The Spanish Civil War (127 page)

3.
The American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy, headed by Dr Cannon of Harvard Medical School, had raised $100,000. For a time, the State Department refused, under the Embargo Act, to permit even doctors and nurses to go to Spain. Later, they relented. Another US fund was ‘The North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy’, headed by Bishop McConnell. The two committees amalgamated in 1938.

4.
Hemingway,
The Spanish War.
Hemingway shortly became busy assisting with the Dutch communist Joris Ivens’s propaganda film,
The Spanish Earth.
The poet Archibald MacLeish, Dos Passos and Lillian Hellman were all involved in this (a successor to
Spain in Flames,
on which Hemingway had also worked, with Prudencia Pereda, a Spanish novelist in New York). Given these talents, it is surprising that the film was no better. (Dos Passos had just then had a great success with his novel
USA.
)

1.
Spender,
World within World,
p. 247. See though Auden’s article in the
New Statesman,
20 January 1937. The experience of Auden in Spain is similar to that of Simone Weil. Both (unlike everyone else who visited Spain) were uninformative when they arrived home. Simone Weil, who spent some time in Catalonia in August–October 1936, underwent conversion as a result of her experiences. She had been appalled by the murders behind the republican lines.

2.
Her Penguin Special,
Searchlight on Spain
(Harmondsworth, 1938), was the most successful of all the propaganda books on the Spanish war. In 1938, she resigned her conservative seat and stood as an independent conservative in protest against non-intervention. She lost the ensuing by-election, despite the help of Gerald Brenan, Ch. 23 of whose
Personal Record
gives a vivid picture of the campaign.

3.
Charlotte Haldane,
Truth Will Out
(London, 1949), p. 106. Gollancz and Laski were the directors, with John Strachey, of the famous Left Book Club, whose 50,000 members were a shadow political movement for the Popular Front in England.

1.
Qu. Stansky and Abrahams, pp. 398–9.

1.
Kindelán, p. 76.

2.
About March 1937, republican and nationalist troops theoretically numbered about 110,000 to 80,000 in both the north and the centre, about 80,000 to 30,000 in Aragon, and 60,000 to 50,000 in Andalusia and Estremadura (F. Ciutat, qu. Payne,
The Spanish Revolution,
p. 330). But see p. 526 above for qualifications to these figures.

3.
See report published in Martínez Bande,
Vizcaya
(Madrid, 1971), p. 223f.

1.
Apparently, in early 1937 one group of CNT in the Legion tried to rebel and release the prisoners in Saragossa. The plot miscarried and all were shot (see Payne,
Politics,
p. 390).

2.
See his report in Martinez Bande,
op. cit.,
pp. 229–38. He later became famous in Franco’s Spain as an engineer of another sort: he designed the Talgo, the low-slung Madrid-Irún express train. He was luckier than his assistant, Captain Pablo Murga, shot as a spy in November 1936. (See Martínez Bande,
La guerra en el norte,
pp. 161–2.)

1.
Aznar, p. 397. The Condor Legion at this time was composed of (1) a combat group of two squadrons of Heinkel 51s and one of the new fast Messerschmitt 109s, and one or two fighters; the commander of this group was von Merhard; (2) a bomber group of two squadrons of Junkers 52s and Heinkel 111s, commanded by Major Fuchs; (3) a squadron of reconnaissance aircraft commanded by Major Kessel; (4) a squadron of light bombers (Henschel 123s); (5) a squadron of Heinkel 59 seaplanes; (6) a squadron of Junkers 52s, for transport; (7) anti-aircraft batteries. The Legion continued to have altogether 100 aircraft. Sperrle remained the commander (Jesús Salas, pp. 212–13).

1.
Twelve questions put by Llano de la Encomienda to Aguirre on 9 January are published in R. Salas, vol. III, p. 2840. Question No. 7 was characteristic: ‘the clothing and equipment belongs to Euzkadi or to the Army of the North? If it is of the latter, can the central staff intervene in its distribution?’ The Basque section of this army numbered 36,000 in March, being increased ultimately to 100,000 by June (Martínez Bande,
Vizcaya,
p. 36).

