The Battle for Spain Read online

  11 Bennassar believes that Marty was responsible for the death of the French commander Gaston Delassale and a dozen International Brigaders, ‘but not, however, of systematic executions’ (La guerre d’Espagne et les lendemains, p. 146). Soviet documents, on the other hand, indicate that Marty’s obsession with ‘fifth column’ infiltration and the executions of deserters and ‘cowards’ may well have contributed to the very high rate of executions.

  12 Castells, p. 73n.

  13 Commissariat XV International Brigade, Book of XV International Brigade, Madrid, 1938.

  14 TsAMO 132/2642/77, p. 47.

  15 RGASPI 545/3/309, p. 2.

  16 RGVA 33987/3/870, p. 346.

  17 The figures in Soviet files do not entirely agree, mainly because of differences in category definition. One of the clearest breakdowns states that in addition to the Red Army advisers attached to various headquarters, a total of 772 Soviet pilots, 351 tankists, 100 artillerists, 77 sailors, 166 signals experts, 141 military engineers and technicians, and 204 interpreters served in Spain (RGVA 33987/3/1143, p. 127). There were about 150 advisers in 1937 and about 250 in 1938. In January 1939 their number was reduced to 84 (RGVA 35082/1/15, pp. 47–9). For casualty figures, see G. F. Krivosheev (ed.), Rossiya i SSSR v voihakh 20 veka. Poteri vooruzhennykh sil (Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the armed forces), Moscow, 2001.

  18 TsAMO 132/2642/192, p. 1.

  19 Rybalkin, p. 56.

  20 TsAMO 132/2642/192, p. 15.

  21 Ibid., p. 32.

  22 RGVA 35082/1/40, p. 78.

  23 RGVA 9/29/315, p. 70; 33987/3/1149, p. 172.

  24 RGVA 33987/3/960, pp. 180–9, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 127.

  25 RGVA 35082/1/185, pp. 356 and 408.

  26 See Rybalkin, pp. 38–42 and RGVA 33987/3/870, pp. 341–2; RGVA 33987/3/961 p. 166; RGVA 35082/1/18, pp. 49, 64–6; RGVA 33987/3/961, pp. 155–6; TsAMO 16/3148/5, pp. 23–5. According to Rybalkin, p. 42, the experience gained in this operation was later used in the Soviet planning and organization of transport during the Second World War and then later in 1962 when Soviet weapons and troops were transported to Cuba as part of Operation ‘Anadyr’, an enterprise directed by the then minister of defence, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, who had himself served in Spain.

  27 RGASPI 545/3/302, p. 118.

  CHAPTER 17: The Battle for Madrid

  1 The first line, some 30 kilometres out from Madrid, linked Navalcarnero with Valdemoro passing by Batres, Griñón and Torrejón de Velasco. The second, about twenty kilometres out, consisted of Brunete, Villaviciosa, Móstoles, Fuenlabrada and Pinto; the third, at about ten kilometres out, went from Villaviciosa de Odón to Cerro de los á ngeles; and the fourth, at the gates of the capital, consisted of fortifying Pozuelo, la Casa de Campo, Campamento, Carabanchel, Villaverde and Vallecas (José Manuel Martínez Bande, La guerra en el norte, Madrid, 1969, p. 130.)

  2 Preston, Franco, caudillo de España, p. 255.

  3 These first mixed brigades came under the División Orgánica de Albacete, commanded by Colonel Segismundo Casado. The first was led by Major of Militia Enrique Líster; the second by Major Jesús Martínez de Aragón; the third, composed of carabineros, by José María Galán; the fourth, commanded by an infantry captain Eutiquiano Arellano, was made up of conscript soldiers; the fifth, also carabineros, was led by Fernando Sabio; and the sixth, of reserve soldiers based in Murcia, was commanded by Miguel Gallo Martínez.

