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

Arms and the Diplomats

The failure of the military coup by the rebels, matched by the failure of the government and unions to crush it, meant that Spain faced a long and bloody war. The need for weapons in this much longer struggle forced both sides to seek help abroad, the first major step in the internationalization of the Spanish Civil War.

Of the three most important neutral governments, the British played the most crucial role. An isolationist United States was wary of international commitments. The French government of Léon Blum was alarmed by Hitler’s rearmament and, despite France’s pact with Russia, relied primarily on Great Britain for mutual defence. Yet when Blum received a telegram on 19 July from José Giral’s government in Madrid requesting arms, his first reaction was to agree to help. The Republican government wanted twenty Potez bombers, eight Schneider 155mm fieldguns, Hotchkiss machine-guns, Lebel rifles, grenades and ammunition.¹ He prepared their despatch in secret with Pierre Cot, the minister of aviation.

The reasons for such discretion were that Blum’s Popular Front coalition had been in office for only six weeks, and street fighting in France took place between left-wingers and fascist groups, such as the Croix-de-Feu. The violence, although not comparable to that in Spain during the spring, still made senior army officers restless. Generals Gamelin, Duval and Jouart, as well as the powerful industrialists of the Comité des Forges, warned that the slightest suggestion of involving the country in the Spanish conflict risked provoking a major storm.² The Catholic writer François Mauriac warned in the Figaro: ‘Take care! We will never forgive you for such a crime.’³

The despatch of the aircraft may have been organized in secret, but nationalist sympathizers in the Spanish embassy informed the press, and perhaps also Count Welczeck, the German ambassador. On 23 July he reported to the Wilhelmstrasse, ‘I have learned in strict confidence that the French government has declared itself prepared to supply the Spanish government with considerable amounts of war matériel during the next few days. Approximately 30 bombers, several thousand bombs, a considerable number of 75mm guns, etc., are involved…Franco’s situation is likely to deteriorate decisively, especially as the result of the supplying of bombers to the government.’⁴ Not only did this pro-nationalist source exaggerate the scale of the intended shipment, in Tetuán, nationalist officers convinced the German consul that they had not been able to delay the rising because ‘Soviet ships had arrived in Spanish harbours with arms and ammunition for an uprising planned by the Communists’.⁵

Blum survived the attacks of right-wing newspapers by restricting the agreement to private sales of unarmed military aircraft, but this meant that the Republic was now being treated on a level similar to the insurgents. To make matters worse, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Juan Cárdenas, joined the nationalists. Giral’s government called on Fernando de los Ríos, then on holiday in Geneva, to replace him, but time was lost. De los Ríos could not be recognized by the French government straight away, he lacked accessible funds and he had no idea of weaponry. On the night of 24 July he had a meeting with Blum, Pierre Cot, é douard Daladier and Yvon Delbos to examine a clause of the 1935 commercial treaty which allowed Spain to purchase arms up to the value of 20 million francs.⁶

The alternative method of helping the Republic was to prevent foreign support reaching Franco. The British Foreign Office feared that the conflict might escalate and warned the French government that helping the Republic would only encourage Hitler and Mussolini to aid the nationalists. Blum and Daladier, his war minister, were aware that French armaments were inferior to those that Franco could obtain from the dictators. Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, agreed with the view of Salvador de Madariaga, the former Spanish representative at the League of Nations, that apart from foreign intervention, the two sides were so evenly balanced that neither could win. This sort of reasoning encouraged the French government to believe that it was better for the Republic if no arms were allowed to reach either zone.

The last hopes of the Spanish republican government that it would not be treated on a par with its enemies disappeared on 25 July. President Albert Lebrun summoned an emergency meeting of the council of ministers to discuss the impact of the right-wing press campaign against aid to the Spanish Republic. Any attempt to sell arms to the Republic was forbidden. The only exception would be the sale of a few unarmed aircraft through private companies or third parties, such as Mexico.⁷

A policy of ‘non-intervention’ was therefore proposed by Blum’s government on 2 August to include the French, British, German and Italian governments, and any others who became involved in the Spanish conflict. There is little doubt that the British government’s attitude was crucial. As Eden said, the French government ‘acted most loyally by us’.⁸ On 3 and 4 August the French foreign ministry sounded out the Germans and Italians on their intentions. They avoided a definite response to gain time while they speeded up their shipments of arms to the nationalists. Meanwhile the British ambassador in Paris put pressure on the French government not to help the Republic.⁹ Blum, afraid of alienating the British, suspended further arms sales as well as civilian aircraft on 8 August. The Spanish frontier was closed to all prohibited commerce.

Four days later the French chargé d’affaires in London recommended an international committee of control ‘to supervise the agreement and consider further action’. Eden, however, decided to announce that Britain would apply an arms embargo without waiting for other powers to respond. This in effect meant denying arms to the recognized government and often ignoring those going to the rebels, for the British government refused to acknowledge the proof of German and Italian intervention. On the other hand, there were instances of the British being even-handed. For example, it appears from a German foreign ministry report that the British embassy in Portugal put heavy pressure on the Portuguese authorities to prevent the German vessel Usuramo from unloading ‘a “certain” cargo’ (probably ammunition) and the ship had to sail away to unload elsewhere.¹⁰ And later Franco complained to the German ambassador that Britain had put heavy pressure on Portugal not to recognize his regime.¹¹ Baldwin’s government nevertheless told the Labour opposition that any active expression of sympathy with the republican government of Spain would at that time be against the interests of Great Britain and therefore unpatriotic.

The policy of appeasement was not Neville Chamberlain’s invention. Its roots lay in a fear of bolshevism. The general strike of 1926 and the depression made the possibility of revolution a very real concern to conservative politicians. As a result, they had mixed feelings towards the German and Italian regimes which had crushed the communists and the socialists in their own countries. Much of the electorate also held anti-militarist sentiments after the First World War and feelings of guilt about the Allies’ humiliation of Germany at the Treaty of Versailles.¹² The British population, moreover, knew little of events abroad. As the British minister in Berlin, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, wrote later, the country ‘could not be expected to take an enlightened view of the situation when the government had done nothing to inform it’.¹³

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Eden was to handle the situation virtually on his own. Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister, was ill when the war began and then became preoccupied by the Abdication crisis. ‘I hope’, he told Eden, ‘that you will try not to trouble me too much with foreign affairs just now.’ Eden was hardly an impartial observer of the conflict. He is supposed to have told the French foreign minister, Delbos, that England preferred a rebel victory to a republican victory. He professed an admiration for the self-proclaimed fascist Calvo Sotelo, who had been murdered. He abhorred the killings in republican territory, while failing to comment on nationalist atrocities. From his diplomatic staff on the spot he received emotive descriptions of the killings in the capital and Barcelona. The ambassador, Sir Henry Chilton, was a blatant admirer of the nationalists and preferred to stay in Hendaye rather than return to Madrid. The government also listened to Royal Navy officers who supported the rebels. The naval base of Gibraltar had been flooded with pro-nationalist refugees, among whom journalists of the British press searched diligently for ‘first-hand’ accounts of atrocities. Franco’s admission at the end of July that he was prepared to shoot half of Spain was virtually ignored.

Franco’s new press officer, Luis Bolín, had, before the rising, organized a discreet but effective anti-republican campaign in London as correspondent of the monarchist newspaper ABC. He claimed, with justification, that he had ‘developed a not inconsiderable degree of influence in appropriate circles’. His most important ally was the Duke of Alba, who also had the English dukedom of Berwick and was addressed as ‘cousin’ by Churchill. In these circles Alba, with his affection for English institutions, typified the civilized Spaniard. His quiet conversations in White’s club were infinitely more influential on government policy than mass rallies or demonstrations. But then anyone speaking up for the Spanish republican government in such surroundings would have provoked the kind of horrified reaction caricatured in a Bateman cartoon.

Eden did not fully recognize the dangers of Hitler and Mussolini until 1937 and he did not speak out openly against appeasement until early in 1938. During the first part of the civil war he preferred, on balance, a ‘fascist’ victory to a ‘communist’ victory. He believed, not unreasonably after the events of the last twenty years, that social upheaval almost certainly led to a communist dictatorship or fascism. But the refusal to sell arms to the Republic in fact strengthened the communists and weakened the forces of the non-communist centre and left. In the summer of 1936 the Spanish Communist Party represented a very small proportion of the republican coalition. Its organization and unscrupulous methods quickly made up for this numerical weakness, but it was mainly the leverage and prestige of Soviet military aid which was to give it a commanding position.

Many Spanish republicans maintained a naive belief that Great Britain would act as the champion of the underdog in its nineteenth-century tradition. Indeed, the belief that the democracies would eventually deliver them from dictatorship persisted until 1946, seven years after the end of the civil war. Certainly, in 1938 there was a conviction in Spain that even British conservatives would be forced to recognize the necessity of ‘joining the fight against fascism’. But they underestimated the deep prejudice of certain governing circles.

The only circumstance likely to influence British foreign policy was a direct threat to traditional interests, the most sensitive of which was still the route to India. It was the threat of a permanent Italian occupation of Majorca and Mussolini’s immediate breaking of their ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ which brought Eden to reconsider his position only on 7 January 1937.¹⁴ Meanwhile, the actions of the Royal Navy were astonishing for a non-interventionist power. Not only were communications facilities provided for General Kindelán in Gibraltar to speak directly to Rome, Berlin and Lisbon, but the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth was moved in front of Algeciras bay to prevent republican warships shelling the port.

At the same time as the republican government was appealing to France for military aid, the nationalists were turning to their natural allies, Germany and Italy. After delivering Franco to Tetuán on 19 July, Luis Bolín flew to Lisbon. There, just before his fatal crash, Sanjurjo had countersigned the authorization to purchase aircraft and supplies for the ‘Spanish non-Marxist army’. Bolín flew on to Rome on 21 July, where he was joined by the Marquis de Viana, the private secretary of ex-King Alfonso. Together they saw Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister and Mussolini’s son-in-law. According to Bolín, ‘his reaction was enthusiastic and spontaneous. Without hesitating an instant he promised us the necessary aid. “We must put an end to the communist threat in the Mediterranean,” he cried.’¹⁵ But the real decision lay with Mussolini, who was persuaded to help after Italian representatives in Tangier, including the military attaché and the consul general, had a meeting with Franco.¹⁶

On 30 July, Mussolini sent Franco twelve Savoia-Marchetti 81 bombers bound for Morocco, two transport planes and a ship loaded with fuel and ammunition. Three of the aircraft crashed on the way, one of them coming down in Algeria, providing documentary proof of Italian military aid. The rest were used as aerial cover for the first nationalist convoy across the straits on 5 August.

Mussolini looked forward to the establishment of another fascist state in the Mediterranean, particularly one which would be indebted to him. His great ambition was to rival British naval power and challenge the French in North Africa.¹⁷ A Spanish ally could control the straits by seizing Gibraltar and offered the possibility of bases in the Balearics, yet her fleet was not likely to be a rival. Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia had greatly increased his delusions of Italian power and Ciano’s main task was to obtain recognition of the ‘Italian Empire’. The Savoias were soon followed on 7 August by consignments of 27 Fiat fighters, five Fiat Ansaldo light tanks, twelve field guns, all with ammunition and trained personnel. Six days later three seaplanes were sent and on 19 August another six fighters.¹⁸

Republican propaganda later tried to prove–with Nazi documents seized from the German consulate in Barcelona–that fascist intervention was pre-arranged and that the generals would not have launched the rebellion without this guarantee. (The nationalists, for their part, pretended to have found papers in Seville which revealed advance planning for a communist coup d’état.) In fact, the military plotters had not received any such guarantee. Relations between Italy and Germany had been strained in the early summer of 1936 primarily because of their rivalry over Austria. Nevertheless, their aid to nationalist Spain was to prove the forging of ‘the Rome–Berlin axis’, a phrase first used by Mussolini on 1 November 1936.

The Nazi government had better information on the situation in Spain, both through unofficial contacts and through their own sources within the German business community. At the beginning of the war their diplomats, led by the foreign minister, Neurath, were opposed to aiding Franco from fear of provoking a British reaction. Hitler despised this traditional branch of the German government and kept his diplomatic staff almost totally uninformed of his actions. He worked instead with German Military Intelligence, headed by Admiral Canaris, who had met Franco in Spain on several occasions and was keen to support his forces in particular.

On 22 July, as already mentioned, Franco told Colonel Beigbeder to ask the German government for transport aircraft. He had visited Berlin in March with General Sanjurjo to obtain German help in establishing a Spanish air force. (Lufthansa had had much to do with the setting up of Iberia in 1927.) Beigbeder made the first approach, using his friendship with General Kühlental. Then Franco’s other emissaries, Bernhardt and Langenheim, two Nazi businessmen living in Morocco, arrived in Berlin on 25 July, in a Lufthansa plane which the nationalists had commandeered.¹⁹ They first saw officials from the Wilhelmstrasse, but the German foreign service was extremely nervous about intervening on Franco’s side.²⁰ They tried to prevent the two men from gaining access to senior members of the Nazi Party in Berlin. But one of them, through his contacts, managed to get a message to Rudolf Hess.²¹ Hitler saw them in Bayreuth after a performance of Siegfried when they handed over a personal letter from Franco. The meeting went on until 1.30 in the morning. Hitler gave orders to Göring and General von Blomberg to expedite the request. Within 24 hours the special staff set up in the air ministry organized the despatch of Junkers 52s (twice the number that Franco had asked for), six Heinkel 51 fighter-bombers, twenty antiaircraft guns and other equipment.²² Hitler, having been convinced that Franco was the most competent and ruthless of the Spanish generals, insisted that military aid would be sent only to his troops. Göring, in a typically theatrical touch, gave the plan the codename, Operation Feuerzauber, or ‘Magic Fire’, which occurs in the last act of Siegfried.

The special staff in the air ministry also selected ‘volunteer’ pilots. Göring was thrilled at the idea of testing his ‘young Luftwaffe in this or that technical respect’. The Germans were far more hard-headed about the whole enterprise than the Italians. They were offering the best machines and experts available and, although Franco was an ideological ally, they wanted payment in copper and iron ore.²³ Dealings between Franco and Nazi Germany were channelled through a company called Hispano-Marroquí de Transportes (HISMA). Its counterpart in Germany was Rohstoffe und Waren Einkaufgesellschaft (ROWAK).

The first delivery of weaponry reached Spain on 1 August and the rhythm was maintained, either directly to Cádiz or via Lisbon. They included Panzer Mark I tanks, as well as 20mm and 88mm anti-aircraft guns. Nevertheless, German intervention became fully established only in November with the creation of the Condor Legion after Franco’s failure to seize Madrid.

