The Spanish Civil War (45 page)

The proximity of the nationalists to Madrid was soon expressed most vividly. On 23 August, the airport at Getafe was bombed and, on 25 August, Cuatro Vientos, an airport even nearer. On 27 and 28 August, Madrid itself was raided. Hans Voelckers, in charge at the German Embassy, described the raid on 27 August as being by three Junkers 52s. ‘Please arrange,’ he asked Berlin, ‘that, as long as Lufthansa traffic continues, no Junkers raid Madrid.’ But, on 29 August, he had to complain again. Junkers 52s had dropped four heavy bombs on the war ministry, causing considerable damage and several deaths.
¹
There was rising anti-German feeling in Madrid. Voelckers urged that the German Embassy and colony should leave.

The air raids caused the formation in Madrid of house committees in each block to organize listeners for the sirens which would be the signal to go down into the cellars. These committees also investigated the obscure texts of the government’s housing decrees, and tried to give protection against illegal arrests. They were really a special constabulary in which the socialists and communists took the lead. Local communist branches also organized groups to paint the street lamps blue and secure a black-out. At that time of the year, nevertheless, a black-out was hard to enforce, since closed shutters made the rooms within intolerably hot. People were told to avoid the rooms facing the street and stay in inner rooms with candles. These experiences would become only too common to those who lived in other parts of Europe at the time of the Second World War. But, except for the modest alarms from 1914 to 1918, these raids on Madrid were the first of their kind to occur.

While the republic was failing militarily, the diplomatic events of August marked as signal a defeat. On 3 August, Count Charles de Chambrun, the French ambassador at Rome, presented the French government’s non-intervention plan to Count Ciano, who airily promised to study it.
¹
Britain, on the other hand, accepted the idea in principle on its presentation, Eden giving his agreement from a holiday retreat in Yorkshire.
²
The same day, the German pocket-battleship
Deutschland
put into Ceuta, and Admiral Rolf Carls, in command, lunched with Franco, Langenheim, Bernhardt, and Beigbeder. An escort of falangists cried, ‘
Heil Hitler!
’
³
That ship and the
Admiral Scheer
had been ordered to Spanish waters from Wilhelmshaven on 24 July. The next day, 4 August, André François-Poncet, French ambassador in Berlin, put the non-intervention plan to the Baron von Neurath, the German foreign minister, who answered that Germany had no need to make such a declaration. Neurath added that he knew that the French had delivered aeroplanes to the republicans. François-Poncet replied by claiming that the Germans had likewise supplied the nationalists.
⁴
In Moscow, the French
ambassador made a similar approach to the Russian government, while, in Paris, the newly arrived republican ambassador, Alvaro de Albornoz, was again putting demands for Lebel rifles, Hotchkiss machine-guns, millions of cartridges, bombs, cannon, more Potez aeroplanes, and more Dewoitine fighters.
¹

On 6 August, Ciano, having consulted Ulrich von Hassel, German ambassador in Rome, said that Italy agreed to the French plan. But he wanted to ‘check all fund raising’ for either side; to make the scheme cover all countries; and to establish a system of international control.
²
That day’s
Pravda
announced that the Russian workers had contributed 12,145,000 roubles to aid Spain. But the Soviet government, like the Italian, agreed to the French non-intervention plan ‘in principle’, asking that Portugal should be asked to join the group of states subscribing themselves, and demanding that ‘certain states’—Germany and Italy—should cease aid.
³
Nevertheless, on 7 August, François-Poncet was back at the Wilhelmstrasse (and Chambrun at the Palazzo Chigi) with a draft declaration of non-intervention, already accepted by Britain, Belgium, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia, which would renounce all traffic in war material or aircraft. Neurath argued that such a thing would be difficult without a blockade: and what about the activities of the Comintern?
⁴
The same day, the British and French ministers in Lisbon asked Monteiro, the Portuguese foreign minister, to join the Non-Intervention Agreement. Monteiro, like Ciano, held his hand.
⁵

All this time, the French frontier was open and new bombers and fighters, not to speak of pilots, were reaching the republic. But, on 8 August, the French cabinet changed their policy. A communiqué announced that, from 9 August, all export of war material to Spain would be suspended. This was explained as being due to the ‘almost unanimously favourable’ reply that the government had received to its ideas for non-intervention. In fact, the previous day Sir George Clerk, the British ambassador, had spoken, without instructions, to Delbos in strong terms. How could he reconcile the dispatch of French aircraft
to Spain with the holding-up of the four Fokker aircraft at Bordeaux bound for the rebels from Britain? If France did not ban the export of war material to Spain, a common front with Britain on this whole matter would be much more difficult.
¹
Furthermore, by this time, Admiral Darlan had returned from London. He had seen Admiral Lord Chatfield, who had told him that there was no point in making any approach to Britain about Spain, and, further, that Franco was a ‘good Spanish patriot’. The British Admiralty were also ‘unfavourably impressed’ by what they had heard of the murder of the Spanish naval officers. Nothing should be done which allowed the spread of communism to Spain or, even worse, to Portugal. Darlan, therefore, reported that there was no possibility of Britain looking favourably on French aid to the republic.
²
Fear of offending England was the main reason why the French cabinet was thus brought, on 8 August, to reverse its decision of 2 August.
³