  4 Rodimtsev, Aleksadr Ilyich, Dobrovoltsy–internatsionalisty, Sverdlovsk, 1976, p. 31.

  5 Louis Aragon, the French poet and communist, and his partner, Elsa Triolet, a writer, were regarded as ‘the royal couple’ of the French Communist Party. Koltsov, Ispansky dnevnik, Moscow, 1957, p. 199. Many people suspected Triolet of being an NKVD agent, but no documentary proof has emerged.

  6 Francisco Largo Caballero, Arenga a las fuerzas armadas, 28 October 1936, reported in the daily press.

  7 The republican tank force was formed on the basis of a brigade which arrived from the Belorussian military district, 60 per cent of the unit were Soviet ‘volunteer’ tankists. RGVA 31811/4/28, pp. 104–10. The brigade was commanded by Colonel D. G. Pavlov, who was executed in the 1941 as a scapegoat when the Wehrmacht smashed the Red Army in its invasion. Arman was not the son of Lenin’s close friend Inessa Armand, as some people think.

  8 Ispansky dnevnik, Moscow, 1957, p. 231.

  9 Letter from Federica Montseny to Bolloten: La revolución española, p. 288.

  10 Ispansky dnevnik, p. 235.

  11 Azaña, Diarios completos, p. 956.

  12 For this massacre and those from other prisons, such as Antón, Porlier and Ventas, see Gibson, Paracuellos cómo fue, pp. 185ff., which gives a total figure of 2,400 murders between 7 November and 4 December 1936. Javier Cervera (Madrid en guerra. La ciudad clandestin, Madrid, pp. 84–103) states that there were more than 2,000 killed at Paracuellos and Torrejón.

  13 See Martínez Reverte, La batalla de Madrid, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 226–7, 240. The document is reproduced pp. 577–81.

  14 RGVA 35082/1/185, p. 365.

  15 R. Salas Larrazábal, Historia del Ejército Popular, p. 574 and General Alonso Baquer, El Ebro. La batalla decisiva de los cien días, La Esfera, Madrid, 2003, p. 33.

  16 ‘French direction had been unmistakably evident on the side of the reds in their whole tactical procedure’ (DGFP, p. 259).

  17 Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, The Secret History of German Diplomacy, 1939–1945, London, 1951.

  18 J. Delperrie, Las brigadas internacionales, Madrid, 1978, p. 94.

  19 Hoy, Las Palmas, 24 July 1936.

  20 Blanco Escolá, El general Rojo, p. 173.

  21 Karl Anger, alias Dobrovolsky, RGVA 35082/1/189, p. 83.

  22 RGVA 35082/1/95, pp. 33–58.

  23 Rodimtsev, Dobrovoltsy–internatsionalisty, p. 46,

  24 Koltsov, Ispansky dnevnik, Moscow, 1957, p. 279.

  25 RGVA. 35082/1/189, p. 103.

  26 A biographer of Durruti suggests that the doctors did not dare intervene surgically when they might have saved him. He died of an internal haemorrhage (Abel Paz, Durruti en la revolución española, Madrid, 2004, p. 678).

  27 J. Salas Larrazábal, La guerra de España desde el aire, p. 140.

  28 See Solé Sabaté, pp. 48–9.

  29 BA-MA RL35/38.

  30 Venid a ver la sangre por las calles,

  venid a ver

  la sangre por las calles,

  venid a ver la sangre

  por las calles! ‘Explico algunas cosas’ in Poesía política, Santiago de Chile, 1953, I, p. 60.

  31 RGASPI 495/120/261, p. 14.

  32 Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 18.

  33 Dobrovolsky (Karl Anger), RGVA 35082/1/189, p. 126.

  34 Richthofen, BA-MA RL 35/38. The request, supported by General Faupel, was rejected in Berlin on both political and technical grounds, principally the problem of shipping such a large body of men past Britain without being seen. See Dieckhoff’s memorandum of December 1936, DGFP, pp. 155–6, 162, 165 and168.

