The Spanish Civil War (91 page)

The survival of this ardent spirit, and much cultural activity due to the stimulus of war, led a French journalist, Raymond Laurent, to say: ‘You are fighting for the noble cause of humanity as much as for the security of France itself.’

That view was no longer still held by the leaders of the POUM, who, except, of course, for the murdered Nin, were brought to trial in October 1938. Not long before, the real falangists who had been implicated in their affairs had also been tried. Thirteen of those, including the agents Golfín, Dalmau and Roca, were shot for espionage. When the POUM leaders came to the tribunal, however, the case against them collapsed. Republican ministers and ex-ministers, headed by Largo Caballero and Zugazagoitia, gave evidence in the POUM’s favour. Gironella, the young leader who had organized the POUM militia in July 1936 (as well as the POUM cavalry, barracks, anthem and band), addressed the prosecutor, to the general scandal, as Vishinsky. Arquer caused difficulties by insisting on testifying in Catalan. A real representative of Trotsky, Grandizo Munis, declared that the POUM were in no way Trotskyists. The judgement found the POUM to be true socialists, and absolved them of treason and espionage. Five leaders, including Gorkin and Andrade, were, however, condemned to various terms of
imprisonment for activities at the time of the May crisis of 1937, and for other revolutionary activities prejudicial to the war effort.
¹

A word should be spared to consider the personal aspect of the war; in the republic, men who a few years before were students, workers or agitators had risen to high positions. The old leaders—Azaña, Largo Caballero, Prieto, Martínez Barrio—had sunk in repute. The change in the status of this latter group affected private lives. Rumours circulated everywhere: so-and-so was drunk at his command post, so-and-so had left his wife and was living with a new woman. It is more odd that the upheaval was not greater, considering the change in status of so many. Some, like Cipriano Mera, had announced that, after the war, they would go back to their old professions—in Mera’s case, plastering.
²
But many, even many anarchists, were proving themselves competent administrators, Negrín was a republican equivalent to Franco in the sense that, being of the generation of men unknown before the war, he could use this new personnel, without prior commitments.

The German ambassador, Stohrer, concluded a general analysis of the Spanish situation at this time with the percipient comment that mutual fear was the reason for the continuance of the war. No prominent man on either side had any illusions as to what would happen to him if he were caught by his enemies. Franco had indeed told an American correspondent that he had a list (with witnesses) of a million persons on the republican side who were guilty of crimes. The German ambassador believed, nevertheless, that the opportunity for a negotiated peace might suddenly come.
³
At the same time, Adolf Berle, the banker who had become assistant secretary of state in the US, was telling President Roosevelt how compromise might be achieved in Spain. He proposed an Inter-American approach at the forthcoming conference of South American countries at Lima. The plan was never carried forward, due to quarrels among the South Americans and to the cautious spirit of Cordell Hull. But Cuba, Mex
ico and Haiti declared themselves, for different reasons, in favour of an approach such as Roosevelt had contemplated.
¹

In fact, the chances of compromise were still remote. The nationalists had even refused to countenance a proposal by Negrín in August that each side should suspend the execution of military prisoners for a month.
²
Even on the question of the removal of volunteers (a touch-stone for his pacific intentions), Franco was unyielding. He would accept no such agreement unless he first were granted belligerent rights. In the meantime, with his new German arms assured, he was preparing a new offensive to follow the battle of the Ebro, just as the runaway Aragon campaign had followed the battle of Teruel.

The best nationalist divisions were assembled all along the line from the Pyrenees to the Ebro and the sea. These were, from north to south, a new ‘Army of Urgel’, under Muñoz Grandes; the Army of the Maestrazgo, under García Valiño; and the ‘Army of Aragon’, under Moscardó. Then came the Italian General Gambara’s four divisions. Farther to the south, there was the ‘Army of Navarre’, under Solchaga, and Yagüe, with the ‘Army of Morocco’. This ‘Army of the North’ was, as ever, led by the competent bureaucrat General Dávila and consisted of 300,000 men, being supported by 565 pieces of artillery. The nationalist air force had 500 aeroplanes, enough to command in the air.
³
Franco himself established his headquarters (with its usual code-name ‘Terminus’) in the castle of Pedrola, north of Lérida.
⁴
The offensive, planned for 10 December and postponed till the 15th, was finally decided for the 23rd.
⁵
The apprehension was great that the attack on Barcelona would involve much fighting.