Hitler’s real reasons for helping Franco were strategic. A fascist Spain would present a threat to France’s rear as well as to the British route to the Suez Canal. There was even the tempting possibility of U-boat bases on the Atlantic coast. (The Spanish ports of Vigo, El Ferrol, Cádiz and Las Palmas were used on an occasional basis during the Second World War.) The civil war also served to divert attention away from his central European strategy, while offering an opportunity to train men and to test equipment and tactics.

Within a fortnight of the rebellion it had become evident that the nationalists would receive military aid from Germany and Italy, while the democracies refused arms to the Republic. This imbalance was increased by financial support to the nationalists, as vital in a drawn-out war as military aid. In the early days the republican government controlled the country’s 635 tons of gold, the equivalent of 715 million dollars, as backing for its peseta, while the nationalists could offer only the probability of victory as collateral for their currency.²⁴ Nevertheless, Prieto was wrong to claim on 8 August that the gold gave the Spanish government an unlimited resistance, while the financial capacity of the enemy was negligible.

The nationalists immediately looked to foreign financial institutions for help as well as to Spanish supporters. The principal backing for the conspiracy came originally from the huge resources of the former tobacco smuggler Juan March, who apparently contributed £15 million. Ex-King Alfonso’s immense generosity to the nationalist movement, giving $10 million, was only possible as a result of the vast fortune he had reputedly managed to transfer abroad. Much of the capital that had been smuggled out of Spain during the Republic, especially in the first half of the year, was soon transferred back to nationalist territory. The nationalist movement demanded the gold of private citizens, in particular wedding rings, to help pay for the war.

American and British business interests were to make a great contribution to the final nationalist victory, either through active assistance, such as that given by the oil magnate Henry Deterding, or through boycotting the Republic, disrupting its trade with legal action and delaying credits in the banking system.²⁵

Oil had now become almost as vital a commodity in war as ammunition. The US Neutrality Act of 1935 did not, however, reflect this change, thus allowing Franco to receive 3,500,000 tons of oil on credit during the course of the war, well over double the total oil imports of the Republic. The president of the Texas Oil Company was an admirer of the fascists, and on receiving news of the rising he diverted five tankers en route for Spain to the nationalist port of Tenerife, which had a large refinery. Since Texaco had been the principal supplier to the government, his decision was a severe blow to the Republic. Standard Oil of New Jersey was another supplier, though on a smaller scale. The Duchess of Atholl, one of the few British conservatives to support the Republic from the beginning, claimed that the Rio Tinto Zinc company helped finance Franco by supplying foreign exchange at over double the official rate. Later on Ford, Studebaker and General Motors supplied 12,000 trucks to the nationalists, nearly three times as many as the Axis powers, and the chemical giant, Dupont of Nemours, provided 40,000 bombs, sending them via Germany so as to circumvent the Neutrality Act.²⁶ In 1945 the under-secretary at the Spanish foreign ministry, José Maria Doussinague, admitted that ‘without American petroleum and American trucks and American credit, we could never have won the civil war’.²⁷

Shunned by the democratic powers and the international business community, the Republic could count only on the support of Mexico and the USSR. As a result, the nationalists’ warnings of an ‘international communist conspiracy’ carried some conviction, even though Soviet policy was hardly consistent. After Lenin’s death Trotsky’s policy of worldwide revolution had been based on the premise that Russian communism could not prosper so long as it was surrounded by a hostile capitalist world. The opposing Stalinist policy of ‘socialism in one country’, which triumphed in 1927, implied an abstention from involvement in revolutions abroad. The Chinese communists, for example, were sacrificed to Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang to further Russian interests, and Stalin gained recognition from the United States government in 1933 by promising not to indulge in subversive activities there.

On 25 July Giral sent a message to Stalin’s government via the Soviet ambassador in Paris requesting modern armaments and ammunition ‘of all types and in large quantities’. But the Soviet Union was fearful of the international situation and the possible consequences. This did not, however, stop the Kremlin from authorizing less controversial help, with the instruction: ‘To order NKVT [People’s Commissariat on Foreign Trade of the USSR] to sell fuel oil immediately to the Spaniards, at reduced prices, on most favourable conditions, any amount that they need.’²⁸

Giral’s request for arms received no reply. For the first two weeks of the Spanish Civil War the lack of comment on events from Moscow raised alarm in foreign communist circles. Stalin was about to purge the Red Army, Trotsky’s creation, and he was deeply concerned at the prospect of a foreign adventure which might provoke Hitler at such a time of Soviet weakness. But the exiled Trotsky made use of this silence to accuse Stalin of betraying the Spanish revolution and aiding the fascists. Whether or not it was Trotsky who goaded him into action, Stalin must have realized that Soviet communism would lose all credibility, and probably the loyalty of European parties, if nothing was done to help the Republic. Stalin therefore decided to send aid to the Spanish government, but little more than the necessary minimum. In this way he would neither frighten the British government, which he needed as a potential ally, nor provoke the Germans.

On 3 August ‘popular demonstrations’ and ‘spontaneous indignation meetings’ took place all over Russia. Factory workers made ‘voluntary contributions’ to help the Republic and the government sent its first nonmilitary supplies. Comintern officials, using false names, were also sent to Spain to make sure that the young Spanish Communist Party should not step out of line. Only at the end of September did Stalin decide to provide military help.²⁹ The first shipment left the Crimea on 26 September and did not reach Cartagena until 4 October.

Mexico, the other country to support the Republic, refused to join the non-intervention agreement. President Lázaro Cárdenas, despite his country’s limited resources, provided the republicans with 20,000 Mauser rifles, 20 million rounds and food. These rifles from Mexico were used to arm the militias facing the Army of Africa as it advanced on Madrid.³⁰

The Spanish war was no longer simply an internal struggle. Spain’s strategic importance, and the coincidence of the civil war with the Axis powers’ preparations to test their secretly developed weaponry in Europe, ensured that the war lost its amateur character. The nationalists were inundated with foreign advisers, observers, technical experts and combat personnel. Within a month of the rising Franco had received 48 Italian and 41 German aircraft. The Republic, on the other hand, received no more than thirteen Dewoitine fighters and six Potez 54 bombers. These aircraft were outdated, and lacked weapons and even mountings. The French government could not provide pilots, so the Republic had to resort to very expensive volunteers.

Malraux, the author of La Condition Humaine and supposedly a communist sympathizer, set up the air squadron España crewed by mercenaries and paid for by the republican government. This provoked the suspicion and contempt of the Comintern representative, André Marty, who regarded Malraux with a good deal of justification as an ‘adventurer’. When Soviet advisers arrived, they criticized him for ignoring republican commanders, making ‘absurd proposals’ and for knowing ‘little about aerial tactics’. They also berated his group for ‘a complete lack of discipline and lack of participation in battle’. To be fair, their obsolete aircraft stood little chance against Heinkel or Fiat fighters, but this did not stop Malraux from extracting exorbitant rates of pay for very little action, as the Soviet officers reported to Moscow. ‘He had recruited the pilots and technicians himself in France. Most of them have come here in order to make good money. Due to his insistence, the Spanish government was paying 50,000 francs a month to pilots, 30,000 francs to observers, and 15,000 to mechanics. This was during the period when the government had no air force at all and it was easy for Malraux to persuade them to pay whatever he wanted.’³¹

The Republic, ignorant of the murky world of mercenaries and the armament industry, suffered from numerous confidence tricksters. Malraux stands out, not just because he was a mythomaniac in his claims of martial heroism–both in Spain and later in the French Resistance–but because he cynically exploited the opportunity for intellectual heroism in the legend of the Spanish Republic.

Relations between foreigners and Spanish were seldom smooth on either side. Franco and his officers hated being indebted to their allies, while their often arrogant German advisers might perhaps have agreed with the Duke of Wellington’s comment on the Spanish officers attached to his staff that ‘the national weakness was boasting of Spain’s greatness’. The Republic, however, was to suffer far more from its only powerful ally, the Soviet Union.

Sovereign States

The nationalists also needed a formalized state structure to impress foreign governments, but there was no pretence of democracy. The authoritarian values of all its component groups–army, Falange, Carlists and monarchists–demanded a single leader. Franco, who had established his headquarters at Cáceres on 26 August, refrained from any overt manoeuvring until the relief of the Alcázar became certain in late September. As with his military strategy, he did not make any political move until everything possible was in his favour.

His command of the most professional force, the Army of Africa, had made him a contender for the leadership from the start. Then the German proviso of giving military aid only to his forces greatly strengthened his claim. But Franco knew that if his long-term ambitions were to be satisfied, he needed to gain a complete moral, as well as military, ascendancy over his rivals. That he achieved with the relief of Toledo. To challenge the ‘Saviour of the Alcázar’ for the leadership of the nationalist movement would have required rash courage.

The first major step to resolve the leadership issue came when Franco requested a meeting of the Junta de Defensa Nacional at the military aerodrome outside Salamanca on 21 September. General Kindelán, the air force commander, had prepared the ground, assisted in the background by the rest of Franco’s camarilla, including his brother Nicolás Franco, Orgaz, Millán Astray, Luis Bolín and the diplomat José Antonio Sangróniz. They had worked painstakingly to place their chief in the most advantageous position. Colonel Walter Warlimont, Hitler’s envoy, had also applied discreet pressure on the question of military assistance.

All the possible candidates for the leadership were present at Salamanca airfield that day: Franco, Mola, Queipo de Llano and Cabanellas, the nominal president of the junta, who chaired the meeting.¹ The military were to take a decision on behalf of right-wing Spain. With the CEDA leader, Gil Robles, in self-imposed exile in Portugal (many nationalists blamed the civil war on his lack of nerve), José Antonio in Alicante prison, where he was to be executed, and Calvo Sotelo dead since just before the rising, only the wishes of the monarchists and the Carlists had to be considered. Mola, Queipo and Cabanellas were all tainted with republicanism or Freemasonry in varying degrees, so Franco benefited greatly from a lack of obvious defects and his political inscrutability.

In a charade which was accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the the monarchist General Kindelán proposed at the end of the meeting that Franco should be appointed supreme commander of all land, sea and air forces, with the title of Generalissimo. Mola, conscious that his reputation had suffered because his plan for the rising had not succeeded, gave in almost sycophantically. ‘He is younger than me,’ he acknowledged, ‘and of higher professional standing. He is extremely popular and is well-known abroad.’² Queipo, with his habitual lack of tact, ran through the possibilities later. ‘So who were we going to nominate? Cabanellas could not take it on. He was a convinced republican and everyone knew that he was a Freemason. We couldn’t possibly nominate Mola either, because we would lose the war…And my reputation was badly damaged.’³ Only Cabanellas dissented. He demanded a military directory and it cost him dear. Six days later Toledo fell. Kindelán, believing that Franco would restore Alfonso to his throne, helped with the preparations for 28 September, when the ‘Saviour of the Alcázar’ was to return to Salamanca to be accepted as supreme commander by the other generals.

The most active supporter of Franco behind the scenes was his brother Nicolás. He arranged for a mixed guard of Falangists and Carlists to hail his brother as chief when all the generals came together in Salamanca. Then, by omitting or changing key words in the text of the decree, he made Franco ‘Head of the Spanish State’, as opposed to ‘head of the government of the Spanish State’ for ‘the duration of the war’.⁴ This trick did not endear Franco to his colleagues, who found themselves presented with a fait accompli, one might almost say a coup d’état within the coup. Even Mola was deeply irritated that Franco had taken over supreme political power as well as military. It is said that Queipo called Franco a ‘son of a whore’, or according to other sources a ‘swine’. But Kindelán and Dávila somehow persuaded the other generals that Franco had simply been proclaimed head of government for the duration, as the original decree had stated. But there was in any case little that either Mola or Queipo could do once the event had been reported in the newspapers. To protest now could be represented as disloyalty to the nationalist cause.

On 1 October 1936 Franco was invested with his powers in the throne room of the captain-generalcy in Burgos, in front of the diplomatic representatives of Portugal, Germany and Italy. General Cabanellas had been forced to accept total defeat. ‘Señor Chief of the Spanish State,’ he proclaimed. ‘In the name of the Council of National Defence, I hand over to you the absolute powers of the state.’ Franco went out on to the balcony to receive the cheers of the crowds. In his speech to them he promised ‘no home without a hearth, nor a Spaniard without bread’. The anniversary of this day was to be celebrated for almost forty years as ‘The Day of the Caudillo’.⁵ The military junta, which had been led by Cabanellas, was immediately replaced by a ‘Junta Técnica del Estado’ with General Dávila at its head.⁶

Once Franco became the Caudillo, he never allowed opposition to develop. His speeches skilfully selected compatible aspects of the rival nationalist ideologies. He affected an intensity of religious feeling to woo the Carlists and the Church. The Falangist slogan, ‘Una Patria, Un Estado. Un Caudillo’, was converted to ‘Una Patria: España. Un Caudillo: Franco’. But it was not long before the chant of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’ was heard.

Historical parallels were drawn by nationalist writers with the first Reconquista. This safely inspired the appropriate image in the appropriate mind. For the Falangists, it was the birth of the nation. For Carlist and Alphonsine monarchists it represented the establishment of a royal Catholic dictatorship; for the Church the age of ecclesiastical supremacy, and for landowners the foundation of their wealth and power. Franco was very different from Mussolini and Hitler. He was a cunning opportunist who, despite his rhetoric, did not suffer from overly dangerous visions of destiny.

Franco’s new position was reinforced with good news. The recently completed nationalist cruiser Canarias had sailed round the Portuguese coast from El Ferrol, the Caudillo’s birthplace, to attack republican warships off Gibraltar. She managed to sink the destroyer Almirante Fernández and force the others to seek shelter in Cartagena harbour. The blockade of the straits was now finished and Moroccan reinforcements could be brought across without diverting aircraft from bombing raids.

In the republican zone, Giral’s government had resigned on 4 September. It had never been able to reflect the reality of the situation, let alone win enough support to influence it. All the political parties recognized that there was only one man able to gain the trust of the revolutionary committees. Largo Caballero was enjoying a great wave of popularity after his visits to the militia positions in the Guadarrama mountains. ‘Largo Caballero’, wrote his fellow socialist Zugazagoitia, ‘retained in the eyes of the masses his mythical qualities and his pathos had started to work the miracle of a difficult rebirth of collective enthusiasm.’⁷

Even Prieto, the middle-class social democrat, recognized that his great rival, the obstinate, often blinkered proletarian, was the only suitable successor to Giral.⁸ Both Prieto and the communists tried to maintain the liberal façade as far as possible, but Largo Caballero wanted a coalition which was preponderantly socialist. He felt strongly that he had been exploited by the liberals in the first republican government, undermining his work as minister of labour.

