64th Division from XVIII Corps would attack from the south-east towards the Pico del Zorro and La Muela de Teruel. Two more divisions, the 40th and 68th from XX Corps, would advance on Escandón and El Vértice Castellar. If the manoeuvre went according to plan, Teruel would be cut off from nationalist territory. In the next stage, units from XVIII and XXII Corps would establish a line of defence to repel the inevitable nationalist counter-attacks, while XX Corps, supported by tanks, would fight into the city.¹⁰

The provincial capital of Teruel, a gloomy town in bleak terrain, was famous for its cold in winter, but in mid December of 1937 the conditions were almost Siberian. Snow was falling at dawn on 15 December when the 11th Division, in which the communist poet Miguel Hernández was serving, broke through the weak nationalist lines. By 10 a.m. they had taken Concud. The republican forces achieved complete surprise, partly as a result of the weather and partly by forgoing a preliminary bombardment.

Many of the attacks, however, were often wasted. On 17 December the 3rd Tank Company of Captain Gubanov started an assault five times, but the infantry failed to support it. The international tank regiment consisted mainly of Soviet volunteers who were fighting at the most dangerous sectors of the front.¹¹ Captain Tsaplin was particularly heroic. His tank was hit, with one of his tracks damaged only 50 metres from the enemy trenches. He stayed in his tank for eight hours, ‘resisting the ferocious attacks of the enemy. When he ran out of ammunition, he disabled the tank, climbed out and escaped.’¹²

XVIII Corps, having cut through the weak opposition and bypassed the town, captured the Muela de Teruel at midday on 18 December. Two days later its troops joined up at San Blas with XXII Corps and began to prepare the defensive line north-west of the city. On 19 December the 40th Division, which had experienced heavy fighting in Escandón, reached the outskirts of Teruel. Prieto and Rojo arrived that day to visit the front, accompanied by a large retinue of foreign journalists including Hemingway, Matthews and Robert Capa, waiting for the moment when they could announce to the world that the People’s Army had captured a provincial capital.¹³

The nationalist high command was taken aback on hearing of the offensive. ‘Alarming news,’ wrote Richthofen in his war diary. ‘The reds have breached the front near Teruel.’¹⁴ Franco was the most disturbed. He was torn between continuing with his plan to attack Madrid, as he was counselled by his German and Italian advisers, or react to the red cape brandished in his face by the republicans. To the intense frustration of his advisers, Franco could not allow the republicans to enjoy their minor triumph. ‘The Generalissimo’, reported the Condor Legion to Berlin, ‘decided from the start, for reasons of prestige of a special political nature, and at the cost of the already prepared attack via Guadalajara towards Madrid, to re-establish the front around Teruel along the line as it was on 15 December.’¹⁵ Franco’s first instinct was to send in the Condor Legion immediately, but Richthofen was cautious. ‘Weather situation is quite serious,’ he noted.¹⁶

To seal the breach, Franco sent Aranda to Teruel with three divisions and ordered Dávila to move the 81st Division from the upper Tagus. On 20 December he issued a directive putting together an army for the relief of the city. It would be commanded by Dávila and include the Army Corps of Galicia, which would operate north of the River Tuna, and the Corps of Castille, reinforced with two Navarrese divisions, which would deploy to the south. These forces would be supported by all the artillery and air units available, especially the Italian artillery and the Condor Legion. But for almost a whole week aircraft were grounded by bad visibility and unusually harsh frosts, affecting engines, wings and runways. Only the Condor Legion’s anti-aircraft batteries could be sent into action against the breakthrough.

On 21 December fierce street fighting began in Teruel itself. The republican 68th Division with T-26 tanks seized the suburb round the bullring. Slightly blurred photos of republican tanks in Teruel were published around the world. The nationalist garrison under Rey d’Harcourt pulled back towards the centre of the city and prepared to defend the buildings around the Plaza de San Juan and its church. These included the Comandancia Militar, the Civil Governor’s office, the Banco de España, the Hospital de la Asunción and many other public buildings. Colonel Barba commanded the defence of the Seminary, the Convent of Santa Clara and the churches of Santiago and Santa Teresa. The republican infantry advanced into the city behind a curtain of machine-gun fire. ‘You could make out the dinamiteros running up the first streets,’ wrote Herbert Matthews of the New York Times, ‘and the flashes of their explosive charges exploding inside houses. A great moment had arrived: one of those dramatic moments in history and journalism.’¹⁷ But such excited optimism was badly misplaced. The winter fighting in Teruel rapidly turned into the most horrific of all the battles of the civil war.

The republicans had to advance up frozen streets, dodging from one pile of rubble to another under nationalist fire. House after house had to be cleared, using grenades and small arms. Holes were blasted in floors during the fighting, and in side walls as soldiers made their way from house to house, avoiding the killing zone of the street outside. Civilians cowering in cellars were in just as much danger of being killed or maimed by grenades, or buried in masonry from the explosive charges. ‘We suddenly saw’, recorded one republican soldier, ‘someone holding a baby out of a window, shouting at us not to fire because there were civilians in the house.’¹⁸

The republicans, following Prieto’s personal instructions to protect the civilian population, were evacuating women and children back to the cellars of the houses near the Plaza del Torico. But many of the women, despite the risk of being shot, looted what they could. In the temperatures, which dropped to around minus 15 centigrade, there was little water available in the city, with pipes frozen solid. Furniture was smashed to provide fuel to melt snow, as well as create a little warmth. Fighting continued during the night, with soldiers on either side bayoneting each other in the intimate anonymity of close-quarter combat. Conditions in Stalingrad, five years later, would not be much worse.

From 22 December the republican artillery was firing at point-blank range into the public buildings held by nationalist defenders. Miners, directed by Belarmino Tomás, were trying to lay charges under those occupied by Rey d’Harcourt and Barba. When the civil governor’s offices were taken ‘some of the defenders slipped into the adjoining building, the Hotel de Aragón, where they carried on this cruel struggle. In the civil governor’s building some prisoners were taken and many corpses brought out. The majority were children who had died of hunger.’¹⁹ The war photographer Robert Capa described the scene: ‘More than fifty people, women and children, most of them blinded by the light, showed their cadaverous faces stained with blood and dirt. They had spent fifteen days below ground, living in continual terror, living off the scraps of food left by the soldiers and a few sardines. Very few had the strength to get up; they had to be helped away. It is impossible to describe such a painful scene.’²⁰

Teruel was still not completely occupied by the republicans, but the government proclaimed victory. On Christmas Eve promotions and awards were made: Hernández Saravia was made a general and Rojo was decorated. The communists claimed the victory for themselves. Even Prieto suffered an attack of optimism and joked that he was now minister of defence and attack.²¹ Professor Haldane, a great supporter of the Republic, had invited the famous singer Paul Robeson to Teruel, and for most of a night he sang spirituals to the British battalion.²²

The terrible weather conditions prevented the nationalists from launching their counterattack until 29 December. This opened with the greatest artillery bombardment yet seen in the war. That day the visibility had improved, the blizzards had died down and the nationalist squadrons were able to operate at full strength, dropping 100 tons of bombs on the republican positions. The republican Moscas were not even able to approach the bombers because of the strong escort of Fiat fighters. The combination of aerial and ground bombardment lasted two hours.²³ As soon as the firing ceased, ten nationalist divisions attacked south-east-wards but the republican line held. The Condor Legion acknowledged that the effect was ‘not great’. The Galicia Corps gained only 300 to 400 metres of ground, while the Corps of Castille ‘remained on their start line’.²⁴

The weather improved next day and the nationalist artillery thundered again. The Condor Legion’s Heinkel 51s attacked the ‘trench systems and reserve positions’, while the highly accurate 88mm guns of its flak batteries focused on key points. ‘As we had already tried out in the Asturias,’ the Condor Legion staff reported to Berlin, ‘the enemy was rendered incapable of fighting when shot up in their trenches by a combination of strafing and flak.’²⁵

During 31 December 1937, fresh blizzards reduced visibility to just a few metres. That night the temperature dropped to below minus 20 centigrade. Despite the weather, the Condor Legion managed to get both bombers and Heinkel 51s off the ground, even though it meant carefully chipping the ice off the wings. Tanks and vehicles were frozen to a standstill. And soldiers who resorted to alcohol to warm up died of cold if they fell asleep. Casualties from frostbite rose dramatically.

On this last day of 1937 the two Navarrese divisions commanded by García Valiño and Muñoz Grandes retook the Muela de Teruel. General Rojo informed Prieto of the development by teleprinter and he replied in an ill humour.²⁶ But worse was still to come. That night, Major Andrés Nieto, commander of the 40th Division who had been appointed military commandant of the city, inexplicably ordered his troops to abandon Teruel. The besieged nationalists do not appear to have realized what had happened. ‘For several hours’, observed Zugazagoitia, ‘Teruel belonged to nobody.’²⁷ General Walter was scathing. He called it ‘a difficult, panic-stricken day when the republican forces fled from the front and cleared out of Teruel itself. [This] was to a significant degree the result of a panic organized by fascist agents among our units.’²⁸

On 1 January 1938, General Rojo ordered Modesto to bring up V Corps to halt the nationalists’ advance on the city. Hellish blizzards filled the trenches with snow and made movement almost impossible. Troops in the open stood out as dark silhouettes and became easy targets. Conditions were so bad that the Condor Legion could not take off. The Germans were highly critical of the Italian artillery, which fired from maps and did not observe the fall of shells ‘which at no point during the attack’ found their targets.²⁹

Republican troops reoccupied most of the city and the fighting began again. Just over a week before, on 23 December, Franco had sent a message to to Colonel Rey d’Harcourt to stimulate his resistance with the promise of immediate reinforcement. ‘Have confidence in Spain, as Spain has confidence in you.’³⁰ But Teruel was not the Alcázar de Toledo and the republican forces were not the militias of 1936. On 7 January, after 24 days of fighting, Rey d’Harcourt surrendered. The nationalists blamed the loss of Teruel on ‘the weakness and incompetence of the sector commander who agreed with the reds to surrender his post of duty’.³¹ The republican authorities evacuated the wounded, some 1,500 people, and took most of the civilian population in trucks to Escandón in terrible weather conditions.

Ten days after the surrender of Teruel the nationalists launched a counter-attack from the north towards the Alto de Celadas and El Muletón, which dominated the valley of the River Alfambra. The onslaught with aircraft and artillery was immense. Over a hundred aircraft fought in the skies over the Alfambra valley. Walter brought up the International Brigades in the 35th Division to halt Aranda’s Galician Corps. XI International Brigade fought well and deserved ‘the highest praise’, Walter reported.³²

Two days later, on 19 January, the 5th Navarrese Division attacked El Muletón defended by XV International Brigade. Republican casualties were very heavy, but they re-formed their line. The order was given to counter-attack, but commanders expected far too much of their troops. They were almost out of ammunition due to the difficulties of resupply, they had received very little food and had to eat snow as there was no drinking water, nor wood for fuel to melt it. Only in Teruel itself could wood be found, stripped from houses. On that same day soldiers of the 84th Mixed Brigade, part of the 40th Division, refused to return to the front. Altogether, 46 of them were executed without trial the following dawn.³³

On 5 February, ‘in perfect weather conditions’ for flying,³⁴ the nationalists launched their major attack towards the Alfambra. General Juan Vigón directed this operation with three corps, those of Galicia, Morocco and Navarre, together with the Italian CTV and Monasterio’s cavalry division. Some 100,000 men and nearly 500 guns were concentrated in the Sierra de Palomera along a front of 30 kilometres.

Peter Kemp, the English volunteer now serving in the Foreign Legion, gives a vivid description of the beginning of this offensive. It was a bright, freezing dawn in the Sierra de Palomera as divisions of red-bereted Carlists and green-coated Legionnaires waited for the bombers to soften up the enemy. Only the sound of the pack-mules’ accoutrements broke the silence. Then, waiting on the ridge, the nationalist troops heard the heavy drone of the Italian bombers coming from their rear. To their sudden horror, they realized that the Savoia-Marchettis had mistaken them for the enemy. Two waves in succession bombed the rocky mountainside, despite the recognition strips and arrows laid out behind. The nationalists’ casualties, however, were much lighter than might have been expected. The operation was hardly delayed.

The attack was accompanied by Monasterio’s 1st Cavalry Division, which made the one great mounted charge of the war in the valley below them. The republican troops manning this part of the front had never seen action before and they were broken immediately by the onslaught. The nationalist formations then swung south, forcing the main republican force to withdraw rapidly. The republicans suffered nearly 20,000 casualties and lost a huge quantity of arms and equipment. On 19 February the nationalists cut the Teruel–Valencia road, leaving El Campesino’s 46th Division surrounded in Teruel. At dawn on 22 February the last republicans slipped out of the city, trying to break through the nationalist lines. Three days later Modesto managed to form a defence line along the right bank of the Alfambra, but this was not the end of the battle. Further operations continued for another four weeks, grinding down the republican forces and pushing them back.

The Battle of Teruel, with its cold and street fighting, was one of the most terrible in a terrible war. The nationalists suffered around 40,000 casualties, a quarter of which were from frostbite. The republican losses had been even more appalling, around 60,000 men altogether.³⁵ In the air battles, the nationalists destroyed far more republican planes than they lost themselves, twelve on 7 February alone,³⁶ but the greatest danger for all pilots was the weather, which accounted for more crashes than enemy action.

The republican infantry suffered its worst casualties after Teruel itself had been taken. This underlined the tragedy and futility of the whole operation. The Republic had set out to seize a city of no strategic value, which it could never have hoped to hold, all at a catastrophic cost in lives and equipment. Once again, the obstinacy of republican leaders, trapped by premature claims of victory for propaganda purposes, sacrificed a large part of their best troops for no purpose. The pathetic state of the survivors, and their demoralization and exhaustion, was to lead straight to another greater disaster in a matter of weeks.

Republican commanders argued furiously among themselves over who was to blame. The report of the political department of the People’s Army listed numerous causes: the strength of the enemy air force, its combined effect with artillery, the reduced republican strength, their inferiority in weapons, the decline in morale and so on.³⁷ Nothing was said about the ineptitude of the plan or the incompetence of commanders.

The Communist Party tried to put the major part of the responsibility on Prieto or Rojo. Comintern advisers even blamed Prieto for ‘distancing himself from the communists’.³⁸ With his usual sinister insinuation, Stepánov reported to Moscow that the failure at Teruel was due, among other things, to the ‘erroneous or treasonous conduct of the general staff, Rojo in particular’.³⁹

During the early spring of 1938, the Republic had only two consolations. One was the opening of the French frontier on 17 March to allow through military equipment. The other came from an unexpected source: the republican fleet, which throughout the war had done little to challenge the nationalist and Italian blockade, mainly because of the inertia and inefficiency of its ships’ crews. Meanwhile, the nationalist fleet had grown with the help of Mussolini, who sent two submarines. These were renamed the Mola and the Sanjurjo, hardly reassuring choices for traditionally superstitious submariners. In addition, seven Italian ‘Legionary’ submarines continued to operate throughout the Mediterranean, ready to hoist the royal Spanish flag if forced to the surface. Mussolini also gave Franco four destroyers and, later in 1938, an old cruiser, the Taranto.

The end of the war in the north meant that the nationalist Mediterranean fleet was reinforced by units from the Cantabrian coast, including the cruiser Almirante Cervera and two seaplane squadrons of Heinkel 60s. One of these went to Palma de Mallorca, where Admiral Francisco de Moreno had set up his joint-staff headquarters with the Italian navy and air force. Palma was used as the principal Italian bomber base for attacks on shipping and republican coastal cities, chiefly Barcelona and Valencia. The Italians dominated the partnership and the island was almost entirely under their occupation. It had been their private fief ever since the early days of the war, when a Bluebeard-like Italian fascist calling himself the Conte Rossi terrorized the island.⁴⁰

It was against this formidable control of the western Mediterranean that the republican navy took everyone by surprise in March. How large a part luck played in their success is difficult to estimate. A flotilla of torpedo boats, backed by two cruisers, the Libertad and the Méndez Nuúñez, and nine destroyers left Cartagena on 5 March to strike at the nationalist fleet in Palma de Mallorca. Meanwhile, a nationalist squadron escorting a convoy from Palma was heading in their direction. It comprised three cruisers, the Baleares, Canarias and Almirante Cervera, three destroyers and two minelayers. The two forces made contact just before 1 a.m. on 6 March. Three of the republican destroyers sighted the Baleares, the flagship, and fired salvos of torpedoes. The nationalist cruiser sank rapidly; Admiral Vierna was among the 726 men lost. Although this was the largest battle at sea, it did not have important results because the nationalists soon refitted the old cruiser República and renamed her the Navarra. Their navy was much more cautious as a result of this action, but its control of the coast was not affected. And only a few days later Heinkel bombing raids on Cartagena crippled the Republic’s only capital ship, the Jaime I.

News of the loss of the Baleares reached the nationalist Army of Manoeuvre just as it was about to launch the most devastating offensive yet seen in the war. It is not certain whether Franco decided after Teruel to give up short cuts to victory once again, and continue with the strategy of dismantling key regions, or whether he was persuaded to take advantage of the weakness of the People’s Army before it could recover from the effects of the winter battle. The opportunity of dealing the enemy’s most experienced formations a further severe blow, while at the same time separating Catalonia, the main source of republican manpower and industry, from the rest of the zone, was obviously attractive. This could then be followed by the reduction of Catalonia and the severing of the Republic from France. Without Catalan industry and supplies from abroad, the central region would fall in a short space of time. It was a less spectacular strategy than a breakthrough to Madrid, but it was more certain of success.