1.
Martínez Bande,
Vizcaya,
p. 135.

2.
Qu. Aznar, vol. II, p. 133.

1.
Steer, p. 162.

2.
Alcofar Nassaes, p. 112; see also Sancho Piazzoni,
Las tropas Flechas Negras
(Barcelona, 1942).
GD,
p. 269.

3.
Martínez Bande,
Vizcaya,
p. 35.

4.
Koltsov, p. 397; Castro Delgado, p. 517f. There were also disputes within the Basque communist party: Astigarrabía and Urondo (director of public works) were closer to the Basque government than others outside it such as Ormazábal, Larrañaga, and Monzón (Ibarruri, p. 388; Castro Delgado, p. 525).

1.
British ships carried most of the trade to and from Spain. British exports to Spain fell during 1937. Coal exports went down by 37 per cent, machinery by 90 per cent, motor-cars by 95 per cent, cutlery by 90 per cent (figures for all Spain, since the Board of Trade did not separate statistics for the two zones). British imports, however, increased, except in respect of nuts and potatoes. For those British persons who worried about their investments in Spain, that genius
manqué
of the epoch, Brian Howard, wrote a poem urging them to
Spare a thought, a thought for all these Spanish tombs,
And for a people in danger, grieving in breaking rooms,
For a people in danger, shooting from falling homes.

2.
FO,
371/205/33.

1.
CAB,
23/88, meeting of 7 April, remark of Runciman, president of the Board of Trade.

2.
Nationalist note of 9 April, referred to by Eden in the House of Commons, 19 April (
Hansard,
House of Commons, vol. 322, col. 1404).

1.
Eden, p. 462;
CAB,
15/37, 11 April 1937 (
Hansard,
House of Commons, vol. 322, col. 597).

2.
CAB,
16(37): meeting on 14 April 1937.

3.
CAB,
23/87.

4.
Anthony Eden,
Foreign Affairs
(Speeches) (London, 1938), pp. 189–90 (speech of 12 April).

5.
So he confided to his private secretary, Oliver Harvey (John Harvey,
The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937–1900,
London, 1970, p. 34).

1.
All this debate, which was punctuated by points of order, cries of ‘withdraw’, and other interruptions, is to be seen in
Hansard,
House of Commons, vol. 322, cols. 1029–142. See Harvey, p. 39. ‘It is very difficult to get facts out of the Admiralty’, Eden’s private secretary added.

2.
Special profits (up to 100 per cent more than usual) were earned by British shipowners who ran the risk of helping to provision the republic.

1.
Eden,
Facing the Dictators,
p. 441.

1.
These Heinkels had begun to arrive in Spain in February. Their first use had been a raid on Barajas and Alcalá de Henares on 9 March. Von Moreau was an ‘ace’ pilot who had successfully dropped supplies into the Alcázar at Toledo in September 1936.

2.
See below, p. 658, for this aircraft.

3.
For these details, see Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts,
Guernica
(New York, 1975), pp. 206–13. The authors had access to the diary of Von Richthofen, the chief of staff of the Condor Legion, and other Condor Legion memories. The oak was destroyed in the Napoleonic wars but there was a stump and new shoots thereafter.

1.
See
Le Clergé basque,
pp. 151–3, and Vicente Talón’s
Arde Guernica,
the first edition of which (Madrid, 1970) was an important breakthrough in the writing of contemporary history in Spain. Talón’s account is accepted in R. Salas, vol. II, p. 1386 and p. 2864f. (vol. III). For a general study of the impact of Guernica, see Herbert Southworth’s
La Destruction de Guernica
(Paris, 1975). An account free of varnish can be seen in Martínez Bande,
Vizcaya,
p. 106f. The number of persons killed is extremely difficult to establish. Estimates vary from 1,600 to 100. Talón discusses the figures (p. 91f.) and suggests 200. But even the nationalist commission of inquiry suggested that 70 per cent of the houses were totally destroyed, 20 per cent seriously damaged, and only 10 per cent left moderately well off.

2.
See Appendix 8 for the British Consul’s report. The Basque account was confirmed by conversations which I had in Guernica in the summer of 1959 and with Father Alberto Onaindía, who was present. I also discussed Guernica with Noel Monks, of the
Daily Mail,
and Jesús María de Leizaola. In 1945, the Basque government in exile attempted to bring a case against Germany at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. The attempt was unsuccessful, since no events which occurred before 1939 were taken into account at Nuremberg.

