The Battle for Spain Read online

  On 22 June Eden argued in the wake of the Leipzig incident that ‘submarines of the patrol powers in Spanish waters (including the western Mediterranean) should not proceed submerged, and that the Spanish parties should be informed that they must follow this procedure’.9 The patrol powers would then be justified in attacking any submarines under the surface. This proposal was blocked by the Italians with German support as ‘pointless’. Their ‘Legionary’ submarines would have been the most at risk. The French, no doubt using Eden’s proposal, called a conference at Nyon on the shore of Lake Geneva to discuss the situation in the Mediterranean, but Italy and Germany refused to attend. The Nazi government claimed that the Leipzig incident had still not been resolved, and the Italians protested at the Soviet Union’s direct accusation of continued submarine attacks. The British and French governments ‘regretted this decision’, adding that they would keep the Axis powers informed of what happened.

  Neurath warned Ciano that British naval intelligence had intercepted signals traffic between Italian submarines. Knowing there was little to fear, Ciano replied that they would be more careful in future. The Nyon conference decided with remarkable speed that any submerged submarines located near a torpedoing incident would be attacked by the naval forces of the signatories.10 Nothing, however, was said of air or surface attacks. That had to be added later at the League of Nations in Geneva. The British then proceeded to make such large provisos in an attempt to persuade the Italians to join the agreement that the whole exercise was rendered virtually worthless. Mussolini boasted to Hitler that he would carry on with his ‘torpedoing operations’.

  On 16 September Negrín took part in the League of Nations debate over events in the Mediterranean. He demanded an end to the farce, but his words had no effect. He continued to argue that maintaining the fiction of non-intervention was tantamount to assisting the war and demanded that the aggression of Germany and Italy be officially recognized. Only the Mexican and Soviet governments supported him.

  At the League of Nations that autumn, Eden tried to justify the non-intervention policy by claiming, untruthfully, that it had reduced the inflow of foreign forces. The British government also tried to prevent the Spanish Republic from publishing details of Italian intervention. Eden admitted that ‘it would be idle to deny that there have been wide breaches of the agreement’, but he went on to recommend the maintenance of the non-intervention agreement because ‘a leaky dam may yet serve its purpose’.11 For the nationalists it proved no barrier at all. Eventually, the League decided that if it ‘cannot be made to work in the near future, the members of the League will consider ending the policy of non-intervention’. The Spanish republican representative asked for a more precise definition of ‘the near future’. The French foreign minister, Delbos, hoped it meant not more than ten days and the British representative replied ‘probably an earlier date than the Spanish delegate thinks’. The near future had still not arrived eighteen months later when the Spanish Republic ceased to exist.

  British Conservative politicians may have started to see the republican government in a more positive light, but they had no idea of the power struggle going on behind the scenes in Valencia. Senior communists and Soviet advisers were in a state of anger and alarm as they found former political allies turning against them.

  On 30 July Dimitrov passed to Voroshilov a report from a senior Soviet official in Valencia about the state of relations within the Negrín government. This document reveals the determination of the communists to seize total power in Spain. ‘The honeymoon is over…The government family is far from what might characterize it: friendship, love and peace…It is true that with this government our party has more opportunities for work, for exerting pressure on government policy, than it had with the preceding government. But we are still far from the desirable minimum.’ Again a bitter attack was launched against Prieto for having freed Rovira, the POUM commander, from prison. Prieto even ordered that the POUM’s 29th Division be rearmed, but the communists had already managed through their members in the army to disband it entirely.