The nationalists began this campaign with a major advantage. They had redeployed their formations far more rapidly than the republican general staff thought possible. Although warned of the threat by spies, the republican commanders somehow convinced themselves that the Guadalajara front was still the nationalists’ target. They assumed, also, that the enemy’s troops must be as exhausted after Teruel as their own. Within two weeks of the recapture of Teruel, General Dávila’s chief of staff, General Vigón, had finalized his plans. The Army of Manoeuvre positioned itself behind the start line, which consisted of the southern half of the central Aragón sector. Starting on the left flank, which was marked by the south bank of the Ebro, there were Yagüe’s Moroccan Corps, the 5th Navarrese Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, the Italian CTV and Aranda’s Galician Corps. Three other corps were deployed, those of Castille, Aragón and Navarre. Altogether, Dávila had 27 divisions, comprising 150,000 men, backed by nearly 700 guns and some 600 aircraft.

On 9 March the nationalist campaign opened with a massive ground and air bombardment. By the time the nationalist infantry reached the republican trenches, their occupants were hardly in a state to hold a rifle. The superiority of nationalist artillery, to say nothing of the Condor Legion, the Aviazione Legionaria and the Brigada Aerea Hispana, left the republicans at a total disadvantage. This campaign saw the Junkers 87, the Stuka dive-bomber, in action for the first time. Luftwaffe officers in Spain claimed that it could drop its load within five metres of a target.

Those republican defenders who endured such bombardments then had to face von Thoma’s tanks, which were used with great effectiveness: ‘the real blitzkrieg’.⁴¹ Nationalist infantry casualties were the lowest of any major offensive during the war. In fact, after many of the bombardments the Foreign Legion had little to do except bayonet the shocked survivors in their trenches. General Walter once again blamed the disaster on ‘the immense and intensive activity and work of defeatist elements and agents of the fifth column within republican units…Those were the days when the most stinking, fetid, treacherous activity by all the bastards of all shades and colours flourished the most.’⁴² Another report to Moscow, however, admitted that ‘we thought [that the nationalist attack] was only a feint and stubbornly continued to expect a general battle at Guadalajara’.⁴³ This, needless to say, was a rather more accurate appreciation of the situation.

On the first day of the offensive Yagüe’s Moroccan Corps, supported by tanks, smashed through the 44th Division and advanced 36 kilometres along the south side of the Ebro. Belchite, still in ruins, fell to the Carlist requetés of the second wave on the next day, 10 March. Yagüe, meanwhile, maintained the momentum of his attack. Any defensive line which the republicans patched together crumbled almost as soon as it was formed. The same day the Condor Legion sent all its Heinkel 111s, Dornier 17s and Heinkel 51s to attack republican airfields. They apparently inflicted with ‘astonishing effect severe damage to the enemy air force on the ground’. The next day the 5th Division’s rapid advance from Belchite was assisted with German tanks from the Gruppe Droehne and Condor Legion 88mm guns.⁴⁴ Without worrying about threats to his flanks, Yagu ¨e pushed forward to Caspe.

After Teruel the republican forces were exhausted and badly equipped (many of them had still not received proper ammunition resupply), while the fresh troops in the front line were inexperienced conscripts. The retreat was more a rout than a withdrawal. ‘A large part of the army, which survived the fascist offensive,’ wrote Stepánov, ‘the overwhelming majority of whom were officers and commanders, were confounded and seized by panic, lost their heads and fled to the rear.’⁴⁵

One or two brave stands were made, but demoralization quickly set in, as the republicans saw that they were incapable of resisting the nationalist onslaught either on the ground or from the air. The situation was made worse by the increase of anti-communist feeling after Teruel. Almost any story of communist perfidy was believed. Non-communist units thought that their ammunition supplies were being cut off deliberately. These suspicions stemmed from isolated incidents. During the battle of Teruel, for example, part of the 25th Division was refused replacement weapons and ammunition when one of their senior officers refused to join the Communist Party. There were also bitter arguments among field commanders and staff, particularly the communist officers, many of which dated from Teruel. Líster had refused to obey Rojo; El Campesino claimed that Modesto had deliberately left his division to be cut off during the withdrawal;⁴⁶ and Modesto and Líster still hated each other, as they had done ever since the loss of the BT-5 tanks at Fuentes de Ebro.

During the chaos which ensued from the Aragón debâcle, the mutual recriminations involved both Marty and Líster, who each tried to justify his behaviour by accusing the other of treason and carrying out arbitrary executions. Leaders of the Spanish Communist Party demanded that several International Brigade commanders, including Walter and C

? opi$$$, should be dismissed for their failures.

In the first ten days of the Aragón offensive the nationalists took the centre-right of the front to depths varying from 50 to 100 kilometres. On 22 March they began their assault on the sector from the Ebro up to Huesca. Moscardó’s Corps and Solchaga’s Carlist divisions pushed down south-eastwards, while Yagüe crossed the Ebro to take the retreating republicans in their rear left flank. With the whole of central Aragón now captured the advance to the sea was launched at the end of March.

On 14 March advance units of the Italian CTV entered Alcañiz, which eleven days before had been smashed by fourteen Savoia-Marchettis dropping 10,000 kilos of bombs, killing 200 people. The nationalist Heraldo de Aragón announced that the town had been ‘set on fire by the reds before fleeing’. The Aviazione Legionaria now had its own Guernica.⁴⁷ The nationalists halted briefly on 22 March to regroup. Its next action was to be to the north of the Ebro towards Lérida. Moscardó’s Aragón Corps, and Solchaga’s Navarrese divisions continued to push to the south-east and took Barbastro and Monzón, while Yagüe, having crossed the Ebro near Quinto on 23 March, chased the republicans withdrawing on his left flank. The same day the nationalist command ordered the bombing of Lérida to prepare for their attack.

For the republicans it was a retreat which slowed only when the enemy paused to rest. The withdrawal of a flank formation set off a panic; in the confusion nobody seemed to warn his neighbouring unit. Rations and ammunition seldom got through. And all the time the enemy fighters harried the retreating troops like hounds. Circuses of fighters dived in turn to drop grenades and strafe the republicans. The old fear of being cut off, which had broken the militias in the early days of the war, now affected the People’s Army. The senior communist officer, Manuel Tagüeña, reported that by 1 April the 35th and 45th International Divisions near Mora del Ebro had ‘completely lost all capacity to fight’.⁴⁸

On 3 April the former POUM stronghold of Lérida fell to Yagu ¨e’s troops, but the Italians were held for a time by Líster’s 11th Division at Tortosa, which had been reduced to rubble by bombing. The Aragón and Navarre Corps seized the reservoirs of Tremp and Camarasa with the hydroelectric plants which provided power to industry in Barcelona. Balaguer fell on 6 April after a terrible bombardment by 100 aircraft. Berti, with the CTV and Monasterio’s cavalry entered Gandesa, where they were welcomed by the Duchesses of Montpensier and Montealegre and the Countesses of Bailén and Gamazo, waiting to pay homage to the victorious troops.

Meanwhile Aranda’s Galician Corps, together with the 4th Navarrese Division, fought on towards the coast just below the Ebro’s mouth. On 15 April they took the seaside town of Vinaroz, thus establishing a corridor which separated Catalonia from the rest of republican Spain. On that day, which was Good Friday, the Carlist requetés waded into the sea as if it were the River Jordan. All the nationalist press competed in describing how General Alonso Vega dipped his fingers in the water and crossed himself. The nationalists believed that the end of their Crusade was near, because ‘the victorious sword of Franco had cut in two the Spain occupied by the reds’.⁴⁹

Hopes of Peace Destroyed

During that spring of 1938, while the nationalist Army of Manoeuvre was overrunning Aragón, the Republic faced a growing economic crisis and low morale in the rear areas. There was distrust between political groups, fear of the SIM secret police and resentment against the authoritarian nature of Negrín’s government, acute food shortages, profiteering and defeatism. At the same time the population of Barcelona–now the capital of the Republic–suffered from the heaviest bombing raids of the war.

The republican zone lived in a spiral of hyperinflation. The cost of living had tripled in less than two years of war.¹ The greatest burden on the economy at the beginning of the war had been the militia wage bill. The rate of pay, however, was not raised from the original ten pesetas a day, despite the high level of inflation, so that by the winter of 1936 arms purchases from abroad had become by far the greatest expenditure. Spain had no arms industry, apart from small factories in the Basque country and Asturias. It was therefore unrealistic to expect metallurgical industries in Catalonia to be able to convert themselves for war production when the expertise was lacking. In fact, it was remarkable what their factories managed to improvise during the first six months of the war, when the central government, determined to take control from the CNT collectives and the Generalitat, refused to provide foreign exchange for the purchase of machinery from abroad.

All the arms which the Republic needed had to be purchased abroad, with payment in advance in gold or hard currency. From the moment it was known that the Republic’s gold reserves had been transferred to France and the Soviet Union, a form of gold fever started in Europe among governments, and above all arms dealers, who saw the chance of huge profits at little risk.

Right from the start of the conflict the republican authorities, ignorant of the arms trade, had created a seller’s market in Europe and North America by their obvious desperation. On 8 August 1936 Álvaro de Albornoz, the republican ambassador in Paris, signed a contract with the Société Éuropéenne d’Études et d’Entreprises, giving it exclusive rights ‘for the purchase in France and other countries of all products’, committing the Republic to pay a commission of 7.5 per cent for its services. Yet this company was largely owned by merchant banks (such as Worms et Cie and the Ottoman Bank), newspapers (Le Temps and Le Matin) and major industrialists such as Schneider-Creusot, all of whom supported General Franco.

Republican purchasers found themselves facing a barrier of blackmail, when government ministers and senior officials demanded huge bribes, ranging from $25,000 to $275,000 for their signature on export licences and other documents. Sometimes they took the money and then blocked the shipment later.² Because of the non-intervention policy, the Republic was entirely vulnerable to such tricks. And often when the weapons–paid for in advance–finally arrived, the crates contained inferior or even unserviceable weaponry. The necessity of obtaining arms wherever they were available meant equipping the People’s Army with a wide variety of calibres involving many different types of ammunition. A very large proportion, perhaps even half, of the weapons purchased never arrived, either because of fraud, or the blockade, with torpedoings at sea and the bombing of ports.

Spanish governments had purchased weapons from Germany since well before the arrival of the Nazis in power. The colonial army in Morocco had demanded mustard gas to use against the Riffian tribes, who later became their most effective auxiliaries. Yet during the civil war the Republic purchased arms from Nazi Germany, General Franco’s most important ally. Recent research³ has now shown that what was long suspected is true: Colonel-General Hermann Göring, Minister President of Prussia and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, was selling weapons to the Republic while his own men were fighting for Franco.

On 1 October 1936 the Welsh cargo ship Bramhill reached Alicante, having come from Hamburg with a consignment of 19,000 rifles, 101 machine-guns and more than 28 million cartridges, all ordered by the CNT in Barcelona for its militia columns. The presence of the Bramhill in Alicante was observed by officers on HMS Woolwich. Her captain immediately informed the Foreign Office, which investigated the matter. The German government made excuses, saying that Hamburg was a free port, yet it was clear that this cargo had arrived with official blessing. The Foreign Office left the matter there. In fact, the architect of this secret sale of arms to the Republic was Hermann Göring. He used as intermediaries the well-known arms trafficker Josef Veltjens, who had already sold arms to General Mola before the rising, but above all Prodromos Bodosakis-Athanasiades, a piratical Greek on close terms with the country’s dictator, Metaxas. Bodosakis-Athanasiades was the chief shareholder and chief executive of Poudreries et Cartoucheries Helléniques SA, whose main associate and backer was Rheinmetall-Borsig which, in turn, was controlled by Göring personally.

Bodosakis passed the demands for weapons which he received to Rheinmetall-Borsig and the Metaxas government provided end-user certificates stating that the equipment was destined for the Greek army. When the shipment reached Greece, Bodosakis transferred it to another vessel supposedly sailing to Mexico, but in fact to Spain. As Bodosakis was dealing with the nationalists as well as the Republic, he had to split shipments between vessels, with the best and latest weapons destined for the nationalists and the oldest and least serviceable for the republicans.

In 1937 and 1938, when the sale of German weapons to the Republic was reaching its peak, Bodosakis’s company was ordering shipments from Rheinmetall-Borsig worth anything up to 40 million Reichmarks (£3.2 million at the time). These consignments were almost all for the Republic and one can be fairly sure that Bodosakis was charging five or six times what he had paid Göring. It is more than likely that he then had to pay a significant share of his immense profits to Göring personally, rather than to Rheinmetall-Borsig, and this was on top of payments to the Metaxas regime and other officials.⁴

There was even a Soviet angle to this very free market trade between Nazi Germany and republican Spain. In November 1937 Bodosakis travelled to Barcelona in a Soviet aircraft, accompanied by George Rosenberg, son of the purged Soviet ambassador. Rosenberg, who was a shipping agent and wheeler-dealer, and Bodosakis came to sign a contract with the Republic for £2.1 million to supply ammunition. On this occasion, as on all others, they insisted on full payment in hard currency in advance. The supply of German weaponry to the Republic continued until the very end of the war, as the international commission for the repatriation of foreign volunteers established in January 1939.⁵

The nationalists, exasperated by this extraordinary racket, protested on many occasions to the German authorities.⁶ They identified eighteen vessels with such shipments to republican ports between 3 January 1937 and 11 May 1938, but received little explanation. As far as Hermann Göring was concerned, republican hard currency was as good as nationalist.⁷ The decoration of Karinhall, his country house of magnificent vulgarity north of Berlin, was no doubt subsidized by his enormous profits from the Spanish Civil War.

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 the 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 for 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.

As soon as Lord Halifax succeeded Eden as foreign secretary the arrangements for the treaty went ahead, even though more British shipping had been sunk by Italian submarines at the beginning of the month. (Eden had ordered the anti-submarine patrols to be recommenced, noting that ‘the Admiralty feared that this would impair the relations which they had established with General Franco’s Admiral Moreno’.)³⁰ On 16 April Ciano recorded that ‘at 6.30 p.m. the Pact with England was signed. Lord Perth was moved. He said to me: “You know how much I have wanted this moment to come.” It is true–Perth has been a friend. Witness dozens of his reports which are in our hands.’³¹ The date of the signing had been chosen to ‘please Halifax as it is his birthday. All very romantic…’ the young fascist foreign minister added sarcastically.³² The part of the treaty which affected Spain most directly was the provision that Italy should be allowed to keep its troops there until the end of the war. This agreement was not referred to the signatories of the non-intervention pact, although it was deemed to be still in force. It is not surprising that even Churchill, who had supported non-intervention strongly, later described it as ‘an elaborate system of official humbug’ which had ‘been laboriously maintained’.

The Spanish republican government was horrified by the treaty. Two weeks after it was signed, Negrín launched a vain diplomatic offensive. He issued his ‘Thirteen Points’ plan for establishing what amounted to a caretaker government with free elections to follow.³³ It was intended as a formula for peace negotiations. According to Stepánov, they had been dictated to him by the central committee of the Spanish Communist Party. They consisted of the following:

Assure the absolute independence and integrity of Spain.

Liberation of Spanish territory from foreign forces.

The defence of the people’s Republic and of a state based on democratic principles.

The calling of a plebiscite as soon as the war had ended.

Without undermining the unity of Spain, the protection and encouragement of the cultures of its various peoples.

Respect for citizens’ rights: liberty of conscience and religious practice.

Respect for legal property and foreign capital.

A profound agrarian reform and democracy in the countryside.

Advanced social legislation to guarantee the rights of workers.

The improvement of the physical and moral culture of the nation.

An army independent of political parties and to be the instrument of the people.

The renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy.

A broad amnesty for all Spaniards.

Needless to say, there was not a single point which Franco would be prepared to consider. Time and again he had insisted that no peace deal was possible. Faupel had reported to Berlin in May 1937: ‘Franco rejected any idea of a compromise as completely impossible, stating that the war would under all circumstances be fought to a final decision.’³⁴ Serrano Súñer said a few days later, ‘Sooner or later there would have to be elections. Since red propaganda in Spain, however, is at present undoubtedly far more clever and effective than that of the whites and since, moreover, red propaganda would have the support of the Marxists, Jews and Freemasons of the entire world, these elections would necessarily lead to the formation of a government, the political composition of which would be decidedly leftist, openly anti-German, and anti-national socialist…We cannot therefore have the slightest interest in a compromise solution in Spain.’³⁵ Once again Franco told Faupel that ‘he and all Spanish nationalists would rather die than place the fate of Spain once again in the hands of a red or democratic government’.³⁶ Even the philo-communist Álvarez del Vayo told a French reporter that ‘after so much blood had been shed he considered impossible any mediation between the two parties, as suggested by Mr Churchill’.³⁷

So it is difficult to know what Negrín hoped to achieve in the way of a settlement. Was this just an appeal to the democracies to change their position, or a deliberate provocation of the nationalists, who were bound to reject every single one of his points? And yet Negrín, despite his overt rejection of the realism of Azaña and Prieto, was carrying out a number of secret overtures aimed at a peace settlement. It is impossible to tell, but one thing is certain. Negrín had great confidence in his diplomatic talents. He felt that all he needed was a single military victory to force the enemy to the negotiating table. This was to lead to the final, self-inflicted disaster of the Spanish Republic.

Arriba España!

Nothing deflected General Franco from his ultimate goal in the war: the total destruction of his enemies and the transformation of Spain. His collaborators in this grand project from the start had been his brother Nicolás, Generals Kindelán, Orgaz and Millán Astray, and then, from February 1937, his ambitious brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Súñer.

