The Spanish Civil War (68 page)

Throughout the following week, there was uproar in Westminster. All that spring, Spain had been an incessant topic for question-time and for debates on foreign affairs. Eden and his lieutenant, Cranborne, had been hard pressed both by labour and liberal sympathizers of the republic and by the handful of conservatives who supported the nationalists. Had the government heard of the arrival of new Italian divisions at Cádiz? How many Russians were there at Madrid? How many British volunteers had been killed? To these questions, the government had professed ignorance of exact information. They had also been carrying on secret negotiations with the nationalists so as to ensure for themselves the produce of British-owned mines in the rebel zone.
³
Now the British interest in Spain reached a climax. Eden defended non-intervention, in a speech at Liverpool:

A broad gain remains. The policy of non-intervention has limited and bit by bit reduced the flow of foreign intervention in arms and men into Spain. Even more important, the existence of that policy, the knowledge that many governments, despite all discouragement, were working for it, has greatly reduced the risks of a general war.
⁴

Privately, Eden ‘definitely wanted the republic to win’.
⁵
On 14 April,
Attlee moved a vote of censure. The British government, the greatest maritime power in the world, had given up trying to protect British shipping; yet the Basques had said that the mines in Bilbao harbour had been cleared, and that at night Basque armed trawlers (aided by searchlights) protected the port. Where did the government gain its information of the dangers? Did it do so from ‘those curious people, our consular agents, who seem so silent on the question of Italian troops landing’? Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, next argued that if British ships were to be allowed to go to Bilbao, there would have to be mine-sweeping. That would constitute ‘a full dress operation of war’. Sir Archibald Sinclair, the liberal leader, argued that the government’s acceptance of the nationalist blockade spelled intervention. The Germans, after all, he said, recalling incidents of the winter, had always looked after
their
ships. Churchill spoke next, and, reiterating his Olympian detachment from either side in the war, indulged in a daydream of mediation through ‘some meeting in what Lord Rosebery once called a “wayside inn”, which would give the chance in Spain of peace, of law, of bread and of oblivion’. Then indeed these ‘clenched fists might relax into the open hands of generous cooperation’. Harold Nicolson, for the National Labour party, described the refusal to risk British ships in Basque waters as a ‘bitter pill. It is not pleasant. It is a potion which is almost nauseating’, but it had to be accepted. The Labourite Philip Noel-Baker suggested that it was the first time since 1588 that the British seemed to have been afraid of a Spanish fleet. Eden ended the debate by saying that, if British merchant ships were to leave St Jean de Luz, and so disobey the Board of Trade, they would be given naval protection as far as the three-mile limit. ‘Our hope is that they will not go, because, in view of reports of conditions, we do not think it safe for them to go.’
¹

The masters of the merchantmen at St Jean de Luz were growing impatient. Their cargoes (for which they had been paid handsomely)
²
were rotting. Three vessels, all commanded by Welsh captains named
Jones (therefore differentiated from their cargoes as ‘Potato Jones’, ‘Corn Cob Jones’, and ‘Ham and Eggs Jones’), gained notoriety by pretended attempts to set out from port. ‘Potato Jones’, whose cargo concealed weapons and whose motives were material, gained a sudden, if unmerited, reputation, from a series of breezy answers to a reporter of the
Evening News,
as a rough salt in the Conradian tradition. But it was not he (he eventually delivered his goods in Valencia) who broke the Bilbao blockade. First, the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson, a restless apologist for Russia, and now the republic, sailed from Bermeo, near Bilbao, to St Jean de Luz on a French torpedo boat without mishap; and told the
Manchester Guardian
so. Then the
Seven Seas Spray,
a merchant vessel with a cargo of provisions from Valencia, sailed out of St Jean de Luz, at ten o’clock at night on 19 April, ignoring messages from the shore. Her master, Captain Roberts, turned a blind eye to the warnings of a British destroyer ten miles off the Basque coast. The captain of the destroyer told Roberts that he must proceed at his own risk, then wished him luck. In the morning, the
Seven Seas Spray
reached Bilbao, without having seen either mines or nationalist warships. As this vessel moved slowly up the river to dock, the captain and his daughter standing on the bridge, hungry people from Bilbao massed on the quay, and cried, ‘Long live the British sailors! Long live Liberty!’

