The Spanish Civil War (55 page)

After the failure of the action, André Marty appeared at General Walter’s headquarters, and Major Gaston Delasalle, commander of the Marseillaise Battalion, was accused of spying for the nationalists, tried, and shot. The major died protesting his innocence, shouting imprecations at Marty and begging the intervention of the Alsatian Colonel Putz, the president of the council of war which had condemned him. If Delasalle was a spy for anyone, however, which seems doubtful, it would presumably have been for the government of France and not for Franco.
¹

After Christmas, a new attempt was made by the nationalists to cut the Madrid-Corunna road. The columns engaged in the battle of Boadilla had been reinforced by new conscripted troops and falangists who had been trained by German officers at Cáceres. These were faced by a republican army reorganized on the Madrid front as an army corps (Miaja in command), with five divisions, led respectively by Nino Nanetti (an Italian communist who, arriving in Barcelona, had led a battalion of Catalan youth at Huesca in August), Modesto (the Spanish communist ex-NCO of Africa and the organizer of the Fifth Regiment) and regular Colonels Perea, Prada and José María Galán. The brunt of the nationalist attack was faced by Modesto’s division, composed of new Mixed Brigades led by El Campesino, Luis Barceló, Cipriano Mera, and Gustavo Durán. Mera was the leading anarchist commander produced by the war, while Durán had been a com
poser—for films mostly—who found himself as a commander, and had, before Christmas, been ‘Kléber’s’ chief of staff.
¹
On 3 January, the attack began. Barrón advanced along the road from Villanueva de la Cañada and, on 4 January, reached the first houses of Las Rozas, on the Madrid–El Escorial railway. On the right, García Escámez and Sáenz de Buruaga fought against tenacious resistance at Pozuelo. The advance was slow, since the number of summer villas in the area afforded good cover to the defenders. Kléber sent as reinforcements the Commune de Paris Battalion to Pozuelo and the Edgar André and Thaelmann Battalions to Las Rozas. On 5 January, after a day of inaction due to heavy fog, a new nationalist attack began. Bombing was followed by the advance of tanks and mobile artillery, then by the first two infantry waves, and then by more tanks. The republican front broke everywhere. This blitzkrieg attack was of interest to those German officers on the nationalist side who, with ruthless objectivity, continued to regard Spain as a ‘European Aldershot’.

A little earlier, at Pozuelo, six Russian armoured cars, with 37-millimetre guns based originally on German Rheinmetall design, had put twenty-five light German Mercedes tanks out of action—an occurrence which ultimately caused many modifications in German armament manufacture.
²
Now, the brigades of Barceló, El Campesino, and Cipriano Mera lost touch with each other, and munitions ran out. Miaja, in general command, was forced to send blank rounds to the front on the assumption that men who heard their rifles firing would
go on defending themselves. He even staged a mock execution of deserters to prevent weakness in the trenches. The sense of impending disaster caused the transfer of Lister’s brigade from Madrid, and persuaded Largo Caballero to send the 14th International Brigade up from Córdoba.

But the nationalist advance continued. Orgaz’s columns reached the main road at Las Rozas and beyond Pozuelo (though the town itself held on). But Orgaz’s columns suffered heavy casualties from the machine-guns of the International Brigade. On the 6th, the Thaelmann Battalion was sent to hold out at Las Rozas, and not to retreat an inch farther. These orders were later revised, but by then messages could not get through, since the battalion was surrounded. All day the Thaelmann Battalion held their ground, against tanks, aerial attack and infantry. The Moors—there was probably still a Moroccan majority in the nationalist assault force—stormed several of their trenches and bayoneted the wounded whom they found there. But the Germans did not give way. The next day, Kléber sent a new order to the battalion, to advance. The survivors had reluctantly to send back the following message: ‘Impossible. The Thaelmann Battalion has been destroyed.’
¹
Walter, leader of No. 1 Company of the Thaelmann Battalion,
²
had during this battle the eerie experience of coming upon the body of a Condor Legion pilot with whom he had once served in the same air squadron.
³