3.
For the visit of foreign journalists between 29 April and 3 May see Southworth, p. 90.

1.
Virginia Cowles,
Looking for Trouble
(London, 1941), p. 71.

2.
Galland, p. 26.

3.
Thomas and Witts, p. 212.

1.
Thomas and Witts, pp. 197–8.

2.
See below, p. 623.

3.
Martínez Bande, p. 110.

4.
See Hills, p. 281.

5.
The Italian raids on Barcelona in 1938 were against a city with some air defences. But see below, p. 785.

6.
Though he had not lived in Spain since 1903, Picasso in 1936 had accepted the (honorary) post of director of the Prado and reported on the condition of the paintings which had been removed from Madrid to Valencia. In January he had etched a series of satirical strips, ‘The Dream and the Lie of General Franco’, in the style of the Aleluyas for which Spanish politics had been known since the eighteenth century—and revived during the civil war.

7.
Guernica was an international journalistic watershed in the civil war. Thereafter, for instance,
Time
magazine,
Life,
and, after a while,
Newsweek
took the side of the republic (Guttman, pp. 61–2).

1.
The Times,
5 May 1937.

2.
Evidence of Father Alberto Onaindía. The priest who collected the signatures, Father Fortunato de Unzueta, wrote an account of how this letter was prepared, in
El clero vasco,
p. 244f.

3.
It appears nevertheless that he was transferred from his post immediately. Bolín’s memoirs were only published in 1967. His Appendix III and Ch. 33 are, I fear, untrue.

4.
In Talón’s
Arde Guernica.

5.
See De la Cierva,
Historia ilustrada,
vol. II, p. 158.

1.
Galland,
loc. cit.

2.
NIS
(c), forty-ninth meeting.

3.
R. Salas Larrazábal, vol. II, p. 1561.

1.
The best book on this event is Julio de Urrutia,
El cerro de los héroes
(Madrid, 1965), a passionate work of investigation. The heroes did not receive their due reward in nationalist Spain.

1.
See above, p. 492.

1.
All the above and the following derived from the Carlist Archives, Seville. The falangists taking part in the discussions were Sancho Dávilla, Pedro Gamero del Castillo (a leading ‘new shirt’ of Seville), and José Luis Escario. The Carlists were Fal Conde, the Conde de Rodezno, and José María Arauz de Robles. Hedilla, the provisional head of the Falange, knew of the negotiations but disapproved of them (
GD,
p. 268). He did not know of the part played by Dávila (García Venero,
Falange,
p. 324). Another who played a part was José María Valiente, sometime leader of the CEDA youth, and now a Carlist.

2.
The most remarkable document was a series of ‘bases for a union’ of the two groups, included in a falangist note of 1 February. By this, the Falange would ‘agree to install, at an opportune moment, a new monarchy, as a guarantee of the continuity of the national-syndicalist state and as the basis for its imperium. The new monarchy would break all links with the liberal monarchy.’

3.
See above, p. 413.

1.
Serrano Súñer was not a member of the Falange before 1936. His escape from the republican zone was thanks to his move to a clinic, and his subsequent escape thence with Miaja’s ex–chief of staff on the Córdoba front. The republican minister without portfolio, Irujo, was responsible for his move to the clinic (see Lizarra, p. 125) on the initiative of Dr Gregorio Marañón.

2.
Hoare, p. 56. Hoare compared him to Stendhal’s Count Mosca (p. 167).

1.
Serrano Súñer, pp. 29–31.

1.
For this, see García Venero,
Falange,
p. 317. The event occurred on 2 February. The speech had contained such phrases as ‘we do not want a Marxist revolution. But we know Spain does need
the
revolution.’ The speech had been an attack on both Left and Right in the elections of 1936.

2.
The case made for him by García Venero,
Falange,
p. 237f., appears convincing, though Southworth (
Antifalange,
p. 159) says that what distressed him was the number of those shot without trial, rather than those shot at all.

