The Battle for Spain Read online

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

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

  Assure the absolute independence and integrity of Spain.

  Liberation of Spanish territory from foreign forces.

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

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

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

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

  Respect for legal property and foreign capital.

  A profound agrarian reform and democracy in the countryside.

  Advanced social legislation to guarantee the rights of workers.

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

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

  The renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy.

  A broad amnesty for all Spaniards.

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

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

  30

  Arriba España!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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