By 9 January, the nationalists had conquered, at great cost, seven miles of the converted highway, from just beyond the last houses of Madrid at the Puerta de Hierro to Las Rozas. On 10 January, there arrived in Madrid the 14th and 12th International Brigades, including the British No. 1 Company, commanded now by Jock Cunningham, a communist since 1920 when he had been gaoled for leading a mutiny
of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Jamaica.
¹
Nathan commanded the Marseillaise Battalion in succession to the ill-fated Delasalle. A German group of the 14th Brigade asked for twelve hours’ sleep after their forty-eight-hour journey following on their battles at Córdoba. Walter, their Polish commander, appealed to them: ‘The government has called for the best troops. That is you. Or could there have been a mistake with regard to the 14th Brigade?’ The recalcitrant troops went on to the front, this being perhaps the first time in history that a Polish commander has rebuked a German force. The next day, the republic counter-attacked in heavy mist (unusual in Madrid) and fierce cold. The 12th International Brigade reached Majadahonda and the 14th, Las Rozas—a battalion of the latter being lost in the mist and never being seen again. Russian tanks, led in person by General Pavlov, drove about, destroying men but unable to gain ground. The battle continued till 15 January, when each side dug fortifications. Both had lost 15,000 men in ten days. Orgaz retained his seven miles of main road, Miaja had prevented the isolation of the Sierras. The military stalemate thus appeared complete.
²
The rebels had observed that their opponents’ power of resistance had increased and attributed that to the existence of ‘foreign professional commanders’
³
as well as to discipline and new armaments.

The remainder of the 1,300-mile front was meantime quiet, since neither side had enough modern weapons for more than one battle at the same time. The republicans had men enough but many of these were, in the mind of the general staff, too unreliable (as in Aragon), too badly trained (as in the south), or too poorly armed (as along the Cantabrian coast). The fronts themselves still consisted in most places simply of ‘a system of narrow trenches hewn out of the rock with primitive loopholes made out of piles of limestone’. Twelve sentries
might be ‘at various points in the trench, in front of which was the barbed-wire, and then the hillside slid down to a seemingly bottomless ravine: opposite lay naked hills’.
¹
On every hilltop, in Aragon, for example, there seemed to be a knot of ragged, dirty men, nationalist or republican, ‘shivering round their flag’, with bullets occasionally wandering between them—and sometimes voices, encouraging desertion, painting a rosy picture of the comforts to be had on the other side, and shouting insults. Nationalists would, indeed, desert, sometimes five a night, before a single company’s sector. The republic offered every deserter from their enemies 50 pesetas, and 100 if they brought their arms with them—not a particularly enticing reward. There were also instances of desertion by republicans though, at this stage in the war, the balance was probably in the republic’s favour. In most cases the deserters, however, were men who had been caught in the wrong place at the start of the war, had pretended to belong to the side for which they were fighting to save their lives, and had been waiting, ever since, for an opportunity to cross the lines.

Dr Junod, the indefatigable humanitarian of the Red Cross, had established himself at St Jean de Luz in order to try to effect exchanges of prisoners, mostly persons apprehended at the beginning of the war rather than soldiers. Red Cross branch offices were set up in Salamanca and Valencia which communicated through Geneva. Lists of prisoners were compiled and, occasionally, individuals would be exchanged by Red Cross agencies between prisoners in one camp or the other and their relations. Giral, who became the republican minister in charge of the possible exchange of prisoners, proposed an exchange of 10,000—but the nationalists were unhelpful, and only a few hundred were exchanged.
²
Friends and enemies rubbed shoulders in the Red Cross offices, irreconcilable even in their sorrow. Dr Junod told later the story of Isabella, a fierce monarchist, on behalf of whose brother he had pestered the republican authorities for months. At last the news came: ‘Executed with ten others. Buried in the cemetery.’ Tearless but deadly pale, she passed on her way out Carlota, whose fiancé had been missing. Each knew the story of the other. They saw each other and
they understood at once. With the same movement of contempt and hatred, they avoided each other as they passed. But Carlota said afterwards: ‘At least she can visit his grave. But I shall never know, never.’
¹

The character of the winter of 1936 in Spain was, however, best expressed by the long convoy of lorries, laden with food brought by the nationalists to feed Madrid once it had fallen. Their contents slowly rotted in the snow and rain. A mile away, behind the republican lines, the people of Madrid stoically put up with rice, bread, and increasing hunger, the consequence of the killing of herds and immediate consumption during the first days of revolution, and of general economic dislocation, as well as the presence, in the republican zone, of a million refugees who had fled during the course of the autumn from one province after another.