The British Admiralty now admitted its former error. For the truth about Bilbao was as Attlee had described it in the debate: the blockade was ineffective.

Other ships moored at St Jean de Luz, therefore, set out for the Basque country. One of these, the
MacGregor,
while ten miles out, was ordered to stop by the nationalist cruiser
Almirante Cervera.
The
MacGregor
sent an SOS to HMS
Hood.
Her commander, Vice-Admiral Blake (who had disbelieved in the story of mines), requested the
Almirante Cervera
not to interfere with British ships outside territorial waters. The
Almirante Cervera
replied that Spanish territorial waters extended six miles. Admiral Blake said that Britain did not recognize this claim, and told the
MacGregor
to proceed, if she wished. The
MacGregor
did so. A few yards short of the three-mile limit, the armed trawler
Galerna
fired a shot across the
MacGregor
’s bows. HMS
Firedrake
ordered the
Galerna
not to attack a British ship. From the coast, the Basque shore-battery loosed a salvo, and the
Galerna
withdrew. No
further attempt was made to prevent British shipping from arriving at Bilbao, although the blockade continued.

What was the explanation of this curious incident in the history of shipping? Eden was no doubt telling the truth when he told the House of Commons, in passing, on 20 April, that ‘if I had to choose in Spain, I believe that the Basque government would more closely conform to our own system than that of Franco or the republic’. (In his memoirs, Eden later wrote that ‘from the early months of 1937, if I had to choose, I would have preferred a government victory’.)
¹
But the Admiralty and Sir Samuel Hoare, who desired to avoid all trouble with Franco, gave incorrect information to the cabinet. Some at least of the Admiralty’s information derived less from a careful examination of the facts than from the nationalist warships themselves. The
Daily Telegraph
of 20 April published an interview with a nationalist, Captain Caveda, who remarked how pleasant it had been to work with the British fleet ‘on questions arising from the blockade of Bilbao’. Sir Samuel Hoare seems to have been pleased to accept the false information and to act precipitately upon it.

On 20 April, a new nationalist advance began in Vizcaya. When the artillery and aerial bombardment had ceased, and the Basques came up from the shallow trenches in which they had sheltered, they heard the Navarrese machine-guns from the rear. Once more, as at Ochandiano, the cry was ‘we are cut off’. Many defenders retreated while they still could. Before the village of Elgeta, however, among the lion-shaped hills of Inchorta, good deep trenches had been dug. Led by the militia Major Pablo Belderraín, the Basques here held off the attack. But two CNT battalions withdrew. This defection completed the collapse. The Basque commanders now longed to retreat to the prepared trenches of the ‘ring of iron’. Constant bombing blocked roads and prevented movement. The general staff in Bilbao displayed a laxness that brought accusations of treachery. On 24 April, all the heights on that section of the front chosen for the offensive fell to the colonel in command of the 1st Navarrese Brigade, Rafael García Valiño. Belderraín had to fall back from Elgeta. An atmosphere of panic persisted. Artillery did not know where to fire. Trenches were evacuated. General defeat for the Basques
thus seemed imminent six days after the renewal of Mola’s offensive. A new crisis now, however, followed: Guernica.

Guernica was a small town of the Basque province of Vizcaya, lying in a valley six miles from the sea and twenty from Bilbao. With a population of 7,000, it seemed at first sight to fit undramatically into a hilly countryside of friendly villages and isolated farmhouses. It had been badly damaged by the French in the Peninsular War. It had nevertheless been celebrated, since before records began, as the home of Basque liberties. For the ‘parliament of Basque senators’ used to be held before Guernica’s famous oak tree while, in the church of Santa María, the Spanish monarchs, or their representatives, used to swear to observe Basque local rights. (The oak was also a sanctuary for Basque debtors in the old days.) On 26 April 1937, Guernica lay ten miles from the front, and was crowded with refugees and retreating soldiers.

