The Spanish Civil War (74 page)

The ministry of defence at Valencia had pointed out that international naval patrol could not be exercised inside Spanish territorial waters. Palma harbour was a known centre of nationalist arms shipment. The republicans would, therefore, continue to attack it. On 26 May, the air raid on Palma had been repeated, and bombs fell near the German patrol ship
Albatross,
also lying off duty in Palma. The commander of the German naval patrol protested: repetition of such behaviour would produce ‘counter-measures’.

That evening, the German battleship
Deutschland
lay at anchor off
Ibiza. Two republican aircraft, at first unidentifiable against the dying sun, appeared overhead and dropped two bombs. One fell in the seamen’s mess, killing twenty-three and wounding seventy-five of the ship’s company. The other hit the side deck and caused little damage. The affair was witnessed by the republican fleet, then out on a rare sortie. In consequence, the Germans at first thought that they had been attacked by destroyers.

The republican ministry of defence claimed that the
Deutschland
had fired first at the aeroplanes, whose pilots thereupon retaliated. This was untrue. ‘Reconnaissance aircraft’, which the ministry claimed them to be, do not carry bombs.
¹
The aircraft were, in fact, flown by Russians.
²

Hitler flew into a rage at the death of so many Germans, and the foreign minister, Neurath, passed six hours with him seeking to moderate his anger.
³
The
Deutschland
itself sailed to Gibraltar where it disembarked the wounded. Nine more died, bringing the death-roll to thirty-one.
⁴

At dawn on 31 May, the Germans took their revenge. The pocket battleship
Admiral Scheer
and 4 destroyers appeared off Almería, and fired 200 shots into the town, destroying 35 buildings and causing 19 deaths. Germany also decided to withdraw from the non-intervention discussions, and from the naval patrol, until she had received ‘guarantees against the repetition of such incidents’. Italy would act likewise.
⁵
In Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, recently arrived as British ambassador, begged Neurath ‘not to do the reds the compliment of expanding the Spanish situation into a world war’.
⁶
Even Cordell Hull
summoned the new German ambassador in Washington, Dieckhoff. With his usual caution, the secretary of state told him that the United States desired Germany ‘to make peaceful adjustments’ of its Spanish difficulties.
¹

In Valencia, the republican cabinet met. Prieto suggested that the republic should bomb the German fleet throughout the Mediterranean. This, he admitted, might start a world war but that was worth risking, since it would draw off German aid from Franco. This audacious proposal was characteristic of Prieto. Negrín said cautiously that Azaña would have to be consulted. That gave all the ministers time to consult their consciences—and their friends. Hernández and Uribe went to the central committee of the communist party. The proposal flung the Comintern advisers into a fine flurry. Codovilla went to the Soviet Embassy. Moscow
²
was consulted by wireless; and Moscow answered that Russia had no desire for world war. Prieto’s plan should, therefore, at all costs be defeated. But Azaña also opposed Prieto’s plan. He said, ‘We must ensure that
Deutschland
is not our
Maine
’.
³
A real war against Germany might, after all, have brought the annihilation of the republic before Britain and France could be induced to intervene. The ‘incident’ of Almería, therefore, was allowed to be forgotten.
⁴

There was another occasion when a world war was nearly provoked by the republic. The dismembered body of a republican pilot was dropped onto the airfield at Barajas near Madrid, with scornful comments made in Italian. The incensed republican air force wished to take off to bomb Rome. Hidalgo de Cisneros, the commander, announced that he would accompany his men. But once again the cabinet restrained the impetuous. The advantage to the republic of a general conflict was always equivocal if it were to arise from the Spanish war. It is unlikely that Britain and France would have wanted to assist the republic if they could have helped it. This was a preoccupation of Russia, who knew that, if she sent to Spain enough arms to win the war for her allies, a world war would probably follow, with Britain and France neutral, if not aligned against her.

The incident at Almería marked the beginning of bad relations between Prieto and the communists. Previously, during the destruction of Largo Caballero, friendship had flowered, out of convenience. Prieto had been shortly afterwards approached by Uribe and Hernández, who had suggested daily conferences with them. Prieto replied that the communists could discuss matters with him at the cabinet meetings, not with him alone. Thereafter, though the
Prietistas
remained at one with the communists on some issues—how to treat Largo Caballero, how to restrain the anarchists—their friendship began to slacken, as friendships with communists often do.
¹

Bad weather, meantime, had been holding up Mola’s operations against Bilbao. Inside that city, a new general staff arrived from Valencia (to act beside the Russian Goriev) under General Gámir Ulíbarri, who was to replace Llano de la Encomienda as a ‘promise of efficiency’. Gámir took over as supreme Basque commander, while Llano de la Encomienda would hold on to the command of Asturias and Santander. Gámir, a military theorist, had once been director of the School of Infantry at Toledo and, since the start of the war, republican commander at Teruel. This able officer was indeed able to achieve greater efficiency in the Basque general staff. That was odd, since his chief of staff, Major Lamas Arroyo, would have liked to have fought for the nationalists, despite the fact that he had earlier been chief of staff to the ill-fated Puigdendolas, of Badajoz, and to General Walter; he had fought in most of the main battles of the war but was disloyal in inclination if competent in action. The explanation for the greater efficiency of the Basques under Gámir was really that Aguirre had been prevailed upon to withdraw from his commandership in chief.
²
During May, many more men had been called up. A new shipment of Czech arms, including 55 anti-aircraft guns, 30 cannons, and 2 squadrons of Chato fighters, also arrived at the start of June. Other commanders came up from Madrid—among them, the gifted Italian communist Nino Nanetti, who had distinguished himself with the 12th Division at Guadalajara.