The new government was presented as symbolizing unity against the common enemy since it brought together the liberal centre and the revolutionary left into one administration. This administration called itself ‘the government of Victory’ and was the first in Western Europe to contain communists. It marked also an important move towards the progressive recuperation of power from local committees. Faced with the nationalist successes (Talavera and Irún were about to fall), even the anarchists found it difficult to challenge its development. Nevertheless, the Republic was still far from that middle-class state which communist propaganda attempted to portray to the world outside. La Pasionaria and Jesús Hernández insisted that Spain was experiencing a ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’ and that they were ‘motivated exclusively by the desire to defend the democratic Republic established on 14 April 1931’.

In fact, the Spanish communists were far from happy that Largo Caballero, the man they had so recently lauded as ‘the Spanish Lenin’, was now leading the government. They reported to Moscow on 8 September that ‘despite our efforts, we were not able to avoid a Caballero government’. They had also tried, following Comintern orders, to evade being included themselves, but ‘everyone emphatically insisted on the participation of communists in the new government, and it was impossible to avoid this without creating a very dangerous situation. We are taking the necessary measures to organize the work of our ministers.’⁹

Marty, meanwhile, knew that communist power did not have to reside within the council of ministers. It lay in infiltrating the army and the police, as well as in its propaganda methods. ‘The political influence of the Communist Party has exceeded all expectations…Only our party knows what must be done. The slogans of the party are quickly taken up and reprinted by all the newspapers…Our party supplies cadres for the police…The main strength of the army has been directed towards the creation of what has become the pride of the People’s Army–the 5th Regiment of the militia. The 5th Regiment, enjoying well-deserved military glory, numbers 20,000 warriors. All the commanders of the regiment are communists.’ The aptly named Comrade Checa, the party official responsible for the army and the police, gave ‘directives for conducting the interrogation of those under serious arrest’.¹⁰

President Azaña, who remained as a figurehead of liberal parliamentarianism, objected to the inclusion of communists in the government, but Azaña was increasingly isolated and Caballero’s will prevailed. The two communist ministers accepted their posts only after instructions to do so from Moscow. Jesús Hernández became minister of education and Vicente Uribe was given the agriculture portfolio; Alvarez del Vayo, whom Largo Caballero did not yet know to be a communist supporter, became foreign minister.

Caballero’s government also included three of his left socialist supporters and Prieto with two of his social-democrat followers, one of whom, the future prime minister Juan Negrín, became minister of finance. Largo Caballero kept the ministry of war for himself and gave Prieto the air force and the navy. There were also two republican left ministers (one of whom was José Giral), one Catalan Esquerra, one Basque nationalist and two representatives of the centrist Republicans.¹¹

Caballero had invited his old rivals, the anarchists, to join the governing coalition to broaden the representation of the anti-nationalist groups. The anarchists made the counter-proposal (which was not accepted) of a National Defence Council with Largo Caballero as president, five CNT members, five from the UGT, four liberal republicans and no communists. Such a structure was no more than a euphemism for government and thus a sop to their conscience. They had tacitly admitted the necessity of central co-ordination and collaboration in conventional war. No anarchists, however, joined the government.

The committees started to be given new names and, although most of the original delegates stayed on, they gradually submitted to control from above. A new form of political parity also crept into the municipal councils which replaced the local committees. This distorted their reflection of local political strengths, especially in Catalonia, and assisted the communists, who gained more representation than the actual size of their following justified.

In Valencia the Popular Executive Committee, which had so contemptuously waved aside Martínez Barrio’s delegation from the previous Madrid government, acknowledged the new one on 8 September. But the Comintern envoys were furious when a ‘very popular anarchist from Valencia’ declared at a mass meeting in Madrid on 25 September, ‘There is one party that wants to monopolize the revolution. If that party continues its policy, we have decided to crush it. There is a foreign ambassador in Madrid [the Soviet envoy, Marcel Rosenberg] who is interfering in Spanish affairs. We warn him that Spanish affairs concern only the Spanish.’¹²

The effective administration in Catalonia, the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias, merged with the Generalitat in a new government on 26 September. It was led by Josep Tarradellas and all the workers’ organizations and all the parties of the Popular Front were represented. This brought together the anarchist CNT, the communist PSUC and the anti-Stalinist POUM. It marked the first outright acceptance of government by the anarchists. They compromised their principles because they knew that the Madrid government would otherwise continue to starve their self-managed collectives of credits and currency for raw materials.

The POUM had been the most outspoken critic of the CNT leadership’s refusal of power in Catalonia; this was partly because it advocated an authoritarian route to the new society, but mainly because it was more aware of the Stalinist threat than the Catalonian anarchists, who could not imagine themselves being challenged in Barcelona. Andreu Nin, the POUM leader and now councillor of justice, had lived long enough in Russia to appreciate how the infiltration of key posts made the size of the Communist Party’s following almost irrelevant. From the Catalan nationalists’ point of view, Companys’s moderate policy was starting to prove its effectiveness. The anarchists might call the Catalan government, which they had joined, the Regional Defence Committee, but what mattered was that three of them were now members of it. This marked the first major step in the loss of anarchist power in Catalonia.¹³

By the end of September the Defence Council of Aragón was the only major non-governmental organization in the southern part of republican territory which retained control over its own area. This anarchist creation, controlled by the FAI and headed by Joaquín Ascaso, was under heavy pressure from the communist campaign for centralized control. By October its committee acknowledged that it would have to make concessions in order to survive. Popular Front parties were brought into the council and Joaquín Ascaso made a successful diplomatic visit to Madrid. Mutual recognition was agreed upon without compromises that appeared to be too damaging, but it later became clear that the central government and the communists had no intention of allowing the Aragonese council to remain in existence any longer than necessary.¹⁴

Largo Caballero did not realize at this stage that he was being used to re-establish central state power by the liberals, social democrats and communists. Not until November did he start to understand that he had reloaded what Lenin called ‘the pistol of the state’ and that others were waiting to take it from him.

Although Caballero’s appointment had been greeted with joy by many, the Comintern was the least impressed. Marty described him in a report to Moscow on 17 October as ‘a bad union bureaucrat’, and recorded that he and Prieto spent most of the time attacking each other in their respective newspapers, Claridad and El Socialista.¹⁵

One of the arguments for central control was that evidence of a stable, authoritative government in Madrid might persuade the British and French governments to change their policy on arms sales. This hope was dashed when the reality of non-intervention became clear. The first interventionist states, Germany and Italy, had initially given the nonintervention plan a very cool reception. But then they realized the potential advantage. Ciano soon agreed to the policy in general, but insisted that it should cover every facet, even ‘propaganda aid’. Italy and Germany would then be able to accuse Russia of violating the agreement and so justify their interventionist activities. The Germans agreed to the pact in principle, but argued that it would require a blockade to be enforced. The Soviet government, eager not to be outmanoeuvred, followed similar tactics by insisting that Portugal must be disciplined. Portugal was to become Stalin’s whipping boy on the Non-Intervention Committee, since attacking the dictators was too risky for his tastes.

There seems to be little doubt that the French government had been sincere in its original intentions. The same cannot be said of Eden. His later realization that the ambitions of the Axis were only encouraged by appeasement tends to obscure his conduct in 1936. It was hypocritical to duck responsibility by saying that ‘the Spaniards would not feel any gratitude to those who had intervened’, when the British government failed to act impartially while maintaining its pretensions to being the ‘international policeman’. Moreover, Eden’s argument that supplying the Republic with arms would make Hitler aid Franco was already shown to be fallacious. Even the nationalist recruitment of Riffian mercenaries, a blatant contravention of the Treaty of Fes in 1912 which established the Spanish protectorate, was ignored. And the republican government was so concerned not to upset the French and British empires that it neither granted Morocco its independence nor made serious attempts to stir up anti-colonial feelings there.

Meetings of the Non-Intervention Committee began in London on 8 September, after numerous delays. These were caused mainly by Germany’s refusal to participate until a crash-landed Junkers 52 was returned by the Republic. The committee was organized by the British Foreign Office in London. Lord Plymouth was chairman and the rest of the committee consisted of the ambassadors of the signatory nations, which included every European country except Switzerland. The ambassador of the Republic in London, Pablo de Azcárate, referred to ‘confused discussions, embroiled and sterile at which denunciations and counter-denunciations took place’.¹⁶ Eden himself had to admit that ‘the lengthy meetings continued…accusations were met with flat denials and the results of both were sterile’.

The British foreign secretary tried to claim that in October ‘the Russians were openly sending supplies to Spain and the evidence we had at this time was more specific against them than against the dictators in Rome and Berlin’.¹⁷ Yet in Geneva at the end of September he had recorded that Álvarez del Vayo, the Republic’s foreign minister, ‘left with me documents and photographs to prove the extent to which Hitler and Mussolini were violating the agreement’. Even the German chargé d’affaires was concerned at the way Wehrmacht uniforms were being cheered openly on the streets of Seville. And considering the sympathies of the Royal Navy in Gibraltar, it was perhaps not surprising that a blind eye had been turned on the streams of Junkers and Savoias over Gibraltar, which had ferried the Army of Africa between Tetuán and Seville. The American ambassador to Spain, Claude Bowers, later condemned the whole procedure: ‘Each movement of the Non-Intervention Committee has been made to serve the cause of the rebellion…This Committee was the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known.’¹⁸

The Soviet Union and the Spanish Republic

During October 1936 the nationalists concentrated their best forces on the renewed attack towards the capital from the south-west. Their relentless advance made it look as if the Spanish Republic was mortally stricken, but the defence of Madrid soon became a rallying call throughout Europe to all those who feared and hated the triumphant forces of ‘international fascism’. The communist slogan that ‘Madrid will be the grave of fascism’ was powerfully emotive and the battle for the capital was to help the party to power. From 38,000 members in the spring of 1936, the Communist Party was to increase to 200,000 by the end of the year and 300,000 by March 1937.¹

The Spanish Communist Party was ordered by the Comintern leaders, Dmitri Manuilski and Georgi Dimitrov, to collaborate in the defeat of the rebellion and the defence of a democratic and independent Spanish Republic. This strategy, decided at the time that the Soviet Union was joining the Non-Intervention Committee, conformed to various political objectives: first, to combat the impression that Spain was undergoing a revolution to install a communist regime; second, to counter the claim of their enemy, relying on outside help, that theirs was a national movement; third, to try to reconcile Leninism with the traditional idea of Spanish liberalism.²

Nevertheless, the situation was hardly encouraging. The military position became worse day by day. Madrid appeared doomed after the defeat at Talavera while Bilbao was threatened after the loss of Irún and San Sebastián. The republicans had still not managed to take Oviedo, they had failed at Toledo and the anarchists’ offensive against Saragossa had come to a halt. They managed to hold on north of Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama, but that, like all republican successes, was purely a defensive action.

These setbacks and the strong German and Italian support for the nationalists made Dimitrov, the secretary general of the Comintern, consider intervention by the Soviet Union. On 28 August he wrote in his diary: ‘The question of aiding the Spanish (possible organization of an international corps).’ On 3 September he wrote: ‘The situation in Spain is critical.’ And on 14 September he noted: ‘Organize help for the Spanish (in a covert form).’³

For some years, the question of Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War has been polarized between two schematic versions: it was either a Comintern strategy to establish a Soviet regime serving the orders of Moscow, or on the other hand a heroic USSR, motherland of the proletariat, disinterestedly helping the legally constituted Republic. Neither of these two conflicting interpretations is correct, but the latter is definitely further from the rather complicated truth.⁴

Since the 1920s the Soviet presence in Spain had increased, mainly in the form of cultural propaganda. The Comintern had done no more than it had in other Western countries: infiltrate and wait. On receiving news of the coup d’état of 18 July 1936, the Comintern had gathered as much information as possible from its principal agents, especially the Argentinian Vittorio Codovilla, who had been the Spanish Communist Party’s controller since 1932, while the Soviet authorities considered their position. Stalin, as we have seen, did not come to a decision to intervene until September, two months after the rising. Only then did the Soviet regime consider the possibilities of exploiting the conflict and gaining domestic and international support. The Politburo in Moscow ordered huge demonstrations to be organized while the Comintern initiated an international campaign. Soviet citizens contributed 274 million roubles (approximately £11,416,000) for humanitarian purposes in republican Spain.⁵

The Soviet government sent Mikhail Koltsov, the most famous Pravda correspondent, to Spain, followed by two film-makers, Roman Karmen and Boris Makaseev. Three weeks after their arrival newsreels from the Spanish front were being screened in Moscow cinemas and articles were published almost on a daily basis in the Soviet press. On 21 August the Soviet government appointed Marcel Rosenberg ambassador in Madrid, and a month later the old bolshevik who led the assault on the Winter Palace, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, as consul general in Barcelona. In the meantime Ilya Ehrenburg, the correspondent of Izvestia, kept Rosenberg informed on the conflict of Catalan politics and Companys’s complaints against the central government. The Politburo also appointed Jacob Gaikis to the embassy secretariat and Artur Stashevsky as commercial attaché.