Blum regretted this. He nearly resigned, but his colleague, Auríol (who was in favour of the Spanish republic), and Fernando de los Ríos persuaded him not to do so. A Blum government would, after all, be better for the republic than any other.
⁴
On 9 August, Blum, in spite of everything, was cheered at a meeting at Saint-Cloud by a great crowd chanting ‘Arms for Spain’, while an aircraft traced the word PAIX in smoke across the blue summer sky. Both the socialist and communist French trade-union leaders were now committed to the policy which the crowd demanded. Léon Jouhaux, the socialist trade-union leader, and Thorez, the communist secretary-general, were as one in declaring
that there could be no neutrality for ‘the conscientious worker’. Since the dispatch of arms was forbidden, funds for clothing, food, and medical supplies for the republic were collected instead. In fact, so long as Pierre Cot remained minister of air (till June 1937), French airports were told to help republican aircraft. These breaches of non-intervention were officially excused as caused by ‘errors of navigation’.
¹
Some aircraft also continued to be sent from France. Fifty-six aircraft are believed to have reached Spain between 9 August and 14 October from the Air France airfield at Montaudran.
²
The Catalan government succeeded also in getting some assistance, in both personnel and material, from France and Belgium, to help develop their munitions industry.
³

While Blum was speaking at Saint-Cloud, the counsellor of the German Embassy in London was blandly assuring the Foreign Office that ‘no war materials had been sent from Germany and none will be’.
⁴
But the Junkers, Heinkels, their pilots and technicians were already making an impact on the war in the south of Spain. The German consul in Seville appealed to the Wilhelmstrasse that these Germans should not appear in the streets in German uniform, since, if they did, they would be recognized and given ‘great ovations’.
⁵
One Junkers 52, however, made a forced landing in republican territory, where it was detained, with its crew. The next day, the German counsellor in Madrid, Schwendemann, on instruction from Berlin, demanded their release. The Spanish government refused. On 12 August, Neurath told François-Poncet that, until the Spanish gave up the aircraft (‘merely a transport aeroplane’), Germany could not agree to a Non-Intervention Agreement.
⁶
But, on 13 August, Portugal accepted non-intervention in principle, reserving liberty of action if her border were threatened by the war. A few days before, the Spanish government had declared the Canaries and Galician provinces to be ‘zones of war’ and therefore subject to blockade. The Foreign Office said that they regarded the statement as one of intent: the fact of blockade was necessary before it could be internationally recognized.

The United States had by now also been called upon to take up an attitude to the Spanish war. On 5 August, after a meeting in the department of state, the secretary of state, Cordell Hull, allowed it to be generally known (though not announced) that his government favoured non-intervention.
¹
On 10 August, then, the Glenn Martin Company, the leading aircraft firm in the US, asked what the government’s attitude would be to the sale of eight bombers to the republic. The acting secretary of state replied that such a sale ‘would not follow the spirit of this government’s policy of a “moral embargo” on arms to Spain’.
²
The State Department next instructed Bowers, the American ambassador in Spain, to refuse even to join a mediation proposal suggested to the diplomatic corps at St Jean de Luz by the Argentinian ambassador.
³
American liberal opinion was shocked: ‘Let us ask Jefferson where he stands on this issue!’ The words might be those of Earl Browder, the American communist, but his sentiments were those of many democrats. Still, most Americans certainly supported the embargo. Mexico, meantime, alone of governments openly began to send a few arms to the republic. President Cárdenas would announce in September that he had sent 20,000 rifles and 20 million rounds of ammunition to the Spanish government.

The British and French pursuit of the chimera of non-intervention continued. Britain prohibited exports of war material to Spain on 15 August, after news had been received of flights of British aircraft from Croydon to rebel Spain.
⁴
Neurath gave a note to François-Poncet on 17 August agreeing, pending the release of the Junkers and the acceptance of similar obligations by all countries possessing arms industries, to ban arms shipments to Spain and suggesting that this ban should be extended to volunteers.
⁵
Ciano also took up this last point with the French ambassador in Rome, but promised, before that question and that of funds were settled, that Italy would prohibit the ex
port of arms.
¹
This reversal surprised the French. It was caused by a realization that it would be possible, in the words of the German chargé at Rome, ‘not to abide by the declaration anyway’.
²
On 24 August, with the future of the Junkers in Madrid still unsettled, Germany signed the declaration demanded by the French.
³
That day, the British chiefs of staff presented an important paper, often subsequently referred to inside the British government, which argued that, for strategic reasons, Britain had to be on good terms with whoever won the war.
⁴
Perhaps this was the most important of British documents of the time affecting Spain.