The republican battle lines in Catalonia were commanded by Azaña’s old military secretary, Hernández Saravia. Beneath him were the Armies of the East and of the Ebro, under Colonels Perea and Modesto respectively. These forces numbered 300,000. Three hundred and sixty pieces of artillery were available, as were 200 tanks and armoured cars (mostly T-26 tanks which were beginning to seem very heavy and ineffective). But many of these items were in bad repair. Aircraft numbered barely 80, and most of the pilots, though enthusiastic, were inexperienced.
¹
The republican army in Catalonia also suffered from a shortage of ammunition and of faith in victory. Negrín himself was, as he confessed, ‘spiritually and physically’ tired.
²
Rojo, chief of staff, on the other hand, believed that Franco needed months in which to prepare a general attack, and the republican leaders hence were toying, when attacked, with a plan to disembark a brigade at Motril, which would march to Málaga and raise Andalusia. This would be combined with another republican attack, in Estremadura. But both Miaja and his chief of staff, Matallana, now promoted a general, refused. The government in Barcelona had to accept this defensive insubordination. Possibly, the reluctance of Matallana derived from treachery.
³
On the other hand, Rojo’s action in transferring thirty-six aircraft to the central zone weakened Catalonia.
⁴
Before this, Negrín had sent the chief of the air force, Hidalgo de Cisneros, to Moscow for a replenishment of arms: 250 aircraft, 250 tanks, 4,000 machine-guns, and 650 pieces of artillery. The cost was to be the then huge sum of $103 million, though the republic’s credit in Russia apparently stood at less than $100 million. Hidalgo de Cisneros saw Voroshilov, Molotov and Stalin, and, despite Voroshilov’s comment, ‘Are you going to leave us without any weapons to defend ourselves with?’, the shipment was agreed. It was sent from Murmansk in seven ships, to Bordeaux. But it arrived late;
and the French government did not hasten its onward shipment.
¹
Little of it had reached Barcelona by January.

On 23 December, the attack began, after the nuncio had vainly requested a truce for Christmas in the name of the Pope.
²
The assault was launched by the Navarrese and the Italians, across the river Segre, fifteen miles north of its junction with the Ebro at Mequinenza. The crossing made, the surprised defenders—a well-equipped company of carabineers—were deserted by their officers. The front was thus broken, at the first moment of contact. Higher up the Segre, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Muñoz Grandes and García Valiño also broke the republican lines. These breaches caused the abandonment of the line of the Segre. At Barcelona, the attack was at first thought a minor one, but soon Lister’s 54th Army Corps was thrown into the battle, to try to hold the attack. With headquarters at Castelldans, in the first line of hills east of the Segre, Lister maintained himself for a fortnight.

On 3 January 1939, the nationalist armour eventually told against Lister, who was forced to abandon his line of defence to the Italians. In the north, García Valiño and Muñoz Grandes, supported by Moscardó, captured the communications centre of Artesa de Segre. On 4 January, the wrecked town of Borjas Blancas fell to the Navarrese and Italian armies. The front was open. Gambara was wounded, but he did not abandon his command. Several Italians were captured by Lister, however, to be shot after interrogation.
³
Ciano, noting that the only danger seemed the possibility of French intervention, instructed his ambassadors in Berlin and London to say that that contingency would bring ‘regular’ Italian divisions to Spain—even if this should ‘unleash
world war’.
¹
But, with the British cabinet bent on appeasement (Halifax told Ciano in Rome on the 12th that he hoped Franco ‘would settle the Spanish question’),
²
there was no likelihood that Daladier’s cabinet would act to save the Spanish republic. The republican commander-in-chief, Hernández Saravia, informed Azaña that he had only 17,000 rifles left for all Catalonia.
³
If that were so—and Hernández Saravia was an honest man—it indicates the confusion in the armies, since there should have been far more than that number of
arms available. The battle of Catalonia became a rout. The reorganized Italian mobile divisions astonished the republicans. Too late did Rojo try to get men and material sent up by boat from Valencia. Uselessly did the government extend the draft to men of forty-five. Successive defence lines (L.1, L.2, L.3) were hardly manned. The only successful counter-measure of the republic was a diversionary campaign on the borders of Andalusia and Estremadura. This advance (‘Plan P’, as Rojo knew it) was led by General Escobar, the civil guard colonel of 1936 in Barcelona, with Colonels Ibarrola and García Vallego, in command of large if not very disciplined armies; the other armies of the central zone, led by General Moriones and Colonel Casada, also began some local actions. The territory occupied was quite large, but militarily that meant little. For, on 14 January, a sudden and imaginative advance by Yagüe from Gandesa along the Ebro took him to the sea to capture Tarragona. There he met Solchaga, with his Army Corps, proceeding north along the coast. The first mass for two and a half years was held in the cathedral, while the proscription began in the city.