Faced with the simplicity of Franco’s ideas, as well as those of the other generals, Serrano Súñer saw the possibilities for his own advancement in the hierarchy of the state. Their simple military government was effective enough to win the war (he called it the ‘army camp state’), but it would hardly appear very convincing to the civilized world after the fighting was over.¹

Once Franco had achieved absolute command of all the armed forces and had made himself the supreme leader of the National Movement, ‘responsible only to God and to History’, the time had come to replace the Junta Técnica of the early days with a formal government. On 30 January 1938, Franco constituted his first cabinet of ministers and established the Law for the Central Administration of the State. ‘The presidency [of the council of ministers] remains tied to the chief of state. The ministers will constitute the government of the nation. The ministers will swear an oath of loyalty to the chief of state and to the nationalist regime.’ And the chief of state assumed in addition ‘the supreme power to dictate juridical norms of a general character’. This in effect meant that the nationalist head of state personally enjoyed total power, executive, legislative and judicial.

In the creation of the three key ministries, defence, public order and foreign affairs, all controlled by generals, the army camp was still clearly at work.² These senior officers and their departments were simply extensions of the Generalissimo’s headquarters. The three ministries controlled by Falangists were linked to the ministry of the interior and the controlling influence of Serrano Súñer, who ran his domain with an iron hand. He achieved supremacy over the civil governors and moved two of his own supporters, José Antonio Giménez Arnau and Dionisio Ridruejo, to take over the direction of press and propaganda. Serrano ˜er even had a say in the appointment of his fellow ministers, suggesting most of the names himself. He somehow persuaded Franco to appoint Amado, a former colleague of Calvo Sotelo, as minister of finance, despite Franco’s dislike of him for having been very critical of his brother Nicolás. He also managed to get the Caudillo to appoint the monarchist Sáinz Rodríguez, whom Franco suspected of being a Freemason.

The day after forming his new government in Burgos, Franco received members of the diplomatic corps, among whom was Robert Hodgson, then the British agent accredited to the nationalist government. Hodgson appears to have been charmed by the Caudillo.³ On 12 February, in the Monastery de las Huelgas, the ministers swore their loyalty to Franco with the following declaration: ‘I swear in the name of God and his holy evangelists to accomplish my duty as minister of Spain with the strictest loyalty to the head of state, the Generalissimo of our glorious forces, and to the constitutional principles of the national regime to serve the destiny of the Fatherland.’ There was no mention either of a republic or of a monarchy, only of the Generalissimo himself, who would define the national regime as he saw fit.

During March, General Franco approved all the decrees which Serrano Súñer passed him to sign, including those abolishing the liberty of meeting or of association. The ministries of justice and education went to work reversing all republican legislation to do with the Church or teaching. Schools were handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities to control. Crucifixes would hang in every classroom. The most important decree was the Fuero del Trabajo, or Right of Work, which was a combination of the Church’s social doctrine, as expressed in the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the 26 points of the Falange and some elements of the Italian fascist Carta del Lavoro. Above all, it decreed the disappearance of class struggle in Spain, which would be replaced by a vertical association of bosses and workers. It also emphasized the desire of the regime to exercise a completely dirigiste control of the economy.

Over the following months the legislative machinery did not halt. Decrees were issued covering every aspect of life, from abolishing republican public holidays and choosing new ones, the design of the currency and postage stamps (usually the effigies of El Cid or the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, or the symbols of the new state). The Statute of Catalonia was abolished on 5 April and on 22 April the Law of the Press was introduced, placing all publications at the service of Franco. The purpose was to punish ‘any piece of writing which, directly or indirectly, tended to diminish the prestige of the nation, or of the regime, undermine the work of government in the new state or sow pernicious ideas among those of feeble intellect’. The Law of the Press, ˜er, remained in force until 1966. On 21 May Castilian was pronounced the only official language. Basque or Catalan could no longer be spoken in public. On 7 July the sentence of death was rather belatedly made official again. Meanwhile, Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez began to overhaul primary education, with classes of religious and patriotic education. All foreign influences were rooted out, even in sport. Only recognizably Spanish sports, such as the game of pelota, were to be allowed.

In May the Portuguese government formally recognized Franco’s government and the Vatican appointed Cardinal Cicognani as papal nuncio. Franco also annulled all republican decrees expelling the Jesuits. He returned their properties and privileges. The head of the order, Vladimir Ledochovsky, thanked the Caudillo, declaring that ‘at the moment of his death, the 30,000 Jesuits in the world would give three masses for the soul of the Generalissimo’,⁴ an exchange very much to the advantage of the Company of Jesus. Franco, however, intended to make sure that the Church in Spain was no more than another lobby, along with the Carlists, the Falangists and his own generals.⁵ He insisted that he should have the right to confirm or reject the appointment of bishops, the old prerogative of the monarchy.

Another question which preoccupied Franco during the spring of 1938 was the treatment of prisoners of war. Following the collapse of the republican northern front and the offensive in Aragón, there were another 72,000 of them, bringing the total captured to more than 160,000, according to the head of the Inspección de Campos de Concentración de Prisioneros, which came directly under Franco’s headquarters.⁶ By the end of the war the figure reached 367,000. Prisoners were held in ordinary jails, camps, castles, convents, monasteries, cinemas and prison ships. The problem was how to identify the ‘irrecuperables’, who were usually executed, and those who had been led astray and could be reeducated back to the nationalist cause.

Since the coup d’état in 1936 had been successful in the main regions of agricultural production, nationalist Spain, unlike the republican zone, never suffered from food shortages, even in 1938 when the economy declined. Industrial production also increased and not just because of the conquest of the north.⁷ This was because factory owners and managers had not fled. A similar process took place in the conquered territories. In addition, the nationalists carried out a very effective commercial and economic policy, such as Queipo de Llano’s development of Andalucian trade. The nationalist authorities maintained an iron grip and centralized control over agricultural and industrial production, and of inter-although introduced as a wartime provision, according to Serrano Su ´n national trade. Monetary policy was also tightly controlled. By the end of the war, the nationalist peseta had lost only 27.7 per cent of its value.⁸

Food was not in short supply for those who could pay for it. In provincial cities of the nationalist zone such as Burgos, Pamplona, Corunna, Seville or Bilbao, well-dressed people strolled in the streets before taking an aperitif or having dinner. Bars and restaurants were as full as churches and bullrings.⁹

Franco’s main suppliers (unlike those of the Republic) did not press the nationalists to pay in advance, nor did they overcharge. The nationalists did not have anything like enough in hard currency to pay, so Franco effectively mortgaged Spain’s mineral wealth. His most voracious creditors, but also the purveyors of his most effective aid, were the Germans. Hermann Göring, the head of the Nazis’ ‘Four Year Plan’ as well as the Luftwaffe, was the key figure. The origins of the German commercial organization, HISMA/ROWAK, have already been mentioned. It rapidly gained control of a virtual monopoly of Spanish nationalist imports and exports. Yet Göring, preoccupied by the scale of nationalist debt and determined to take control of Spanish mining output on a more permanent basis, created a special affiliate of HISMA, called the Montana Project. Montana would oversee the exploitation and export to Germany of iron, mercury, pyrites, tungsten and antimony from 73 Spanish mines.

On 10 January 1938 von Stohrer, the German ambassador in Salamanca, called a meeting to discuss HISMA/ROWAK’s operations in 1937, which reached a total of 2,584,000 tons sent to Germany.¹⁰ Fifteen days later Count Jordana, the foreign minister, told German representatives that the Montana project could not go ahead because existing (in fact, republican) legislation insisted on a study mine by mine first and could not be applied to 73 of them at once. Also, according to this same law, foreign capital invested in Spanish mines could not exceed 20 per cent. Jordana asked them to be patient until a new law could be passed. But the nationalists also came under heavy pressure from Great Britain which, as the largest importer of iron and pyrites from Spain, wanted to protect its own interests. Before July 1936 five British companies, including the Rio Tinto company, accounted for 65 per cent of British pyrite imports, which were essential for the armaments industry.

Franco’s national pride reacted against the German demands and he asked for an increase in military aid, while playing for time. Eventually, the infuriated Germans threatened to cut off all aid and he had to sign the new mining law in July 1938. The Germans nevertheless immediately reinforced the Condor Legion, which happened to be just in time for the Battle of the Ebro.

Franco had a much easier time with his Italian allies. Mussolini’s megalomania led him into prodigal gestures of munificence, which reduced his minister of finance to despair. He never pressed the nationalists for payment or tried to exploit Spanish mineral wealth. Italian aid to nationalist Spain was disastrous to the economy. The cost of Mussolini’s adventure in Spain rose to 8,500 million lire (the equivalent of three billion euros).

In 1938, as well as devoting his energies to rebuilding the political and economic structure of Spain, Franco had to concentrate on finishing the war. After the devastating advance of the nationalists across Aragón to the sea, his allies expected the fall of Barcelona to follow, yet Franco turned away from this prize. General Vigón and the other nationalist commanders could not understand why the Generalissimo should fail to seize the opportunity when his troops were almost at the gates of the Catalan capital. Nor could his republican opponents. General Rojo himself admitted that Barcelona could have been taken with ‘less force and in less time’ than when it finally took place in January 1939.¹¹

The reason for Franco’s timidity is indeed strange. Since the autumn of 1936 he had been convinced that the French were playing an ambitious game. He thought that French officers were serving secretly with the republican forces and that France planned to annex Catalonia. He had told a German representative in September 1936 that ‘France was the actual ruler of Catalonia’.¹² He continued to believe, quite wrongly, that the French would annex Catalonia ‘to prevent nationalist Spain from being too powerful’, as he stated to Richthofen in November 1937.¹³ It must be said that even the Germans were concerned for a short time in March 1938 that the French were moving troops to the south-west of the country and that the French Mediterranean squadron had ‘received orders to be prepared for action’.¹⁴ But Franco’s fears persisted long after his allies had discounted the threat entirely. As late as 17 January 1939, with nationalist troops advancing on Barcelona, Richthofen again had to reassure Franco that the French would not intervene.¹⁵ All this was despite the fact that Chamberlain had warned France clearly that if the Nazis reacted furiously to a French intervention in Catalonia, Great Britain would not come to her aid. In addition, Franco had heard that the French general staff was opposed to involvement in Spain, partly because few of its members sympathized with the Republic, and because they feared a conflict which could lead to war on two fronts.

Mussolini was fluctuating, once again, between enthusiasm and pessimism. He was becoming weary of the war in Spain. He had begun to set his sights on the coast of Albania across the Adriatic and was exasperated by Franco’s lack of gratitude. In addition, Ciano had been deeply angered by the nationalist attitude. ‘I talked to Nicolás Franco about our aid for 1938,’ he recorded in his diary at the end of March. ‘They want a billion lire worth of goods, payment to be mostly in kind and very problematical. We must keep our tempers. We are giving our blood for Spain–do they want more?’¹⁶

Relations between the national contingents were not helped by mistakes, however genuine: Italian bombers mistook targets and Condor Legion Messerschmitts attacked nationalist Fiats, which they had thought were Chatos. The Italian troops were becoming very unpopular in the rear. Even officers were frequently involved in brawls with Spaniards after mutual insults. Also an increasing number of Legionaries were deserting to the enemy and their commanders were making money on the black market. ‘It seems from reports we have had’, Ciano noted, ‘that a bad impression is being created by the sight of Italian troops filling the cabarets and brothels in the rear areas, while the Spaniards are fighting a grim battle…The soldiers of fascism must not, at any moment or for any reason, set an example of indifference to the struggle.’¹⁷

Meanwhile, the German minister of war gave instructions to General Volkmann to push Franco into carrying out the offensive towards Barcelona. But Franco obstinately refused to be shifted from his decision. Some suspect that he wanted a more drawn-out war so as to crush all opposition, bit by bit, in the conquered territories. According to Dionisio Ridruejo, a short war for him ‘inevitably signified negotiations and concessions to finish it. A long war meant total victory. Franco chose the crueller option which, from his point of view, was also more effective.’¹⁸

Instead of deploying the Army of Manoeuvre in a swift offensive against the Catalan capital, Franco decided to widen the corridor to the sea and launch his troops south-westwards towards Valencia. This strategy lost all the momentum which they had achieved in the Aragón campaign and gave the defeated republican forces which had retreated into Catalonia, the opportunity to reorganize and rearm with the supplies just delivered across the reopened French frontier. Also, the heavy rain in March and April greatly reduced the effectiveness of his air force. But most important of all, his troops were now sent against fresh republican formations in good defensive positions.

On 25 April, eight days after the Carlists reached the sea, the offensive towards Valencia began with Varela’s army corps of Castille, Aranda’s Galician Corps, and García Valiño’s formation. They first occupied Aliaga to create a salient for an advance into the sierras of El Pobo and La Garrocha. This initial push took four days and then the bad weather forced them to suspend operations. On 4 May the offensive recommenced. The corps of Castille attacked along two axes: from north to south towards Alcalá de la Selva and from Teruel towards Corbalán. Meanwhile, the Galician Corps advanced southwards down the coast road towards Benicassim and Castellón de la Plana. García Valiño’s attacked from Morella towards Mosqueruela. The plan was to form a line from Teruel to Viver, Segorbe and Sagunto, but the nationalist advance was hard, because of the breadth of the front and because the republicans had established a strong line of defence–the XYZ Line–anchored on the left in the Sierra de Javalambre and which extended across the Sierra de Toro to the heights of Almenara, next to the coast. The nationalists launched attack after attack, but not even with 1,000 field guns and air attacks could they break the front. The well-prepared defence line gave the republican troops confidence in their flanks.

The painful experience of air and artillery bombardments had at last taught the republicans the necessity of solid trenches and bunkers. They had also learned to plan their fields of fire better to prevent infiltration of their positions via dead ground. Their artillery batteries prepared fire plans to bombard the most likely forming-up areas for enemy attacks. The nationalist advance prevailed slowly along the coast, taking Castellón on 13 June and Villarreal the next day. But the resistance of the republicans in the Sierra de Espadan prevented the nationalists from reaching their objective of the Segorbe–Sagunto line.

Nationalist commanders were deeply disconcerted by the strength of the resistance and their casualties, especially after such a crushing victory as the Aragón campaign.¹⁹ Kindelán tried to persuade Franco of the difficulties of advancing further in the sector and begged him to abandon the operation in view of their heavy losses, but the Generalissimo ordered for the attacks to continue. The nationalists did not have any airfields within striking distance and the Condor Legion, withdrawn from the fighting until the mining law came into effect, played no part. Nevertheless, Franco had just received fresh support from Italy in the form of 6,000 more soldiers and new aircraft: 25 Savoia-Marchetti 81s, 12 Savoia-Marchetti 79s and 7 Br-20s.²⁰ At the beginning of July Franco ordered the front to be reinforced with the Italian CTV, led by General Berti, and formed the new Turia Corps of four divisions commanded by Solchaga. The Generalissimo ordered that Valencia was to be taken by 25 July, the feast of Saint James the Apostle, patron saint of Spain. Opposing the five nationalist army corps, which totalled fourteen divisions in all (some 125,000 men) the republicans had six corps,²¹ but numbers were roughly equal on both sides, because the People’s Army’s formations were usually under strength.

On 13 July, the fourth and final phase of the battle began with an attack down the Teruel–Sagunto road, with the CTV and the army corps of Turia and Castille. At the same time the Galician Corps and García Valiño’s formation tried to advance down the coast. Such concentrations of forces hindered the nationalists in this ‘absurd manoeuvre’.²² For ten days the nationalists tried in vain to break the republican defences under the blazing sun of the Levante, with waves of infantry and intense bombing raids.

To their surprise, the nationalists found that these novice republican divisions were able to inflict severe damage on their attackers without the heavy losses, which the troops of Modesto were accustomed to suffering. As a result, this purely defensive operation proved to be a far greater victory for the Republic than that of Guadalajara. With 20,000 nationalist casualties against only 5,000 republican, the slogan ‘to resist is to win’ finally achieved some sense. The tragic fact, however, was that even at this late stage of the war the republican leadership still failed to learn the lesson and continued to give priority to political and propaganda motives over those of military effectiveness. The Battle of the Ebro, which was to begin soon afterwards, exceeded even that of Brunete in its disastrous attempts to create a spectacular success. It would lead directly to the final destruction of the republican army.

The fierce fighting north of Valencia had not been the only action of the early summer. After many months of inactivity, General Queipo de Llano put an end to the comparative calm in the west of Spain. On 20 July he launched an offensive from Madrigalejo to cut off the republican salient which pointed at the Portuguese frontier from either side of the River Guadiana. Queipo’s five divisions and a cavalry brigade broke through the weakly held republican lines, manned by ill-armed and untrained troops. On 23 July the nationalists took Castuera, and Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena on the next day. This cut off the republican salient in Estremadura. But Queipo de Llano’s operation was brought to a halt on 25 July, because the republican army in Catalonia launched its great offensive on the Ebro. Franco’s headquarters needed every battalion it could lay its hands on.

Just one week before, on 18 July, the second anniversary of the coup d’état, the government in Burgos decided to ‘raise to the dignity of Captain-General of the Army and the Fleet, the Head of State and Generalissimo of the armed forces, and National Chief of the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS, the most Excellent Señor Don Francisco Franco Bahamonde’. In the military mind this appointment held great significance. Captain-general was the rank reserved for Spanish monarchs. Franco was on a path which would lead him not to the throne, but to the role of an all-powerful regent.

