The Spanish Civil War (120 page)

4.
John Cornford, A Memoir,
edited by Pat Sloan (London, 1938), p. 199. See also P. Stansky and W. Abrahams,
Journey to the Frontier
(London, 1966), a memoir of Cornford and of another Englishman who went to Spain, Julian Bell. Cornford’s resolution, and perhaps even more a famous resolute photograph of him, makes him the best known ‘volunteer for Spain’ of all, in England. His decision to go was fairly casual (Stansky and Abrahams, p. 314). He was a poet of rare promise.

1.
Martínez Bande,
La invasión de Aragón,
p. 70.

2.
Les Événements survenus,
p. 219.

3.
One soon appeared. See
FO,
371/205/26/83; 96; and 120; also 28/177.

4.
CNT-FAI bulletin, 28 July.

1.
GD,
p. 20.

2.
The republic also attempted to gain native troops from the fetid Spanish colony of Ifni, before it fell at the start of August.

3.
R. Salas, vol. I, p. 441.

4.
Whealey, in Carr,
The Republic,
p. 217, quoting German naval documents.

5.
Viñas, p. 429.

1.
12,000 men were flown to Spain from Africa in August and September in some 677 flights. After the end of September, the need for such airlifts ceased as Franco gained command of the sea. See below, p. 413. (Kindelán, in
Guerra de liberación,
Saragossa, 1961, p. 365.)

2.
Hitler’s Table Talk,
p. 687. The very first airlift in the Spanish war was constituted by the modest flights of Fokkers and Dorniers from Tetuán to Seville carried out by Spanish pilots between 20 and 29 July, carrying 10 legionaries in each flight, 837 men between 20 and 31 July, according to J. Martínez Bande, in
La campaña de Andalucía
(Madrid, 1969), p. 36.

3.
For a description of the day, the bands, Franco watching on the hill of El Hacho near Ceuta, and the arrival of the singing warriors, see Larios, p. 32, Bolín, p. 173, and Martínez Bande,
op. cit.,
p. 40f. The aircraft active on this day were the 5 Savoias, 3 Fokker Trimotors, a DC2 captured in Seville, 2 hydroplanes, 2 Nieuport fighters and a squadron of Breguet XIXs (R. Salas Larrazábal, vol. I, p. 295). Cf. also the memoir by the Italian Colonel Bonomi on the Italians’ role.

1.
See above, p. 206, fn. 4.

2.
A
tabor
was a battalion of 225 men.

3.
Larios, p. 44. The republican air command concentrated—or, rather, split up—its still superior forces in the Sierras to the north of Madrid. See Jesús Salas, p. 64.

1.
O Seculo,
11 August 1936. The Portuguese press was, during the early months, frank in its comments on nationalist massacres. See Brenan,
The Spanish Labyrinth,
p. 225, and Southworth,
El mito,
p. 215, for comment. For this campaign, see also Aznar, p. 102f.; Lojendio, p. 138f.; Sánchez del Arco; and Harold Cardozo,
The March of a Nation
(New York, 1937); Cecil Gerahty,
The Road to Madrid
(London, 1937); and H. R. Knickerbocker,
The Siege of the Alcázar
(Philadelphia, 1936).

1.
The news of the ‘massacre of Badajoz’ was first given to the world by two French journalists, Marcel Dany and Jacques Berthet, and a Portuguese journalist, Mario Neves. Their account was later denied by Major McNeil Moss in
The Legend of Badajoz
(London, 1937), which was itself countered by Koestler in
Spanish Testament,
pp. 143–5. McNeil Moss got his story from two British volunteers for Franco (Captains Fitzpatrick and Nangle) who, however, only joined the nationalist army on 9 September. Inquiries by the author in Badajoz in 1959 left him convinced of the truth of the story as described above. The exact number of those killed will probably never be known. It may not be quite as many as 1,800—the figure named by Jay Allen of the
Chicago Tribune.
Southworth’s
El mito
(p. 123) contains new material on these events. There was certainly fighting inside the cathedral, as eye-witnesses separately testified to the author, and as is suggested anyway in nationalist accounts (e.g., Sánchez del Arco,
op. cit.,
p. 9). See Jay Allen’s report published at the time in the
Chicago Tribune
(30 August 1936), reprinted in Robert Payne,
The Civil War in Spain, 1936–1939
(New York, 1962), pp. 89–91; and J. T. Whitaker, ‘Prelude to War’ (
Foreign Affairs,
October 1942), p. 104f. A false account of this massacre in which Yagüe was accused of having organized a fiesta at which the prisoners were shot before the wealth and beauty of Badajoz was published in
La Voz
of Madrid, 27 October 1936, and had a disastrous effect, causing reprisals in Madrid.