  Prieto, the report continued, ‘is afraid that the Popular Army, headed by commanders who come from among the people [i.e. loyal communists], hardened in battle, represents a huge revolutionary force and, as a result of this, will play a decisive role in determining the economic and social life, the political system of a future Spain’. Prieto therefore was trying to prevent political activity, ‘especially communist activity, and in this the professional military, including Rojo, supports him. He at least wants the command staff not to consist of active revolutionaries. This policy of Prieto is fundamentally linked to his overall political conception, which does not allow the development of the Spanish revolution to step beyond the limits of a classical bourgeois-democratic republic…I must add that Prieto’s conception about the army is completely supported by Martínez Barrio and the Republicans…The Republicans are beginning more and more to change their relationship with the Communist Party. Not long ago they regarded the Communist Party with great respect. In June this began to change.’ This was presumably influenced by the disappearance of Andreu Nin.

  The report then described Zugazagoitia, the socialist minister of the interior, as ‘a disguised Trotskyist’: ‘It was he who sabotaged the pursuit of the POUMists. What is more: he himself organized and supported a number of campaigns of a blackmailing nature, provocations whose goal is to turn the Trotskyist spy affair against the party. He forbade and prevented the publication of materials exposing the connection between Nin and the POUMists and Franco’s general staff. It was he who removed Ortega, the communist, from his post as the director general of public security.’ The attacks continued against other ministers. Irujo, the Basque minister of justice, ‘acts like a real fascist…Together with Zugazagoitia, Irujo does everything possible and impossible to save the Trotskyists and to sabotage trials against them. And he will do everything possible to acquit them.’

  The report also accused Giral, the minister of foreign affairs, of infiltrating Trotskyists into his ministry. Negrín was the only one to support the Communist Party, but he was not strong enough. ‘Our party insisted on the following three points: to carry out a purge of the military apparatus and to help promote to the top ranks the commanders who come from among the people, and to put a stop to the anti-communist campaign; to carry out tirelessly a purge of Trotskyist elements in the rear; once and for all to stop indulging the press, groups and individuals who are carrying out a slanderous campaign against the USSR. If he will not do this, then the Party is strong enough, understands well enough the responsibility that it bears, and will find the necessary means and measures to protect the interests of the people.’ The survey of the political situation concluded with the statement: ‘The popular revolution cannot end successfully if the Communist Party does not take power into its own hands.’12

  26

  The War in Aragón

  After the failure of the Brunete offensive in July, the republican general staff finally admitted that nothing could be achieved by major operations in the central region. But even though another attack on such a massive scale could not be considered after their losses in matériel, a further effort to help Santander and Asturias was demanded. If the republican forces in the north could hold out until the winter snows blocked the passes of the Cordillera Cantábrica, Franco would not be able to bring down his Navarrese, Galician and Italian troops (which would bring him numerical parity) or the major part of his air power before the late spring of 1938.

  The Aragón front was chosen for the next republican attack. The reasons for deciding on the east rather than the south-west were primarily political. The communists and their senior supporters in the army could not select Estremadura, because it would be a virtual admission that the Brunete strategy had been wrong and Largo Caballero’s project right. The major reason, however, for switching the emphasis of the war to the east was the intention of Negrín’s government and the commun
ists to establish complete control over Catalonia and Aragón.

  In the wake of the May events in Barcelona, the central government had taken over responsibility for public order in Catalonia, dissolved the Generalitat’s Council of Defence, which had been run by the anarchists since its inception, and appointed General Pozas to command the newly designated Army of the East. This represented the first stage in ending the Generalitat’s independence and anarchist power in Catalonia. The next stage in reasserting central government control was to be the crushing of the Council of Aragón by bringing in communist troops and placing the three anarchist divisions under overall communist command. The composition of republican forces in the east was changed radically in the summer of 1937. Before Brunete the only communist formation in the region had been the PSUC’s 27th (Carlos Marx) Division, but during the last days of July and the first part of August all the elite communist formations were transferred from the central front, including Kléber’s 45th Division and Modesto’s V Corps (with Líster’s 11th Division, Walter’s 35th Division and El Campesino’s 46th Division). For the first time the anarchists were threatened in their ‘Spanish Ukraine’.

