The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (45 page)

By the spring of 1937 the Basque nationalists and their left-wing allies had raised some 46 battalions, of which about half were Basque militia, the Euzko-Gudaroztea. The rest were UGT, CNT, communist or republican units. (Many Basques were shocked by the idea of women fighting in some of the left-wing ranks.) These formations were reinforced by ten battalions from Asturias and Santander who did not get on well with the local population. The general staff under Llano de la Encomienda consisted of professional officers, none of whom seem to have been either energetic or efficient. The greatest liability, however, was the shortage of weapons.

At the beginning of the war Telesforo Monzón’s trip to Barcelona had produced only limited supplies. Other means had to be used. The gold reserves in the Bank of Spain were seized. Weapons were purchased abroad, or even stolen, and smuggled back by fishing vessels through the nationalist blockade or brought in aboard English ships. In the late autumn, even though the republican battleship
Jaime I
had left the area, some larger ships still managed to get through. One of these was the Russian
A. Andreev
, which brought the Basques two squadrons of Chatos, 30 tanks (T-26 and Renaults) and fourteen Russian armoured cars with 37mm cannon, 40 mortars, 300 machine-guns and 15,000 rifles.
³
Food was also a major worry, with seldom more than two weeks’ supply. The monotonous and sparse diet of chickpeas from Mexico was all that separated the Basques from starvation. There were few cats left alive in the Basque country and ingenious methods of catching seagulls were tried.

The nationalist naval force off the Cantabrian coast consisted of the battleship
España
, the cruiser
Almirante Cervera
and the destroyer
Velasco
. The Basques had only an ancient destroyer and two scarcely serviceable submarines. They therefore improvised by mounting 101mm guns from the battleship
Jaime I
on four deep-sea fishing vessels.

The problem for the republican forces, wrote a Soviet adviser, was the naval leadership, especially Captain Enrique Navarro. ‘According to the local people and sailors, Navarro was not paying serious attention to the operations of the flotilla. He has avoided visiting the ships, as he is afraid of the sailors. He wears civilian clothes while in town and at his headquarters on the shore. During our first meeting, Navarro complained about the lack of discipline among the sailors, about the threats from committees of ships, and said that a plot existed to attempt to assassinate him…There was not a single socialist, to say nothing of communists, among the personnel of the headquarters.’ Warships of the flotilla were staying passively in Bilbao, following, apparently, a silent agreement between officers at the headquarters and on the ships. Repairs lasted for indefinite periods of time under different pretexts. The republican flotilla was given the scornful nickname of the ‘Non-Interference Committee’.
⁴

On 5 March the nationalist cruiser
Canarias
was spotted off the mouth of the River Nervión with a small vessel, the
Yorkbrook
, which she had captured. Basque 105mm and 155mm shore batteries opened fire immediately to drive her off; they knew that armed trawlers, escorting a boat from Bayonne, were due. When they appeared out of the mist, the
Canarias
left her prize to engage them. One of the trawlers, the
Bizkaya
, nipped round the
Canarias
and made off with her prize, while the other two replied to her 8-inch guns with their much smaller armament. One of them, the
Guipuzkoa
, caught fire and had to make for the shelter of the shore batteries, but the crew of the other one, the
Nabarra
, continued the attack and fought on into the night until all ammunition was used and the trawler sunk.
⁵
This incident, reminiscent of Tennyson’s ‘The Revenge’, was commemorated in an epic poem by Cecil Day-Lewis.

In mid March the nationalist commanding general, Emilio Mola, issued his preliminary orders for the campaign. His chief of staff, Colonel Vigón, was the most capable planner in the nationalist army and about the only senior Spanish staff officer to be respected by his German colleagues, who described him as ‘one of the most oustanding phenomena in the new Spanish nationalist army’.
⁶
However, even Vigón could do little to overcome Mola’s excessive caution. Richthofen claimed that ‘the leadership is practically in the hands of the Condor Legion’.
⁷

The nationalist force was based on the Navarre Division of four Carlist brigades. In addition, there was the
Black Arrows
Division, with 8,000 Spanish infantry commanded by Italian officers and supported by Fiat Ansaldos. In this mountainous region, however, the Condor Legion was to prove the nationalists’ biggest advantage. The thin coastal strip allowed the defenders little warning of raids, while the terrain greatly restricted their choice of airfields from which defending fighters could be scrambled. The Basques had only a minute fighter force, so the Condor Legion was able to risk using obsolete Heinkel 51s as ground-attack aircraft while waiting for more of the new Messerschmitts to arrive.

