The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (59 page)

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.
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The BT-5s had been grouped in the International Tank Regiment commanded by Colonel Kondratiev. All the drivers were members of the Red Army.
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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.
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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 general 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.
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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.
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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’.
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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’.
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Quinto was attacked by the 25th Division, which managed to take it on 26 August, despite the nationalist troops’ courageous defence of the chapel of Bonastre. With the 11th Division locked in a stalemate in Fuentes de Ebro, the 35th Division had to be sent to its aid. Republican commanders were obsessed once again with crushing every defensive position, when they should have forged ahead towards the main objective and left them to second-line troops. At this point Modesto proposed changing the original plan of taking Saragossa into one of capturing Belchite, which was defended by only a few hundred men. These nationalist defenders had good machine-gun positions, some of them made in ferro-concrete and others in specially prepared houses, as well as the seminary and church of San Agustín.

The attack on Belchite began at ten in the morning on 1 September. It was supported by artillery and aircraft flown by the first Spanish pilots to graduate from training schools in the Soviet Union. Much of the town was reduced to rubble. Then the tanks advanced, a very unwise manoeuvre, since they were extremely vulnerable in streets partially blocked by collapsed buildings. The next day resistance was crushed in the seminary and the fighting revolved around the church of San Agustín. The Calle Mayor became the main line of fire while the nationalists defended their positions in the calle Goya and the town hall from behind sandbagged emplacements. The desperate fighting continued until 6 September when the whole of Belchite was a smoking ruin of death, smashed masonry, dust and corpses, both human and animal. The ‘nauseating stench’ drifted out over the countryside around.
¹⁴

The whole operation had lasted thirteen days, during which the republican troops lacked water in stifling heat amid the overwhelming smell of rotting bodies so powerful that those who had gas masks wore them in spite of the temperature.
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The delays caused by the nationalists’ fierce defence of Quinto and Codó had given them time to bring up Barrón’s 13th Division and Sáenz de Buruaga’s 150th Division. This was a repeat of the republicans’ mistakes at Brunete. They wasted totally unnecessary numbers of men and time reducing resistance points that should have been contained and bypassed. The small nationalist garrisons never posed a serious threat to Modesto’s rearguard if he had continued the advance. In the end this huge effort by the republicans, who enjoyed overwhelming superiority, succeeded only in advancing ten kilometres and taking a handful of villages and small towns. It was a total failure in its main objectives of taking Saragossa and diverting the nationalists from their campaign in the north.

Once again the Republic suffered a considerable loss of badly needed armament, especially the tanks. And once more Stalinist paranoia blamed the failure on a ‘Trotskyist’ fifth column. General Walter considered the situation worse than at Brunete. ‘The 35th Division’s medical unit’, he reported, ‘registered several instances of wounded internationalists who were in Spanish hospitals for treatment dying because of maliciously negligent or completely unnecessary surgical operations and diagnoses and methods of treating the sick that were patently the work of wreckers.’ In addition, ‘a large-scale Trotskyist spy and terrorist organization’ was suspected in XIV International Brigade. They were supposedly planning to murder Hans Sanje, its commander, and Walter himself. Walter called the NKVD in Barcelona to come to investigate, but ‘Brigade Commander Sanje took it upon himself to carry out the investigation. He went to work so ardently and clumsily that the arrested man, a French lieutenant, quickly died during interrogation, taking with him the secret of the organization.’
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General Pozas held Walter responsible for the failure of the operation, by concentrating on secondary objectives and not the main one. Prieto was furious at the handling of the battle and his bitter criticism aroused the Party’s anger against him. Along with a growing number of senior officers, he had begun to recognize that communist direction of the war effort was destroying the Popular Army with prestige operations which it could not afford and triumphalist propaganda that was counterproductive. The Catalonia press claimed on 4 September, while the fighting still raged in Belchite, that ‘an intelligent and relevant act of the government has given for the first time mobility to all battle fronts. The Spanish people are starting to sense the longed-for and welcome consequences of an efficient policy of national unity facing the fascist invasion.
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The Aragón offensive had certainly come too late to help the defence of Santander. Nor did it delay the start of the third and final stage of the war in the north. Well aware of the importance of reducing the remaining Asturian territory before winter set in, General Dávila redeployed his forces rapidly to continue the advance westwards from Santander.