On that day of march pasts through the streets of Burgos, hung with bunting and huge portraits of the Generalissimo, there was a ‘mixture of fascist and medieval elements’.²³ In the ancient captain-generalcy of Burgos, the new captain-general made a speech, referring to the revolution of October 1934, paying homage to the ‘absent one’, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, denouncing the conspiracy of atheist Russia against Catholic Spain, recounting the crimes of the reds and announcing the final victory of his military crusade.²⁴ ‘This imposes on every Spaniard the duty of cultivating remembrance. The harsh lesson must not be lost, and the benevolence of Christian generosity, which has no limits for those who have been led astray, and for the repentant who come in good faith to join us, must nevertheless be controlled by prudence to prevent infiltration by recalcitrant enemies of the Fatherland, whose health, like that of the body, needs to be quarantined from those coming from the camp of pestilence…In their name [those of the Nationalist dead] and that of sacred Spain, I sow today this seed in the deep furrow which our glorious army has ploughed. Spaniards all: ¡Arriba España! Viva España!’²⁵

The Battle of the Ebro

After the collapse in Aragón during the spring, the republican government had set out to reconstitute an army from the formations pushed back into the isolated eastern zone. They had the River Segre to the west and the Ebro to the south as reasonable defence lines behind which they could reorganize. They also had the 18,000 tons of war matériel which came over the French frontier between March and mid June. And they had more time to reorganize than they could have reasonably expected, thanks to Franco’s ill-judged offensive towards Valencia.

During the late spring and early summer the call-up was extended to the classes of 1925–9 and 1940–1. Twelve new divisions were formed. The conscripts ranged from sixteen-year-olds (which veterans called the quinta del biberón, the baby’s bottle call-up) to middle-aged fathers. To these were added nationalist prisoners of war and many skilled technicians, who were now drafted because the loss of the hydroelectric plants in the Pyrenees had cut Catalonian production dramatically. Yet since there were insufficient rifles to go round, the government’s militarization decrees seem to have had more to do with creating an impression of resolute resistance than with military requirements. The new war matériel was of most use to the air force, special arms and machine-gun companies. The small arms did no more than replace those lost by front-line divisions at Teruel or in Aragón.

After the failure of his peace overtures Negrín, supported by the communists, felt that international attention must be aroused by a great heroic action. If it were successful the Republic could negotiate from a position of greater strength. This reasoning, however, contained several basic flaws. European attention was much more preoccupied with events in the east, especially Hitler’s designs on Czechoslovakia. There was no prospect of Franco changing his refusal to compromise,¹ nor of Chamberlain coming to the aid of the Republic.

The military justification for the project consisted of a vain plan to recapture the nationalists’ corridor to the sea and link the two republican zones again. But this was wildly optimistic and demonstrated that the government and the communists still refused to learn from their own disastrous mistakes. The pattern was entirely predictable. Even if the republican attackers achieved surprise, the nationalist armies, with their American trucks, would redeploy rapidly to halt the offensive. And once again nationalist air and artillery superiority would crush them in the open. In addition, this attack across a major river, with all the problems of resupply that entailed, represented a far more dangerous risk than even the offensives of Brunete and Teruel. The loss of aircraft and equipment would also be far more catastrophic than before, since there was little chance of any further replacements arriving, now that the French border had closed again. Negrín also refused to see that another battle involving heavy casualties would damage republican morale irretrievably. Altogether it was a monumental gamble against very unfavourable odds and bizarrely incompatible with Negrín’s hope that the Republic would still be resisting strongly when a European war broke out.

An Army of the Ebro was specially formed for this offensive. As at Brunete, it was communist dominated and received nearly all the armour, artillery and aircraft. Modesto was the army commander, with V Corps under Líster, and XV Corps under the 26-year-old communist physicist Manuel Tagüeña. His right flank was covered by XII Corps, which defended the bottom part of the River Segre from Lérida to where it joined the Ebro opposite Mequinenza.²

The curve of the Ebro between Fayón and Cherta was the sector chosen for the main assault, with XV Corps on the right and V Corps on the left. Two subsidiary actions were added–the 42nd Division crossing to the north, between Fayón and Mequinenza in order to impede a counter-attack from the right flank, and the French XIV International Brigade crossing downriver at Amposta. The total strength of the assault force was about 80,000 men.³ The greatest weakness was in artillery as a result of losses in Aragón. The whole army had no more than 150 guns, some of which dated from the last century. In addition, the 76mm anti-aircraft ammunition was known to be defective, although the soldiers were not informed ‘for reasons of morale’.⁴

The nationalist troops facing them from the right bank of the Ebro consisted of the 50th Division commanded by Colonel Luis Campos Guereta, who had his headquarters in Gandesa, Barrón’s 13th Division in reserve and the 105th Division, which covered the front from Cherta to the sea.⁵ These divisions of Yagüe’s Moroccan Corps consisted of about 40,000 men. Over the last few days before the republican attack, Colonel Campos passed back intelligence reports to Yagüe, warning that his men had observed troop movements and preparations on the opposite bank of the Ebro. These observations were confirmed by air reconnaissance, but the nationalist high command did not take the threat seriously. It seemed unthinkable to them that the republican army, which had been so severely mauled in Aragón, would be ready to undertake any sort of offensive, especially one across a broad river.

On 24 June Colonel Franco-Salgado, the Generalissimo’s aide, had been informed that the republicans were preparing rafts to cross the river as well as pontoon bridges, and that the majority of the International Brigades were concentrated in Falset.⁶ This intelligence was confirmed by the interrogation of deserters and prisoners, but Franco did no more than tell Yagüe to maintain a state of alert.⁷

The crossing of the Ebro was prepared in minute detail for a whole week, with the republican troops practising in ravines, rivers and on the coast. The engineer corps mocked up the crossing with bridges built in Barcelona or bought in France. Meanwhile, reconnaissance troops from the specialist XIV Corps of commandos slipped across the river at night. They made contact with peasants on the other side to obtain information on nationalist positions. The seventeen-year-old Rubén Ruiz, the son of La Pasionaria, was one of them. He was finally killed as a major in the Red Army in 1942 during the retreat into Stalingrad.

In the very early hours of 25 July commandos went across silently and knifed the sentries on the far bank. They also fastened lines for the assault boats to follow. Six republican divisions then began to cross the Ebro, with the point units in assault boats, guided by local peasants who knew the river. The bulk of the forces followed using twelve different pontoon bridges set up by the engineers. Above Fayón, the 226th Brigade from the 42nd Division cut the road from Mequinenza, and the rest of XV Corps crossed the river at Ribarroja and Flix to establish a bridgehead along the line of Ascó–La Fatarella. At the same time V Corps crossed near Miravet to take Corbera d’Ebre on their line of advance to Gandesa, and also near Benissanet to attack Móra d’Ebre and link up with the flank units of XV Corps.

Much further downriver, almost on the sea, XIV International Brigade tried to cross the river, but only a small number reached the other shore alive. The Riffian Rifles of the 105th Division inflicted heavy casualties. XIV International Brigade lost 1,200 men in 24 hours, shot or drowned. Pierre Landrieu of the Henri Barbusse Battalion, recorded that it was not possible to cross the river to help their comrades trapped on the far bank, who yelled for help in vain.⁸

In the centre the republican troops advanced rapidly and captured some 4,000 men from the 50th Division. On the following day they approached Vilalba dels Arcs and Gandesa, after occupying Puig de L’A

` liga, between the sierras of Pàndols and Cavalls, the key to the Terra Alta, as this dry mountainous region was called. It included the infamous Point 481, which became known as ‘the heights of death’, or the ‘pimple’, as the International Brigades called it.⁹ In a little more than 24 hours, Modesto’s troops had seized 800 square kilometres. But Yagüe, who had not forgotten Modesto’s mistakes at Brunete and Belchite, ordered Barrón’s 13th Division to move at greatest speed to the defence of Gandesa. The forced march of 50 kilometres under the July sun killed a number of men through heat exhaustion. The feet of many others were in a pitiful, bloody mess after this feat.¹⁰ Nevertheless, by the early hours of 26 July, the 13th Division was deployed to defend the town. General Volkmann, the new commander of the Condor Legion, who visited Yaguë was at his headquarters at this point, observed how calm he was. Yagu undoubtedly the nationalists’ most capable field commander.

Franco had heard of the offensive within hours of it beginning on 25 July, the anniversary of the end of the battle of Brunete and the festival of Saint James: the day on which he had hoped to take Valencia. His reaction was typical. He rejected any idea of allowing the republicans to hold any territory, whatever the cost of winning it back. Operations on the Levante front were halted immediately and eight divisions were turned round to march against the republican bridgehead. The Condor Legion, the Italian Legionary Air Force and the Brigada Aérea Hispana were tasked immediately for operations on the Ebro front. By the early afternoon of the first day nationalist planes were over the Terra Alta and attacking the crossing points over the river. The pontoon bridges were given the highest priority. Altogether, 40 Savoia 79s, 20 Savoia 81s, 9 Breda 20s, 30 Heinkel 111s, 8 Dornier 20s, 30 Junker 52s and 6 Junker 87 Stukas, as well as 100 fighters, went into action. The republican air force was nowhere to be seen.¹¹

Franco, having been assured by an engineer that no permanent damage would be done to industry in Barcelona,¹² ordered the dams at Tremp and Camasara up in the Pyrenees to be opened. The flood water which resulted raised the river by two metres and swept away the pontoon bridges on which Modesto’s troops relied for supply and reinforcements. Republican engineers managed to repair them within two days, but the timing had been disastrous. Only a small number of tanks and guns had crossed the river. They were not enough to defeat Barrón’s troops in Gandesa.

Throughout the battle the constant bombing of the bridges taxed the republican engineers to the limit. Each night they repaired the damage done during the day, a veritable task of Sysiphus. The most useful weapon which the nationalists had against the narrow bridges was the Stuka dive-bomber, but the Condor Legion never used more than two pairs at a time, and then with a strong fighter escort. The Luftwaffe was extremely concerned about losing one on enemy territory and the remains being sent to the Soviet Union. Even nationalist officers were not allowed to go near them. Stukas had been used for the first time during the Aragón offensive, but there had been little danger then, with the republicans retreating rapidly, because a downed aircraft could be recovered.

At dawn on 27 July republican aircraft had still not appeared, yet Modesto ordered his few T-26 tanks to attack Gandesa. General Rojo was appalled at the inexplicable absence of republican air cover. On 29 July he wrote to his friend Colonel Manuel Matallana with the Army of the Centre: ‘The Ebro front is almost paralysed…Once again we are facing the phenomenon in all our offensives of people seeming to be deflated.’¹³ This was hardly surprising. The plan was deeply flawed from the start, and once the initial advantage of surprise had worn off, the communist field commanders had no idea how to handle the situation. They reverted to their usual practice of wasting lives for no purpose, because they could not admit that their operation had failed. In the first week alone their troops had suffered a huge number of casualties, decimated by bombing and strafing, but also by dysentery and typhus.¹⁴ There was, too, a problem of physical and moral exhaustion, especially among the International Brigades. Dimitrov reported to Voroshilov and Stalin, ‘The soldiers of the International Brigades are extremely exhausted by the continuous battles, their military efficiency has fallen off, and the Spanish divisions have significantly outstripped them in fighting value and discipline.’¹⁵

On 30 July Modesto reorganized the formations in the central sector and took personal command of operations. He concentrated the tanks and artillery which had managed to cross the Ebro around Gandesa. But the tanks presented an excellent target for the Condor Legion’s 88mm anti-aircraft guns, which had been ordered to take them on whenever there were no aircraft around. Meanwhile its Kampfgruppe of Heinkel 111 bombers concentrated on the bridges, with over 40 sorties that day. They destroyed two bridges and one footbridge from a height of 4,000 metres. One of the bridges was repaired and again destroyed in a night bombing run. And the Stuka flight attacked the bridges at Asco and Vinebre, with eight of their 500kg bombs, achieving a direct hit on the latter.¹⁶ But the Stukas had less luck next day when they attempted to smash the tunnel exit four kilometres east of Mora la Nueva.

Modesto ordered a relentless bombardment of Gandesa with his thirteen batteries and launched his infantry into the attack. They reached the cemetery and came close to the heavily defended building of the agriculture syndicate, but they could not get to grips with Barrón’s men.

Meanwhile the 3rd Division attacked Vilalba dels Arcs. But all during daylight hours nationalist and allied aircraft continued to strike at troop concentrations and supply lines, still without opposition from the republican air force. Only on 31 July did republican planes appear in an attack on Gandesa.

The largest air battles of the whole war then took place over the Ebro front. On 31 July alone, no less than 300 missions were flown with aircraft mixed in dogfights and attacking bombers to prevent them dropping their loads on comrades on the ground. ‘The place stank because of the corpses,’ wrote Edwin Rolfe, an American International Brigader. ‘Enemy bombers returned to our position in the valley killing the wounded being evacuated and the stretcher-bearers, and attacking the wells…The bullets whistled over our heads, red tracers which seemed to move slowly through the air…It was the longest day of my life.’¹⁷

The experience was terrifying for those on the ground, but the last four weeks had also been disastrous for the Republic in the air, despite their absence from the Ebro front. The Condor Legion and the nationalists claimed for the month of July alone 76 republican aircraft destroyed and nine probables. But the Battle of the Ebro provided an even better opportunity for the nationalists and their allies to destroy the republican air force once and for all.¹⁸

Rojo, Modesto and Tagüeña estimated that everything which had happened up to this point was a tactical victory. They had no doubt about the effect of the battle on an international audience as well as on the republican zone. But in fact the only thing they had achieved was to send their bull into the ring, with little chance of survival. Even if they had taken Gandesa, there would have been no further chance to advance because of the rapid concentration of nationalist troops against them. In this first week they had exhausted all their advantages, of surprise, speed and audacity.¹⁹ Once again a great republican offensive collapsed without achieving its aims because of a lack of follow-through due to wasting time on crushing points of enemy resistance instead of pushing on towards the main objective. Yagüe’s rapid reaction to the attack had given the nationalists enough time to bring up eight divisions of reinforcements. The situation of the republicans was even worse than that at Brunete. They had the river behind them and this created a far greater problem in bringing forward supplies and ammunition. There was also even less water for drinking.

On 1 August Modesto ordered the Army of the Ebro to go on to the defensive. They had lost 12,000 men to gain an area of desolate, scorched terrain of no strategic value. The heat increased. On 4 August the Condor Legion recorded temperatures of 37 degrees in the shade and 57 in the sun. Even the night brought little relief.²⁰ For the republicans, defence was hardly an easy option. It was impossible to dig trenches in the iron-hard earth and rocky landscape of the Terra Alta. They could protect themselves only with parapets and sangars made from stones, and they soon found that artillery shells were far more lethal in such surroundings than in open countryside for each explosion turned stones into shrapnel.

To continue the battle in such circumstances had no military justification at all, especially when the Republic was so vulnerable and there was no hope of achieving the original purpose of the offensive. But instead of withdrawing their best troops in good order to fight again, the republican command continued to send more men across the Ebro. And all this was because Negrín believed that the eyes of Europe were upon them and he could not acknowledge a defeat. Once again, political and propaganda considerations led to yet another self-inflicted disaster. The only consolation, perhaps, was that Franco was obsessed with destroying the force which had taken nationalist territory. The Army of the Ebro was thus saved the logical nationalist counter, an attack across the Segre in the rear of its right flank.²¹

Committed to a ‘blind battle of sheep’,²² the nationalist forces were obliged to launch six counter-offensives against the republican positions. The first, which began on 6 August, was aimed against the bridgehead of Fayón defended by the 42nd Division. Over two days the Condor Legion flew 40 sorties against this target and dropped a total of 50 tons of bombs. ‘The red losses are very high,’ its war diary noted.²³ This onslaught lasted until 10 August, when the nationalists forced the republicans back across the river. The next attack, which began on 11 August, targeted the 11th Division in the Sierra de Pàndols. This was a bad decision, considering that the republicans occupied the high ground and could inflict heavy casualties on those climbing to the attack. For the next week the Condor Legion concentrated all its forces, including the Stukas, against bridges again to cut off supplies. Perhaps the nationalists counted on the fact that Líster’s men were exhausted, dehydrated in the high temperatures and almost starving due to the interruption of their supplies. The shortage of water meant that they had to urinate into the water jackets round the barrels of their Maxim machine-guns.

During the day the bombs, shells and bullets never seemed to cease. The republicans had no choice but to wait for nightfall. Bodies could not be buried and there was no shade in that treeless waste.²⁴ The troops took it, the propaganda version goes, because they were disciplined anti-fascist fighters. The sceptic, on the other hand, might ponder the cold hysteria of commanders like Modesto and Líster, who were willing to shoot anyone ‘who loses an inch of ground’. Their stubborn bravery, however, was more likely to have been an inarticulate expression of their hatred of the enemy.

On 13 August, during the nationalist assault on the Sierra de Pàndols, a deadly battle developed in the skies above the Terra Alta between the republican air force and nationalist fighters: three squadrons of Messerschmitts and a swarm of Fiats took on Chatos and Supermoscas, an up-gunned and up-engined version of the Soviet monoplane. Meanwhile the Heinkel 111s of the Condor Legion and the Junkers 52s of the Brigada Aérea Hispana continued to bomb the river crossings, when they were not acting as ‘flying artillery’ to hammer troop positions in the sierra.

The aerial battles were an unequal duel, with the republicans outnumbered by at least two to one. While the Moscas and Chatos in V formations fought with Fiats in the old-fashioned way, the Messerschmitt squadrons were trying out new tactics. They fought in pairs, a system later adopted by both sides during the Battle of Britain. The great danger in such chaotic air battles was from collision or fire from friendly aircraft. The great nationalist air ace García Morato was shot down for the first time in the war by one of his own pilots.