  At the end of July, after the battle of Brunete, the communists launched a propaganda offensive against the Council of Aragón’s president, Joaquín Ascaso, who was a controversial and flamboyant figure. The communists accused him of acting like a Mafia chieftain. His libertarian supporters, on the other hand, defended him vigorously when he was accused of smuggling jewellery out of the country. Ferocious attacks were made on the system of self-managed agricultural collectives in the main Party newspapers Mundo Obrero and Frente Rojo, because it ran counter to the ‘controlled democracy’ which Negrín and the communists advocated.

  At the end of July the carabineros, which Negrín had built up when finance minister, were used to harass the collectives by confiscating their produce. Then, on 11 August, the central government dissolved the Council of Aragón by decree while its members were gathering in the last of the harvest. The anarchist 25th, 26th and 28th Divisions were kept occupied at the front and cut off from news of what was happening, so that Líster’s 11th Division, backed by the 27th and 30th Divisions, could be sent against the anarchist and joint CNT-UGT collectives. These ‘manoeuvres’, as they were officially described, involved mass arrests and the forcible disbandment of the Council of Aragón along with all its component organizations. CNT offices were seized and destroyed, and the collectives’ machinery, transport, tools and seed grain were given to the small proprietors whom the communists had encouraged to resist the co-operatives.1

  The anarchist members of the Council were the first to be arrested and they were fortunate not to have been shot out of hand. Around 100 of them were put in the prison of Caspe, and were still there when the nationalists occupied the town in March 1938.2 The communists counted on arranging a show trial for Ascaso, but he had to be released on 18 September when they could produce no evidence. (La Pasionaria tried to revive the accusations in 1968, saying that Ascaso had fled to South America where he was living in luxury on his booty. He was, in fact, still working as a servant in a hotel in Venezuela.)

  The justification for this operation (whose ‘very harsh measures’ shocked even some Party members) was that since all the collectives had been established by force, Líster was merely liberating the peasants. There had undoubtedly been pressure, and no doubt force was used on some occasions in the fervour after the rising. But the very fact that every village was a mixture of collectivists and individualists shows that peasants had not been forced into communal farming at the point of a gun.3 It is estimated that there were up to 200,000 people belonging to the collectives and 150,000 individualists.4 Perhaps the most eloquent testimony against the communists is the number of collectives that managed to re-establish themselves after Líster’s forces had left. Meanwhile, the degree to which food production was disrupted and permanently damaged became a matter for bitter debate. José Silva, the head of the Institute of Agrarian Reform, later embarrassed his communist colleagues considerably when he admitted that the operation had been ‘a very grave mistake, which produced a tremendous disorganization in the countryside’.5

  The exact part in these events played by the non-communist members of Negrín’s government, especially Prieto, is the subject of dispute. Negrín himself backed the communist action without reservation, while the liberals and the other right socialists continued to support measures which destroyed ‘cantonalism’ and increased centralized power. Prieto, the minister of defence, and Zugazagoitia, the minister of the interior, certainly gave instructions for the dismantling of the Council of Aragón and were prepared to use force if necessary. But Prieto denied Líster’s claim that he was given carte blanche to destroy the collectives as well.6 In any case the libertarian revolt, which the authorities had feared, did not take place.

  The events in Aragón also caused the rift between the CNT leadership and its mass membership to widen. The weakness of the CNT leaders in their refusal to condemn Líster’s action outright provoked much frustration and anger. The only attempt to restrain the communist action came from Mariano Vázquez, the CNT secretary-general, who asked Prieto to transfer Mera’s division to Aragón immediately. But he was satisfied by the minister of defence’s reply that he had already reprimanded Líster. (Vázquez, a ‘reformist’ syndicalist and the chief advocate within the CNT of complete obedience to government orders, was a great admirer of Negrín, who is said to have despised him.) The CNT leaders claimed that they had prevented death sentences from being carried out by the special communist military tribunals, but the prospect of three anarchist divisions turning their guns against Líster’s troops probably carried greater weight. In any case the whole episode represented a considerable increase in communist power and a corresponding blow to anarchist confidence.