The Destruction of the Northern Front and of Republican Idealism

O
n 29 August, while the battle of Belchite was reaching its height, the Provincial Council of Asturias assumed all military and civil powers. It proclaimed itself to be the Sovereign Council of the Asturias, under the presidency of Belarmino Tomás. Its first act was to replace General Gámir Ulibarri with Colonel Adolfo Prada, who took command of the remnants of the Army of the North, now less than 40,000 men strong.

Prada’s chief of staff was Major Francisco Ciutat and its main formation was XIV Corps, commanded by Francisco Galán. The republican air force in the north was down to two flights of Moscas and less than a squadron of Chatos.
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Republican territory was now reduced to some 90 kilometres deep between Gijón and La Robla, and 120 kilometres along the coast, with the Oviedo salient sticking into the western flank.

Dávila’s attack on this last piece of republican resistance in the north came from the east and south-east aimed at Gijón. His force was at least twice the size of the republicans’ and included Solchaga’s four Carlist brigades, three Galician divisions under Aranda and the Italian CTV. They were supported by 250 aircraft, including the Condor Legion.

Nevertheless, the advance, which began on 1 September, averaged less than a kilometre a day, even with the nationalists’ crushing air superiority. The Picos de Europa and the Cordillera Cantábrica gave the republican defenders excellent terrain to hold back the enemy and they did so with remarkable bravery. It has been said that they fought so desperately only because the nationalist blockade gave them no hope of escape, but this can never have been more than one factor. When most of the senior officers managed to escape in small boats, the rank and file fought even more fiercely.

Solchaga’s Carlists did not reach Llanes until 5 September. These Navarrese brigades then launched themselves against the El Mazuco pass, which they seized and lost and then recaptured, then lost again. The defence of the pass, led by a CNT worker from La Felguera, continued for 33 days. The Carlists finally took it at bayonet point, suffering many losses. Meanwhile, the Condor Legion relentlessly bombed and strafed the republican rear,
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finding it too difficult to hit their mountain positions with conventional bombs. The German squadrons experimented with a prototype of napalm, consisting of cans of petrol attached to incendiary bombs.

On 18 September Solchaga’s Carlists opened the bloodiest part of the whole campaign. After fierce fighting, the 1st Navarre Brigade managed to enter Ribadesella; on 1 October the 5th Navarre Brigade occupied Covadonga; and ten days later they cleared the west bank of the upper Sella. On 14 October Arriondas fell. In the meantime Colonel Muñoz Grandes managed to break through Tama, one of the best fortified positions of the Asturian miners, and advance to Campo de Caso, thus sealing the encirclement. The Condor Legion completed the work, machine-gunning the republicans falling back on Gijón. On 20 October Solchaga’s forces joined up with those of Aranda.
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The republican government in Valencia instructed Colonel Prada to begin a general evacuation, but Franco’s fleet, waiting for the collapse, asked the Condor Legion to bomb the republican destroyer
Císcar
, sent to take off as many people as possible. The
Císcar
sank and foreign ships were intercepted by the nationalist warships. Many senior officials and officers managed to escape on gunboats and other small vessels to France. Yet the bulk of the republican troops continued fighting ferociously until the afternoon of 21 October, when the 4th Navarre Brigade entered Gijón. Part of the republican troops slipped away into the mountains where they joined up with remnants of units which had escaped from Santander. Guerrilla warfare continued in the Cordillera for another six months, tying down considerable bodies of nationalist troops.