Among the military advisers were General Jan Berzin (‘Grishin’), Vladimir E. Gorev (‘Sancho’) as military attaché, Nikolai Kuznetsov (‘Kolya’) as naval attaché and Yakov Smushkevich (‘Duglas’) as air force adviser. The majority of the senior military men in Spain were from Soviet military intelligence, the GRU. The Soviet embassy was set up in the Hotel Palace until eight weeks later when it followed the government to Valencia. The Comintern sent its own team, with Palmiro Togliatti (‘Ercole’ or ‘Alfredo’), the leader of the Italian Communist Party in exile and one of the chief influences on Comintern decision making. He later became the main adviser to the Spanish Communist Party. The Hungarian Erno Gerö (‘Pedro’) performed a similar role with the PSUC in Barcelona. The most terrifying adviser to come to Spain was Aleksander Orlov, the representative of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the NKVD, who was to take charge of the secret police.⁶

At first, the French Communist Party and its leaders provided the main source of communication for the Comintern’s directives. Soon, communications on arms shipments, reports from GRU officers and Soviet military advisers were radioed either in the morning or in the evening direct to a transmitter in the Sparrow Hills next to what is now Moscow University.⁷

The government of Largo Caballero approved on 16 September the establishment of an embassy in Moscow. Five days later the socialist doctor Marcelino Pascua, who spoke Russian and had visited the Soviet Union to study public health, was named ambassador. Dr Pascua was received in Moscow with great ceremony and deference, and allowed access to Stalin. On the other hand the republican government did nothing to make Pascua’s task easy.⁸

The Soviet authorities knew from their intelligence service, the NKVD, and from Comintern representatives of the critical situation in which the Republic found itself towards the end of August. The secretary general of the French Communist Party, Maurice Thorez, presented a report on 16 September to the Comintern outlining the Republic’s lack of a regular army and chain of command. On 22 September Codovilla called for ‘arms above everything else’. As a result, Soviet military intelligence prepared a contingency plan for military assistance and the organization of a GRU group to carry it out. It was completed on 24 September and bore the codename Operation ‘X’. Kliment Voroshilov, the minister of defence and an old crony of Stalin’s from the Russian civil war, informed the Kremlin ten days later that the sale had been prepared for 80 to 100 T-26 tanks, based on a Vickers model, and 50 to 60 fighters. Stalin gave his approval.⁹

More important than the quantity of armaments sent was their quality. This varied enormously. Rifles and field guns were often in a bad state and obsolete. One batch of guns of Tsarist vintage was known as ‘the battery of Catherine the Great’. The ten different sorts of rifles came from eight countries and required rounds of six different calibres. Many of them had been captured during the First World War and some of them were fifty years old.¹⁰ The T-26 and later BT-5 tanks, on the other hand, were entirely modern and better than the opposing German models. The aircraft, although modern by Soviet standards, were soon out-fought and out-flown by the new German aircraft which came into service the following year.

The main barrier to achieving the best use of all this matériel came from the sectarianism of the communists, who jealously kept it for the use of their own forces. Regimental commanders were sometimes forced to become members of the Communist Party to ensure that their men received ammunition and medical care. The advisers, especially the tank commander General Pavlov (‘Pablito’) and the air force adviser Smushkevich, took all the decisions, often without consulting their Spanish colleagues. Prieto, the minister for air, found that the Soviet advisers and the senior Spanish air force officer, Colonel Hidalgo de Cisneros y López de Montenegro, an aristocrat with strong communist leanings, would not even tell him which airfields were being used, or how many aircraft were serviceable. Prieto’s fellow socialist, Luis Araquistáin, said that the real minister of air was the Russian general.

This was no exaggeration. One report back to Moscow clearly demonstrates that Smushkevich, or ‘Duglas’ as he was known, controlled the republican air force completely. ‘The Department is headed by Colonel Cisneros. [He is] a very honest and strong-willed officer who enjoys a great authority both in aviation and in governmental circles, and is a friend of the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that at this moment he lacks both theoretical knowledge and tactical experience to lead the air force on his own. He realizes this and accepts our help with honesty and gratitude. S[mushkevich] as the Chief Adviser has established the best possible relations with him…It can be said quite clearly that while remaining officially in the position of an adviser, Smushkevich is in fact the commander of all of the air force.’¹¹

One of the most important issues of the Spanish Civil War is the payment of Soviet aid with the gold reserves of Banco de España.¹² Spain at the time had the fourth largest gold reserves in the world, due mainly to the commercial boom during the First World War. It would appear that Artur Stashevsky, the Russian economist, was the one who suggested to the minister of finance, Dr Juan Negrín, the idea of keeping ‘a current account in gold’ in Moscow. Madrid was threatened by the advance of the Army of Africa and this arrangement could be used to buy arms and raw materials.¹³ The gold would be converted into foreign exchange through the Banque Commerciale pour l’Europe du Nord, or Eurobank in Paris (both part of the Kremlin’s financial organization in France).

On 24 July Giral had authorized the first despatch of gold, in this case to Paris, to pay for armament purchases in France. When the NonIntervention Committee began its work, gold was still sent until March 1937 in order to buy arms from other sources. Altogether 174 tons of gold (27.4 per cent of the total Spanish reserves) went to France.¹⁴

On 13 September 1936 the council of ministers authorized Negrínto transfer the remaining gold and silver from the Banco de España to Moscow. Two days later 10,000 crates full of precious metal left the Atocha station and reached the magazines of La Algameca in the port of Cartagena on 17 September. Another 2,200 cases, were sent to Marseilles and the rest, 7,800 cases, was shipped to Moscow via Odessa. This consignment was accompanied by NKVD personnel and guarded by a detachment of carabineros. On reaching Odessa the 173rd NKVD Rifle Regiment took over guard duties.¹⁵ These 510 tons of precious metals were worth at least $518 million at 1936 values.¹⁶ One of the first bills the Republic had to pay with the gold amounted to $51,160,168. It was for the ‘fraternal military support’ already provided.¹⁷ It is very hard to judge the Soviet method of accounting when they calculated what the Republic owed for arms and other expenses, such as shipping and the training of republican troops and specialists. Nothing was free and many charges appear to have been exaggerated to say the least. The Soviet Union claimed that with the credits it provided in 1938 (after the current account in gold had been exhausted, according to their calculations), the Republic had received $661 million worth of goods and services, yet only $518 million in gold had been sent to Moscow. But the Soviet figure does not reveal the creative accounting which took place when changing gold into roubles, and roubles into dollars, and dollars into pesetas. At a time when the rouble–dollar exchange rate was fixed at 5.3:1, the Soviet Union was using the figure of 2.5:1, a difference which netted it a very considerable profit.

When news leaked out of the transfer of the gold reserves to Paris and Moscow, the value of the republican peseta collapsed on the foreign exchanges, falling by half between November and December. The cost of imports became a terrible burden for an already battered economy and the cost of living shot up.¹⁸

Negrín’s role at this time was important for future developments. While organizing the despatch of the gold to Moscow, he became extremely close to Stashevsky, a Pole sent by Moscow as the Soviet economic attaché. Stashevsky immediately recognized that Negrín was more than just somebody the Soviet Union could trust. Negrín believed fervently in the centralization of political power and that also meant economic power. ‘Our opinion’, Stashevsky reported to Moscow, ‘is that everything possible has to be done to support the concentration of all the exports and imports–i.e. all foreign currency operations–in the same hands.’¹⁹

Both Negrín and Stashevsky were furious with the Generalitat and the anarchists in Catalonia for taking financial affairs into their own hands. ‘Catalonians are seizing without any control hundreds of millions of pesetas from the branch of the Banco de España,’ Stashevsky reported to Moscow.²⁰ In their view the fact that the central government had done nothing to help Catalan industry was irrelevant. They also hated the Soviet consul-general in Barcelona, Antonov-Ovseyenko, who clearly sympathized with Companys and got on well with the anarchist leader García Oliver. ‘García Oliver does not object to the unified leadership or to discipline in battle,’ Antonov-Ovseyenko recorded, ‘but he is against the restoration of the permanent status of officers, this foundation of militarism. It is with obvious pleasure that he listens to me when I express agreement with his military plan.’²¹

Antonov-Ovseyenko also noted the comments of the Esquerra minister, Jaume Miravitlles: ‘Anarcho-syndicalists are becoming more and more cautious in their management of industry. They have given up their idea of introducing egalitarianism in large enterprises.’ Antonov-Ovseyenko, the Bolshevik leader who stormed the Winter Palace, had become an associate of Trotsky and a member of the left opposition, but his abject statement that August, confessing his faults and condemning his former comrades, did not save him from Stalinist suspicion.²² He may well have been one of those functionaries sent to Spain as a way of preparing their downfall later. The old bolshevik completely failed to see the danger he was in. He asked Soviet advisers and the central government to support an offensive in Catalonia. On 6 October 1936 the consul-general sent a detailed report to Rosenberg, the Soviet ambassador in Spain: ‘Our view of anarchism in Catalonia is an erroneous one…The government is really willing to organize defence and it is doing a lot in that direction, for example they are setting up a general staff headed by a clever specialist instead of the former committee of anti-fascist militias.’ His words were ignored. Comintern propaganda regarded Catalonia and Aragón as ‘the kingdom of the Spanish Makhnovist faction’. And since it had been the Red Army which had destroyed the Makhnovist anarchists in the Ukraine, Antonov-Ovseyenko should have seen the warning signs.²³

He then moved into the realm of international relations, supporting the Generalitat’s contacts with Moroccans, and promising them independence for the colony in the hope of creating an uprising in Franco’s recruiting ground. ‘Two weeks ago’, he reported to Moscow, ‘a delegation of the national committee of Morocco, which can be trusted because it has a lot of influence among the tribes of Spanish Morocco, started negotiations with the Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. The Moroccans would immediately start an uprising if the republican government guaranteed that Morocco would become an independent state if it succeeded and also on the condition that Moroccans would immediately receive financial support. The Catalan committee is inclined to sign such an agreement and sent a special delegation to Madrid ten days ago. Caballero didn’t express an opinion and suggested that the Moroccan delegation negotiates directly with [the central government].’²⁴ Although such a move was considered by the central government and the Spanish Communist Party, this démarche was angrily rejected by Moscow. The last thing Stalin wanted was to provoke France, whose own colony in Morocco might be encouraged to revolt, and to give the British the impression that communists were stirring up worldwide revolution.

Antonov-Ovseyenko appears to have been doomed by the criticisms of Stashevsky and Negrín. This came to a head the following February when Antonov-Ovseyenko ‘showed himself to be a very ardent defender of Catalonia’. Negrín remarked that he was ‘more Catalonian than the Catalans themselves’. Antonov-Ovseyenko retorted that he was ‘a revolutionary, not a bureaucrat’. Negrín declared in reply that he was going to resign because he regarded the statement by the consul as political mistrust and while he was ready ‘to fight the Basques and Catalans, he did not want to fight the USSR’. Stashevsky reported all this to Moscow (one even wonders whether he and Negrín provoked Antonov-Ovseyenko on purpose) and the consul-general’s days were numbered.²⁵

As a result of the reports from Spain expressing total frustration with Largo Caballero’s determination to thwart communist power in the army, the Kremlin was looking for ‘a strong and loyal’ politician who would be able to control events internally, impress the bourgeois democracies, especially Britain and France, and put an end to the ‘outrages committed by some of the provinces’. Stashevsky had already seen Negrín as the ideal candidate. In late 1936 he reported to Moscow: ‘The finance minister has a great deal of common sense and is quite close to us.’²⁶ But although Stashevsky’s advice was followed, he was to suffer the same fate as Antonov-Ovseyenko. In June 1937 he, Berzin and Antonov-Ovseyenko were all recalled to Moscow where they were executed. Stashevsky’s great mistake was to have complained in April 1937 about the vicious activities of the NKVD in Spain, a curious blunder from one so politically aware.

The International Brigades and the Soviet Advisers

During the Spanish Civil War the Comintern was best known for having created the International Brigades. Although the exact origin of the idea remains uncertain, it came with the first calls for international support for the Spanish Republic–a form of solidarity, it was felt, which should have a military dimension.¹ On 3 August the Comintern approved a first resolution in general terms, no doubt waiting for a clear signal from the conspicuously silent Kremlin. Only on 18 September, after Stalin had made up his mind, did the secretariat dictate a resolution on ‘the campaign of support in the struggle of the Spanish people’, of which point No. 7 read: ‘proceed to the recruitment of volunteers with military experience from the workers of all countries, with the purpose of sending them to Spain’.²

A meeting was then held in Paris when Eugen Fried (‘Clément’) presented the instructions which he had brought from Moscow. Maurice Thorez and the other leaders of the French Communist Party were to organize the recruitment and training of volunteers destined to fight fascism in Spain. Communist Parties and organizations, such as Red Help International, Friends of the Soviet Union, Rot Front, la Confédération Générale du Travail, the Paix et Liberté movement and the various local committees to aid the Spanish Republic organized by the Soviet intelligence officer Walter Krivitsky, from The Hague, were all to play their part.³

In Spain there were already several hundred foreign volunteers. Most had just arrived in Barcelona for the People’s Olympiad when the rising took place. A number of them volunteered to form the first nucleus of the International Brigades, the centuria Thaelmann, then attached to the PSUC in Catalonia. This unit was led by Hans Beimler, a member of the central committee of the German Communist Party and a deputy in the Reichstag. After Hitler’s seizure of power, Beimler had been locked up in Dachau, from where he had managed to escape, reaching Barcelona on 5 August 1936. During the course of the whole civil war between 32,000 and 35,000 men from 53 different countries served in the ranks of the International Brigades.⁴ Another 5,000 foreigners served outside, mostly attached to the CNT or the POUM.

The main recruitment centre chosen for the International Brigades was Paris, where volunteers were organized by leaders of the French and Italian Communist Parties. André Marty, a leader of the PCF and a member of the executive committee of the Comintern, had Luigi Longo (‘Gallo’), who had been in Spain during the rising, as his second in command. Giuseppe di Vittorio (‘Nicoletti’) became head of the commissars. Another key figure was Josip Broz (‘Tito’), who was also in Paris. The Comintern claimed publicly that the International Brigades consisted of a wide group of spontaneous volunteers, democrats and anti-fascists. It denied that young communists had been ordered to Paris as part of an organized recruitment. Towards the end of the 1960s Moscow admitted that in September 1936 the Comintern had decided to infiltrate ‘volunteers with military experience to send them to fight in Spain’.⁵ Esmond Romilly, the young nephew of Winston Churchill who enlisted in the International Brigades, wrote that French communists reprimanded those who shouted ‘Vive les Soviets!’.⁶

With right-wing dictatorships forming a belt from Hamburg to Taranto, it required careful organization to bring the East Europeans to Spain. Poles in exile from their country’s military regime started to arrive in Paris, together with Hungarians fleeing from Admiral Horthy’s dictatorship and Romanians escaping from the Iron Guard. Yugoslavs avoiding the royalist police came along Tito’s ‘secret railway’. Even White Russians, hoping that service with the Brigades would allow them to return home, joined the mass of East European exiles. Most of them had a hard and painful journey before reaching their destination. ‘Often on foot, across fields and mountains, sleeping in the open, hidden in coal tenders or in the bilges of a ship, they managed to get through police control points and frontiers to reach France.’⁷ Volunteers from North America did not arrive until much later. The first detachment from the United States left New York on Christmas Day and the Lincoln Battalion saw action in the battle of the Jarama in February 1937.

The story of the International Brigades later became distorted in many ways, not simply from the propaganda motive of exaggerating their role out of all proportion to that of Spanish formations. An impression arose, especially in Great Britain and America, that they consisted of middle-class intellectuals and ideological Beau Gestes such as Ralph Fox, John Cornford, Julian Bell and Christopher Caudwell, who were all killed in action. This came about partly because the intellectual minority was newsworthy and partly because they were articulate and had ready access to publishers afterwards.