  CHAPTER 18: The Metamorphosis of the War

  1 Chargé d’affaires in Madrid, v. Tippelskirch to Foreign Ministry, 23 September 1936, DGFP, p. 94.

  2 Faupel to Foreign Ministry, 10 December 1936, DGFP, p. 159.

  3 Richthofen personal war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  4 Karl Anger (Dobrovolsky), RGVA 35082/1/189.

  5 Koltsov, Ispansky dnevnik, p. 309.

  6 RGVA 35082/1/185, pp. 400, 407.

  7 Ibid., pp. 680–95.

  8 Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales, pp. 130–1.

  9 The Owl of Minerva, London, 1959.

  10 Gillain, La Marseillaise, p. 16.

  11 Preston, La guerra civil española, Barcelona, 1999, p. 125.

  12 See Gabriele Ranzato, L’eclissi della democrazia. La guerra civile spagnola e le sue origine, Turín, 2004, pp. 372–3.

  13 Diarios 1937–1943, Ba
rcelona, 2004, p. 15.

  14 When Villalba returned to nationalist Spain after the war, his claims of ‘negligencia deliberada’ were fully accepted and he was restored to the rank of full colonel, with pension. See ‘Rectificaciones’ in vol. iv of Crónica de la guerra española, Buenos Aires, 1966, p. 491.

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

  16 Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit, p. 227.

  17 23 March 1937, RGVA 33987/3/991, pp. 81–96, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 162.

  18 RGVA 33987/3/960, pp. 180–9, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 127.

  19 RGVA/33987/3/1010, p. 300.

  20 Marchenko to Litvinov, 22 February 1937, RGVA 33987/3/960, pp. 303–15.

  21 Brusco, p. 114.

  22 El péndulo patriótico, vol. ii, p. 22.

  23 ‘Adelante!’, Internatsionalnaya brigada, Moscow, 1937, pp. 106–18.

  24 Krasnaya Zvezda, 15 September 1993.

  25 Alpert, El Ejército de la República, p. 65.

  26 Guerra, exilio y cárcel, Paris, 1976.

  27 J. Martínez Reverte, La batalla de Madrid.

  CHAPTER 19: The Battles of the Jarama and Guadalajara

  1 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  2 Regler, The Great Crusade, pp. 243–63.

  3 Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales, p. 166.

  4 Wintringham, English Captain, London, 1939.

  5 Alexander, British Volunteers, p. 95.

  6 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  7 Kemp, Mine Were of Trouble, London, 1957.

  8 RGVA 33987/3/912, pp. 127–8.

  9 RGVA 35082/1/185, p. 379.

  10 Sixten Rogeby, Spanska frontminnen, Arbetarkultur, Stockholm, 1938.

  11 RGVA 35082/1/185, p. 361.

  12 Salas, La guerra de España desde el aire, p. 164.

  13 Marty to Dimitrov, 28 March 1937, RGVA 33987/3/991, pp. 150–88.

  14 Blanco, La incompetencia militar de Franco, p. 344.

  15 Segala, Trincee di Spagna, p. 116.

  16 Renzo de Felice, Mussolini il duce, vol. ii., Lo steto totalitario, p. 404.

  17 Rodimtsev, Dobrovoltsy, p. 57.

  18 Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales, p. 187.

  19 Rodimtsev, op. cit., pp. 73–4.

  20 RGASPI 533/6/102, p. 110.

  21 Karl Anger (Dobrovolsky), RGVA 35082/1/189, p. 188.

  22 Koltsov, Ispansky dnevnik p. 450.

  23 Mi embajada en Londres, pp. 321–3.

  24 Rodimtsev, pp. 94–6.

  25 Mera, Guerra, exilio y cárcel, Paris, 1976.

  26 Karl Anger (Dobrovolsky), RGVA 35082/1/189, p. 190.

  27 Rodimtsev, p. 102.

  28 RGVA 33987/3/1082, p. 206.

  29 RGVA 33987/3/961, p. 123.

  30 Two Wars and More to Come, p. 264.

  31 Renzo de Felice, Lo stato totalitario p. 392.

  32 Mussolini, probably echoing Franco’s own conviction that French regular officers were directing operations, told the German ambassador in Italy on 25 March that ‘French direction has been unmistakably evident on the side of the reds in their whole tactical procedure’ (DGFP, p. 259).