At half-past four in the afternoon, a single peal of church bells announced an air raid. There had been some raids in the area before, but Guernica had not been bombed. There were no air defences of any kind. At twenty minutes to five, a single Heinkel 111 (a new fast German bomber, with a metal frame, capable of carrying 3,000 pounds of bombs), flown by Major von Moreau, bombed the town, disappeared and returned with three other similar aircraft.
¹
These Heinkels were followed by three squadrons of the older spectres of the Spanish war, Junkers 52s—twenty-three aircraft—some new Messerschmitt BF-109 fighters
²
and some older fighters, Heinkel 51s. The fighters were to escort the bombers but also to machine-gun at a low level all whom they saw. Incendiary, high-explosive and shrapnel bombs together weighing 100,000 pounds were dropped by several waves of aircraft. Forty-three aircraft altogether took part, the Junkers being led by Lieutenants von Knauer, von Beust and von Krafft.

The centre of the town was left destroyed and burning. The Basque parliament house (
casa de juntas
) and the remains of the famous oak, lying away from the centre, nevertheless remained untouched.
³
So was
the arms factory outside the town. Many people, perhaps as many as a thousand, were killed, though subsequent events make it impossible to be quite certain how many.
¹
Many others were maimed or injured in other ways. It is possible that some Italian aircraft joined in the last stages of the bombing.

This story was attested by all witnesses, including the mayor of the town, and the British Consul, as well as by foreign correspondents—principally English—who were in the Basque country at the time.
²
But Luis Bolín, still the chief of the foreign press at Salamanca, said on 27 April that the Basques had blown up their own town.

On 28 April, Durango and, on 29 April, meantime, Guernica, fell to the nationalists, without much resistance. General Solchaga executed the captured Basque commander, Colonel Llarch, with three of his staff, after a summary court-martial. Foreign journalists with the nationalists were told, and shown, that, while ‘a few bomb fragments’ had been found in Guernica, the damage had been mainly caused by Basque incendiarists, in order to inspire indignation.
³
On 4 May, a new nationalist report said that Guernica naturally showed signs of fire after ‘a week’s bombardment by artillery and aircraft’. It agreed that Guernica had also been intermittently bombed over a period of three hours. Ten days later, the word ‘Garnika’ was found in the diary for 26
April of a German pilot shot down by the Basques. The pilot explained, unconvincingly, that that referred to a girl whom he knew in Hamburg. Some months later, another nationalist report admitted that the town had been bombed, but alleged that the aeroplanes were republican. The bombs, it was said, had been manufactured in Basque territory and the explosions caused by dynamite in the sewers. But in August a nationalist officer admitted to a reporter from
The Sunday Times
that Guernica had been bombed by his side:
¹
‘Certainly we bombed it and bombed it and
bueno
why not?’ Years later, the German air ace Adolf Galland, who shortly afterwards joined the Condor Legion, admitted that the Germans were responsible.
²
He argued, however, that the attack was an error, caused by bad bombsights and lack of experience. The Germans, said Galland, were trying for the bridge over the river, missed it completely, and by mistake destroyed the town. That idea is supported by other Germans including some who took part in the raid.
³
The wind, they said, caused the bombs to drift westwards.

In fact, Guernica was a military target, being a communications centre close to the battle line, almost within sight indeed of the nationalist columns some miles to the south. Retreating republican soldiers could only escape westwards with any ease through Guernica, since the bridge just outside across the river Oca was the last one before the sea. But if the aim of the Condor Legion was primarily to destroy the bridge, why did von Richthofen not use his accurate Stuka dive bombers, of which he had a small number at Burgos? Why too was such a specially devastating expedition mounted? At least part of the aim in his mind (if not in his diary) must have been to cause panic among civilians as well as among soldiers. The use of incendiary bombs proves that some destruction of buildings or people other than the bridge must have been intended, even though von Richthofen may not have known that the fires would spread so fast through Guernica’s narrow streets and even though dust and smoke from the explosions caused by the Heinkels may have prevented the pilots of the Junkers from seeing the bridge clearly. The machine-gunning of people running out of the town could hardly be part of the business of destroying the bridge.