On 18 August the nationalists again opened dams on the Segre. The wall of water, raising the level of the river by 3.5 metres, carried away the bridges at Flix, Móra d’Ebre and Ginestar. The next day ‘the long-awaited’ nationalist counter-attack began against the main Ebro bridgehead, with six divisions and a cavalry brigade. Condor Legion 88mm guns supported the ground troops, while the Stukas went for republican artillery batteries. The Heinkel 111 Kampfgruppe attacked the bridges again. The greatest success went to the Messerschmitt squadron, which shot down four Moscas (or Ratas as the nationalists called them) on that one day for no losses. One of the pilots was Oberleutnant Werner Mölders, later a great Luftwaffe ace of the Second World War. Having achieved fourteen kills in Spain, the highest score on the nationalist side, he became the first Luftwaffe fighter pilot to be credited with a hundred victories.²⁵ Yagu ¨e ordered his troops against the republican positions round Vilalba dels Arcs and captured the heights of Gaeta. This time the nationalist planes dropped leaflets calling on the republicans to surrender, followed by heavy bombs. Over five days of fierce fighting Yagüe’s divisions were hurled against well-defended positions manned by experienced troops who could deal with the waves of infantry. Nationalist tactics were often no better than those of the commanders on the republican side.

On 26 August Modesto was promoted to colonel, the first officer from the militia to achieve such rank. But the Army of the Ebro could do no more than hold on. Visits were paid by the friendly journalists of former battles: Hemingway, Matthews and Capa, but also Joseph North of the New York Daily Worker, Daniel Roosevelt of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Louis Fischer of The Nation and the German poet Ernst Toller.²⁶

From the Coll del Moro, where Yagüe had his command post, General Franco studied the battlefield through his binoculars: on the right the Sierra de Pàndols; in the middle Gandesa and the sierras of Cavalls and Lavall de la Torre; Corbera on the left and beyond flowed the River Ebro on its last stretch to the sea. ‘All within 35 kilometres’, Franco said euphorically to his aide, Luis M. de Lojendio, ‘I have the best of the red army trapped.’²⁷ But in Italy Mussolini did not see things in the same way. ‘Today, 29 August,’ he said to Ciano, ‘I predict the defeat of Franco. That man either does not know how to make war or doesn’t want to.’²⁸

On 31 August the nationalists launched their third counter-offensive. It was aimed between Puig de l’Àliga and the road from Alcañiz to Tarragona. They wanted to take the Sierra de Cavalls at any cost and advance towards Corbera d’Ebre. Their frontline troops had now been reinforced with García Valiño’s Maestrazgo Corps and stood at eight divisions, 300 guns, 500 aircraft and 100 tanks. Facing them were the 35th Division between Corbera and Gandesa, the 11th Division around Cavalls and the 43rd Division in Puig de l’Àliga. (According to Tagüeña, the telephone line from corps headquarters had to be repaired 83 times in a morning because of shell bursts.) Republican soldiers hung pieces of wood from their necks to bite on during the bombardments. Shell-shock and battle fatigue appear to have been far more prevalent on the republican than on the nationalist side, which was hardly surprising with the intensity of air bombardment.

On 3 September, exactly a year before the outbreak of the Second World War, the nationalists launched their fourth attack, this time against Líster’s men in the sierra. After hammering the republican lines relentlessly with their artillery, the nationalists advanced from Gandesa towards la Venta de Camposines and captured Corbera the following day. They had deployed 300 field guns on that sector as well as the German 88mm anti-aircraft guns firing directly at ground targets.²⁹

During this attack Yagüe’s forces managed to break the republican line on the boundary between the sectors of V Corps and XV Corps. Modesto had no choice but to throw in his only reserve, the 35th Division, to seal the breach. Modesto’s orders at this time emphasize the madness of the republican decision to hold on. ‘Not a single position must be lost. If the enemy takes one, there must be a rapid counterattack and as much fighting as necessary, but always making sure that it remains in republican hands. Not a metre of ground to the enemy!’³⁰

Two weeks later, between 19 and 26 September, the nationalists fought their way from rock to rock to take the heights of the Sierra de Cavalls, held by the exhausted soldiers of Modesto’s army. Rojo was desperate because Menéndez, the commander of the Army of the Levante, and Miaja did nothing to launch an offensive on their side of the corridor to alleviate pressure on the Army of the Ebro. On 2 October, after capturing the heights of Lavall, the nationalists reached La Venta de Camposines. And a couple of weeks later they captured in a night attack Point 666, the key to the Sierra de Pàndols. They totally cleared the defensive position of Cavalls, leaving republican formations exposed, and carried out a pincer movement, with Yagüe attacking towards La Faterella and García Valiña gave the order to blow it up. ‘A dry explosion, a flash, a thundering from fragments of iron falling into the water announced the end of the Battle of the Ebro, 113 days after its beginning.’³¹ General Rojo supported Tagüeño in the direction of Ascó and Flix.

The republicans, after losing huge casualties, were left with only a small strip of territory on the right bank of the Ebro. At 4.30 in the morning of 16 November, taking advantage of a heavy river mist, the last men of the 35th Division recrossed the Ebro by the iron bridge at Flix. Fifteen minutes later Tagüeña’s decision to withdraw.

The mistake was not to have done it at least 100 days earlier. Modesto’s Army of the Ebro had virtually ceased to exist. Its remnants returned to the same positions which they had occupied on 24 July.

The Terra Alta had been a harsh battlefield for a pitiless conflict–a summer counterpart to the winter horrors of Teruel. The nationalists had lost 60,000 casualties, the republicans 75,000, of whom 30,000 died, many of them unburied in the sierras which Modesto’s army had been forced to abandon. Apart from the terrible loss of human life, almost all the weapons needed for the defence of Catalonia had been lost on this grotesque gamble.

Non-communist officers were the most vocal critics of the Ebro campaign and the way it had been handled. General Gámir Ulibarri argued that the fall of Catalonia had taken place on the Ebro. Others, such as Colonel Perea, the commander of the Army of the East, who was furious with Rojo, had harsh words for the lack of military sense in the whole operation. The Comintern agents, on the other hand, tried to blame Rojo and the general staff. Togliatti informed Moscow that the Army of the Ebro had received no support from the central front because of ‘sabotage and the malevolent action of General Miaja and the other commanders of the centre’.³²

Following the distorting pattern of his usual Stalinist paranoia, Stepánov attacked the general staff and Rojo for having prolonged the operation, ‘calculating that by exhausting the Army of the Ebro, they would debilitate and incapacitate it’.³³ The fact that the whole strategy had been agreed between Negrín and the communists, and the army had been commanded by a communist who refused to retreat, were of course ignored. So was the fact that the whole plan had been ill thought-out. To attack a sector so close to the bulk of the nationalist Army of Manoeuvre meant that the enemy could counter-attack rapidly; and to choose to fight with a large river just behind your front line when the enemy had a crushing air superiority to smash your supply lines was idiotic; to refuse to pull back after a week when it was clear that you had no chance of achieving your objective was bound to lead to the useless sacrifice of an army which could not be replaced. It was beyond military stupidity, it was the mad delusion of propaganda.

The Republic in the European Crisis

During the slaughter on the Ebro front, the vastly over-optimistic propaganda bulletins had raised exaggerated hopes in the rear areas. Even the normally pessimistic Azaña had been encouraged by the initial reports. But few people back in Barcelona realized that the offensive had in fact failed by 1 August.

Negrín, meanwhile, was attempting to impose an even more authoritarian stamp on his government. On 5 August he called a meeting of the council of ministers. He demanded their agreement to the confirmation of 58 death sentences; he presented a draft decree militarizing the war industries of Catalonia under the orders of the under-secretary of armaments; he set before them another decree planned to set up a special court to try those accused of smuggling and exporting capital; and he produced one more to militarize the emergency tribunals. But these measures provoked strong protests from five ministers, including Manuel de Irujo and Jaime Aiguader (the brother of the Artemi Aiguader involved in the events of May 1937). Irujo roundly attacked the activities of the SIM and the drift towards dictatorship, while Aiguader protested that Negrín’s decree violated the Catalan statute of autonomy. Negrín, however, won the vote in the cabinet despite the protests. The censorship department tried to keep the affair quiet. Even Azaña was not informed of the confirmation of the death sentences. But when news of the clash leaked out, the communists hastened to attack the Basque Irujo and the Catalan Aiguader for being involved in ‘a separatist plot’.

On 11 August Irujo and Aiguader resigned. The death sentences were carried out and two days later a shaken Azaña wrote in his diary, ‘Tarradellas told me that yesterday they shot 58 people. Irujo sent me details. It’s horrible. I feel indignation about the whole affair. Eight days after [I gave a speech] on pity and forgiveness, they kill 58. Without telling me anything nor seeking my opinion. I only found out from the press after the deed was done.’¹ Negrín, without turning a hair, left that night to visit the Ebro front.

Everyone began discussing the government crisis. La Vanguardia (perhaps at Negrín’s own suggestion) published an article warning that a coup d’état might remove him and bring in a defeatist government to seek peace with the nationalists. Troops in communist formations were asked to send telegrams of support for the head of the government. On 16 August, in a meeting with Azaña which the president described as ‘unforgettable’, Negrín, in a scarcely veiled threat, brandished the claim that the leaders of the army were behind him. Certainly, the communists were. Two days before, Frente Rojo had proclaimed, ‘Faced with all this manoeuvring, the workers, the soldiers, the whole people are firmly on the side of the government and its leader, Negrín.’

It can hardly have been a coincidence that on the day of Negrín’s meeting with Azaña a military parade through the streets of Barcelona, with tanks and aircraft flying low overhead, was mounted by XVIII Army Corps, commanded by the communist José del Barrio. This blatant show of strength in the rear was especially provocative at a time when the republicans were fighting for their lives beyond the Ebro. Negrín’s former liberal and social-democrat allies were outraged. Prieto condemned the prime minister for ‘imposing his will over the composition of the government with a military show of strength through Barcelona streets’. Their protests were too late. In any case, Negrín’s action was overshadowed by graver events. The appalling sacrifice on the Ebro was virtually ignored by Europe as it moved to the brink of war over Czechoslovakia in the late summer of 1938.

Negrín’s next move represented a curious form of brinkmanship. He went to the residence of the president of Catalonia for a meeting. Apart from Companys, there were also present Tarradellas, Sbert, Bosch Gimpera and Pi Sunyer. Negrín announced that he was exhausted and intended to resign. He suggested that Companys should replace him. Negrín, a man of voracious appetites in women and food, apparently claimed to Companys (who related it to Azaña) that he was ‘an animal and needed his hands free for his desires. Every ten days, a new woman.’²

Companys, although having fiercely attacked Negrín, said that he should continue to lead the government of the Republic, yet maintain a dialogue with the Generalitat to sort out their differences. In fact, there was no possible alternative to Negrín. His close alliance with the communists remained the only way to prevent the military machine, then involved in the most desperate battle of the whole war, from becoming totally paralysed. Yet there was little chance of agreement over Catalan autonomy. Negrín was almost as much of a centralist as Franco. ‘I am not fighting Franco’, he had said in July, ‘so that a stupid and childish separatism resurfaces. I am fighting the war for Spain and on behalf of Spain…There is only one nation: Spain!’³

Negrín decided to form a new government, but he restricted the changes in his cabinet to replacing Aiguader and Irujo with José Moix of the Catalan communist PSUC and Tomás Bilbao, of Acción Nacionalista Vasca. He then left for Zurich, officially to take part in an international medical conference, but also to have secret talks either with ‘some pro-Franco Germans’, according to Azaña,⁴ or with the German ambassador to France, Count Welczek, according to Hugh Thomas,⁵ or as has often been said with the Duke of Alba, to try to find a negotiated settlement of the war. Whichever the case, Negrín was attempting to find a way to finish the war while attacking his opponents as defeatists.

The Anglo-Italian treaty of April 1938, which signified the tacit acceptance of Italian intervention, had been a serious blow to the Republic’s hopes of winning international support. The Munich agreement of September was far more serious. This climax of appeasement did not only signify that British policy towards Spain would not change, it also led to Stalin’s decision that the Soviet Union’s best interests lay in a rapprochement with Hitler. Soviet support for the Republic was starting to be an embarrassment.

The Munich agreement marked, too, the postponement of the European war on which Negrín was counting to force Great Britain and France to aid the Republic. In fact, it was rash of him to believe that even then their intervention would have been worth much. There would be little incentive for the British government to aid a severely weakened Republic at a time when all available armaments would be needed for its own forces. Moreover, active participation would have exposed Gibraltar to Franco’s forces before a programme for improving the Rock’s defences had started.

On the other hand the Republic’s other potential ally, France, was starting to resent the British government’s domination of its foreign policy. The French had been forced consistently from one compromise to another in what they had thought was the cause of democratic unity. Yet Chamberlain was in some ways closer to Franco, Mussolini and Hitler in his belief that France was politically and morally decadent. Fear of their traditional German enemy, combined with resentment against the anti-French attitude prevalent in the British government, had made even some conservative army officers feel they should intervene in Catalonia on the Republic’s behalf. But the French general staff was firmly opposed to any move which might result in a war on two fronts. It was therefore greatly relieved, during the Czechoslovakian crisis, when Franco (on British advice) assured them of Spanish neutrality in the event of a European war, and also gave his guarantee that Axis troops would not approach the Pyrenean frontier. Ciano was sickened by this pandering to France, but the German and Italian regimes were at least reassured that France, as well as Great Britain, would do nothing to hinder their intervention in Spain. Yet Franco, as already mentioned, continued to fear it obsessively.

In fact, the proceedings of the Non-Intervention Committee had never given them cause for alarm. The sittings continued as before, despite the Anglo-Italian pact in April. ‘The entire negotiation in the committee’, the German representative reported, ‘has something unreal about it since all participants see through the game of the other side…The non-intervention policy is so unstable and is such an artificial creation that everyone fears to cause its collapse by a clear “no”, and then have to bear the responsibility.’⁶ The plan for the withdrawal of volunteers, which the British had originated as a formula to retard the granting of belligerent rights, had been undermined in the Anglo-Italian pact. Lord Halifax had deemed a partial withdrawal of troops sufficient to satisfy the spirit of the non-intervention agreement.

Franco had been unsure how to react to the revised British plan for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Spain, once it had been agreed by the committee in London on 5 July. He had asked his allies for advice, and they counselled him to accept in principle, but delay in practice. On 26 July Negrín’s government accepted the withdrawal proposals, even though it was deeply disturbed at the prospect of the nationalists’ being awarded belligerent rights. This meant that even ships flying the British flag would become liable to search, thus allowing the blockade to become completely effective. Eventually, on 16 August, Franco made his reply to the British representative, Robert Hodgson. He demanded belligerent rights before the British minimum figure for withdrawal of 10,000 men on each side had been reached. His attitude was almost certainly encouraged by the fact that the British had pressured the French into closing the frontier to republican war matériel.

Against this background, Negrín made a speech to the League of Nations on 21 September to announce the unconditional withdrawal of the International Brigades. His surprise gesture had little of the dramatic effect upon which he had counted to focus sympathy for the Republic. Concern over the Czechoslovakian crisis, then reaching a climax, had turned Spain into a sideshow which diplomats in Geneva preferred to forget, since it was an embarrassing reminder of the worst aspects of international relations. Ciano was perplexed by Negrín’s move. ‘Why are they doing this?’ he asked in his diary. ‘Do they feel themselves so strong? Or is it merely a demonstration of a platonic nature? So far as we are concerned, I think this robs our partial evacuation of some of its flavour. But it has the advantage that the initiative is not made to appear ours–this would certainly have lent itself to disagreeable comments about Italian weariness, betrayal of Franco, etc.’⁷

Mussolini, on the other hand, although infuriated at times by Franco’s ‘serene optimism’ and his ‘flabby conduct of the war’, offered fresh divisions. At that stage there were about 40,000 Italian troops in Spain. Eventually it was agreed that the best of them should stay and be concentrated in one over-strength division, while the remainder would be repatriated. In order to make up for this withdrawal, Mussolini promised additional aircraft and artillery, which were what Franco had really wanted in the first place. The Italian government was then able to point to its infantry withdrawals and insist on the implementation of the Anglo-Italian pact. Chamberlain asked for a brief delay, so that it would not look to the House of Commons, in Ciano’s words, ‘as if Mussolini has fixed the date’. This was necessary as Italian attacks on ships flying the British flag had continued sporadically. The first Italian troops disembarked in Naples to an orchestrated welcome on 20 October. Lord Perth asked permission for his military attaché to witness the event, which prompted Ciano to note, ‘No objection in principle on our part–so long as the thing is useful to Chamberlain for the parliamentary debates.’⁸

Ciano had every reason to feel that he could afford to be patronizing in the wake of Munich. The prospect of a European war (which had frightened both Mussolini and Ciano, despite all their bombastic statements) had receded. Mussolini claimed that ‘with the conquest of Prague, we had already practically captured Barcelona’. This remark underlines the way that Britain had sacrificed the Spanish Republic in its misguided desperation to avoid war, just as it went on to sacrifice the Czechs. Soviet policy towards the Republic changed from cautious support to active disengagement. The betrayal of Czechoslovakia finally convinced Stalin that he could not count on Great Britain and France as allies against Hitler and so must cover his vulnerability by an alliance with Germany. But it would be misleading to link the fate of the Republic entirely with that of Czechoslovakia. The final destruction of the Republic’s hope of survival had begun with the fighting across the Ebro, at least a month before the Munich agreement.