  While these events took place, Rojo had been preparing a new operation to be undertaken by the Army of the East. The objective was to distract the nationalists from their final offensive in the north by attacking Saragossa. The recapture of this regional capital offered more than just symbolic significance. It was also the communications centre of the whole Aragón front. The first year of the war in this part of Spain had emphasized that the possession of a key town was of far greater importance than the control of wide areas of open countryside. The nationalists had only the 51st, 52nd and 105th Divisions spread across 300 kilometres of front, with the majority of their troops concentrated in towns.

  General Pozas and his chief of staff, Antonio Cordón, set up their headquarters at Bujaraloz. Their plan was to break through at seven different points on the central 100-kilometre stretch between Zuera and Belchite. The object of splitting their attacking forces was to divide any nationalist counter-attack and to offer fewer targets for bombing and strafing shuttles than at Brunete. On the north flank the 27th Division would attack Zuera, before swinging left on Saragossa itself. In the right centre Kléber’s 45th Division was to attack south-eastwards from the Sierra de Alcubierre towards Saragossa. Meanwhile, the 26th Division and part of the 43rd Division would attack from Pina, cross the Ebro and cut the highway from Quinto to Saragossa.

  The main weight of the offensive, with Modesto’s V Corps including Líster’s 11th Division and Walter’s 35th Division, was concentrated up the south side of the Ebro valley. Líster’s 11th Division would thrust along the southern bank towards Saragossa, spearheaded by nearly all the T-26 and BT-5 tanks allocated to the offensive.7 The BT-5s had been grouped in the International Tank Regiment commanded by Colonel Kondratiev. All the drivers were members of the Red Army.8 The majority of the 200 republican aircraft on the front were also reserved for the Ebro valley attack. They greatly outnumbered the nationalists’ obsolete Heinkel 46 light bombers and Heinkel 51 fighters.9

  The republicans enjoyed an overwhelming local superiority, both on the ground and in the air. Modesto was certain that the operation was bound to be successful. The gener
al staff orders emphasized that the opposing troops were of low quality, that the nationalists had few reserves in Saragossa and that an uprising would take place in the city to help them.10 Modesto seemed to be more interested that Líster’s division, supported by the tanks, would have the glory of being the first formation to enter the city than in considering contingency plans in case the operation did not turn out to be the walkover he expected. It had been only six weeks since Brunete and Modesto appears to have forgotten what happened there, unless he believed the propaganda that had turned defeat into a victory.

  The offensive in Aragón began on 24 August, the day the nationalists were on the point of entering Santander on the north coast, so the main point of the attack was lost. To maintain the advantage of surprise, there was no artillery bombardment nor attacks by the republican air force.11

  In the north, the 27th Division occupied Zuera towards midday. Kléber launched his 45th Division into the attack and reached Villamajor de Gállego, some six kilometres from Saragossa, and halted there because he lacked intelligence on enemy defences. The troops of the 25th Division took Codó after overcoming the fierce resistance of Carlists from the tercio of Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, which blocked the road from Belchite to Medina. Meanwhile, Líster with his 11th Division advanced on Fuentes de Ebro but failed to capture it. They took time trying to smash one defensive position after another. An attached cavalry brigade was shattered in the process and lost all its fighting capacity. The most disastrous part of this action affected the International Tank Regiment, which the infantry failed to support when it broke through. Almost all the BT-5s were destroyed. A furious Modesto blamed Líster for the disaster and from then on the mutual hatred of the two great communist leaders became a major problem. This too was blamed on ‘the interference of fascist elements who roused mutual hostility between the two and thus weakened the strength of V Corps’.12 A more rational report to Moscow, however, put the blame on ‘the open sabotage of Líster, who did not want to be subordinate to Modesto’.13