Russia did not propose to be left out of these negotiations any more than the German foreign ministry wanted her to be. Given his desire for an alliance with France and Britain, Stalin wanted to be a party to all such discussions. On 23 August, Russia accepted the Non-Intervention Agreement and, on 28 August, Stalin issued a decree forbidding export of war material to Spain. Russian officials showed even greater diffidence than usual during these negotiations, and Litvinov had to refer even insignificant details of wording of their government’s adhesion to Stalin.
⁵
Izvestia
turned many logical somersaults in denouncing neutrality as ‘not our idea at all’ and as ‘a general retreat before fascist governments’, yet explaining that the Russian acceptance of it was ‘due to the fact that the French declaration aimed at the end of fascist aid to the rebels’.
⁶
The dilemma of Russian policy, desirous of pleasing France, while not appearing to desert the world revolution, was never more difficult. But Stalin’s slowness is also explained by his preoccupation at that moment with the trial of the first group of Old Bolsheviks, which began on 19 August: Kamenev was condemned to death on 23 August, and Zinoviev some days later. Stalin’s mind was thus on other things than Spain.

Moreover, at the very moment that Russia adhered to the Non-
Intervention Agreement, diplomatic relations between her and the Spanish government were being formidably established.
¹
An old revolutionary, Vladimir Antonov-Ovsëenko, who had commanded the Red Guard which stormed the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in 1917, and had later been a member of the first bolshevik government, arrived in Barcelona as consul-general on 25 August. In the late twenties, he had been a member of the Trotskyist opposition, but in 1928 he had capitulated to Stalin and had been afterwards a diplomat in Prague and Warsaw. The nomination of so experienced a revolutionary to Barcelona was a curious, and, as it turned out, an ironic step.
²
The competent diplomat Marcel Rosenberg, ex–deputy secretary of the League of Nations, reached Madrid as ambassador on 27 August. Rosenberg brought with him a large staff, including a naval attaché, Captain N. Kuznetzov, an air attaché, Colonel Boris Sveshnikov, and a military attaché, General V. Gorev.
³
The chief Russian military adviser in Spain was the Latvian General Jan Berzin, previously head of Soviet military intelligence, a courageous man whose youth in Latvia had been spent fighting the Tsarist police. He played a brilliant role in the Russian Civil War. He was a tall, grey-haired man whom some mistook for an Englishman.
⁴
Antonov-Ovsëenko also had an adviser, Arthur Stashevsky, who was in effect Russian economic attaché in Spain. He was a Pole, short and thick-set, married to a Frenchwoman, seeming to be an ordinary businessman, and had once also been Berzin’s assistant. Other Russians included the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, who came to Spain as
Izvestia
correspondent in late August, and busied himself with propaganda and even military activity as well as reporting.
⁵
Another Russian writer of eminence, Mikhail Koltsov, correspondent of
Pravda,
had ar
rived earlier, on 8 August.
¹
The date of the arrival of these missions suggests that the double attitude expressed in
Izvestia
reflected a double policy, showing that, as ever, Stalin intended to keep all courses open. The headquarters of the Russian mission in Madrid was the quiet Gaylord’s Hotel, between the Prado and the Retiro Park.
²
As yet, no Russian military equipment was to be seen in Spain, though, at the moment that Russia was formally ‘banning the export of war material’, Stalin was approving it.

Russia’s double-dealing was matched by that of Germany. On 25 August, the day after Germany had signed the Non-Intervention Agreement, the war minister, Field-Marshal von Blomberg, summoned Colonel Warlimont, a promising and ambitious officer. The Führer, said Blomberg, was moving into an attitude of explicit hostility to Russia. Hitherto, his anti-communism had been confined to Germany. Now it embraced the Comintern and all its works. His speech at the annual congress of the Nazi party at Nuremberg in September would reflect that attitude. As a result, Blomberg went on, Hitler had decided to give substantial aid to Franco. Warlimont would lead the German contingent. On the 26th, Warlimont and Canaris visited the head of Italian military intelligence, Colonel Roatta, and then Roatta and Warlimont left for Tetuán, on an Italian cruiser. A German aircraft flew the two of them to Seville, where they talked to Queipo, and then to Cáceres, where they met Franco. Warlimont thereupon took up his duties.
³
Roatta returned to Italy but, in the course of the next month, about twenty light Ansaldo-Fiat tanks, including some fitted with flamethrowers and a quantity of Italian artillery of the reliable 65/17 millimetre model used in the First World War, were sent to Spain by Mussolini, along with ‘specialists’ in the use of this material, to act alongside the pilots of the Savoias and Fiat fighters already there.