Chamberlain, however, was convinced that the Munich agreement had been a diplomatic triumph. He was so pleased with his efforts that, just before Mussolini and Ciano left Munich, he suggested ‘the possibility of a Conference of Four to solve the Spanish problem’.⁹ Evidently he felt that the Spanish republicans could be made to see reason like the Czechs and be persuaded to sacrifice themselves in the cause of what he thought was European stability. The late 1930s were years in which statesmen were particularly tempted to cultivate inflated ideas of their diplomatic abilities. A diplomatic coup in times of tension offers the dazzling prospect of political stardom. As Anthony Eden commented about Chamberlain, ‘This is a form of adulation to which Prime Ministers must expect to be subject: it is gratifying to indulge, and hard to resist.’ This observation was also true of Negrín who, perhaps because of his undeniable talents in many fields, gravely overestimated what could be achieved by personal reputation and the power of persuasion. It is difficult otherwise to understand how he could have taken such an unjustified gamble as the Ebro offensive to serve as the backing for his diplomatic ventures.

In fact, Negrín’s declaration on 21 September to the League of Nations did not represent a great sacrifice for the Republic because the number of foreigners serving in the ranks of the People’s Army had greatly reduced already. The ‘International Military Commission to Observe the Withdrawal of non-Spanish combatants in Government Spain’ observed, ‘It may be said that the decision of the Negrín government to withdraw and send away the international volunteers and to let this happen under the supervision of the League of Nations was a way to make a virtue out of necessity.’¹⁰ It was an astute propaganda move, because both the Republic and the nationalists had greatly exaggerated their role. In September 1938, only 7,102 foreigners were left in the International Brigades. The balance had been made up with Spaniards.

The stories of communist heresy hunting and the treatment of volunteers who wanted to leave, which had circulated in the second half of 1937, affected recruiting so seriously that the handfuls of new arrivals had done little to replace the losses suffered at Teruel and in Aragón. (The death rate among non-Spaniards in the International Brigades was just under 15 per cent up to the end of the Aragón campaign according to Soviet army statistics. A total casualty rate of 40 per cent is the figure most frequently cited.) The international military commission, which supervised their withdrawal, was later surprised to find how old many of the foreign volunteers were. The Swedish Colonel Ribbing paid particular attention to his own countrymen. ‘As for the Swedes, whom I checked in Sant Quirze de Besuara, I noted: “Remarkably many in and around their forties.”’¹¹

On the Ebro front, Negrín’s plan to withdraw foreigners was not communicated to the Americans, Canadians and British of XV International Brigade, because they were about to attack Point 401 on the following day and the news might affect their morale. During the last week of September, the survivors were brought back from the front to Barcelona for their official farewell, although more than half of them were given Spanish nationality and transferred to the People’s Army. They usually consisted of those men for whom the secret police would be waiting in their home country: Germans, Italians, Hungarians and those from other dictatorships in Europe and Latin America.¹²

André Marty, however, rewrote the last editorial of the International Brigade newspaper, Volunteer for Liberty, telling the ‘anti-fascist fighters’ to return to their home countries to lead the struggle against fascism there. It was a way of saying that only selected senior cadres would be given refuge in the USSR. Marty was also terrified that proof of his summary executions might threaten him in the future, and headquarters personnel at Albacete only just escaped with their lives in his mania to suppress the truth.¹³

On 28 October, seven weeks after their withdrawal from the front, the International Brigades assembled for a dramatic farewell parade down the Diagonal in Barcelona past President Azaña, Negrín, Companys and General Rojo, along with many other republican leaders. There were 300,000 people lining the streets and aircraft flew overhead ready to defend them against a nationalist raid. La Pasionaria said in her speech, ‘Comrades of the International Brigades! Political reasons, reasons of state, the welfare of that same cause for which you offered your blood with boundless generosity, are sending you back, some of you to your own countries and others to forced exile. You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy’s solidarity and universality. We shall not forget you and, when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves again, mingled with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s victory–come back!’¹⁴

It was a moving occasion. Even the passionless expression on a huge portrait of the Soviet leader who was secretly considering an alliance with Hitler could not belittle the emotion of internationalism which made the tears of the Brigaders and the crowd flow. They were leaving behind 9,934 dead, 7,686 missing and had suffered 37,541 wounded.¹⁵

The international commission overseeing the withdrawal of foreign volunteers was clearly shocked later to find about 400 International Brigaders in prisons in and around Barcelona, including Montjuich and the ‘Carlos Marx’ prison. Colonel Ribbing, the Swedish member of the commission reported, ‘As regards the international volunteers, they had sometimes been convicted for pure trifles, sometimes for definite and seriously undisciplined behaviour. Many stated that they were accused of espionage or sabotage; most of them protested their complete innocence.’ Even though the Negrín government had agreed to the repatriation of International Brigade prisoners as well, the commission found that there were still around 400 of them held in mid January 1939, just as the nationalists were advancing on Barcelona. This was more probably due to incompetence or bureaucratic inertia in a chaotic situation than to a deliberate attempt to leave them to the mercies of the enemy.¹⁶

The beginning of the departure of foreign communists in the second half of 1938 did not change Party policy outwardly. The Spanish communists may have been relieved that the exporters of the show-trial paranoia were returning home but this is uncertain. Spanish communist leaders later claimed that they had on several occasions argued against the orders of Moscow, not necessarily because they disliked Soviet methods, but because they considered them to be ‘premature’, as La Pasionaria put it. There is, however, little evidence of this claimed opposition in Russian files. More strikingly, there is nothing to show in the Comintern files that Dimitrov ever warned the Soviet advisers in Spain that their urge to take over the government completely was against Stalin’s policy of reassuring the bourgeois democracies.

On his return from Zurich, Negrín summoned the Cortes to a meeting in the monastery of Sant Cugat del Valle`s above Barcelona on 30 September and 1 October. The head of the government gave a speech in which he paid tribute to the soldiers who had died on the Ebro, without admitting, of course, that the plan had been disastrous. He then reviewed the governmental crisis, the relationship between the central government and the Generalitat, and re-emphasized the slogan ‘to resist is to win’. He did not mention his own secret attempts to find a negotiated solution, but proclaimed his readiness to seek an agreement with the nationalists on the basis of his Thirteen Points, even though they were clearly unacceptable to Franco.

Many of the deputies did not hide their concerns at Negrín’s designs. He had also made veiled references, which Prieto and Zugazagoitia interpreted as a threat to resign. After an adjournment in which Negrín assembled his ministers and spoke of a new governmental crisis which could be definitive, he recalled the Cortes and took up the debate again in violent terms. Faced with his hard position, opposition collapsed and the chamber gave him a vote of confidence, although this was, as Zugazagoitia later wrote: ‘without enthusiasm and out of necessity. Negrín and the parliament recognized that they were enemies.’¹⁷

The trial of the POUM leaders¹⁸ began on 11 October before the Tribunal of Espionage and High Treason, over fifteen months after the murder of Andreu Nin. Most Spanish communists realized that, although the process set in motion had to be followed through, it was unwise to be implacable. Even so, a remarkably unsubtle case was presented based on crudely forged documents linking the POUM to a nationalist spy organization in Perpignan. The communists also prepared a reserve line by adding the events of May 1937 to their charge of high treason. They claimed that the POUM had made a ‘non-aggression pact with the enemy’ so that their 29th Division could participate in the Barcelona fighting. The trials ended in something of a compromise verdict. The Republic’s reputation could not be dragged through the mud at such a moment by a show trial, so the most outrageous charges were rejected; but the POUM’s role in the events of Barcelona was used to justify imprisoning its leaders.

The onset of winter in republican Spain was bleak. Food supplies had diminished even further, industrial production was down to about one-tenth of 1936 levels as a result of raw material shortages and the lack of electricity in Barcelona. There was little fuel for heating. Cigarettes and soap had been generally unobtainable for many months. Defeatism was rife and even those who had, in desperation, convinced themselves that the struggle would eventually end in victory could not now avoid the truth. They realized that the next battle would be the last and faced the prospect with bitter resignation.

In Barcelona the population was by now on the edge of starvation. The ration, if obtainable, was down to about 100 grams of lentils per day as winter approached. People collapsed from hunger in the bomb-scarred streets and diseases such as scurvy increased. The propaganda broadcasts sounded increasingly hollow to their ears. They kept going only because there seemed to be no alternative. Workers weak from lack of food carried on in factories with virtually no electricity or raw materials for the same reason that the army kept fighting: it was less painful than thinking about the consequences of stopping.

In late November and early December Negrín’s government issued more mobilization decrees. They served little purpose because there were no spare weapons. Many of the new conscripts went home again, despite the shooting of deserters. Only a tiny proportion were caught because the administration was unable to cope with the new intake.

Even the army, where morale was usually higher than in the rearguard, looked beaten before the battle of Catalonia began, though this did not mean that they could not once again astonish the enemy with actions of brilliant and ferocious resistance. Apart from having lost some 75,000 men on the Ebro, the republican forces in Catalonia had little equipment left. The Army of the Ebro and the Army of the East, with an estimated total strength of more than a quarter of a million men, were left with only 40 tanks, fewer than 100 field guns, 106 aircraft (of which only about a half were serviceable, due to a shortage of spare parts) and only 40,000 rifles to face the nationalist onslaught.

Soviet advisers, meanwhile, appear to have been taking things easily. Perhaps they thought that with the Republic’s imminent defeat, they would not be in Spain for much longer and should therefore enjoy their ‘holiday’ while they could. ‘Things are still the same with me,’ an interpreter wrote home, ‘that is, things are very good. I’ve turned into an inveterate gambler (dominoes), we play “goat” in the evenings. We listen to the gramophone…My appetite clearly isn’t normal (it is too great)…One takes a nap after lunch, for an hour or two, that’s why I’ve put on weight…I am reading a lot here.’¹⁹

Negrín, however, was thinking about the future, but not discussing anything with his ministers. As Gerö pointed out to Dimitrov, ‘the ministers complain that they cannot see Negrín and cannot resolve questions about their departments with him.’²⁰ In fact, Negrín appears to have been seeing only leading communists and Soviet officials. In an interview on 17 November with Marchenko, the Soviet chargé d’affaires, Negrín raised ‘the question of our neighbouring workers in Spain’, a euphemism for the NKVD. He said that ‘a connection between Comrade Kotov and his workers with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the SIM was inexpedient. He proposed that Comrade Kotov maintain an indirect connection with him, Negrín, because he is creating a special apparatus attached to him. The fact that Negrín, who is always extremely delicate with regard to our people, considered it necessary to make such a remark undoubtedly indicates the great pressure on him from the Socialist Party, the anarchists and especially the agents of the Second International concerning the “interference” of our people in police and counter-intelligence work.’²¹

At another meeting on 10 December, Negrín outlined his far from democratic vision, which was entirely in agreement with communist policy. He had discussed with Díaz and Uribe the idea of ‘a united national front, which seemed to him to be a sort of distinctive new party. This idea came to him after he lost faith in the possibility of uniting the socialist and communist parties…The most that might be expected is that the Socialist Party will be absorbed by the Communist Party at the end of the war.’ Negrín realized that to ‘depend on the Communist Party is unfavourable from the international standpoint. The existing republican parties have no future. The Popular Front does not have a common discipline and is torn apart by inter-party struggle. What is needed, therefore, is an organization that would unify all that is best in all of the parties and organizations and would represent a fundamental support of the government…There is no returning to the old parliamentarism; it will be impossible to allow the “free play” of parties as it existed earlier, for in this case the right might once again force its way into power. This means that either a unified political organization or a military dictatorship is necessary. He does not see any other way.’²² Negrín’s plan for a ‘National Front’ party was more or less a left-wing counterpart to what Franco had achieved with his Movimiento Nacional.

The Fall of Catalonia

At the beginning of December, two weeks after the last republican units slipped back across the Ebro, the nationalist Army of Manoeuvre redeployed along the two river frontiers of the Republic’s north-eastern zone. The republican general staff, foreseeing this development, prepared the defence of Catalonia and planned attacks in the west and south to divert the enemy’s attention.¹

Negrín also had to pay attention to feelings in the rearguard. Very few parties supported his policy of resistance to the very end. The republican alliance was split between his supporters, chiefly the communists,² and the other factions led by Prieto, Largo Caballero and Besteiro. Besteiro in particular disliked Negrín’s position. On 16 November he had left Madrid for Barcelona to see the president of the Republic. He told Azaña of his conviction that Negrín was completely bound up with the communists. At the executive committee of the Socialist Party he had said to the head of government, ‘I consider you to be an agent of the communists.’³

During a dinner with the new British representative, R. C. Shrine Stevenson, Negrín managed to convince him that his attitude to communism was purely a question of necessity. Stevenson reported to Lord Halifax afterwards how Negrín argued that communism was the wrong ideology for Spaniards. The republican government had only worked with the communists because they were the best organized force in the early days, and because the Soviet Union was the only country which had been able to provide solid support. The communists had been the most enthusiastic and energetic in their support of the government, and for that reason the government needed them, but if the Republic could obtain from France and Britain what it needed, then as soon as that happened, he could crush the Communist Party in a week.⁴ But these sentiments which Negrín expressed are rather hard to reconcile with his own approach on 10 December to the communists about forming a United National Front to have done with party politics.

At the beginning of January Negrín tried again to persuade the French to help the Republic in extremis. On 7 January he travelled in secret to Paris where he met the British and the American ambassadors as well as seeing Georges Bonnet, the foreign minister. He told them that in order to resist, they needed 2,000 machine-guns and 100,000 rifles.⁵ The French authorities not only failed to reply to this desperate and ingenuous request. Bonnet collaborated with Franco’s representative in Paris, Quiñones de León, in partially blocking the last delivery of Soviet arms which reached Bordeaux on 15 January.⁶

Faced with the huge nationalist concentration of forces on the River Segre, the republican general staff put into effect its plan of diversionary attacks, agreed on 6 December. On 8 December republican forces advanced on the Córdoba-Peñarroya front towards Seville, while another effort was to be made on the north side of the Estremaduran front. An amphibious assault in reinforced brigade strength was also planned for the same day against the Andalucian coast near Motril, but it was called off just as the troops were ready to leave. The Estremaduran offensive did not begin for another four weeks, by which time the nationalist onslaught on Catalonia had commenced.

The nationalist offensive in the east was due to begin on 10 December, but torrential rain forced a postponement. Franco did not want to take any risk and insisted that flying conditions should be good enough for their ‘flying artillery’ to operate. The nationalists had deployed 340,000 men, around 300 tanks, more than 500 aircraft and 1,400 guns. Their only concern was the danger of a desperate resistance in Barcelona. The Italians were once again in two minds. ‘Things seem to be going well and the campaign in Catalonia could have a decisive character,’ wrote Ciano in his diary on 6 December. ‘I am a little sceptical. This phrase has been used too many times to be believable.’⁷

Meanwhile, foreign statesmen like Roosevelt, who admitted that the arms embargo ‘had been a grave mistake’,⁸ and Churchill and Eden, who had previously held aloof in disapproval of the Republic, now realized what its extinction signified. The few democracies left on the Continent included France, Switzerland, the Low Countries and Scandinavia; even the pessimists did not imagine that most of these had only eighteen months left. Attempts to mediate in Spain were made by many foreign governments, but Franco rejected all approaches. The attitude of the British government left him feeling secure enough to continue to insist on belligerent rights before volunteers were withdrawn. Italian infantry he could do without, but the Condor Legion was his guarantee of victory.

The eventual outcome of the campaign was hardly in doubt, short of French intervention. Ciano warned London on 5 January (soon after the despatch of more Italian fighters and artillery) that ‘if the French move, it will be the end of non-intervention. We will send regular divisions. That is to say, will make war on France on Spanish soil.’⁹ His posturing proved unnecessary, for Lord Halifax immediately told Paris once again that if the Axis powers were provoked over Spain, Great Britain would not help France. Franco’s concern that Catalonia might declare itself independent and ask for French protection was also groundless. Negrín was almost as much of a centralist as he himself was. There was never a serious possibility of French troops being sent to intervene, despite the dramatic mutterings of those Frenchmen who felt humiliated by the betrayal of Czechoslovakia.

The nationalist air forces had benefited from having more than a month to reorganize for the Catalonian campaign. Nearly 400 new Spanish pilots, fresh from flying school, were posted to the Fiat squadrons. At the same time the Condor Legion began to hand over the Messerschmitt 109b fighters to the more experienced Spanish pilots, as their own squadrons were to be re-equipped with the 109e. Another Spanish squadron was equipped with the Heinkel 112, which had been beaten by the Messerschmitt in the Luftwaffe comparison trials. The Italians tried to rush in their latest fighter, the Fiat G.50 monoplane, to be battle-tested in the closing stages, but it never saw action.¹⁰

To face this force the seven republican fighter squadrons now had far fewer Moscas than Chatos. This was because the Moscas had to come from the Soviet Union. Only Chatos were manufactured at Sabadell. The 45 aircraft which they produced in the last three months of 1938 did little to make up their losses over the Ebro. Republican ground forces were suffering from an acute shortage of spare parts in almost every field, and machines, weapons and vehicles were being cannibalized ruthlessly so as to ensure a bare operational presence.

On the eve of the battle for Catalonia, the Republic’s eastern army group mustered 220,000 men, of whom only 140,000 were in organized mixed brigades.¹¹ Many were without rifles. Of their 250 field guns, half were unserviceable and few of their 40 tanks were in battleworthy condition.