34. The campaign in Catalonia, December 1938–January 1939

The French government opened the frontier again to allow into Catalonia some of the new war material bought in Russia, but it was too late. The streets and squares of Barcelona were filled with refugees. The city wore a desperate air. Soldiers, bourgeoisie, and anarchists thought only of how they could escape to France. Air raids were continuous, especially on the port. These aimed to destroy vessels which might assist those who desired to flee. The government, preoccupied with the question of evacuating children, did not move until the last moment. In one of the last entries in his diary, Azaña recorded a visit to Hernández Saravia’s headquarters: ‘Enormous disaster. The army has disappeared. The men of the Ebro [collapse] almost without fighting. Worse than April.’
¹

The battle drew nearer to Barcelona, with little fighting; the advance was almost as fast as the advancing columns could have managed had there been no opposition at all. On 24 January, Yagüe, by the sea, Solchaga, twenty-five miles inland, and Gambara, seven miles farther to the north, had reached the Llobregat, the river which runs roughly from north to south to flow into the Mediterranean a few miles to the
west of Barcelona. The same day, García Valiño captured Manresa, and turned north-east to attempt to cut off Barcelona from the border. Negrín, Azaña, the government, the communist leaders, the chiefs of the army and of the civil service now moved from Barcelona to Gerona, along with the Catalan and émigré Basque governments. (Azaña was left to shift for himself.)
¹
In the Catalan capital, there was no spirit of resistance, and the communist demand that the Llobregat should become ‘the Manzanares of Catalonia’ was mere persiflage. The republican chief of staff, Vicente Rojo, remarked that ‘though not exhausted by suffering and hunger, the people were tired of the war’.
²
The Catalan capital could have been defended, and García Lacalle, the commander of the republican fighters, expressed to his chief an astonishment that it was not.
³
The central government’s feud with the
Generalidad
paid its toll, since it had broken Catalonia’s desire to resist the nationalist armies. The communist campaign against the POUM and anarchists had had the same effect.
⁴
Those foreigners who remained either joined the flood of refugees, which fled north, or tried to find a ship to evacuate them. The streets of the great city were filthy after the flight of the municipal cleaners. Mobs began to pillage food shops.

In Rome, Barcelona was held so certainly to be lost that Lord Perth was already asking Ciano to try to prevent reprisals by the nationalists.
⁵
In France, a debate raged for a week in the National Assembly, in the course of which Daladier and Bonnet said that it was too late to try to save Spain, while Blum and the united Left, including the communists, denied that all was lost. Yet Blum’s criticism of the Daladier government for continuing even now to maintain non-intervention could have applied to his own governments, at least after February 1937. On 25 January, Yagüe, followed by Solchaga and Gambara, crossed the Llobregat. Resistance was isolated, and without plan. By the following morning, the north and west of Barcelona had been invested. The
Navarrese and Italians established themselves on Mount Tibidabo and Yagüe on Montjuich (where he liberated 1,200 political prisoners). At midday, the occupation of the city began. On the first tank which entered Barcelona, a laughing German Jewess was perched, giving the fascist salute. She had recently been in the women’s prison at Las Cortes as a Trotskyist.
¹
The incongruity of the spectacle gave a mocking commentary to the
vivas
of triumph at the ‘liberation’ of Catalonia. The streets were empty. Almost half a million persons had left for the north by all means possible. By four o’clock, the main administrative buildings were occupied, untouched by incendiaries. In the evening, those citizens of Barcelona who had all the time secretly supported the nationalists came into the streets to rejoice.