1.
Yagüe did not intervene to prevent bloodshed. But, on Franco’s orders, he did usually restrain the Moors from castrating corpses of their victims—an established Moorish battle-rite.

2.
Malraux, pp. 99–105; Lacouture, p. 233.

1.
Hidalgo de Cisneros, vol. II, p. 299. These Fiat-Ansaldo fighters, the CR 32s, were the most used Italian fighter on the nationalist side in the civil war. They had begun to arrive by sea on 14 August and were based at the end of August on Cáceres.

2.
Aznar, p. 174. It was Hernández Sarabia’s last act as minister of war.

3.
Iribarren, pp. 132, 135.

1.
Iturralde, vol. II, p. 72.

2.
Op. cit.,
p. 141. The brave, ruthless, simple giant, Beorlegui, was a man of character. Mola kept ringing him up but the colonel hated the telephone and persuaded Major Martínez de Campos to serve as go-between. ‘You must take San Sebastián,’ Mola would yell; ‘Let him take Madrid,’ Beorlegui would call back. See Martínez de Campos, p. 45. Beorlegui put up his umbrella in Oyarzún to protect himself from bombs (del Burgo, p. 206). See also Martínez Bande’s official history,
La guerra en el norte
(Madrid, 1969), pp. 37–99.

1.
On his own admission in the Chambre des Députés on 16 March 1939, the French communist leader André Marty, member of the Comintern’s central committee, ECCI, future leader of the regularly organized International Brigades, was at Irún.

1.
Martínez Bande,
op. cit.,
pp. 91–2.

2.
See above, p. 122.

3.
Luis María de Lojendio,
Operaciones militares de la guerra de España
(Barcelona, 1940), p. 108; Martínez Bande,
La campaña en Andalucía,
p. 73f.

4.
Borkenau, p. 158; Martínez Bande,
op. cit.,
p. 61. Others fought bravely, but one survivor recalls a whole battalion of volunteers from Alcoy being knifed by the Moors in their trenches (José Cirre Jiménez,
De espejo a Madrid,
Granada, 1937, p. 20).

5.
Evidence of Francisco Giral.

6.
Zugazagoitia, p. 110.

1.
Taking with him, secretly, Ramón Serrano Súñer. Fernández-Castañeda eventually became a general in nationalist Spain.

2.
Fraser,
The Pueblo,
p. 74.

3.
Charles Delzell,
Mussolini’s Enemies
(Princeton, 1961), p. 181. See also José Luis Alcofar Nassaes,
Spansky,
vol. I (Barcelona, 1973), p. 23.

1.
Figures in Guarner memorandum, p. 4. Originally, perhaps, only 2,000 disembarked but the total rose to about 8,000 probably (Martínez Bande,
La invasión de Aragón,
p. 141). The republic had made one other attempt at capturing Majorca: a destroyer anchored in the Bay of Pollensa, the captain landed alone, requisitioned a car and drove fifty miles to Palma, where, in full uniform, he called on the military governor to surrender. The audacious request was rejected and the captain detained (see De la Cierva,
Historia ilustrada,
II, p. 40).

2.
Lojendio, p. 150; see too Elliot Paul,
The Life and Death of a Spanish Town
(New York, 1937); Jesús Salas, p. 98. Martínez Bande,
La invasión de Aragón,
has a useful chapter. This first Italian shipment to Majorca was financed by Juan March. See also the efforts of Mallorquin falangists, such as de Zayas, to buy arms direct in Rome for their island, reported in Martínez Bande,
La invasión de Aragón,
documento No. 3, p. 268f.