The nationalists deployed along the Segre the newly formed Army Corps of Urgel, commanded by Muñoz Grandes, the Army Corps of Maestrazgo, commanded by García Valiño and the Army Corps of Aragón, commanded by Moscardó. Near the confluence of the Segre with the Ebro was the renamed Cuerpo Legionario Italiano, mustering 55,000 men under General Gambara, and Solchaga’s Army Corps of Navarre, while Yagüe’s Army Corps of Morocco was concentrated along the Ebro. The priority given to the Segre showed that the nationalist general staff had at last learned that that was their best start line. It is not hard to detect the hand of General Vigón in this improvement.

Despite the Vatican appeal for a Christmas truce, the nationalist offensive was launched on 23 December. It was a bright, cold day, with snow showers, a contrast to the rain and wind of the previous two weeks. The Navarre Corps and the Italians attacked from their bridgeheads towards Montblanc and Valls, supported by the Condor Legion. They were faced by the 56th Division of XII Corps. Although these carabineros were the best armed in the People’s Army, they withdrew immediately. The breach in the line led to the collapse of that sector and allowed the requetés and Italians to penetrate sixteen kilometres towards Granadella in the rear of the Ebro front. The next day they entered Mayals, although on 25 December their advance was blocked by formations from V and XV Corps.

Also on the morning of 23 December the nationalists made another major attack on the left flank, south of Tremp, aiming for Artesa de Segre and Cervera. Then the Corps of Maestrazgo and that of Urgel, backed by a massive artillery bombardment, came up against the 26th Division, the former Durruti column, which maintained, according to Rojo, a ‘magnificent resistance’, and only conceded a little ground. A breakthrough on the western flank would have been catastrophic. After five days of heavy fighting, General Vigón felt obliged to change the main point of attack to the sector of Balaguer, some 30 kilometres downstream. He moved the Aragón Corps there and ordered the Maestrazgo to advance along the south bank of the bend in the Segre with maximum artillery support, all the available tanks and three anti-aircraft detachments of the Condor Legion.¹²

The real threat to Catalonia remained the thrust near the corner of the two fronts, where the Italians and the Carlists were fighting a reconstituted corps under Líster. This force, particularly the 11th Division, managed to slow the nationalists near Granadella on Christmas Day. Both they and the other formations defending the Ebro had been extremely fortunate that Yagüe’s troops were held back by floodwater from the Pyrenees. But the war in the air had also been going badly for the Republic. Nearly a whole squadron of Natashas were wiped out in one battle on Christmas Eve, and about 40 fighters had been lost in the first ten days of the campaign. Only a handful of fragmented squadrons remained.

The crucial day was 3 January 1939. Solchaga’s Carlists pushed forward to reach the Borjas Blancas–Montblanc road, some 50 kilometres behind the Ebro front. Also on that day the offensive from the Balaguer sector overran the key town of Artesa. Yagüe’s troops finally crossed the Ebro and established a bridgehead opposite Asco in the centre of the bulge which had been occupied by the People’s Army in the autumn.

Over the next few days the two Army Corps of Urgel and Maestrazgo widened their salient in the middle of the Segre front, while the Aragón Corps advanced from Lérida to protect the left flank of the Italians in their attack on Borges Blanques, which fell on 5 January. The Italians were fighting much better than on previous occasions. Richthofen, however, retained his rather jaundiced view. ‘5 January. Artesa taken,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Hard resistance. Today the offensive in [the west] started. Hopefully, Franco will keep his nerve.’¹³

That morning, in Estremadura, the republicans’ XXII Corps launched a surprise attack and broke the nationalist front line in the Hinojosa del Duque sector, opening a breach eight kilometres long. On the following day the republicans managed to break the second line and occupied Fuenteovejuna, but the bulk of the nationalist troops, some 80,000 men backed up by 100 guns, halted them at the Hill of the Saints, preventing them from reaching Peñarroya.

In Catalonia, General Solchaga’s troops took Vinaixa on 6 January, but Richthofen was unimpressed. He sent an ultimatum to General Vigón. ‘If tomorrow Agramunt is not attacked then the Condor Legion will not provide support any longer.’¹⁴ The next day, he wrote, ‘7 January. Corps Valiño fails again. Three times the reds are thrown from their positions by [German] flak and air attack. Instead of the possible fifteen kilometres only two kilometres are taken. Of the whole Corps comprising 36 battalions, only two battalions attack.’ Richthofen saw this as ‘bad faith’ and ceased operations, because he considered that the nationalists were letting the Condor Legion do all the work. The next day at a meeting he told Franco, Dávila and Vigón what he thought about the lack of Spanish leadership at Artesa. ‘Good troops and miserable generals who are only battalion commanders, which is a natural consequence of the way things develop here. The Spaniards complain that they could relieve commanders but they do not have better ones.’

On 9 January the Aragón Corps and Gambara’s Italians joined up at Mollerusa. The republican V and XV Corps were unable to block the Carlist requetés and the Italians. The northern part of the Ebro front collapsed in disorder with this threat to its rear. It was a bitter ending for those who had fought so hard for so little on the Ebro.

The day before, 8 January, the nationalists had begun the second phase of their offensive with the bombardment of Montsant. On 12 January they took Montblanc. On 13 January the republicans suffered another disaster. ‘Our fighters destroy ten red fighters on the airfield at Vendrell,’ Richthofen noted.¹⁵ On 14 January the nationalists took Valls. Solchaga’s Carlist troops turned south towards Tarragona, which was being battered by the Condor Legion. At dusk on 15 January the Navarre Corps joined up round Tarragona with the Moroccan Corps, which had just carried out another of its 50-kilometre forced marches, all the way from Tortosa in a single day. The Aragón and Maestrazgo Corps managed to take Cervera at the same time.

The nationalists had taken 23,000 prisoners and inflicted casualties of 5,000 dead and 40,000 wounded. The Battle of Catalonia was already decided after a third of the territory was conquered, yet Franco did not want to repeat the mistake of the Aragón campaign: he intended never to allow the enemy a real chance to reorganize.

Meanwhile, in Estremadura the republican offensive had come to a halt in heavy rain after taking some 500 square kilometres. The attack never managed to gain momentum again, mainly because of enemy aircraft, but also because the tanks and guns were bogged down in the mud. The nationalists counter-attacked and seized back Peraleda del Saucejo on 22 January and three days later retook Fuenteovejuna.

In Catalonia the republican general staff had designated fall-back lines, but they were purely theoretical. ‘Only when Tarragona fell’, wrote Stepánov, ‘did we realize that there was no Maginot Line round Barcelona, as some of our military leaders seemed to think. There was not even a kilometre of trenches.’¹⁶

The republican authorities had called up reserves on 9 January from the classes of 1922 and 1942, and a week later they ordered the general mobilization of all citizens of both sexes between 17 and 55 years old. All industry and transport was also militarized.¹⁷ But these measures came far too late to have any effect. They were just gestures of defiance. The republican forces found themselves outnumbered six to one. Many were out of ammunition or without weapons. A defence of the city was also impossible because the morale and determination of 1936 had completely disappeared. Resistance might have taken place only if the city was surrounded, but an escape route to the French frontier remained open.

Since the fall of Tarragona the nationalist air forces never ceased bombing the city, yet Franco was still nervous about French intervention. On 17 January Richthofen had to reassure him again that it was simply too late for them to send in troops. The nationalists and their allies were now convinced that they could prosecute the campaign to the bitter end without the slightest worry of international reaction.

On the republican side, Negrín called an emergency meeting of the council of ministers on 18 January, to which Companys and Martínez Barrio were also invited. He proclaimed a state of war after two and a half years of fighting, a curiously empty gesture. For Federica Montseny, as for almost everyone else, the war was clearly lost. ‘The Spanish people could do no more,’ she wrote. ‘Any solution aimed at saving lives…seemed to us to be a collective salvation.’¹⁸

On the morning of 22 January General Rojo told Negrín that the front had ceased to exist.¹⁹ The same day Negrín ordered all government departments to abandon Barcelona and make their way to Gerona and Figueras. The divisions of Solchaga and Yagüe were crossing the river Llobregat, the two corps of Muñoz Grandes and of García Valiño were attacking Sabadell and Tarrasa, while Gambara’s Italians were advancing on Badalona. ‘Barcelona, 48 hours before the entrance of the enemy’, wrote Rojo, ‘was a dead city.’²⁰

On the night of 25 January, Lluís Companys rang his friend Josep Andreu i Abelló, president of the Appeal Court of Catalonia, to invite him to dinner. Afterwards the two men drove to the centre of the old town through deserted streets. Leaflets appealing for resistance to the bitter end blew in the wind, along with identity cards that had been thrown away. ‘It was a night which I will never forget,’ recounted Abelló many years later. ‘The silence was total, a terrible silence, of the sort which comes at the culminating point of a tragedy. We went to the Plaza de Sant Jaume and we made our farewell to the Generalitat and the city. It was two in the morning. The vanguard of the nationalist army was already in Tibidabo and close to Montjuich. We never believed that we would return.’²¹

Companys would return, but against his will, when the Gestapo found him in France in the autumn of the following year. He would be handed over to nationalist representatives and brought back over the border. The president of the Generalitat was to be declared guilty of ‘military rebellion’, sentenced to death and executed in the moat of Montjuich on 15 October 1940.

A large part of the population of Barcelona, seized by fear, abandoned the city. So many documents were being burned around the city that many minor fires broke out.²² Shops were looted by people wanting food to take with them on the hard journey ahead. The coast road eastwards was jammed with buses, heavy lorries, vans, motor cars and horse-drawn carts piled with mattresses and domestic utensils, trunks and suitcases as well as exhausted women and children. Some men pushed their family belongings on handcarts, but it was hard to see them having the strength to cross the Pyrenees.

The military convoys full of soldiers cast an even greater shadow over the sadness of departure. Teresa Pàmies, a young militant of the Communist PSUC, described what she saw: ‘Of the flight from Barcelona on 26 January, I will never be able to forget the wounded who crawled out of the Vallcarca hospital. Mutilated and covered in bandages, half-naked despite the cold, they pushed themselves towards the road, yelling pleas that they should not be left behind to fall into the hands of the victors…Those who had lost their legs crawled along the ground, those who had lost an arm raised the other with a clenched fist, the youngest crying in fear, the older ones shouting in rage and cursing those of us who were fleeing and were abandoning them.’²³

Also on 26 January the fifth column, right-wing men and women who had remained hidden for two and a half years, appeared in the streets to settle accounts. They mixed with the advance detachments of nationalist troops entering the city, particularly Yagüe’s regulares, who were allowed several days of looting–their ‘war tax’–in shops and apartment buildings, without worrying whether the owners were reds or whites. Although the republicans had released most of their prisoners before the downfall, the nationalists and their supporters killed some 10,000 people in the first five days of ‘liberation’.²⁴ Italian officers were shaken by these massacres in cold blood, but obeyed the orders of Mussolini that any captured Italian who had fought in republican ranks should be executed immediately, ‘because dead men tell not tales’.²⁵

General Dávila, the commander-in-chief of the nationalist troops who had occupied Barcelona, published on that day an edict which ‘reintegrated the city of Barcelona and other liberated territory of the Catalan provinces within the sovereignty of the Spanish state’. All appointments and decrees made since 18 July 1936 were annulled and gave ‘the Catalan provinces the honour of being governed on an equal footing with their counterparts in the rest of Spain’.²⁶

General Eliseo A

´ lvarez Arenas, under-secretary of public order, and now chief of the occupation authority, published a decree which indicated that the nationalists saw themselves as an invading army in conquered territory. The Falangist Dionisio Ridruejo, who was in charge of propaganda, had prepared leaflets in Catalan. General A

´ lvarez Arenas, on discovering this, gave orders that they should all be destroyed. The Catalan language was forbidden by law. ‘It is a city which has sinned greatly,’ he told Ridruejo, ‘and now it must be cleansed. Altars should be erected in every street of the city and masses said continually.’²⁷ In less liturgical terms, Serrano Súñer told the special correspondent of the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter, ‘The city is totally bolshevized. The decomposition is absolute. The population, whose deeds I myself have checked up on, is morally and politically sick. Barcelona and its citizens will be treated by us in the way one would attend to someone who isill.’²⁸

On the day of the fall of Barcelona no newspaper appeared in the city. All were requisitioned, passing under the control of the ‘Press of the Movement’. On 27 January the first issue of Hoja Oficial de Barcelona came out, in which was written, ‘Yesterday Barcelona was liberated! At two in the afternoon, without firing a shot, nationalist forces under the command of General Yagüe, entered Barcelona.’ On the same day La Vanguardia and El Correo Catala

´n also reappeared. The former now called itself La Vanguardia Española and had changed its motto of ‘Daily paper in the service of democracy’ for ‘Daily paper in the service of Spain and Generalissimo Franco’. Posters were displayed on walls proclaiming ‘If you are Spanish, speak Spanish’, and ‘Speak the language of the empire!’. Books censored by the Church or the army were burned.

A few republican officers and officials had not fled to the frontier, but also stayed hidden waiting for the nationalist troops. They included Antonio Rodríguez Sastré, the chief of republican intelligence, who had been working for Franco and later became Juan March’s lawyer. Others also remained either because they felt they had nothing to fear, or because of exhaustion and apathy. There was a numb relief that the fighting was at last over and they told themselves that nothing could be worse than recent months. For most, though, the atmosphere of downfall before the arrival of the enemy contributed greatly to their panic. Some nationalist prisoners, other than those left behind in Barcelona, had been herded ahead of the retreating forces. A number were shot by their guards, who either lost their heads or acted out of the bitterness of defeat. The victims included the Bishop of Teruel and Colonel Rey d’Harcourt, who had surrendered the town.

On 28 January, at eleven in the morning, nationalist troops paraded through Barcelona. Richthofen observed, no doubt with amusement, that the Italian commanders were furious that the nationalists were not allowing them to take part in the triumphal entry. A squadron of Condor Legion Messerschmitts flew overhead as an umbrella in case republican fighters tried to make a hit-and-run raid. The next day the Luftwaffe fighter pilots switched to making low-level attacks on railways and roads, which were packed with at least as many refugees as fleeing soldiers. ‘The successes they had were excellent,’ the Condor Legion reported, ‘and the pilots are gradually getting a taste for it.’²⁹

The few formations of the republican army which remained intact carried out desperate rearguard actions, such as the defence of Montsec, or fell back from one position to another, ambushing their pursuers. The Italians took five days to cover the 30 kilometres between Barcelona and Arenys de Mar. Meanwhile, in the castle of Figueras Negrín tried to manage the remains of the republican administration, split between different towns.

On 1 February the Cortes met in the stables of the castle of Figueras. Only 64 deputies out of the full 473 were present. In his speech, Negrín laid down three minimum conditions for peace negotiations: the independence of Spain from all foreign interference; the holding of a plebiscite so that the Spanish people could decide the form of government it wanted; and the renunciation of all reprisals and political repression after the end of the war. Negrín hoped that the democracies might support this, but Franco would never have accepted the last two.

On the following day the nationalists entered Gerona. Their progress had been held up by bridges blown up in the retreat or destroyed by their own bombers. The Condor Legion reported, ‘The number of prisoners increases in an extraordinary way, just as the resistance in certain sectors.’ Among the prisoners were two Sudeten Germans. If they were handed over to the nationalists, ‘the best they could hope for was a bullet’. The Condor Legion’s main task was to intercept any republican pilots trying to fly back to the central zone. In two days they destroyed another fifteen aircraft.³⁰

During the battle for Catalonia International Brigaders waiting for repatriation had clamoured since early January to be allowed to rejoin the fighting. The republican authorities refused because this would break the agreement undertaken on the withdrawal of foreign volunteers. The volunteers, exasperated with their forced idleness, then appealed to the Spanish Communist Party. Only some 5,000 of them were fit to fight and they were finally given permission. One of them was a Latvian called Emil Shteingold and he recorded what happened: ‘Soldiers and officers were distributed hastily in platoons, companies and battalions. We were put on trains in a great rush, and moved off towards Barcelona. It was cold on the train, as the wind pierced the carriages completely. Glass had long ago disappeared from the windows. Walls and partitions, too, were sometimes missing. Our carriage was moaning like a wounded beast when the train moved. We huddled against one another in an attempt to keep warm. At dawn we arrived at Granollers. As the train was not going any further, we started to disembark. Barcelona had fallen, and Italian motorized divisions were moving along all the roads heading north. Exhausted refugees with children and household belongings were trudging along the roads.’

A truck arrived with weapons and ammunition. These were distributed and the International Brigaders moved off as quickly as possible. They cleaned the grease from the rifles as they marched. After half an hour they took up positions either side of a small bridge to cut off the road.

‘Some time later the enemy’s reconnaissance appeared. There were two motorbikes, and after them an ambulance with officers. When we tried to capture them, the motorcyclists turned back and we killed them at the turn of the road. The ambulance also turned back, but was surrounded by our soldiers…Officers surrendered and were taken to the headquarters of the brigade.’ Then a short column of motorized infantry appeared. They halted them by knocking out the first and the last vehicles, and started firing with their rifles and machine-guns. The Italian troops panicked. ‘Soldiers were pouring down from the truck like peas. Many fell and never got up again. Those who were still alive turned to flee, hiding behind vehicles which caught fire, and the ammunition and petrol on board began exploding. The corpses of these Italian fascists received a free cremation.’

But this was a short-lived success. They were soon attacked by fighters and then outflanked by stronger forces. They had to retreat over the hills by paths to find another ambush position. It was raining and they had received little food. ‘Our boots were wet and torn by sharp gravel, they started to fall apart. After the sleepless nights, people were falling asleep while on the march. No one was allowed to sit down, as it would be impossible to get them up again.’ This pattern of ambush and retreat repeated itself for at least a week, until the order finally came to withdraw over the French border.³¹

On 5 February Negrín, accompanied by President Azaña and his wife, crossed the frontier with Martínez Barrio, Giral, Companys and Aguirre. Azaña wanted to resign at that point, but he was persuaded to remain a little longer. He went to stay, supposedly incognito, in the Spanish embassy in Paris. Meanwhile, the endless caravan of refugees moved painfully towards the French frontier.