The repercussions of one event in particular extended over both sides of these battle lines. This was the trial of José Antonio. The decision to bring the leader of the Falange (who had now been in Alicante gaol since 6 July, remarkably well treated by an admiring prison staff) to trial seems to have been inspired by the fear that, if the ‘military rebellion’ were to collapse, one of their greatest enemies would go unscathed.

Plans for an exchange for José Antonio had failed; the government seem not to have been able to accept such an arrangement for fear of their own followers. An adventurous attempt to rescue José Antonio by means of a
coup de main
in Alicante had failed, though both the honorary German consul, Von Knobloch, and Admiral Carls, on the battleship
Graf Spee,
had been ready to help. The falangist leader of militias, Agustín Aznar, arrived in disguise in Alicante on the German torpedo boat
Ildis,
sought to suborn the local CNT, but ultimately failed to find anyone in Alicante who would help him, even for 8 million pesetas.
¹
Later, José Antonio made an offer to try to negotiate
peace in the civil war by flying to Salamanca, leaving his relations in gaol as hostages against his return. The government refused.
¹

José Antonio’s trial was held correctly before a magistrate and he was able to defend himself by reading out editorials from
Arriba
to prove that his views differed from those of Franco or the monarchists. During the trial, a militiaman appeared as a witness for the prosecution. ‘Do you hate the defendant?’ asked José Antonio, who was defending himself. ‘With all my heart’, replied the witness. Dignified throughout, the founder of the Falange was condemned to death. For his brother Miguel and his brother’s wife, a similar sentence was asked. José Antonio, with the chivalry which his enemies never denied him, appealed on their behalf. ‘Life is not a firework one lets off at the end of a garden party’, he concluded. As a result, they received terms of imprisonment. No such clemency was possible for José Antonio himself. Princess Bibesco, who, as the wife of the ex-Roumanian minister in Madrid had been friendly with Azaña, telephoned the president to beg him to prevent the execution. Azaña gloomily answered that he could do nothing since he also was a prisoner,
²
though he had twice previously saved José Antonio’s life by intervening with the civil governor of Alicante, Jesús Monzón.
³
According to Largo Caballero, the death sentence came up in the cabinet for confirmation on 20 November, but even as the discussion was going on, the news came of the technically insubordinate act of execution, the local bosses at Alicante having been afraid that the sentence would be commuted.
⁴
The anarchists had been opposed to the death sentence, since they granted that José Antonio was ‘a Spanish patriot in search of solutions for his country’.
⁵
All the ministers apparently would have voted for the commutation of the sentence. Indeed, the execution of
José Antonio was a boon to Franco in the long run, since he was the one other leader of character on the Spanish Right who remained after the holocaust of July. But no action was taken against the Alicante authorities; indeed, many sentences were still carried out without governmental consultation.
¹

José Antonio was shot on 20 November in the prison yard in Alicante gaol, between two other falangists and two Carlists, who were also executed. His final request was that the patio in which he was to be shot should be wiped clean after his death ‘so that my brother Miguel will not have to walk in my blood’.
²
At almost the same hour on the same day as José Antonio was shot, his contemporary, Durruti, was dying of wounds in the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. Two Spanish ‘heroes of their time’ died, leaving the way open to less generous successors. José Antonio left behind a will full of constructive ideas for a future Spain: it pleased Prieto but had no effect.