In fact, almost 80 per cent of the volunteers from Great Britain were manual workers who either left their jobs or had been unemployed.

Photographs of them show scrubbed faces with self-conscious expressions, short hair, cloth caps clutched in hand and Sunday suits with boots. Some of them were glad to escape the apathy of unemployment, others had already been fighting Mosley’s fascists in street battles, as their French equivalents had fought Action Française and the Croix de Feu.

But most had little notion of what warfare really meant. Slightly over half of them were Communist Party members. Jason Gurney of the British battalion described the drawing power of the Party in the 1930s: ‘Its real genius was to provide a world where lost and lonely people could feel important.’ Interminable, deeply serious meetings at branch level gave members a feeling of being involved in ‘the march of History’.⁸ Yet all the time they were made eager to have the responsibility and effort of original thought taken from them. Slogans in ‘pidgin agit-prop’, as Victor Serge termed it, became an inwardly soothing mantra despite the outward protest.

George Orwell later attacked the left’s intellectual dishonesty in the apparently effortless switch from pacifism to ‘romantic warmongering’: ‘Here were the very people who for twenty years had hooted and jeered at the “glory” of war, atrocity stories, at patriotism, even at physical courage, coming out with stuff that with the alteration of a few names would have fitted into the Daily Mail of 1918. The same people who in 1933 sniggered pityingly if you said that in certain circumstances you would fight for your country, in 1937 were denouncing you as a Trotskyist-Fascist if you suggested that the stories in New Masses about freshly wounded men clamouring to get back into the fighting might be exaggerated.’⁹

In their own countries some young middle-class idealists were ill at ease with workers and perhaps wary of the way their earnest social potholing could risk derision. Like Marx before them, they had often despaired of England’s ‘bourgeois’ proletariat. The Spanish proletariat, on the other hand, had never respected or aped their social superiors. Even in the eighteenth century foreign travellers were amazed at the cavalier way Spanish servants and labourers treated their aristocracy. Also, the fact that the Andalucian peasant had never been crushed by the seizure of the common land or contained by religion meant that the Spanish working class could be romanticized in a way which their own working class seemed to thwart. Consequently, the Spanish conflict offered Anglo-Saxon intellectuals a breath of pure and uncloseted emotion in comparison to the suffocating complacency at home. Middle-class guilt feelings and an urge to sublimate a privileged identity in the mass struggle made many of these intellectuals ideal recruits for communist authority.

There were, perhaps, many volunteers who went to Spain partly in search of excitement, but the selflessness of the International Brigaders’ motives cannot be doubted. They saw fascism as an international threat, and the Brigades appeared to offer the best way of fighting it. Spain was seen as the battleground which would decide the future. This belief was maintained long afterwards, so that even to this day there are those who argue that a republican victory would have prevented the Second World War.

Paris was the marshalling yard for volunteers of all nationalities. The secret networks directed them there from eastern, central and southeastern Europe. From the north, British workers without passports crossed the channel on excursion tickets. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, left-wing taxi drivers drove them to the reception centres in the 9th Arrondissement. Almost every day, young men, brown paper parcels under their arms, could be seen waiting for the Perpignan train at the Gare d’Austerlitz, conspicuously trying to look inconspicuous.

Once safely on the train, they would fraternize with those whose glances they had just been avoiding so studiously. Wine was passed round, food shared and the ‘Internationale’ sung endlessly. The two principal routes were either to Marseilles, where they were smuggled on to ships for Barcelona or Valencia, or else to Perpignan and then over the Pyrenees at night. Some anarchists, who still controlled the Pyrenean frontier, wanted to turn them back. Their argument was that weapons were needed, not men, but their main fear was that a communist-controlled ‘Foreign Legion’ was being built up to crush them later.¹⁰ In the fields peasants straightened up to watch the young foreigners pass, singing, in their trains or lorries. The reaction to them was warmest in the towns, where most of the population, especially the children, cheered them and gave the clenched-fist salute. In Barcelona the welcome was unstinted despite the misgivings of the libertarian movement.

On 12 October the steamer Ciudad de Barcelona reached Alicante with the first 500 volunteers who had embarked two days earlier in Marseilles. They then boarded a train which took them to Albacete, the base chosen for the International Brigades. Their barracks in the Calle de la Libertad had been seized from the Civil Guard after the rising.

The barracks where many of the nationalist defenders had been killed was used as the induction centre. It was in a disgusting state until a party of German communists cleaned it out thoroughly. Hygiene was a problem, especially for those who were weakened by the malnutrition of unemployment. Certainly the rations of beans in oil contributed to the dysentery suffered by the British working-class volunteers who, like the Canadians and Americans, were unused to foreign food. As soon as they arrived, the German communists put up a large slogan in their quarters proclaiming ‘We Exalt Discipline’, while the French posted precautions against venereal disease. (With the lack of antibiotics, the latter was to take almost as heavy a toll as in the militias.)

In Albacete, the Brigaders were given their initial indoctrination and issued with ‘uniforms’–often either woolly Alpine hats or khaki berets, ski jerkins, breeches, long thick socks and ill-fitting boots. Some found themselves in army surplus uniforms from the First World War, and the Americans later turned up almost entirely kitted out as ‘doughboys’. It was rare to find anything that fitted satisfactorily. Senior Party cadres and commissars were conspicuously different. They favoured black leather jackets, dark-blue berets, and a Sam Browne belt with a heavy 9mm automatic pistol. This last item was the great status symbol of the Party functionary.

The recruits were lined up on the parade ground for an address by André Marty, the Brigades’ controller who had earlier brought the French volunteers over the border during the fighting at Irún. Marty, a squat man with white moustache, drooping jowl and outsize beret, had made his name in the 1919 mutiny of the French Black Sea fleet. The heroic legend woven around him in Party mythology made him one of the most powerful figures in the Comintern. Almost nobody dared challenge his authority. At that time he was starting to develop a conspiracy complex that rivalled Stalin’s. Influenced by the show trials in Moscow, he became convinced that ‘Fascist-Trotskyist’ spies were everywhere, and that it was his duty to exterminate them. Marty later admitted that he had ordered the shooting of about 500 Brigaders, nearly one-tenth of the total killed in the war, but some question this figure.¹¹

The organizational committee of the International Brigades transformed itself on 26 October into a military council, which included Vital Gayman (‘Vidal’) and Carlos Contreras as well as General Walter. Constancia de la Mora, the niece of the conservative prime minister Antonio Maura and the wife of the communist commander of the republican air force, Hidalgo de Cisneros, acted as interpreter. The military council installed itself in a villa on the outskirts of the town and André Marty requisitioned other buildings in Albacete. The Brigades’ military commander was General ‘Kléber’ (alias Lazar Stern), a tall, grey-haired Hungarian Jew and veteran of the Red Army, who was later to be shot on Stalin’s orders. He had travelled under the name of ‘Manfred Stern’ on a Canadian passport faked by the NKVD.¹²

The parade ground at Albacete was used for drill, after which battalion commissars gave the volunteers long lectures on ‘why we are fighting’. These talks were followed by group discussions, used by the commissars to introduce ‘ideas’ which were then ‘discussed and voted upon democratically’. The International Brigades followed the 5th Regiment in introducing the saluting of officers. ‘A salute is a sign that a comrade who has been an egocentric individualist in private life has adjusted to the collective way of getting things done. A salute is proof that our Brigade is on its way from being a collection of well-meaning amateurs to a precision implement for eliminating fascists.’¹³

Such meetings and ‘democratic procedures’ provided tempting targets for the iconoclasts to mock, but these light-hearted jokers were marked down by the commissars. They were likely to be the first suspected of ‘Trotskyist-Fascist leanings’. Other sceptics, especially the old sweats from the Great War, were bitterly critical of the ‘training’. Most of the volunteers were very unfit, as well as ignorant of the most elementary military skills. As one of the veterans remarked, they were not preparing to go over the top with Das Kapital in their hands.

Marty told the volunteers that ‘when the first International Brigade goes into action, they will be properly trained men with good rifles, a well-equipped corps’. This was all part of the Party’s myth of the professional, when in fact sheer courage, bolstered by the belief that the world depended on them, had to make up for appalling deficiencies in the Brigaders’ basic training. Men who were to be sent against the Army of Africa had to project the aura of experts to impress the militias, but they could do little except form ranks, march and turn. Many of them had never even handled a rifle until they were on the way to the front, and the few Great War veterans had to show them how to load their obsolete weapons of varied calibres. From a box of assorted ammunition, inexperienced soldiers had to find the right bullets to fit their rifles. The number of jammed weapons through wedged and separated casings was predictably high.

The militias had suffered from similar disadvantages, but they had no pretensions to being an elite force arriving in the nick of time to save the situation. Nevertheless, the foreign innocents, who felt a ‘moment of awe’ on being handed a rifle, had several advantages over the Spanish militiamen on first going into battle. They had a slightly greater knowledge and understanding of modern military technology, they understood the value of trenches and, most important of all, they had men in their ranks who ‘had been through it before’. Spain’s neutrality in the Great War made the first shock of battle much more traumatic to the militia.

The Soviet authorities did everything they could to camouflage the number of Red Army personnel in Spain, even making some of them enlist as volunteers in the International Brigades. The most obvious examples were the commanders, Kléber, Gal, Copic and Walter, while in the Polish Dombrowski Battalion there was a significant nucleus of Red Army officers. Altogether thirty Soviet officers were sent to Spain as commanders in the International Brigades.¹⁴ The Palafox Battalion appears to have had an even larger Soviet contingent than most. It was commanded by a Major Tkachev (‘Palafox’), most of the four companies were commanded by Red Army lieutenants and many of the men, it would appear, were Soviet citizens. ‘There was all sorts of nationalities in it,’ wrote one member in the official account, ‘such as Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Lithuanians, etc.’¹⁵ In addition, a training centre for International Brigade officers was set up in Tiflis with a capacity for 60 infantry officers and 200 pilots.¹⁶ The Soviet military advisers were ordered to keep out of range of artillery fire (podalshe ot artillereiskogo ognia), so that captured officers could not be paraded in front of the Non-Intervention Committee.

Although it is hard to establish exactly the number of Soviet personnel who served in the Spanish Civil War, it is clear from documents that there were never more than 800 present at any one time. The total appears to have been a maximum of 2,150, of whom 600 were noncombatant, including interpreters. There were, in addition, between 20 and 40 members of the NKVD and between 20 and 25 diplomats. Altogether, 189 were reported killed or missing: 129 officers, 43 NCOs and 17 soldiers.¹⁷

On 16 October, in a coded telegram, Voroshilov, the People’s Commissar for Defence, ordered Gorev to ‘send advisers to work in divisions and brigades’.¹⁸ The vain Voroshilov, who adopted the codename of ‘The Master’ for Operation X, was eager to impress Stalin. He hoped, while sitting in his office in Moscow with a map of Spain, to control events on the ground thousands of kilometres away.¹⁹ Advisers, exasperated by his interference, started to refer to him ironically as ‘the great strategist’. Voroshilov started sending messages to Madrid telling the chief military adviser to ‘use his brains and display some will-power, so that the situation would start looking different’.²⁰ He also threatened the most senior advisers that ‘if the aforementioned instruction is not implemented [on the concentration of forces to attack on the Madrid front], strict disciplinary measures will be taken against all of you.’²¹

The trouble was that many of the advisers were so junior that they had as little experience of command as the Spanish officers they were supposed to advise. Colonel [later Marshal] R. Malinovsky (‘Malino’) wrote that advisers to some divisional commanders were ‘very good lieutenants, wonderful commanders of companies or squadrons, but, of course, were not ready to command a division–and how could one offer advice on something that one has no idea about?’²² Some advisers were extremely undiplomatic in the way they worked with republican officers and ‘rudely interfered in the operational orders given by the commanders’.²³

Soviet advisers, however, were soon complaining bitterly in their reports back to Moscow about the incompetence and inertia with which they had to deal. ‘Sometimes my hands itch to take some of these bastards out of their offices and stand them up against a wall,’ wrote General Berzin to Voroshilov. ‘Such unpunished, unbridled sabotage of necessary measures, such sloppiness and irresponsibility as reign here in the general staff and in the bureaucracy of the administration at the front, I could never have imagined before. People simply do not carry out the orders of the war ministry, or they do the opposite and calmly continue to stay where they are.’²⁴

One of the main problems in the relationship between Soviet personnel and their Spanish allies stemmed from a clash of very different cultures, political as well as social. Soviet soldiers had never had the opportunity to mix with foreigners, especially with ones who disagreed with Stalinist policy, and this was clearly a shock. A commissar with a Soviet tank battalion reported that the first ‘specific feature of the local situation which we had failed to take into account’ was the fact that ‘people around us belong to different political parties’. Another problem was the ‘practice of a completely open consumption of alcohol (wine is served with meals)’. Perhaps predictably, a number of Soviet advisers tended to over-exploit the opportunity. An aviation commissar reported that alcohol ‘was also a great threat’ for the Soviet pilots. ‘A local tradition is to drink wine with meals. There is always a lot of wine in our canteens. At first, our men got carried away.’

The tank battalion commissar was also shocked by the existence of legalized brothels in republican Spain. ‘I have to mention that it took a while for a number of our comrades to understand how disgraceful it is to visit brothels. About twenty men have visited prostitutes without permission before 3 December. After the party collective stopped these visits to brothels, discipline has changed dramatically for the better.’ Clearly few precautions were taken, since 22 men were infected with venereal diseases. He also reported on a ‘carefree and offensive attitude towards women: Morkevich, a Komsomol member and commander of a tank, offered 200 pesetas to one woman, who refused and reported this to the Antifascist Women’s Committee’.²⁵

The small detachment of Soviet naval advisers, led by Kuznetsov, had one overriding priority. It was to organize the safe arrival of ships bringing armaments and ammunition from the Soviet Union. Each vessel was identified by a cypher, consisting of Y followed by a number, and given a different route. Those leaving the Crimea would pass through the Dardanelles, then find an island in the Aegean to carry out a superficial refit to change identity, including the name of the ship and flag of convenience. A fake funnel or superstructure would be added to camouflage the ship’s profile. Some pretended to carry tourists, with members of the crew strolling around in hats and pretending to take photographs. The captain was instructed to avoid crossing dangerous stretches in daylight.