The republican government now undertook two offensives in other parts of Spain to draw the nationalist fire from Bilbao. The first was
against Huesca, on the Aragon front. This was carried out by the reorganized Catalan army, which, since the May riots, had been under more rigid central control. Led by General Pozas, the attack was unsuccessful. The republicans outnumbered their opponents, who were well entrenched in the town, though hard pressed and almost besieged. There were 1,000 republican casualties, mainly anarchists, in the two weeks which the attack lasted. They included the gay General Lukács, who was killed by a shell.
¹
These Italians were observed in their train singing ‘Bandiera Rossa’ on the way to the front by the recently wounded George Orwell. From his hospital train he saw

window after window of dark smiling faces, the long tilted barrels of the guns, the scarlet scarves fluttering—all this glided slowly past us against a turquoise-coloured sea … The men who were well enough to stand moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged arms gave the red salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war—the trainloads of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed sliding slowly down.
²

The other attack at this time was on the Segovia front. On 31 May, General Domingo Moriones (he had been military governor in Gijón in 1934 and began the ruin of the revolution there then), with three republican divisions (under José María Galán, Walter, and Colonel Barceló respectively), broke through the nationalist lines at San Ildefonso. The attack reached La Granja before being halted by Varela, with units transferred from Barrón’s division south of Madrid. The attack occasioned a quarrel between General Walter and Colonel Dumont, his subordinate of the 14th International Brigade, the attacking force, as to who was to blame for the ultimate reverse.
³
Since Dumont
was supported by the French communists, Walter could do no more than protest against Dumont’s vanity and inefficiency. The Russian air force in support of the republic was not only ineffective, but bombed republican positions.
¹
The failure of these two offensives sealed the fate of Bilbao.

There was one further preliminary to the final act of the Basque campaign. The death occurred on 3 June of General Mola. The aeroplane in which he was flying crashed on the hill of Alcocero, near Burgos. Mola used aeroplanes a great deal and there is nothing to prove foul play even though, for many years afterwards, a colonel sat in Valladolid, with two loaded pistols before him on his table, waiting till he found out who had killed his son, Captain Chamorro, the pilot of the aircraft. Faupel described Franco as ‘undoubtedly relieved by the death of Mola’. The Generalissimo’s last words on his brother-in-arms were: ‘Mola was a stubborn fellow! When I gave him orders differing from his own proposals, he often asked, “Don’t you trust my leadership anymore?”’
²
The eclipse of the ‘Director’ of the conspiracy of the preceding year removed one more leader with a political position of his own. Mola had been a man of decision, nervous and outspoken, who, though a republican all his life, had taken to the Carlist cause when posted to Pamplona, and the Carlists to him, so warmly, that his death was a bad blow for them.

General Dávila, head of the administrative
junta
at Burgos, who resembled Mola in his views, succeeded as commander of the Army of the North. He was a bureaucratic general, in height even shorter than Franco, but ‘pure, austere and Spanish’, as Admiral Cervera recalled him. General Gómez Jordana succeeded Dávila at Burgos. A member
of Primo de Rivera’s governments, son of an officer whose name in Morocco was legendary for knowledge of, and interest in, the Moroccans, himself high commissioner of Morocco under the King, he was already old, and, therefore, recommended himself as being beyond personal ambition. Although a monarchist, he regarded himself as a liberal. In truth, he was a man of an age far from that of fascism, communism, and the industrial revolution. Courteous, loyal, indefatigable, and honest, he was later, as foreign secretary, to do much to commend Franco’s régime to foreign ambassadors.