3.
Cantalupo, pp. 117–18; García Venero,
Falange,
p. 249; and Southworth,
Antifalange,
p. 160. Italian fascists were often shocked by Spanish conservatives’ brutality.

1.
Angel Alcázar de Velasco,
Serrano Súñer en la Falange
(Madrid, 1940), pp. 64–6.

1.
Haartman’s memoir, qu. Southworth,
Antifalange,
p. 197.

2.
The conflict of evidence is summarized in Southworth,
op. cit.,
p. 198 and pp. 219–24.

3.
See
Cartas entrecruzadas entre el Sr D. Manuel Hedilla Larrey y el Sr D. Ramón Serrano Súñer
(Madrid, 1947). See also L. Pagés Guix (possibly a pseudonym for Garcerán),
La Traición de los Franco
(Madrid, 1938); Payne,
Politics and the Military,
pp. 166–7; and García Venero,
Falange,
p. 372f. For Peral, see Ortiz Villalba, p. 242.

1.
García Venero,
Falange,
p. 394. The text is in Díaz Plaja, pp. 398–401. The writer and wit Agustín de Foxá referred to the monstrously entitled party as the ‘Compañia Internacional de Coches Camas y de los Grandes Expresos Europeos’. It was written some days before—no doubt before 16 April (see Escobar, p. 178).

2.
Carlist Archive. The official party uniform henceforth consisted of the blue shirt of the Falange and the red beret of the Carlists. Neither party liked the compromise, and the falangists put the Carlist beret into their pockets whenever they could. On one celebrated occasion, a group of falangists with bare heads were greeted by the Carlist Rodezno in ordinary clothes. Asked why he was so dressed, the old cynic answered: ‘It is because I cannot put my blue shirt into my pocket …’ (Ansaldo, p. 78).

1.
Serrano Súñer, p. 42.

2.
They were José Luis Escario, the ‘technocrat’; Colonel Gazapo, the rebel officer of Melilla at the beginning of the war, active in Saragossa since, a falangist since about May 1936; Miranda, the Seville chief; Giménez Caballero, an early Spanish fascist, expelled by José Antonio and recently readmitted; López Bassa, an
arriviste,
from Majorca; and Pedro González Bueno, another (very) ‘new shirt’.

1.
See Southworth,
Antifalange,
p. 213.

2.
There appears no truth in the story put out by Cardozo, p. 308, that Franco was personally challenged by Hedilla.

3.
García Venero,
Falange,
p. 406. This was the very time when the Guernica attack of 26 April was conceived and carried out.

4.
An exception was José Luis Arrese, who was condemned to death in Seville for helping Hedilla but became, nevertheless, secretary-general of the movement in 1941.

1.
His vexations were added to by his fellow prisoners who were ‘reds’ and who hated him.

2.
Gil Robles, ex-leader of the CEDA, announced his support for Franco, but he spoiled the effect by aligning himself at the same time with the (orthodox) monarchists. He remained in exile, taking no part in politics (though he occasionally helped with arms traffic), and did not return to Spain till 1957.

1.
Serrano Súñer, p. 38. This text was written in 1947 and the mention of the ‘immoral’ side to German practice was thus a post-1945 reflection.

2.
GD,
p. 274.

3.
Serrano Súñer, p. 49.

1.
ABC de Sevilla,
19 July 1937.

2.
At least one man, a pastry-cook from Estremadura, Fernando Gordillo Bellido, unwisely used the back of one of these posters for a different purpose: to write a letter renewing a subscription to a journal. He was arrested, tried, and gaoled for six years and a day, and met another innocent man, Hedilla, in the gaol of Las Palmas (García Venero,
Falange,
p. 444).

3.
W. González Oliveros, in
Falange y Requeté orgánicamente solidarios
(Valladolid, 1937), as qu. Cabanellas, vol. II, p. 939. González Oliveros became civil governor in Barcelona after the war.

1.
‘El Tebib Arrumi’ was Víctor Ruiz Albéniz, who had worked for eight years as a doctor at the Monte Uixan mines. For a general picture of press relations in Salamanca, see Southworth,
La Destruction,
p. 63f.

2.
Gay was succeeded soon by Major Arias Paz of the corps of engineers.