Once into the central Mediterranean, the Y ships would keep close to the coast of Africa. They turned north towards Cartagena only when level with Algeria. The most dangerous part of the journey came towards the end, with Italian submarines as well as aircraft patrolling the blockade area. When 48 hours from their destination, Kuznetsov’s staff, who had been tracking the progress of each ship, arranged for Spanish republican warships to escort them in.²⁶

One young Soviet sailor was clearly fired up with his mission, to judge by the poem he wrote:

I am a brave sailor from the Red Navy

I am exactly twenty years old.

I am sailing out into the vast expanse of the sea

To bring the Great October to the whole of the world.

Oh, our noise and uproar,

Resound against the bourgeois shores,

Our Soviet fleet is the stronghold.

All the working people, forward!²⁷

The first ship with Soviet military supplies to reach Spain was the Campeche, which berthed in Cartagena on 4 October 1936. The second ship, the Soviet vessel Komsomol, reached Cartagena eight days later with the first shipment of T-26 tanks. These two shiploads arrived just in time to play a major part in the imminent battle for Madrid.

The Battle for Madrid

The success of the Army of Africa in putting to flight the militias had greatly raised the optimism of the nationalists and the expectations of their allies. Reports were sent to Germany that Madrid had no food reserves, no anti-aircraft defences and no fortifications. The militia were badly armed with old rifles of varying calibres and they had few machine guns that worked. The republican fighters and bombers, consisting mainly of French Dewoitines and Potez, were no match for the Heinkel and Fiat fighters. It was the combination of artillery fire and air attacks which had completely demoralized the militia columns. Even many regular officers began to shake uncontrollably when they heard aero engines.

It is often forgotten that the Spanish metropolitan army had no battle experience and the majority of its officers had not handled troops even on manoeuvres. This lack of training, as much as the instinctive dislike which most officers felt for the militia system, contributed to the chaotic retreat of the republican forces from Estremadura. As headquarters’ staff frequently retreated without attempting to warn their forward units, it was not surprising that militia groups, feeling abandoned, should make a run for it before they were cut off. In fact, with communications virtually non-existent, a formalized command structure could not have co-ordinated the different sectors, even if it had been run efficiently. General Carlos Masquelet attempted to establish defences close to Madrid, with four concentric defence lines, roughly ten kilometres apart. They were not continuous, but concentrated on the most important road junctions.¹

The nationalist advance on the capital started at the end of the first week of October. The Army of Africa began a three-pronged attack: northwards from Toledo, north-eastwards along the Navalcarnero road and eastwards from San Martín de Valdeiglesias. Mola was given official command of the Madrid operation, which appears to have been a calculated ploy by Franco, in case anything went wrong,² while Colonel Varela was in command of the colonial troops. Yagüe was back with the Army of Africa, but in a subordinate position. The columns, composed of around 10,000 men each, were commanded by Lieutenant-Colonels Carlos Asensio, Fernando Barrón, Heli Rolando de Tella, Delgado Serrano, and Major Castejón while Colonel Monasterio commanded the cavalry. The left flank of the attack was strengthened by 10,000 men from Mola’s army, made up of Carlist requetés, Falangist militia and regular soldiers. The plan was for the nationalist forces to enter the capital on 12 October, the day of the Feast of the Spanish Race. Mola claimed that he would drink a cup of coffee that day on the Gran Vía and, although the attack on Madrid was delayed, even Franco’s staff began to prepare for a triumphal entry. The seemingly inevitable capture of Madrid would not only mean a crushing psychological blow to the republicans. It should guarantee belligerent rights, if not de facto recognition, from foreign powers.

After Navalcarnero on the north-east axis had fallen, Illescas on the Toledo road was occupied on 19 October. Torrejón, also on the Toledo road and some 30 kilometres from the capital, was taken several days later. The nationalists were not alone in believing that Madrid would fall to them rapidly. Foreign journalists and diplomats were sure that the advance of the Army of Africa, backed by squadrons of the Luftwaffe and Italian air force, could not be stopped. The Republic’s administration seemed paralysed by a strange mixture of frantic activity and inertia. Many blamed ‘sabotage by reactionary civil servants’, but however true, such charges did little more than divert attention from the government’s own chaos.

In the second half of October Largo Caballero began to issue decrees extending mobilization in an effort to improve Madrid’s defences; yet for much of the capital’s population the war still seemed remote. Militiamen, criticized for being on ‘excessive guard duty’ in the capital rather than at the front, tended to ignore official communiqués. Nor could the prime minister himself forget old rivalries. He refused to assign UGT construction workers to the digging of trenches in case they defected to the CNT. And yet the speed of the nationalist advance was such that on 18 October, when Caballero had tried to telephone the republican commander in Illescas, he had found himself talking to the nationalist commander who had just occupied the town.

Of the government decrees issued at this time, the one on 18 October was to have the most far-reaching effect. This announced the establishment of ‘mixed brigades’ of 4,000 men each. Although not implemented immediately, it marked the first major step away from militia columns towards a formalized army. The brigades were to consist of four battalions, with supporting artillery.³ A few days later, XI and XII International Brigades were formed at Albacete under the command of Kléber and Lukács. The Republic soon had 80,000 men under arms, most of whom were to bear the brunt of defending Madrid.

Aleksandr Rodimtsev, one of the key commanders at Stalingrad six years later, described his arrival at the Madrid front at this inauspicious moment. He had come from Albacete by truck. Each time they had stopped on the way, village boys had admired their uniforms and stroked their pistol holsters. There had been an air attack on the convoy, and everyone had jumped out cursing in different languages. In Madrid he had reported to the war ministry, accompanied by an interpreter. He was taken to meet General Pozas, commander of the Army of the Centre, who was about to become a member of the Communist Party. Pozas warned him that discipline was weak in the militias. Soldiers went home from the front on their own accord.

Rodimtsev visited the front and encountered a young woman machine gunner and anarchist dinamiteros festooned with grenades. One of them fired a pistol in the air, demanding to see his documents. Rodimtsev was attached to Líster’s brigade and he found its headquarters in an abandoned village. Some of the staff were having a siesta. Others were out in a meadow singing a melancholy song. Their commander came over. ‘Líster was stocky and swarthy,’ wrote Rodimtsev. ‘He had a high protruding forehead, black hair which was long and its ends bleached by the sun. When he smiled, dimples appeared in his cheeks, which made his face look kindly and almost childlike. He said in Russian with a slight accent, “Hello, Pablito. I’ve been expecting you. I had a telephone call in the morning to say that you had left.” He introduced me to his commissar and officers. They clapped me on the shoulder, and shook my hand vigorously. All had a few words of Russian: “Come here. Have a coffee. Have a cigarette.”’ Líster warned him in a whisper that he must be careful. There were ‘people around from the “fifth column”.’⁴ The ‘fifth column’ was a phrase attributed to General Mola, who apparently claimed to a journalist that he had four columns attacking the capital and a ‘fifth column’ of sympathizers within the city ready to revolt.

The rhythm of the nationalist advance was so fast that on 21 October, three days after reaching Illescas, the column of Heli de Tella, supported by Monasterio’s cavalry, occupied Navalcarnero, 30 kilometres from Madrid. The militiamen, faced with Ansaldo light tanks, had fled from their triple line of trenches on the western side of the town.

In his final orders for the attack on Madrid, Franco emphasized the need to concentrate forces to provoke the fall of the city. On 23 October Junkers 52s bombed Getafe and Madrid itself for the first time. ‘Everyone who can flee the city is fleeing,’ wrote Koltsov in his diary the next day. ‘By means fair or foul, all the rich people, all top officials escape. Only four or five correspondents have stayed. The streets are completely dark in the evenings. Everywhere patrols are checking people’s passes, and it’s become dangerous to drive around unarmed. Aragon arrived suddenly from Paris. He came accompanied by Elsa Triolet.’⁵

Four days later the nationalists took Torrejón de Velasco, Seseña, ˜ón. The next day, 28 October, Largo Caballero, in an astonishing radio broadcast designed to boost morale, revealed the republican plans: ‘Listen to me, comrades! Tomorrow, 29 October, at dawn, our artillery and our tanks will open fire on the enemy. Then our air force will appear, dropping bombs on them and machine gunning them. At the moment of the air attack, our tanks will attack the enemy’s most vulnerable flank sowing panic in their ranks…Now we have tanks and aircraft! Forward comrades of the front, heroic sons of the working people! Victory is ours!’⁶

Next morning, as he had said, fifteen T-26 tanks commanded by Captain Pavel Arman of the Red Army attacked Seseña. They were the spearpoint of the first mixed brigade commanded by Líster. Pavel Arman was an adventurous character who, despite his heroism in Spain, later fell foul of the Stalinist authorities and died fighting on the Eastern Front. The crews were mainly made up of Russian instructors, with their Spanish trainees acting as gunners.⁷

Taken by surprise, the nationalist infantry retreated and Monasterio’s cavalry suffered a number of casualties. But a detachment of regulares, having made a batch of petrol bombs, managed to knock out three tanks, a fifth of Arman’s force. The skirmish was claimed as a victory and Arman was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, but the attack had failed completely because Líster’s men could not, or would not, keep up with the tanks. Koltsov, who was present, wanted to find out what had gone wrong. ‘Líster was standing by the door of the little house in Valdemoro waiting for the group to return. He explained, a grimace upon his face, that his units had been moving well at first, but after 1,500 metres, they had felt tired and sat down. They began to “get stuck” in little groups among the hills. Once they lost sight of the tanks, the infantry on the main axis stopped, then they moved forward again, reached Seseña and after encountering a rather weak fire there, turned back…While the tankists were being congratulated, bandaged and fed, they kept asking quietly why the infantry had never caught up with them.’⁸

At the beginning of November Largo Caballero again asked the anarchists to join the government, since they constituted the largest group involved in the fight against the nationalists. The other Popular Front parties supported this attempt to end the anti-state within the state. The only Torrejón de la Calzada and Grin prominent dissenter was President Azaña, whose intense dislike of the anarchists appears to have dated from the Casas Viejas incident, the event which had led to the fall of his first government.

Once again CNT-FAI leaders were faced with a fundamental dilemma. They believed the state could not change its nature, whatever the politics of its leaders; yet they were extremely worried by growing communist strength. Federica Montseny, an FAI intellectual, later explained to the American historian Burnett Bolloten: ‘At that time we only saw the reality of the situation created for us: the communists in the government and ourselves outside, the manifold possibilities and all our achievements endangered.’⁹

The CNT-FAI asked for five ministries including those of finance and war so as to protect themselves in the two areas where they felt most vulnerable. They settled, however, for four minor posts: health, which had previously only been a directorate-general, justice, industry and commerce. The ‘purists’ were persuaded to accept this compromise by the ‘reformist’ syndicalists, such as Horacio Prieto, the secretary of the CNT National Committee, Juan Peiró, the new ministry of industry, and Juan López, who took the ministry of commerce. Federica Montseny cast aside misgivings and the warnings of her father, to become Spain’s first woman minister. García Oliver proved an unconventional minister of justice. Legal fees were abolished and criminal dossiers destroyed.

The CNT-FAI leaders had only just taken up their posts when, on the morning of 6 November, Largo Caballero called a cabinet meeting and stated that the government must move to Valencia. Azaña had already abandoned the capital for Barcelona without warning and most ministers, especially Largo Caballero and Prieto, were convinced that Madrid would fall immediately. It was argued in cabinet that if they were captured, the Republic would have no legal leadership and the rebels would instantly achieve international recognition. (In fact, the fall of the capital alone would have had much the same result and Barajas aerodrome to the east was not threatened if they had wanted to escape at the last moment.) The new CNT-FAI ministers opposed this plan strenuously, saying that the government should not abandon the defenders. But the anarchists were alone in their objections and it was decided that the capital would be ruled by a junta in the absence of the administration.

While the government was preparing to quit the city, the streets were filled with peasants and their livestock. ‘Many refugees are moving through Madrid,’ noted Koltsov that day. ‘They are mostly from villages close to the capital. A big flock of sheep was driven past the “Palace” [Hotel], the parliament buildings and the Castellana. Sheep in the streets and plazas of Madrid surprise no one now.’¹⁰

General Pozas, the former commander of the Civil Guard and soon a Communist Party member, was given command of the Army of the Centre, while General Miaja was to lead the junta in charge of the capital. The orders to these two generals were put in the wrong envelopes, but luckily they opened them immediately instead of waiting as ordered. Pozas alleged that Miaja nearly wept with rage at what he saw as an attempt to sacrifice him in Madrid.

Meanwhile, on that night of 6 November the government loaded its files on to an enormous convoy of lorries which set off for Valencia. Fears that the Valencia road might be cut at any moment by a nationalist thrust were misplaced; instead the convoy was stopped by CNT militia at Tarancón. For desertion in the face of the enemy, the anarchists arrested A

´ lvarez del Vayo, the foreign minister, General Pozas, Juan Lopéz, their own CNT minister, and General Asensio, the under-secretary of war, who was reputed to have discriminated against anarcho-syndicalist militias. They also stopped the Soviet ambassador to tell him what they thought of communism. Eventually Horacio Prieto of the CNT National Committee persuaded the militia to let the convoy pass.

The effect of the government’s flight from Madrid was remarkable. The anarchist attitude immediately changed to ‘Long live Madrid without government!’ and the cry was echoed by others as a new feeling came over the capital. The sense of urgency which had marked the early days of the rising returned. The communists called for the formation of local committees, the very bodies which they had resolutely opposed before. The establishment of the Madrid junta was, in itself, a step back towards the fragmentation of power that had occurred in July. Slogans, which would have been taboo only a few days before, were now on the lips of every communist cadre. The gut instinct of defending the city against ‘the fascists and their Moors’ stirred the population. The parallel with the defence of Petrograd against the whites in the Russian civil war was repeatedly drawn and cinemas showed films like Sailors of Kronstadt and Battleship Potemkin. The communist deputy La Pasionaria was tireless in her exhortations to resistance, both on the radio and at mass rallies.

As in Barcelona in July, the decision to defend Madrid inspired mass bravery. The terror and loathing which the colonial troops aroused in the madrileños helped turn panic into a spirit of fierce resistance. In the Plaza de Atocha a large placard warned: ‘In Badajoz the fascists shot 2,000. If Madrid falls they will shoot half the city.’ Chains of women and children passed rocks and stones for the construction of barricades. Trenches were dug on the threatened western flank of the city. Houses in the south-west suburb of Carabanchel were prepared for a street-by-street defence.