For a long time, this execution was not mentioned in the nationalist press. He was referred to as
el ausente,
the ‘absent one’. Since 1933, when names of falangist martyrs were read out at ceremonies, the Falange would cry
Presente,
‘Present’, in imitation of a similar fascist rite. They would continue to call out ‘Present’ after the name of José Antonio, and many who knew that the
jefe
was dead acted as if they thought he was not.

One other notable occurrence straddling the battle lines was the change of attitude of the most prominent intellectuals of pre-war Spain. Most of these had found themselves in republican Spain at the time of the rising. They signed a manifesto pledging support of the republic. The signatures had included those of the physician and historian Dr Marañón; the ex-ambassador and novelist Pérez de Ayala; the historian Menéndez Pidal; and the prolific philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: friends, founders even, of the republic of 1931. But the atrocities and the increasing influence of the communists caused all these
men to take what opportunity they could find to flee abroad. There, they repudiated their support of the republic.
¹

A different course was taken by the Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, arch-priest of the Generation of ’98. As rector of the University of Salamanca, he had found himself at the start of the civil war in nationalist territory. The republic had disillusioned him, he had admired some of the young falangists, and he gave money to the rising. As late as 15 September, he was supporting the nationalist movement.
²
But by 12 October his view had changed. He had become, as he said later, ‘terrified by the character that this civil war was taking, really horrible, due to a collective mental illness, an epidemic of madness, with a pathological substratum’.
³
On that date, the anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, celebrated as the ‘Day of the Race’, a ceremony was held in the great hall (
paraninfo
) of the University of Salamanca. There was Dr Plá y Deniel, bishop of Salamanca;
⁴
there was General Millán Astray, the founder of the Foreign Legion, at the time an important if unofficial adviser to Franco. His black eye-patch, his one arm, his mutilated fingers made him a hero of the moment; and, in the chair, there was Unamuno, rector of the university. The meeting occurred within a hundred yards of Franco’s headquarters, recently established in the bishop’s palace in Salamanca, on the prelate’s invitation. After the opening formalities, there were speeches by the Dominican Father Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, and the monarchist writer José María Pemán. Both delivered hot-tempered speeches. So did Professor Francisco Maldonado, who made a violent attack on Catalan and Basque nationalism, describing them as ‘cancers in the body of the nation’. Fascism, Spain’s ‘health-giver’, would know how to exterminate both, ‘cutting into the live healthy flesh like a resolute surgeon free from false sentimentality’. A man at the back of the hall cried the Foreign Legion’s motto: ‘
¡Viva la Muerte!
’ (Long live
death!). Millán Astray then gave the now usual rabble-rousing slogans: ‘Spain!’ he cried. Automatically, a number of people shouted ‘One!’ ‘Spain!’ shouted Millán Astray again. ‘Great!’ replied the audience. To Millán Astray’s final cry of ‘Spain!’ his bodyguard gave the answer ‘Free!’ Several falangists, in their blue shirts, gave a fascist salute to the sepia photograph of Franco which hung on the wall over the dais. All the eyes were turned to Unamuno, who it was known disliked Millán Astray and who rose to close the meeting and said:
¹

All of you are hanging on my words. You all know me and are aware that I am unable to remain silent. At times to be silent is to lie. For silence can be interpreted as acquiescence. I want to comment on the speech—to give it that name—of Professor Maldonado. Let us waive the personal affront implied in the sudden outburst of vituperation against the Basques and Catalans. I was myself, of course, born in Bilbao. The bishop [here Unamuno indicated the quivering prelate sitting next to him], whether he likes it or not, is a Catalan, from Barcelona.

He paused. There was a fearful silence. No speech like this had been made in nationalist Spain. What would the rector say next?

Just now [Unamuno went on] I heard a necrophilistic and senseless cry: ‘Long live death’. And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. General Millán Astray is a cripple. Let it be said without any slighting undertone. He is a war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are all too many cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of them, if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millán Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.