The Condor Legion fighter wing was concentrated at Vitoria, the bomber squadrons at Burgos, because the airfield at Vitoria was too narrow. General Sperrle stayed with Franco’s GHQ at Salamanca, leaving Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen as the operational commander of the strike forces. On the northern front these consisted of three squadrons of Junkers 52 bombers, an ‘experimental squadron’ of Heinkel 111 medium bombers, three squadrons of Heinkel 51 fighters and half a squadron of Messerschmitt 109s, although they were suffering from engine problems.
⁸
The Italian Legionary Air Force also flew missions in support of troop attacks, with Savoia Marchetti 81s and 79s as well as their Fiat CR 32 fighters.

After issuing his ultimatum that ‘if submission is not immediate I will raze Vizcaya to the ground’, Mola ordered an advance from the southeast. The offensive opened on 31 March with an assault on the three mountains–Albertia, Maroto and Jarinto–which had been taken by the Basques in the Villarreal offensive the previous year. The nationalists showed on this first day that they meant to make use of their crushing superiority in the air. The towns of Elorrio and Durango, behind the front line, were bombed in relays by the heavy Junkers 52s and Italian S-81s from Soria.

Durango, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, had no air defences nor any form of military presence. A church was bombed during the celebration of mass, killing fourteen nuns, the officiating priest and most of the congregation. Heinkel 51 fighters then strafed fleeing civilians. Altogether, some 250 non-combatants died in the attack. The objective of the raid appears to have been to block the roads through the town with rubble, though that does not explain the activities of the fighters.
⁹
General Queipo de Llano stated on Seville radio that ‘our planes bombed military objectives in Durango, and later communists and socialists locked up the priests and nuns, shooting without pity and burning the churches’. On 2 April, the nationalists claimed on Radio Valladolid that ‘in Durango only military objectives were attacked. It has been confirmed, on the other hand, that it was the reds who destroyed the church. The church of Santa María was set on fire while it was full of church-goers.’
¹⁰

The main objectives that day included the three mountains and bombing raids were combined with an artillery barrage just before the Navarrese troops of Alonso Vega went into the attack. Condor Legion bombers went in at 8 a.m.: ‘60 tons of bombs dropped within two minutes,’

Richthofen recorded. Richthofen, in his command post, had ‘a very good view’. The Navarrese troops, in order to be recognized clearly by the German aircraft ‘have white tunics on their back. The national flag is carried ahead.’
¹¹
The Basque militiamen, known as
gudaris
, hardly knew what had hit them before they were overrun by red-bereted Carlists screaming their war cry of ‘
Viva Cristo Rey!
’. Reserves could not be brought up because of air strikes on all communications leading to the front. The artillery barrage had also cut field telephone wires from the forward positions.

The Basque counter-attack on Mount Gorbea was successful and they were to hold it for another eight weeks, thus securing their extreme right flank. But two other mountains were lost the next day, while the air attacks on and around the town of Ochandiano smashed a hole in the front. The
gudaris
were demoralized by this overwhelming air power. They could fight back against the fierceness of a Carlist infantry attack, but they lacked both anti-aircraft guns and fighter cover. Twenty battalions lacked proper automatic weapons and some units’ machine-gun companies had only a handful of machine pistols. On 4 April Richthofen noted: ‘The fighters are strafing the reds up and down the mountain. 200 dead 400 taken prisoner.’ The Basque forces were pushed back, but they dug in and fought on. ‘We are always surprised by the toughness of the red infantry. The reds are bleeding heavily.’
¹²