  33 DGFP, p. 265.

  CHAPTER 20: The War in the North

  1 The government consisted of Aguirre, Jesús María Leizaola, Heliodoro de la Torre and Telesforo Monzón (all PNV); three socialists (Santiago Aznar, Juan Gracía and Juan de los Toyos); a member of ANV (Gonzalo Nárdiz), one from the Izquierda Republicana (Ramón Maria Aldasoro), another from Unión Republicana (Alfredo Espinosa) and Juan Astigarrabía, a communist.

  2 S. de Pablo et al., El péndulo patrótico, vol. ii, p. 19.

  3 Luis María Jiménez de Aberasturi, La guerra en el Norte, p. 118.

  4 RGVA 35082/1/189, pp. 8–9.

  5 Aberasturi, op. cit., p. 163. 6 BA-MA RL 35/3.

  7 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38. 8 Ibid.

  9 According to the republican chaplain, José María Basabilotra, people tried to seek refuge in the cemetery. Fraser, Recuérdalo tú…, pp. 549–50.

  10 Vicente Talón, Memoria de la guerra de Euskadi, p. 398.

  11 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Luis Michelena, quoted Fraser, Recuérdalo tú…, p 552.

  16 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  17 Sole Sabaté and Villarroya state that three Savoia S-79s had already ropped 36 bombs of 50 kilograms each (España en llamas, pp. 84–5).

  18 Between 200 and 300 according to V. Talón, Memoria…, pp. 34–5, and around 200 according to S. De Pablo, ‘La guerra civil en el País Vasco’.

  19 See Southworth, Guernica, pp. 22–4, and Steer, The Tree of Gernika.

  20 ángel Viñas, Guerra, dinerodictadura, p. 122.

  21 ABC, 29 April 1937.

  22 Ibid. A slightly different version was reported by Faupel, the German ambassador, on 5 May 1937. It included the sentence: ‘Aguirre planned the destruction of Guernica with the devilish intention of laying the blame before the enemy’s door and producing a storm of indignation among the already conquered and demoralized Basques’ (DGFP, p. 281).

  23 A. Rovighi and F. Stefani, La participazione italiana alla guerra civile spagnola, Estado Mayor del Ejército, Roma, 1993, quoted by Ranzato, Leclissi della democrazia, p. 492.

  24 Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 75.

  25 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  26 For the destruction of Guernica see Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, The Day Guernica Died, London, 1975; H. R. Southworth, Guernica el mito; A. Viñas, Guerra, dinero, dictadura; and J. L. de la Granja and C. Garitaonandía (ed.), Gernika: 50 años después

  27 Diarios completes, p. 974.

  28 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

  29 Aberasturi, La guerra en el norte, pp. 234–5.

  30 The German ambassador in Rome, Ulrich von Hassell, reported as early as 13 January 1937 that ‘through the mediation of the Vatican negotiations are being carried on in the north with the Basque separatists at Bilbao’ (DGFP, p. 221).

  31 Franco’s headquarters, however, announced: ‘Vizcaya front. This afternoon at 3.10 p.m. troops entered the capital of Vizcaya. Bilbao is once again part of Spain.’

  32 For the ‘Pact of Santoña’, the relations between the Basque government and Valencia and the diplomatic discussion, see S. De Pablo, El péndulo patriótico, pp. 29–41.

  33 Ciano, Diarios 1937–1943, p. 15.

  CHAPTER 21: The Propaganda War and the Intellectuals

  1 H. R. Southworth, El lavado de cerebro de Francisco Franco, pp. 21–186.

  2 Blanco Escolá, Falacios de la guerra civil, p. 105.

  3 The Catholic Church declared that the murdered priests were martyrs. This position continued right up to John Paul II’s visit to Spain in May 2003, when he maintained that the killing of priests was a ‘bloody and planned religious persecution’. In Madrid, he beatified the teacher Pedro Poveda, killed there on 27 July 1936. He still made no mention of the Basque priests killed by the nationalists (El País, 5 May, 2003).