At this, Millán Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. ‘Death to Intellectuals!’ ‘
¡Mueran los intelectuales!
’ he shouted. ‘Long live death.’ There was a clamour of support for this remark from the
falangists, with whom the simple, soldierly Millán Astray had actually little in common. ‘Down with
false
intellectuals! Traitors!’ shouted José María Pemán, anxious to paper over the cracks in the nationalist front. But Unamuno went on:

This is the temple of the intellect. And I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince, you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: reason and right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain. I have done.

There was a long pause. Some of the legionaries around Millán Astray began to close in on the platform menacingly. Millán Astray’s bodyguard pointed his machine-gun at Unamuno. Franco’s wife, Doña Carmen, came up to Unamuno and Millán Astray and insisted that the rector give his arm to her. He did so and the two slowly left together. But this was Unamuno’s last public address. That night, Unamuno went to the club in Salamanca, of which he was president. As the members, somewhat intimidated by these events, saw the rector’s venerable figure ascending the stairs, some shouted out: ‘Out with him! He is a red, not a Spaniard! Red, traitor!’ Unamuno continued and sat down, to be told by a certain Tomás Marcos Escribano, ‘You ought not to have come here, Don Miguel, we are sorry for what happened today in the University but all the same you ought not to have come.’ Unamuno left, accompanied by his son, the shouts of ‘traitor’ accompanying him. One minor writer, Mariano de Santiago, alone went with them. Thereafter, the rector rarely went out, and the armed guard that followed him were perhaps necessary to ensure his safety. The senate of the university ‘demanded’ and obtained his dismissal from the rectorship. He died broken-hearted on the last day of 1936.
¹
The tragedy of his
last months was a natural expression of the tragedy of Spain, where culture, eloquence and creativity were giving way to militarism, propaganda, and death. Before long, there was even a concentration camp called ‘Unamuno’ for republican prisoners.
¹

Salamanca was now the centre of power in nationalist Spain. Franco slept, received and dined on the first floor of the episcopal palace and he worked with his staff on the second floor. The diplomatic secretariat headed by José Antonio Sangroniz, and the press and propaganda department, headed first by Juan Pujol, then by Millán Astray
²
, were on the ground floor, while a radio telegraphic service was established on the top floor. The simplicity of this organization rendered it efficient. Apart from Franco himself, the important men were his chief of staff, Colonel Martín Moreno; his brother Nicolás, who acted as political secretary; the legal adviser, Colonel Martínez Fusset; and one or two staff officers, such as Colonel Juan Vigón, a pro-German monarchist, and Major Antonio Barroso, the ex–military attaché in Paris. Influential also were Kindelán, the commander of the air force, and Admiral Juan Cervera, the 66-year-old sailor of experience, who became chief of staff of the navy. All these officers saw Franco daily—or rather, nightly, since Franco held a
tertulia
in his apartments most nights to discuss the war, usually with a general from the front also present: Varela, Yagüe, or some other
Africanista.
³
Also in Salamanca, there were the German and Italian diplomatic representatives, the headquarters of the Falange and some, though not all, of the government offices; the treasury, the new Bank of Spain, the ministries of justice and labour were in Burgos. Salamanca was, however, the nerve centre of the nationalist rebellion: to that city came the reports of the few diplomats which nationalist Spain as yet had officially (only the Marqués de Magaz in Berlin, García Conde in Rome), the private
agents (Juan de la Cierva or the Marqués de Portago in London) and secret intelligence reports (particularly about ship movements and republican arms purchases) from the ex-monarchist ambassador in Paris, Quiñones de León, as well as such information as there was from spies in the ‘red zone’.
¹
The centralization of the nationalist command, and the concentration of power, in the willing hands of Franco became daily more striking, given the divisions in the republican zone. Loyal but unobtrusive generals such as Orgaz and Dávila played at least as great a part as more flamboyant and better-known officers such as Varela, while the role of Admiral Cervera was considerable. Nephew of the unfortunate admiral who lost the Spanish fleet in the Spanish American War, older than any of Franco’s other intimates, he was strong enough in character to insist on the importance of the sea in the conflict, and to ensure the purchase of naval supplies, such as mines (from Germany), or launches (from Italy), as well as money to set up new schools for naval technicians.