1.
Bernanos, pp. 111–12.

2.
Qu. Jellinek, p. 405.

3.
Dundas, p. 69ff. Georges Oudard (
Chemises noires, brunes, vertes en Espagne,
Paris, 1938, p. 196f.), a pro-Right writer, noted, ‘if Franco kept Majorca, it was thanks to the Italian aircraft’. Azaña, vol. IV, pp. 776 and 629, is specially contemptuous of this expedition for a ‘Greater Catalonia’, of which he was uninformed. De la Cierva,
Historia ilustrada,
vol. II, p. 83, says that there was virtually no repression in Majorca; perhaps Bernanos exaggerated, but everything points to there having been
‘numerosísimas ejecuciones’
as an informant told Azaña later (
op. cit.,
p. 737).

1.
These details are described in Elliot Paul’s book cited above.

2.
See Oscar Pérez Solís,
Sitio y defensa de Oviedo
(Valladolid, 1938),
passim;
and a useful study, Oscar Muñiz Martín,
El verano de la dinamita
(Madrid, 1974).

1.
Borkenau, p. 147;
General Cause,
pp. 317–41.

1.
GD,
p. 61.

1.
Count Ciano,
Diplomatic Papers
(London, 1948), pp. 25–6.

2.
Eden, p. 402.

3.
GD,
p. 27.

4.
Ibid.,
p. 30.

1.
FD,
p. 120.

2.
GD,
p. 27.

3.
The Times,
7 August 1936.

4.
GD,
p. 323.

5.
USD,
1936, vol. II, p. 485.

1.
Alvarez del Vayo (
Freedom’s Battle,
p. 70) reported the British ambassador’s words more strongly, and, though there is no evidence for other than the above in Sir George’s account (Paris telegram No. 252 of 7 August) and in the French Documents (
FD,
vol. III, pp. 158–9), it is possible that he did speak specially vigorously: Hugh Lloyd Thomas, British minister in Paris, wrote privately to Sir Alexander Cadogan, under-secretary at the Foreign Office, that the ambassador’s conversation with Delbos ‘might well have been the factor which decided the government [in France] to announce the policy of non-intervention’ (
FO,
371/205/31/27). The French under-secretary, Pierre Vienot, later told Thomas that the ambassador’s ‘timely words’ had been most useful (
loc. cit.,
29/215), and Delbos later said that he had ‘listened’ to the ambassador’s appeal. The conventional view of the time was that ‘Perfide Albion’ had inspired non-intervention from the start.

2.
Les Événements survenus,
p. 219;
FD,
p. 130f, and
FO,
371/205/27.

3.
Pierre Cot,
op. cit.,
pp. 345–6.

4.
De los Ríos convinced Blum with an eloquent description of the young militiamen fighting fascism in the sierras. Blum wept (Azcárate, p. 257).

1.
Cot, pp. 353–4.

2.
Pike, pp. 44–6, 48.

3.
See Companys’s letter to Prieto, 13 December 1937, qu. Peirats, vol. I, p. 136.

4.
GD,
p. 36.

5.
Ibid.,
p. 38.

6.
Ibid.,
p. 37.

1.
Traina, p. 50.

2.
USD,
1936, vol. II, p. 474.

3.
Ibid.,
p. 488. The first ‘incident’ for America arising out of the civil war was the accidental nationalist bombing of the US destroyer
Kane
while
en route
from Gibraltar to Bilbao to evacuate American citizens there. No damage was done and an evasive apology from Franco was forthcoming (Taylor, pp. 61–2).

4.
This prohibition was first contingent on similar action by Italy, Germany, Russia, and Portugal; but it was implemented conditionally on the 19th (Eden, p. 403).

5.
GD,
p. 45.

1.
Ciano,
Diplomatic Papers,
pp. 31–2.

2.
GD,
p. 60.

3.
The crew of the Junkers had already been released. The aeroplane itself was destroyed in a nationalist air raid.

4.
C.O.S. 509 of 24 August 1936: ‘A hostile Spain or the occupation of Spanish territory by a hostile power would make our control of the straits and use of Gibraltar as a naval and air base extremely difficult’.