The nationalist rejoicing at having captured the second city of Spain slowed their advance and allowed the fugitives more time. The official cars of government functionaries tried to make a way through the crowds of refugees on foot. In the general atmosphere of sauve qui peut, some bureaucrats and politicians commandeered ambulances for themselves and their families, while the wounded had to make it on foot. ‘A human mass,’ wrote Julián Zugazagoitia, the socialist ex-minister who would also be handed back to Franco and shot, ‘scattered across the countryside and slept on the hard winter ground, heating themselves with fires made from wood from the carts and branches. Some died of cold during the night. Mothers refused to let go of dead babies and women who had just given birth stood little chance.’³²

The nationalist troops pursuing them were also tired from the long marches of the campaign, yet the main concern of the nationalist general staff focused on the remaining republican fighters. They did not want to allow them to rejoin squadrons in the central zone. All the nationalist and allied fighter and bomber groups were tasked to attack the last enemy airfields.

The French government faced a huge wave of refugees, without having done anything to prepare for the catastrophe, short of sending to the border gendarmes, gardes mobiles and Senegalese troops.³³ Its first decision was to close the frontier and refuse the republican government’s request to allow through 150,000 old people, women and children. But the pressure of the multitude was so great that the French government was obliged to open the border on 28 January to civilians. Troops and men of military age were forbidden to cross. More than 200,000 people came through, as well as thousands of others who slipped across in the mountains, escaping the attention of the Senegalese battalions.

On 3 February nationalist units arrived within 50 kilometres of the frontier and it was evident that the republican rearguard could not hold them. The French government faced fierce opposition from the right-wing press and politicians. France was already sheltering many exiles, both from Spain and from the totalitarian states to the east and south. Since 1936, 344 million francs had been spent on supporting political refugees. But the government either had to let the republican troops through or attempt to keep the frontier closed with machine-guns against a well-armed force.

On 8 February General Rojo signed the order to republican troops to fall back on the frontier passes. The Condor Legion reported that white flags could be seen everywhere, yet that very morning French 105mm anti-aircraft batteries had fired warning shots at their aircraft flying close to the frontier.³⁴ ‘German arms have also played a decisive role in this victory,’ Colonel von Richthofen wrote in his war diary. The next day he added, ‘We think of our brave comrades, who happily gave their lives for the destruction of the red world-pest and for the peace and honour of our Fatherland.’³⁵

For the French government, which already had a bad conscience over the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, there was no choice. On 5 February it announced that the remains of the People’s Army could cross into France. Altogether, from 28 January around half a million people crossed the border. Another 60,000 did not arrive in time and fell into nationalist hands. Negrín witnessed the entry into France of the first units of the People’s Army. V and XV Corps crossed at Port-Bou; XVIII Corps at La Junquera; the 46th Division at Le Perthus; the 27th Division at La Vajol; and the 35th Division, which covered the withdrawal of the Army of the Ebro and XI Corps finally crossed the frontier near Puigcerdá, on 13 February.

The sight of these gaunt, shivering masses was often tragic and pitiful. But many observers noted that their manner was of men and women who still refused to admit defeat. Some republican units marched across and piled arms on French soil under the directions of the gendarmes while the colonial troops from Senegal stood with rifles at the ready, not understanding the situation. A garde mobile, in a scene now famous, prised open the fist of a refugee to make him drop the handful of Spanish earth which he had carried into exile.³⁶ The republican diaspora had begun.

The Collapse of the Republic

On 9 February, just as the nationalists completed their occupation of Catalonia, the republican government, forced from Barcelona into France, met briefly in Toulouse to discuss the possibility of continued resistance. At the end of the meeting Negrín received a message from General Miaja, who a few days earlier had been promoted and made commander of all three services, requesting authorization to start negotiations with the enemy to end the war.¹ Negrín made no reply.

Accompanied by álvarez del Vayo, he then managed to elude journalists before taking a chartered Air France plane to Alicante. On his arrival Negrín immediately had a meeting with Miaja, accompanied by Matallana who had taken over as commander of the armies in the remaining central and southern zone. Negrín wanted to know his reasons for starting negotiations. Only a few ministers, generals and senior officials returned to the remaining central-southern zone. Azaña was shortly to resign the presidency, when Great Britain and France recognized the Franquist regime, and his provisional successor, the leader of the Cortes, Martínez Barrio, refused to return to Spain.

Another meeting had taken place on 8 February in Paris. Mariano Vázquez, Juan García Oliver, Segundo Blanco, Eduardo Val and other CNT leaders had also come together to discuss the situation. For García Oliver, Negrín’s policies had been a resounding failure and in his opinion there was no alternative but to seek peace with the nationalists, although not at any price. It had to be an ‘honourable’ agreement and needed a new government to negotiate it. Eduardo Val, secretary of the defence committee of the central region, supported this, saying that Negrín had been telegraphing in code to his closest colleagues warning them to evacuate the republican zone. From this it appeared that Negrín was playing a dirty game. They unanimously decided to push for the formation of a new government from which Negrín would be excluded. On returning to Madrid, Eduardo Val, who did not have complete confidence in the determination of his comrades, decided to act on his own account.²

During the first part of February the Comintern agent Stepánov tried to convince the cadres of the Spanish Communist Party in Madrid that the only course possible was a ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship’.³ He proposed to replace the government with a ‘special council of defence, work and security’, made up of two ministers and two soldiers, ‘reliable and energetic’,⁴ not to make peace, but to continue the war and win it. The Madrid communists accepted this at their conference, which took place from 9 to 11 February.

La Pasionaria also declared her determination to win the war and came up with another of her slogans: ‘Spain will be the torch which will light the road of liberation for people subjugated by fascism.’⁵ Palmiro Togliatti was dismayed. He tried to warn them of the divide between the leaders and the people, who were exhausted to the point of nausea by the war and only wanted to hear of peace.⁶ Togliatti realized that the communists had lost support, largely because of the disastrous military strategy and because their methods had made them more enemies than friends. Officers, who had leaned towards the Party early in the war, now opposed them in secret. Many of them believed that the communists constituted the main barrier to peace. Above all, the commanders of the republican armies left in the centre had no illusions about their inability to resist any longer. The lack of armament was not as serious as in Catalonia, but they knew they had no chance against the crushing nationalist superiority in artillery, tanks and aircraft.

No assistance could be expected from the British. Chamberlain wanted the war to be finished as quickly as possible. On 7 February, with the collaboration of the nationalists, the British consul in Mallorca, Alan Hilgarth, arranged for the island’s surrender on board HMS Devonshire. The British simply wanted to make sure that the Balearic Islands remained Spanish, with no Italian presence.⁷

On 12 February Negrín came to Madrid, where he summoned a council of ministers for the following day. During the session, Negrín called once again for the unity of the Popular Front and re-emphasized his decision to resist until the end: ‘Either we all save ourselves, or we all sink in extermination and dishonour.’⁸ On the same day General Franco published in Burgos his Law of Political Responsibilities. Its first article declared ‘the political responsibility of those who from 1 October 1934 and before 18 July 1936 contributed to create or to aggravate the subversion of any sort which made Spain a victim, and all those who have opposed the nationalist movement with clear acts or grave passivity’. The law could thus apply to practically any republican, whether a combatant or not. The British consul in Burgos informed the Foreign Office that, in his opinion, the law gave not the slightest guarantee that those who had served in the republican army or been a member of a political party–which implied no criminal responsibility–would not be punished.⁹

Despite his calls for resistance, Negrín did not install his government in either Madrid or Valencia. He went to live in a villa near Elda, close to the port of Alicante, guarded by 300 communist commandos from XIV Corps. From there, by telephone and teleprinter, he sent a frenetic series of instructions, on one hand attempting to invigorate the defence of the republican zone, and on the other making preparations for evacuation and exile. This confused everyone, because he never gave his reasons, but Negrín was cut off from reality in his solitary world. He threatened to shoot anyone who disagreed with him and was attacked on all sides.¹⁰

It was hardly surprising that despite Franco’s intransigent attitude, people believed that some sort of agreement must be possible. The International Military Commission had reported hearing frequent statements along two themes: ‘If Spaniards alone were left here on both sides, we’d probably be able to reach agreement’; and ‘We on this side are tired of revolutionary freedom, and the others of strict fascist order. It should not be hard to agree.’¹¹ In fact, the only argument on the republican side for continuing the war was that it was better to go down fighting than to face Franco’s firing squads.

Negrín’s supporters, especially the communists, tried to claim that if the Republic held out until the autumn, they would be saved by an Anglo-French intervention. But this did not take into account the obvious fact that with the destruction of the Republic’s capacity to wage war after the battle of the Ebro there was no point in Britain and France coming to its aid, even if they had wanted to. They simply could not spare the troops or weapons with the threat from Nazi Germany and the prospect of war looming in Europe. They were bound to prefer a neutral Spain under Franco to a debilitated and needy ally in the form of the Republic.

On 27 February the British and French governments formally recognized the nationalist government in Burgos. Marshal Philippe Pétain, who called Franco ‘the cleanest sword in the Western world’, was appointed the ambassador of France to Spain. In Paris, JoséFélix de Lequerica presented his letters of accreditation to President Lebrun. Daladier then handed over all the republican arms and matériel retained in France, as well as the republican gold deposits at Mont de Marsan.¹² He also guaranteed that his government would allow no activity against the nationalists from French soil. In London the Duke of Alba became the Spanish ambassador at the Court of St James. Chamberlain misled the House of Commons by saying that Franco had renounced all political reprisals, just two weeks after the Law of Political Responsibilities had been published. The United States government recalled its ambassador to the Republic, Claude Bowers, so that it could establish relations with Franco.¹³

On 26 February, a Sunday, Manuel Azaña left the Spanish embassy in Paris. He received a telegram from Negrín requesting him to return to Spain to continue in his duties. But Azaña decided to resign on 28

February after hearing of Britain’s and France’s recognition of the nationalist government. He informed Diego Martínez Barrio, who as leader of the Cortes was obliged to succeed him temporarily until he could convene the deputies to elect a successor. In his letter of resignation, Azaña made use of General Rojo’s statement that the war was lost. He asked Negrín to arrange peace terms with General Franco and explained that he was resigning now that the Western democracies had recognized Franco and in any case the apparatus of the Republic, especially the Cortes, had ceased to function.¹⁴ Negrín was left in a constitutional void.

Martínez Barrio met with sixteen deputies of the permanent commission of the Cortes at the Lapérouse restaurant on the Quai des Grands-Augustins. In this haunt of grand men of letters, the republican deputies discussed the rather academic question of presidential elections. There was not a single communist among them. They decided to send a telegram to Negrín, stating that Martínez Barrio was prepared to come to the central zone to carry out the requirements of the constitution and organize the election of a new president of the Republic, but only to ensure the negotiation of a peace accord. Apparently the telegram received no response. Martínez Barrio and others, including General Rojo, then made their final decision not to return.

In the remaining republican zone of Spain, meanwhile, Negrín had summoned military leaders from all services to the aerodrome of Los Llanos outside Albacete. They included Miaja and Matallana, as well as General Menéndez of the Army of Levante, General Escobar of the Army of Estremadura, Colonel Casado and Admiral Buiza, the commander of the republican fleet.¹⁵ Negrín urged them to fight on, assuring them that he was seeking peace. He also made the incredible claim that in a short time the arms blocked in France would arrive and war would break out in Europe. His generals were clearly unconvinced. Matallana warned that their troops were handicapped by the terrible lack of supplies and arms, and Buiza said that without an immediate solution, the fleet would have to abandon Spanish waters, which was what his officers and sailors wanted. Camacho, the air force commander, told him that they had no more than three fighter squadrons and five bomber squadrons in a serviceable state. Only Miaja, irritated that Negrín had not asked him to speak first, said to everyone’s astonishment that he was ready to fight on. This sudden passion of his would not last long.

Over the last few months, Madrid had been increasingly cut off from the decision-making process of the Republic. The parties of the Popular Front had become more and more united in their dislike of Negrín and the communists, and began to seek an independent solution to put an end to the war. An alliance grew up between the socialist professor Julián Besteiro, professional officers, especially in the Army of the Centre, liberal republicans and the anarchists. There were many reasons for their anger. The communists’ conduct of military affairs, however much they claimed to have had the interests of the war at heart, seemed to have had more to do with augmenting their own power. The arrogance of Soviet advisers, the ‘Kléberist’ arrogance of the International Brigades, the Stalinist persecutions through the NKVD and SIM, had all produced a strong reaction. It was also impossible to believe Negrín’s claim that the weapons waiting in France would soon be with them. Negrín must have known that the French government would never let them through, even if he did not yet know that they would be handed over to Franco the moment they recognized his government.

Perhaps one of the deepest suspicions, however, was that while Negrín called for resistance, they found it hard to imagine him and the communist leaders sharing the fate of their followers. Specifically, there were strong fears that the communists might use their military superiority and their control of republican shipping to ensure that their members got away, while those belonging to other parties and organizations would be left to face the nationalist revenge on their own.

The commander of the Army of the Centre, Colonel Segismundo Casado, a professional cavalry officer of peasant birth and austere tastes, had been one of the few career officers to have opposed the communists since the beginning of the war. He got on well with the anarchists and was particularly close to Cipriano Mera, with whom he had shared the tension before the battle of Brihuega.¹⁶

Mera still commanded IV Corps, which held the Guadalajara and Cuenca fronts. The other three corps in the Army of the Centre were all commanded by communists. The liaison committee of the libertarian movement had criticized Mera for adopting an independent political line and taking decisions on his own account. Mera defended himself throwing back at them the CNT’s collaboration with Negrín, who had ignored the anarchists altogether. When Negrín visited the Guadalajara front at the end of February, Mera told him what he thought of a government which told its people to resist when they had no means of doing so, and of ‘those who talk so much of resistance, while they collect valuables and goods to sell abroad and get their own families out of Spain’.¹⁷

Like other commanders and senior officers, Colonel Casado thought there might be a chance of professional army officers obtaining better terms for surrender than a regime controlled by Negrín and the communists. He was not one of those who hoped to save their lives, and perhaps also their professional careers, through a last-minute betrayal. But he was naive to believe that their military links and a record of anticommunism would sway Franco. The last thing that Franco wanted was for anyone else to be in a position of claiming that they had saved Spain from communism.

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 vein.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

With its attempts at negotiation completely thwarted, the National Council for Defence collapsed. Julián Besteiro decided to remain in Madrid awaiting his fate (which would be death in prison a year later). Miaja fled to Orán in his aeroplane on 28 March. Casado went to Valencia, having given orders that formal surrender would take place at 11 a.m. on 29 March.³⁷

Nationalist formations continued their advance to the main ports, where thousands and thousands of people were jammed trying desperately to board one of the few boats. The pleas for help which Casado had sent to the British and French governments had received no reply, and in any case there had been too little time to organize such an evacuation. There was also still the danger of Italian submarines torpedoing any ships in the area. When Casado reached Valencia he encountered total chaos. Only one ship, the Lézardrieux, managed to get away loaded with refugees. In the port of Alicante the Maritime and the African Trade sailed without taking on passengers, unlike the Stanbrook, which left on 28 March loaded with 3,500 refugees. From Cartagena only the Campilo managed to sail. Casado carried on to Gandía where the next day he was allowed to board the British cruiser HMS Galatea, which was there to evacuate Italian prisoners as part of an exchange arrangement.

Meanwhile, thousands of soldiers, union members and politicians still tried to get to Alicante, despite the blocked traffic of coaches, trucks and vehicles of all sorts. More than 15,000 were rounded up by Gambara’s Italian troops on 30 March. Many committed suicide, but the vast majority were marched off by nationalist troops to prisons, bullrings and camps.

The first nationalist troops to enter Madrid were those on the Casa de Campo front on the morning of 28 March. Later, at midday, a column led by General Espinosa de los Monteros arrived, followed by trucks with food and 200 justice officials and military police who, assisted by the Falange, began to take part in the repression of the defeated. On balconies the flag of ‘Old Spain’ appeared, while fifth columnists rushed out into the streets, shouting nationalist slogans with their right arm raised in the Falangist salute. ‘They smashed portraits [of republican leaders] and tore down posters, they pulled down street signs and those on buildings, and they dismantled barricades. Yet apparently on that first night Falangists patrolled the streets to prevent revenge killings. Priests and monks appeared blessing everyone, also civil guards who had hidden away their old uniforms.’³⁸ The Spanish capital was transformed even more dramatically than on 19 July 1936. Julián Marías, who had assisted Besteiro in the Junta, felt bemused. The slogans of the Popular Front were replaced by their nationalist counterparts. Language itself changed. People went back to saying ‘my wife’ instead of the left-wing ‘mi companˆera’, and ‘Buenos días’ instead of ‘¡Salud!’.³⁹

On 31 March Franco’s armies reached their ultimate objectives. ‘Lifting our hearts to God,’ ran Pope Pius XII’s message of congratulation to Franco, ‘we give sincere thanks with your Excellency for the victory of Catholic Spain.⁴⁰ ‘Ciano wrote in his diary that ‘Madrid has fallen and with the capital all the other cities of red Spain. It is a new formidable victory for fascism, perhaps the greatest one so far.’⁴¹ In London on 20 April, exactly three weeks after Franco’s conquest, the Non-Intervention Committee dissolved itself at its thirtieth plenary session.