At this moment of crisis, when the fighting reached the southern suburbs, there was a mass mobilization. Metal workers created the slogan ‘Every union syndicate a militia, every union member a militiaman’. The UGT and CNT syndicates formed themselves into battalions of railwaymen, barbers and tailors. There was a battalion of schoolmasters and a graphic arts battalion. Transport and buildings were requisitioned and, as in Barcelona, the Ritz Hotel was turned into a canteen for the homeless and refugees. The junta itself took over the palace of Juan March, where typists worked in the ballroom under huge chandeliers, which jangled ominously once the air raids and shelling started.

Miaja’s junta was a strange mixture. Nearly all the members were young and energetic, several being still in their twenties; as a result they were known as ‘Miaja’s infant guard’. On the other hand the old general, myopic, loquacious and incapable of staying with a subject, was no revolutionary. In fact, he had been a member of the Unión Militar Española, which played an important part in the early planning for the rising. However, he craved popularity and was easily flattered. The communists promoted him as the hero of Madrid, giving him an idealized treatment in their press throughout the world. Miaja was thrilled and even became a Party member to repay the compliment, though joining as many political organizations as possible seemed to be his major indulgence. Azaña laughed at Miaja’s ‘communism’, remembering that the general had told him only four years previously that socialists should be shot.¹¹

A chill warning of future developments came with Rosenberg’s veto of any POUM representation on the junta. This overtly ignored the principle of political parity, which had so benefited the communists up to then. Rosenberg made it clear that there would be no Soviet weapons if the ‘Trotskyists’ were included. (Andrés Nin had, in fact, broken with Trotsky, who was critical of the POUM, but Nin remained an anti-Stalinist.) ‘Public order’ in Madrid was to take on a frightening aspect; NKVD officers remained in the capital after all the other non-military Russian personnel had left. The situation was worsened by Mola’s use of the phrase ‘fifth column’. Not surprisingly this ill-judged remark greatly increased the fear of treachery from within and unleashed another round of repression.

The Civil Guard, now the Republican Guard, was ruthlessly purged. This drastic act was encouraged by memories of their revolt at Badajoz on Yagüe’s approach. The Assault Guard were treated in a similar manner and sent down to Valencia. The communist 5th Regiment took control of the vast majority of security operations, and the security delegate, Santiago Carrillo, presided over a spate of arrests and summary executions which may have exceeded those of July and August. There is no doubt that there were many nationalist supporters in Madrid, but the overwhelming majority of attacks attributed to the fifth column came from a frightened population mistaking the direction of machine-gun fire or confusing artillery shells with ‘grenades dropped from windows’.

It is difficult to know whether the junta authorities acted out of genuine fear of a ‘stab in the back’, or whether they purposely exaggerated incidents in order to justify the security forces’ ruthless methods. Spy mania was at its height, and the telephones were cut off to prevent nationalist sympathizers from telephoning intelligence to the Army of Africa in the suburbs. The activities, real and imagined, of the fifth column could not, however, justify the decision to evacuate inmates of the Model Prison to Paracuellos del Jarama and then shoot them. Many were leading nationalist supporters.¹²

It is not known for sure whether this order was given by Carrillo’s assistant, José Cazorla, or by Koltsov, the Pravda correspondent and special envoy, who declared that ‘such important elements must not fall into fascist hands’. Immediate and outspoken condemnation of the killings came from Melchor Rodríguez, the anarchist director of prisons newly appointed by Juan García Oliver, but few others dared to criticize the communists at such a critical moment.

The decision to deal with the prisoners was taken on 8 November at 10.30 during a meeting between representatives of the United Socialist Youth and the local federation of the CNT. The prisoners were classified according to three groups:

First group: Fascists and dangerous elements. Immediate execution, concealing [our] responsibility.

Second group: Non-dangerous prisoners. Immediate evacuation to the prison of Chinchilla, with full security.

Third group: Prisoners not responsible [for any crimes]. To be set at liberty immediately to demonstrate to foreign embassies our humanitarianism.¹³

There is no evidence to suggest that either Miaja’s Junta of Defence or the government in Valencia were informed of this decision taken by Santiago Carrillo and Amor Nuño, both just twenty years old, which cost at least 2,000 lives. (Santiago Carrillo was later the leader of the Spanish Communist Party and the great proponent of Euro-Communism in the latter part of the Cold War, an attempt to distance Western Communist Parties from the rusty iron hand of the Soviet Union.) It has been claimed that their ruthless policy prevented a revolt by the ‘fifth column’, but although there is no doubt that there were many nationalist supporters still hidden in the city, they had neither the arms nor the organization to undertake such an action.

Meanwhile, militia units were falling back into the capital, exhausted and demoralized. Some had fled openly, even seizing ambulances to get away from the Moors, but others were fighting back with a dogged courage which slowed the nationalist advance. In fact, it would appear that the militia collapse was exaggerated by newsmen who saw only those who were fleeing. On 4 November Getafe and its aerodrome were captured, prompting Varela to tell journalists that they could ‘announce to the world that Madrid will be captured this week’. To the west Brunete had been taken two days before. The newspaper ABC in Seville declared: ‘We are only a 4.60 peseta taxi ride from the city.’

The nationalists were already organizing food convoys so as to be able to feed the population once they entered the city. Even the cautious Franco felt the outcome was virtually certain, so certain, indeed, that he decided to allow republican troops a line of escape so that they were not forced to fight by being cornered. As a result, no push was made towards Vallecas to cut the Valencia road. It was a decision the nationalists greatly regretted later.

In spite of the republicans’ retreat, there had been a major development to improve the morale of the militias. Russian aid purchased with the gold reserves was starting to arrive. Maisky, the Russian ambassador in London, and thus representative on the Non-Intervention Committee, had declared on 28 October that his country felt itself no more bound by the agreement than Germany, Italy or Portugal. This was the day before the T-26 tanks attacked Seseña.

The first batch of Russian aid, which arrived in October, included 42 Illyushin 15 (Chato) biplane fighters, and 31 Illyushin 16 (Mosca) monoplane fighters. On 29 October a squadron of Katiuska fast bombers, which had just arrived, raided Seville, and on 3 November Chato fighters were seen over Madrid. A day later they dispersed a formation of Fiat fighters and held their own against the Heinkel 51s. The streets of Madrid were thronged with crowds staring up into the skies and cheering whenever an aircraft was hit; it was always assumed to be an enemy. They did not know, however, that Soviet ‘fighters over the Madrid sector were ordered to conduct air battles over their own territory, and to enter enemy territory only so far that they would be able, should the engine stop, to glide back to our own lines’.¹⁴ The arrival of this modern Soviet weaponry, especially the tanks and the stubby I-16 Mosca monoplane, made the Nazis decide to increase their aid. With Franco’s agreement it was to be organized within an independent German command and named the Condor Legion.

Having advanced the last few kilometres to the south-western outskirts of the city, Varela began to make probing attacks on 5 November as he tried to decide the best approach. The western side of Madrid had no suburb buffer because the old royal hunting ground of the Casa de Campo stretched down to the River Manzanares. Madrid’s centre and key buildings all lay within a kilometre of this exposed triangle, bound by the Corunna road running north-west, and the Estremadura road stretching to the south-west. On the north of the wedge lay the new university city with its widely spaced modern blocks. Varela, who had some 15,000 men altogether, wanted to make a left-flanking attack round the northern tip of the Casa de Campo, in the area of the San Fernando bridge, but Franco insisted on attacking straight on. He wanted to reduce street fighting, especially in working-class districts, to a minimum. Nationalist troops were clearly superior in open country while the majority of their casualties, especially among the regulares, had been sustained in house clearing.

The next day Varela issued his orders for the attack scheduled for 7 November. There would be feint attacks against the Segovia and Princesa bridges to distract the defenders, while the main thrust would take place towards the sector which ran from the University City to the Plaza de España. Castejón’s column would protect the left flank and occupy Garabitas hill and part of the Casa de Campo. Asensio, with his column, was to advance from the centre of the wedge towards the sector of Rosales and Princesa. Delgado Serrano was ordered to head for the Plaza de España. He would be supported by the Italian Ansaldos and the Panzer Mark Is of Colonel von Thoma.

Miaja had established his military headquarters in the finance ministry on 6 November, the day the government left for Valencia. His chief of staff was Colonel Vicente Rojo, described by his opponents as ‘one of the most competent members of the Spanish army’.¹⁵ But not all agreed. General Alonso Baquer wrote later that Rojo was a ‘mixture of Russian populism and French scholasticism’, which meant in the latter case, that as a graduate of the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre, he was anchored in the French doctrines of the First World War. Curiously, the republican army’s slavish respect for French military doctrine later convinced Franco and his Axis allies that officers from the French army were secretly directing operations.¹⁶

Neither Miaja nor Rojo, however, knew what forces they had under their command, nor who was on their staff. Many officers had taken advantage of the confusion to flee the city and some of them, including the former chief of operations, had joined the nationalists. Even Miaja’s orders from the central government were contradictory, for he was told to hold Madrid at any cost yet also given detailed instructions for retreat towards Cuenca.

General Goriev, the man said by many to be the real commander in Madrid, was established in the ministry as well. One of his officers, Colonel Nikolai Voronov, controlled the artillery, although few batteries had any shells because of incompetence at the ministry of war. (Six years later Voronov commanded the artillery at Stalingrad and took Paulus’s surrender.) He and his Spanish counterpart established their observation post at the top of the Telefónica, a building which later attracted more nationalist artillery fire than any other. Ironically, this skyscraper belonging to the American corporation International Telephone and Telegraph, ITT, became the symbol of left-wing resistance during the course of the battle. Downstairs its chairman, Sosthenes Behn, entertained journalists with brandy while awaiting the arrival of General Franco. According to Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt, he had prepared a banquet to greet the conquerors.¹⁷

The international press was already describing ‘the last hours of Madrid’. Several French journalists even sent details of the capital’s capture so as to beat their rivals to the story. The correspondent of L’Illustration declared, ‘Decisive victory is imminent’ and Léon Bailby wrote, ‘Nothing can be done to prevent the evident truth. Madrid will be taken rapidly, and that will be the final victory for the nationalists.’¹⁸ Portuguese radio gave vivid details of General Franco’s triumphal entry, mounted on a white charger. It also claimed that José Antonio Primo de Rivera had escaped and was advancing on Madrid at the head of a column of civilians.¹⁹ Telegrams from the Austrian and Guatemalan governments congratulating Franco on his victory were delivered to General Miaja instead. The nationalists and their allies simply did not consider that their success was in doubt. According to the Daily Telegraph correspondent, Carlist requetés were hurried forward so that Spanish Catholic troops were present at the entry. Reprisal tribunals and Civil Guard detachments allocated to each district waited behind the front line. Even the usually cautious General Franco had declared that he would attend mass in Madrid on 7 November and ordered his staff to make travel arrangements for Church leaders.

The world awaited the outcome of ‘a decisive battle’ between progress and reaction, or between civilization and red barbarism, depending on one’s point of view. Liberals and the left everywhere believed that international fascism had to be defeated at Madrid before Europe fell beneath a totalitarian ice age, while conservatives felt it to be the chance to halt the tide of communism. At this crucial moment the defenders were greatly aided by a fortunate discovery, following Varela’s decision to delay his attack by a day. On 7 November, the day before the postponed attack, a militia detachment searched the body of Captain Vidal-Quadras, a nationalist officer in an Italian tank which had been knocked out. In his jacket they found the operational orders.

The plan was to ‘occupy the zone between, and including, the University City and the Plaza de España, which will constitute the base of departure for further advances into the interior of Madrid’.²⁰ Now knowing that the assault on Carabanchel was only a feint, the republican general staff switched the bulk of its forces to the Casa de Campo sector and prepared defensive positions for the next morning. Non-militia members of the UGT organized themselves at their casas del pueblo and CNT members at their ateneos libertarios before going to the front as reserves. They and everyone else, including the refugees from the south-west, were to wait in batches immediately behind the front line, ready to dash forward and take over the weapon of anyone killed. The reassuring presence of such a mass of comrades may have been like an injection of courage, but that night inexperienced sentries on their own took fright at shadows and opened fire. This inevitably led to fusilades into the dark across the whole sector, resulting in a wastage of ammunition. Any indiscriminate firing was serious as there were apparently fewer than ten rounds per rifle; the departing officials of the war ministry had not left word of where the ammunition reserves were kept.

On the morning of 8 November Varela’s three main assault forces under Yagüe attacked out of the cover provided by the low trees on the Casa de Campo. Castejón’s column came under heavy fire and he was severely wounded. At the same time Barrón’s and Tella’s smaller columns moved on Carabanchel in their diversionary attack. Being forewarned, Miaja had maintained only about 12,000 of his 40,000-strong force in Carabanchel; the rest were positioned opposite the Casa de Campo. This heterogeneous mass of militia, including a women’s battalion at the Puente de Segovia, mixed with carabineros and regular soldiers, and backed by totally untrained volunteers, was twice the size of their opponents. But that does not belittle their achievement that day, considering the difference in armament and experience. Probably less than half of the republicans had been involved in earlier fighting and had only learned how to operate the bolt and aim a rifle the evening before. Many still had no idea of how to clear a stoppage, an operation difficult enough for steady fingers. Nevertheless, the nationalist assault columns were held at the western edge of the city that day, a victory of great psychological importance. The Army of Africa no longer appeared invincible. Republican spirits were further raised by the deployment that evening in the Casa de Campo sector of the first of the International Brigades.

The arrival of XI International Brigade, commanded by General Kléber, had a powerful effect on the population of Madrid. It was generally regarded as the best of the Brigades. Its steadiness, ammunition discipline and trench digging was to have a good influence on the militias. As the 1,900 foreigners marched up the Gran Vía in well-drilled step, the madrileños cheered them with cries of ‘¡Vivan los rusos!’, on the mistaken assumption that they were the infantry counterpart of the fighter aircraft. ‘There were many old women among the locals who welcomed us,’ wrote a Serbian serving under the nom de guerre of Karl Anger. ‘They were wiping tears from their eyes with one hand, while the other hand was raised, with the fist clenched, in a Rot Front greeting…These clenched fists of old Spanish women made us more courageous and determined.’²¹

The almost suicidal bravery of XI International Brigade, especially the Germans, cannot be doubted, but the exploitation of their devotion was particularly unpleasant. General Kléber (alias Manfred Stern) was turned into a hero, but this was dangerous for him later when he was accused by fellow Soviet officers of ‘Kléberism’, which meant claiming all the glory for yourself at the expense of the Spanish.²² Madrid was to be the Communist Party’s victory alone. Communist troops under the Italian commissar, Luigi Longo, had tried to stop Major Palacios with two battalions of volunteers and a battery of Vickers 105mm field guns from reaching the capital the day before XI International Brigade arrived. They forced their way through, nevertheless, and were welcomed by General Miaja and Colonel Rojo just before the Brigaders turned up. Soon after dawn on the next morning, these two battalions counterattacked over the San Fernando bridge on the nationalist left flank in the Casa de Campo, losing nearly half their men and retaking the northeastern part lost on the previous day. But nothing was heard of this in the outside world, nor were other militia actions reported. It was forgotten that the Brigaders had not appeared in time to affect the fighting on 8 November and that they represented only 5 per cent of the republican forces. So successful was Comintern propaganda that Sir Henry Chilton, the British ambassador, was convinced that only foreigners defended Madrid. Meanwhile, the nationalists also exaggerated the Brigaders’ importance, so as to justify their own failure and emphasize the ‘threat of international communism’.