  4 ‘Carta colectiva del Episcopado español a los obispos del mundo entero’, 1 July 1937, quoted in Antonio Montero, Historia de la persecución religiosa en España, 1936–1939, Madrid, 1961.

  5 Southworth, El mito, p. 169.

  6 Luis Bolín, Spain: The Vital Years, London, 1967

  7 Peter Kemp, Mine Were of Trouble, pp. 49–50.

  8 Virgina Cowles, p. 77–80.

  9 Peter Kemp, Mine Were of Trouble.

  10 Arthur Koestler, Spanish Testament, London, 1937.

  11 Southworth, El mito, p. 238.

  12 Bennassar argues that ‘the two camps behaved like agencies of disinformation and rumour factories’ (La guerre d’Espagne et ses lendemains, p. 323).

  13 Quoted in Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins, p. 115.

  14 For the part played by intellectuals in the Spanish C
ivil War, see among others: Southworth, El mito de la cruzada de Franco;R. álvarez and R. López (eds), Poesia anglo-norteamericana de la guerra civil española, Salamanca, 1986; Robert Payne, The Civil War in Spain, 1936–1939, London, 1962 and Francisco Rico (ed.), Historia y crítica de la literatura española, vol. 7, Barcelona, 1984.

  15 ‘Authors Take Sides’, in New Left Review.

  16 Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom, London, 1948.

  17 Supporters included Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, Américo Castro, Pau Casals, Rodolfo Halffter, Blas Cabrera, Alberto Jime´nez Fraud, Josep Ferrater Mora, Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao, Pere Bosch Gimpera, Luís Buñuel, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. Writers and others who took an active role, either in the trenches or behind the lines, included Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, Vicente Aleixandre, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, José Bergamín, León Felipe, Max Aub, José Moreno Villa, Ramón J. Sender, Miguel Hernández, Salvador Espriu, Juan Marichal, Francisco Ayala, Antonio Buero Vallejo, María Zambrano, Rafael Dieste, Juan Gil-Albert, Ramón Gaya, Teresa León, José Herrera Petere, Antonio Sanchez Barbudo, Manuel Altolaguirre, Emilio Prados, Pedro Garfias, Rosa Chacel, Antonio Agraz, Fe´lix Paredes, Leopoldo Urrutia, Lorenzo Varela, José María Morón, Benigno Bejarano, Eduardo Zamacois, Rafel Vidiella, Julio Sesto, A. Martínez de Luzenay, Silvia Mistral, Clemente Cimorra, Roger de Flor, Gabriel Baldrich, Manuel Cabanillas, Juan Usón (‘Juaninus’).

  On the nationalist side supporters included Eugenio d’Ors, Manuel Machado, Jose´ María Pemán, Francisco Cossío, Concha Espina, José Muñoz San Román, Rafael García Serrano, Ricardo León, Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, Cecilio Benítez de Castro, Francisco Camba, Evaristo Casariego, Tomás Borrás, Josep Pla, Eduardo Marquina, Federico de Urrutia, Jose´ Camón Aznar, José María Castroviejo, Ignacio Agustí, Alvaro Cunqueiro, Pedro Laín Entralgo, JoséL. López Aranguren, Antonio Tovar, Luis Díez del Corral, Antonio Maravall, Gerardo Diego, Leopoldo Panero, Luis Rosales, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Félix Ros, Pedro Muñoz Seca and of course the literary court of Jose´ Antonio Primo de Rivera: Rafael Sánchez Mazas, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Eugenio Montes, Agustín de Foxá, Jacinto Miquelarena, Pedro Mourlane Michelena, José María Alfaro, Luys Santa Marina, Samuel Ros and Dionisio Ridruejo.