5.
USD,
1936, vol. II, p. 515.

6.
Izvestia,
26 August 1936.

1.
The republic had recognized Russia in 1933, but the rebellion of Asturias prevented an exchange of ambassadors. The exchange of ambassadors had been planned ever since February 1936, but only now occurred.

2.
For Antonov-Ovsëenko, see Isaac Deutscher,
The Prophet Armed
(London, 1954), p. 221, and
The Prophet Unarmed
(London, 1959), pp. 116–17, 160–61, 406.

3.
For the arrival of Kuznetzov (afterwards admiral and supreme commander of the Russian navy), see his memoir in
Bajo la bandera de la España republicana,
a collection of Russian memoirs, published Moscow, 1967. For reports by all these, see Radosh et al., 22 and passim.

4.
Walter Krivitsky,
I Was Stalin’s Agent
(London, 1963), p. 98. See also Elizabeth Poretsky,
Our Own People
(London, 1969), pp. 211–12. Berzin was born Ian Pavlovich Kuzis.

5.
Ilya Ehrenburg,
Men, Years and Life
(London, 1963), vol. IV, p. 110. He had been in Spain earlier in the year.

1.
Koltsov, pp. 9, 59. Koltsov speaks of the arrival on this day of a ‘Mexican communist, Miguel Martínez’, pseudonym for Koltsov himself. Koltsov was probably Stalin’s personal agent in Spain, with on occasion a direct line to the Kremlin.

2.
For life in this hotel, see the brilliant Ch. 18 of Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls.

3.
General Warlimont’s affidavit to US military intelligence in 1946 (
UN Security Council Report on Spain,
p. 76).

1.
Despite non-intervention, from this time the Foreign Office gave asylum to Spanish refugees from the ‘Red Terror’; and within a matter of weeks the Embassy in Madrid (under George Ogilvie Forbes) comprised seven buildings. The change in British policy towards refugees was due to the consequences of a refusal to give refuge to the Marquesa de Balboa, with her twelve-year-old son (who was later shot). For the rest of the war, the embassies in the Spanish capital remained the home of several thousand upper- and middle-class Spaniards, some active members of the Fifth Column, others terrified and broken, most hungry, cold and pale, due to the lack of fresh air. There were later some exchanges of these refugees for republicans in nationalist hands.

2.
Eden, p. 122.

3.
‘Shakes’ Morrison, as he was known, was a conservative politician and had been chairman of a cabinet sub-committee since early August coordinating non-intervention.

4.
Non-Intervention Committee records in the Public Record Office, first meeting. Hereafter referred to as
NIC.
The Non-Intervention Committee was throughout serviced by the Foreign Office. Papers, documents, etc., were prepared by a British secretariat.

1.
Ribbentrop, p. 71.

2.
GD,
p. 77.

3.
Kay, p. 95. Early in September, the crews of two Portuguese warships overpowered their officers and prepared to sail to join the republic. Salazar had them destroyed by gunfire.

4.
Ibid.,
p. 75.

5.
Ribbentrop,
loc. cit.
He added, in this apologia written in Nuremberg between the trial and the sentence, ‘I often wished that this wretched Spanish Civil War would go to the devil, for it constantly involved me in disputes with the British government’.

1.
GD,
p. 84.

2.
Lord Plymouth at meeting of the committee, 23 October 1936.

3.
Eden in the House of Commons, 16 December 1936.

4.
D. Cattell,
Soviet Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War
(Berkeley, 1957), p. 24. La Pasionaria, Marcelino Domingo, and Jiménez de Asúa also failed to convince Blum in an audience about this time (Ibarruri, p. 305). But others were persuaded; for example, Edith Thomas wrote:
Pasionaria Pasionaria
il n’est plus temps que les hommes t’aiment
ils t’écoutent
comme ils écoutent le vent chanter …

1.
Koestler,
Invisible Writing,
p. 323. Bing later went on to become a Labour MP and attorney general to President Nkrumah in Ghana. The Spanish republic said that they would accept ‘real non-intervention’. By this they meant no legislation in any country preventing them from buying arms. This was rather different from, for example, the Labour party’s view of non-intervention, which was that neither side should be able to get arms from abroad.

2.
NIC
second meeting.

3.
Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 224–5.