Líster’s brigade was transferred to the University district by the bridge across the Manzanares. Rodimtsev in the command post saw Moroccan regulares advancing, shouting wildly as they moved in towards the bridge, one group at a time running forward while the others covered them. Miguel, one of Líster’s machine-gunners, was firing at them in short bursts, but then the gun ceased firing. Rodimtsev, a machine-gun instructor, ran over. ‘The belt was jammed. I hit the handle hard with my palm and it fell into place. I started firing at the Moroccans running towards me. The Maxim was working really well. There was a bottleneck on the bridge. The Moroccans at the front turned back and collided with those coming up behind.’ Another machine-gunner, Gómez, later told him that the Soviet Union had sent them bad machine-guns. They could not kill Moroccans. ‘We fire at them but nothing happens. Then the enemy shell us with mortars.’ Rodimtsev told him to camouflage the machine-guns. The Moroccans were using dummies to attract their fire. Then the nationalists shelled the republican machine-gunners when they revealed their positions.²³

Having been severely checked on the west flank, Varela switched his attack on 9 November towards Carabanchel. Fierce house-to-house fighting ensued in this working-class suburb, where the militias, on familiar ground, not only held back the regulares, but inflicted heavy casualties. That evening, two kilometres to the north, XI International Brigade suffered severe losses when forcing the nationalists to retreat a few hundred metres in the central part of the Casa de Campo. The fierce fighting continued in Carabanchel over the next few days, then on 12 November General Miaja (or more probably General Goriev), concerned that the nationalists might thrust through to cut off the Valencia road, sent XII International Brigade and four Spanish brigades to attack the important hill, Cerro de los Angeles, as a diversion. This second International Brigade had received even less training than the first and, despite the Great War veterans in their ranks, the attack collapsed in chaos. Much of this was due to language and communication problems, but the fact remains that the Brigaders were hardly more skilful at mounting attacks than the militias.

At this stage the anarchist leader, Buenaventura Durruti, arrived with more than 3,000 men from the Aragón front. He had been persuaded to go to Madrid by Federica Montseny, who was representing the government in Valencia. At a meeting with García Oliver at Madrid CNT headquarters, Cipriano Mera, the delegate-general of their militia battalions, warned Durruti against attempting a frontal attack on the Casa de Campo, even though the anarchists had become alarmed at the influence the communists were achieving through the International Brigades. Durruti insisted that he had no option but to attack from the University City in the direction of the Casa de Velázquez. The assault took place on the morning of 17 November, but the covering artillery and air support he had been promised failed to materialize. (Whether that was through oversight or intention, anarchist suspicions of communist tactics were greatly increased.) Durruti’s men, who had shown such reckless bravery in the Barcelona fighting, broke back to their start line when they met a concentrated artillery barrage and heavy machine-gun fire, neither of which they had experienced before.

‘Endless air battles have been going on all day,’ wrote Koltsov that evening. ‘At 16.00 a republican fighter aircraft lost its group and attacked a Junkers bravely on its own. Several Heinkel aircraft chased and damaged it. The pilot bailed out with a parachute and landed safely right on a sidewalk on the Paseo de Castellana. The admiring crowd carried the brave man to a car. Five minutes later he was brought to the war ministry. Members of the junta applauded him and hugged the pilot, Pablo Palancar.’²⁴

On 19 November the nationalists attacked with the support of heavy artillery and Asensio’s column found a gap in the republican line. As a result the nationalists were able to cross the Manzanares and establish a bridgehead deep in the University City in the Faculty of Architecture. The legionnaires and regulares held on despite furious counter-attacks from XI International Brigade and other units in that sector, which was to become the most bitterly contested stretch of territory in the whole front. In a foretaste of Stalingrad, the legionnaires of the 4th Bandera and the Edgar André Battalion of XI International Brigade fought a savage battle in the buildings there. ‘Once at the University Campus,’ wrote Karl Anger, ‘we started a ruthless fight for every path, every house, every floor, and every threshold. Here, the front line sometimes goes through the most valuable laboratories and libraries. Sometimes breastworks are constructed from huge volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Here the fascists have come the closest to Madrid: it is only between three and five hundred metres from the Casa Velázquez to the nearest café in town.’²⁵

Durruti was mortally wounded during the fighting that day. He died the next morning in the improvised hospital set up in the Ritz, at the same time as José Antonio Primo de Rivera was executed in Alicante.²⁶ A rumour soon started that Durruti had been shot by one of his own men who objected to his severe discipline. The anarchists, for reasons of morale and propaganda, claimed that he had been killed by a sniper’s bullet when in fact his death had really been an accident. The cocking handle of a companion’s ‘naranjero’ machine pistol caught on a car door, firing a bullet into his chest. Durruti was without doubt the most popular anarchist leader. He had been an unrelenting rebel throughout his life and had earned the reputation of a revolutionary Robin Hood. His funeral in Barcelona was the greatest scene of mass mourning that Spain had witnessed, with half a million people in the procession alone. His reputation was so great, not just among anarchists, that attempts were made after his death to claim his allegiance. The Falange said that, like his two brothers, he was a Falangist sympathizer at heart, while the communists felt certain that he was on the way to joining them.

The nationalists’ failure to break through on 19 November made Franco change his strategy. He could not risk any more of his best troops in fruitless assaults now that a quick victory looked much more difficult. So, for the first time in history, a capital city came under intense air as well as artillery bombardment. All residential areas except the fashionable Salamanca district were bombed in an attempt to break the morale of the civilian population. The Italian Aviazione Legionaria and the Luftwaffe conducted a methodical experiment in psychological warfare with their Savoia 81s and Junkers 52s. The bombing did not, however, break morale as intended; on the contrary, it increased the defiance of the population. In London, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chargé d’affaires, derided British fear of air attacks ‘since you see what little harm they have done in Madrid’.

After the statement that the Salamanca district would be spared, the whole area was packed to overflowing and the streets became virtually impassable. Meanwhile, in a remarkably effective operation, the UGT reorganized the transfer of Madrid’s most essential industries to unused Metro tunnels. The artist Josep Renau, the director general of the Bellas Artes, organized the evacuation of paintings from the Museo del Prado to Valencia. The air raids destroyed hundreds of buildings in Madrid, from slum dwellings to the Palacio de Liria belonging to the Duke of Alba. Alba, in his bitter charges accusing the Republic of responsibility for the damage, did not seem to find it incongruous that the nationalist crusade was destroying its own capital with foreign bombers, but then Franco had already declared to the correspondent of The Times: ‘I will destroy Madrid rather than leave it to the Marxists.’

That week saw the air war escalate. On 13 November the largest dogfight so far took place, with 14 Fiats and 13 Chatos locked in combat over the Paseo de Rosales.²⁷ The next day Miaja issued an order against shooting at pilots baling out. On 16 November nationalist allies bombed the Prado, the Museo Antropológico, the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Museo Arqueológico and the Archivo Histórico Nacional, as well as various hospitals: the Clinic of San Carlos, the Hospital Provincial and the Hospital de la Cruz Roja. These attacks were described by Malraux in his novel L’Espoir.²⁸ One bomb hit a school and photographs of the rows of dead children strengthened the determination of madrileños to prevent a nationalist victory.

Estimates of the bombs dropped on Madrid vary a great deal, but we know from Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen’s personal war diary that on 4 December alone, his Junkers 52s dropped 36 tons on the city.²⁹ In comparison to Second World War bomb loads, when a single British Lancaster could drop ten tons, this was not intensive, but as the first concerted bombing campaign against a capital city, the psychological effect was considerable. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who lost his house, ‘the one of the flowers’, experienced a sense of outrage which had nothing to do with his own material loss:

Come and see the blood in the streets

Come and see

The blood in the streets

Come and see the blood

In the streets.³⁰

The fierce fighting on the western edge of Madrid continued. ‘The morning had been hard,’ wrote a French volunteer called André Cayatte. ‘The battalion was relieved for a few hours’ rest. To the west, the noise of shelling rolled on. In all the European languages, people talked and sang with so much friendship that one worked out what one could not understand.’ They went back into action at Palacete de la Moncloa on 20 November. ‘Major Rivie`re, a smile on his lips, died with elegance, as he had lived. Rivière with 115 volunteers, was defending a weekend house surrounded by enemy tanks. Three times the survivors attempted a sortie. Finally, the Moors set the house on fire. Rivière lit a last cigarette from the flames. “Nobody will ever know”, he said, “everything that we have done.” A moment later he was dead.’³¹

The reversion to local committees was proving of great value. Despite an evacuation programme, refugees still crammed the city (its million inhabitants had been increased by half); only such a system could have helped both them and those made homeless by the bombing. The committees supervised the construction of shelters, commandeered empty apartments and organized essential supplies and canteens. In contrast to these efforts a black market boomed and inevitably damaged morale.

The Soviet advisers, commissars, senior officers and important Party cadres had their luxurious and well-stocked base in Gaylord’s Hotel. The large number of visitors, fact-finding missions and committed supporters from abroad were also well looked after. Foreign journalists (‘conspicuous as actresses’ in Auden’s phrase) suffered little. But for the majority of the population the daily allowance was meagre. A horse or mule killed by the bombing or shellfire would be stripped to its skeleton by housewives, while starving dogs hovered around. One International Brigader recorded that a militiaman, having shot a stray which was lapping at the brains of a dead man, shrugged apologetically and explained that dogs were acquiring a taste for human flesh. Cats and rats were also used as food, if only to improve the thin lentil soup. The killing of one bird in the Madrid zoo was not provoked by hunger, however, but by the way the wretched creature learned to imitate the whistle of incoming shells.

Life in Madrid was full of contradictions. Near the Puerta del Sol two foreign journalists, Sefton Delmer and Virginia Cowles, passed an old woman on the pavement selling black and red anarchist scarves to enter a tailor’s shop which made cavalry and opera capes. Delmer and Cowles were fascinated by the continued existence of such an establishment in the middle of revolutionary Madrid. The proprietor, who clearly lacked customers, welcomed his visitors with enthusiasm. Delmer asked him how business was going. ‘It is very difficult, señor,’ he replied sadly. ‘There are so few gentlemen left in Madrid.’³² They left for lunch on the Gran Vía, ‘having to take shelter along the way from the daily preprandial artillery salvoes.’ Cowles was most impressed at the way the streets filled again after the last round had landed, shopkeepers emerged to take down shutters and people strolled along pavements again.

An English International Brigader told her later that what had struck him the most on reaching the country was to see a Spaniard, standing in the road during a bombardment, nonchalantly picking his teeth with a match. Foreigners were intrigued by the Spanish cult of conspicuous fearlessness. A Serbian International Brigader noted: ‘Spaniards are very brave in the fighting. But this courage, too, is of a knightly, poetical sort. It is hard for them to adapt to the volatile, pedantic and prosaic demands of modern war.’³³

Even with the intense air attacks of 19–23 November life was almost normal. People went to work each day and the trams still ran, even though their tracks had to be repaired continually. The underground was, of course, safer, though people joked that at least the tram had to stop before the front line, whereas on the metro you might come up behind it on the far side. These communication systems meant that reinforcements and supplies could be moved rapidly over the relatively short distances involved. Hot food for the front-line troops was far easier to provide than in normal defensive positions and the troops themselves could be relieved frequently, or even visited at the front.

The troops, and particularly the International Brigades, received visits in their trenches from the large numbers of foreigners brought to Madrid by the siege. These groups included journalists and a few war tourists, as well as politically committed supporters of the Republic. Some of the visitors were there for ‘pseudo-military excitement’ as one International Brigader described it. On visits to the front line they would often borrow a rifle or even a machine-gun to fire off a few rounds at the nationalist lines. Ernest Hemingway was a good example of the genre and, much as the men may have liked seeing new faces, especially famous ones, they became less enthusiastic when the thrill seekers provoked enemy bombardments.

By the end of November the struggle for Madrid had settled into a cold, hungry siege, punctuated by bombardment, air raids and the occasional flare-up. In Carabanchel, where the front line cut through the middle of streets, a strange deadly struggle continued, with sniping, flame-thrower attacks and tunnelling under houses to lay dynamite. The Carlists lost most of a company in one explosion. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic commitment of Madrid’s population diminished as the immediate danger receded. This was accompanied by the gradual replacement of the committees by centralized control. The activities of the communist secret police continued even after the danger was past, which also damaged morale. Anarchist militiamen clashed violently with communist authorities and attempts were made to censor the anarchist press. It was the beginning of a process which led to a major explosion in May of the next year, the start of a virtual civil war within the civil war.

At this time the communists made their first open move against the POUM, as mutual accusations between the Marxist rivals increased. The POUM had outraged the communists on 15 November, when its newspaper, La Batalla, analysed Russian policy too accurately. ‘Stalin’s concern’, the article said, ‘is not really the fate of the Spanish and international proletariat, but the protection of the Soviet government in accordance with the policy of pacts made by certain others.’ Soviet advisers immediately accused La Batalla of having ‘sold out to international fascism’. With the great increase in direct Soviet control, the Party line in Spain began to reflect the witch-hunt for Trotskyists in the USSR. Having kept them off the Madrid junta, the communists now stopped pay and supplies to the small POUM force on the Madrid front. The POUM militia in the region thus had no option but to disband and its members joined either UGT or CNT units.

The capital was saved and political passions aroused through much of the world, but it had certainly not proved ‘the grave of fascism’ as the communist slogan had hoped. The battle of Madrid marked only a change in the war. Checking the nationalists there turned a coup d’état into a full-scale civil war with international ramifications, almost a world war by proxy. This meant that even more help was needed from abroad. On 2 December 1936, Colonel von Richthofen recorded in his diary: ‘Salamanca wants German ground troops–at least two divisions.’ [In fact, one German and one Italian.]³⁴ But a cautious Hitler decided to restrict his aid to Franco to the Condor Legion.