On 11 June, the Army of the North returned to the attack. The preliminary artillery bombardment by 150 pieces, accompanied by aerial bombing by both the Condor Legion and Italian aircraft, was heavy, and the shock broke the Basque defenders of the last high point before the ‘ring of iron’. By nightfall, Colonels García Valiño, Bautista Sánchez, and Bartomeu, with three out of the six Navarrese brigades, had reached this famous line of defences. All night, the bombardment continued. Incendiary bombs dropped in a cemetery and caused a fiery resurrection of the dead.
¹
General Gámir had probably about 40,000 men in all, of whom some were Asturianos or Santanderinos and, therefore, considered unreliable; while about half the other units were socialist or communist in political flavour and therefore unable to share fully in the Basque nationalist adventure breathed by those brigades whose names were ‘
Arana Goiri
’, ‘
Itxar Kundia
’ or ‘
Sukarrieta
’.
²

On 12 June, after the batteries and more aircraft (perhaps seventy bombers in action that day) had pounded away at the ‘ring of iron’ for several hours, Bautista Sánchez’s brigade attacked at the spot where the defence system had hardly been constructed at all. The treachery
of Major Goicoechea had no doubt suggested this point for the assault, at Monte Urcullu. A ground attack followed the artillery bombardment. The defenders could thus hardly tell when firing from tanks succeeded the shelling. Confusion, smoke, movement was suddenly everywhere. Once again, Basque units found that they were in danger of being surrounded, and hastened to retreat. By dusk, Bautista Sánchez had broken the Basque lines on a front half a mile long. He was only six miles from the centre of Bilbao. The nationalists could then shell Bilbao as well as bomb it.
¹
On 13 June, all the Basques beyond the ‘ring of iron’ were withdrawn inside. Their morale had suffered a shattering blow: thereby proving the psychological unwisdom of an elaborate, fixed system of defence. In Bilbao, some prepared to flee to France. A conference was held at the Carlton Hotel, at which Aguirre asked the military commanders if Bilbao could be defended.
²
The chief of artillery, Guerrica Echevarría, thought that it could not. The Russian General Goriev advised resistance. Another Russian adviser, Colonel Golmann, and a Frenchman, Monnier, were also firm. Gámir said nothing. During the night of 13–14 June, the Basque government decided to defend the city. Prieto gave precise orders from the ministry of defence to that effect. Industrial and other establishments useful to the enemy were to be destroyed. But as many as possible of the civilian population were evacuated to the west, towards Santander. This foreshadowed the abandonment of the city.

On 14 June, the Alsatian Colonel Putz, who had previously commanded the 14th International Brigade, took over command of the 1st Basque Division. The Italian Nino Nanetti was given a division also. Nevertheless, the flight of refugees from Bilbao went on all day, and the coast road to Santander was machine-gunned by the Condor Legion. Two vessels full of refugees were captured by the nationalist fleet. The Basque government withdrew to the village of Trucios, in western Vizcaya. They left behind a
junta
of defence for Bilbao composed of Leizaola (the minister of justice), Aznar (socialist), Astigarrabía, and Gámir. The government’s withdrawal was a reasonable act; less so the flight of Navarro, the chief of the navy off Vizcaya, the chief of artillery, Guer
rica Echevarría, and others in the last ships available. On 15 June, thanks to Putz, a line at least was presented to the advancing Carlists and Italians: Belderraín was in the north, Putz in the centre, and, in the south, Nino Nanetti. It was again at a point where the treacherous Major Goicoechea had revealed the fortifications to be incomplete that the next attack was made. Nanetti’s men broke and fled across the river Nervión, without blowing up the bridges behind them. They thus laid open the road to Bilbao. The next day, 16 June, Prieto telegraphed to Gámir to hold Bilbao at all costs, especially the industrial region of the town. But the Fifth Column had begun to fire indiscriminately into the suburb of Las Arenas. An anarchist group silenced this outburst. There was, however, no aerial bombardment: the nationalists had learned a lesson from Guernica; while Leizaola discovered, and quashed, a plan to burn the city.
¹
Throughout the day, the nationalist advance continued. Putz’s division incurred heavy casualties. On 17 June, the field headquarters of these two commanders were in the centre of Bilbao. During that day, 20,000 shells dropped on the city. High points and isolated houses changed hands several times. A few factories were evacuated, some partially evacuated, the rest abandoned. Within Bilbao, men and material were transported along the railway line and the last two roads towards Santander. These routes were now beginning to come within artillery range of the advancing Black Arrows. In the evening, Leizaola chivalrously arranged for the delivery to the enemy of political prisoners in Basque hands to avoid leaving them without guards in the last stages of the resistance. He also prevented the communist and anarchist battalions from blowing up the university and the church of San Nicolás, which they had thought would make good enemy machine-gun nests. The nationalists had now gained all the right bank of the river Nervión from the city to the sea and most of the left bank as far as the railway bridge. At dusk on 18 June, the Basque units were ordered to evacuate their capital. In the morning of 19 June, the last of them did so. At noon, nationalist tanks made a preliminary reconnaissance across the Nervión, to find Bilbao empty. The Fifth Column, the opportunists, and the secret agents emerged, to hang red and yellow monarchist flags
from their balconies. A crowd of two hundred nationalist sympathizers gathered to sing and shout. A Basque tank appeared from nowhere, dispersed the crowd, tore down, with bursts from its guns, three flags from the balconies, and drove along the last road of escape. Between five and six o’clock in the evening, the 5th Navarrese Brigade, under Bautista Sánchez, entered the city and placed the monarchist flag on the town hall.
¹