Later that day, to Richthofen’s exasperation, Mola gave orders for a pause in the offensive. ‘War here is a tedious business,’ Richthofen wrote on 5 April. ‘First Spaniards are brought to an operation. Then operational orders have to be worked through. Then reconnaissance, then visiting headquarters. Look at the operational orders and suggest changes, perhaps with the threat “without us”. Checking if orders have gone out and were followed.’ The next morning his bombers attacked as agreed, ‘but the infantry does not intervene, then asks for more support’. Mola ordered another attack for the next day. ‘We are dropping bombs for no reason at all,’ wrote Richthofen. ‘Protest telegram to Franco.’
¹³

On 6 April the nationalists announced a blockade of republican ports on the Cantabrian coast. The same day the nationalist cruiser
Almirante Cervera
, with the moral support of the pocket battleship
Admiral Graf Spee
in the background, stopped a British merchantman. However, HMS
Blanche
and HMS
Brazen
of the British destroyer flotilla assigned to the Bay of Biscay raced up and the cargo ship was allowed into Bilbao.

Baldwin’s government was alarmed that Anglo-Basque trade might force Great Britain to take sides in Spain. It did not wish to recognize either the nationalists or the republicans as belligerents, because that meant allowing them to stop and search British ships en route to Spanish ports. Nevertheless, in the light of subsequent events it is difficult to credit the cabinet or its advisers with impartiality. Admiral Lord Chatfield, the First Sea Lord, was an admirer of General Franco and his officers in the Bay of Biscay had an undoubted sympathy for their nationalist counterparts. Sir Henry Chilton, the ambassador at Hendaye, who still had the ear of the Foreign Office though he was not on the scene, acted as a mouthpiece for the nationalists. Chatfield and Chilton informed the British government that the blockade of Bilbao was effective because the nationalists had mined the mouth of the River Nervión and would shell British ships if they did not stop. Although no unit of the Royal Navy had been near the area in question for months, the Basques’ assurances that all mines had been cleared were ignored. The Royal Navy flotilla was ordered by London to instruct all British vessels in the Biscay area en route to Bilbao to wait in the French port of Saint Jean de Luz until further notice. As if to mitigate any damage to British prestige caused by this implicit support of the nationalists, the battle-cruiser HMS
Hood
was ordered to Basque waters from Gibraltar.

The Royal Navy’s view of the blockade’s effectiveness led to furious scenes in the House of Commons. There were only four nationalist ships watching 200 miles of coast and the Basque shore batteries controlled an area beyond the three-mile limit. The government was taken aback at the onslaught it received but Sir Samuel Hoare, the First Lord of the Admiralty, would not admit the truth about the mines in the Nervión, for his source of information was the nationalist navy.

On 20 April the
Seven Seas Spray
, a small British merchantman which had decided to ignore all Royal Navy instructions and warnings, arrived off Bilbao from Saint Jean de Luz. There were neither nationalist warships nor mines; only an ecstatic welcome from the population of Bilbao awaited them. The British government and the Admiralty were totally discredited. Other vessels waiting near the French Basque coast immediately set out for Spain. One of them was stopped ten miles from Bilbao by the cruiser
Almirante Cervera
. The merchantman radioed for help and this time the Royal Navy, in the form of HMS
Hood
, had to take a firm line with the nationalists. In the Basques’ view it was poetic justice that the battleship
España
struck a nationalist mine off Santander nine days later and sank.

The Basques could not now be starved into surrender, but the fighting which had begun again on 20 April was going badly for them. The combination of nationalist air power, the fighting qualities of the Carlist troops and republican units pulling out of line without warning brought the front close to collapse. Yet Richthofen’s frustrations did not decrease.

On 20 April he was furious with the Italian air force. ‘There you are. They dropped their bombs on our own troops. A day full of mishaps. Führer’s birthday. Sander [Sperrle] has been promoted to lieutenant-general.’
¹⁴
Whatever the imperfections on the nationalist side, chaos among the republican forces was increased by the slowness and incompetence of the general staff. Its chief, Colonel Montaud, was notorious for his defeatism and the regular officers were widely criticized for ‘their civil service mentality’.
¹⁵
The situation was so bad that Aguirre tried to intervene. Luckily for the Basques, Mola’s cautious advance failed to take full advantage of the republican disarray.