The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (61 page)

Co-operation was withheld from even the most senior non-communist officers. Colonel Casado, when in command of the Army of Andalucia, was not allowed to know the location of airfields or the availability of aircraft on his front. Commissars given recruitment targets to fulfil by the Party hierarchy went to any lengths to achieve them. Prieto later stated that socialists in communist units who refused to join the Party were frequently shot on false charges such as cowardice or desertion. After the battle of Brunete, 250 men from El Campesino’s division sought protection in the ranks of Mera’s 14th Division because of the treatment they had suffered for not becoming communists. Mera refused to return them when El Campesino arrived in a fury at his headquarters. General Miaja, though officially a communist, backed him against a Party member.

Perhaps the most dramatic deterioration in morale after mid 1937 occurred in the ranks of the International Brigades, who in October had lost 2,000 men through a typhus epidemic.
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There had always been non-communists in their ranks who refused to swallow the Party line, but now even committed communists were questioning their position. At the beginning of 1937 the Irish had nearly mutinied after the Lopera débaˆcle, when they were prevented at the last moment from forming their own company. The American mutiny at the Jarama in the early spring had been successful, though that was seen as an aberration which had been put right. Some Italians from the Garibaldi Battalion deserted to join the liberal and anarchist Giustizia e Libertá column. During the Segovia offensive XIV International Brigade had refused to continue useless frontal attacks on La Granja and foreigners in a penal battalion mutinied when ordered to shoot deserters.

The anger at futile slaughter was accompanied by a growing unease at the existence of ‘re-education’ camps, run by Soviet officers and guarded by Spanish communists armed with the latest automatic rifles. At these camps labour was organized on a Stakhanovite basis, with food distribution linked to achieving or exceeding work norms. The prisoners were mostly those who wanted to return home for various reasons and had been refused. (It was not known until later that several Brigaders in this category were locked up in mental hospitals, a typically Soviet measure.) One of the most sordid camps was at Júcar, some 40 kilometres from Albacete, where disillusioned British, American and Scandinavian volunteers were held. Some British members were saved from execution by the intervention of the Foreign Office, but those from other nationalities were locked up in the prisons of Albacete, Murcia, Valencia and Barcelona.
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The persistent trouble in the International Brigades also stemmed from the fact that volunteers, to whom no length of service had ever been mentioned, assumed that they were free to leave after a certain time. Their passports had been taken away on enlistment and many of them were sent to Moscow by diplomatic bag for use by NKVD agents abroad. Brigade leaders who became so alarmed by the stories of unrest filtering home imposed increasingly stringent measures of discipline. Letters were censored and anyone who criticized the competence of the Party leadership faced prison camps, or even firing squads. Leave was often cancelled and some volunteers who, without authorization, took a few of the days owing to them were shot for desertion when they returned to their unit. The feeling of being trapped by an organization with which they had lost sympathy made a few volunteers even cross the lines to the nationalists. Others tried such unoriginal devices as putting a bullet through their own foot when cleaning a rifle.

Comintern organizers were becoming disturbed, for accounts of conditions had started to stem the flow of volunteers from abroad. Fresh volunteers were shocked by the cynicism of the veterans, who laughed at the idealism of newcomers while remembering their own with bitterness. Some of the new arrivals at Albacete were literally shanghaied. Foreign specialists, or mechanics who had agreed to come for a specific purpose only, found themselves pressganged and threatened with the penalty for desertion if they refused.
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Even sailors on shore leave from foreign merchantmen in republican ports were seized as ‘deserters’ from the brigades and sent to Albacete under guard. On 23 September 1937, Prieto issued a decree incorporating the International Brigades into the Spanish Foreign Legion, which brought them under the Spanish Code of Military Justice. He also established a regulation that International Brigade officers in any one unit should not exceed Spanish officers by more than 50 per cent.
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The greatest jolt to the attitudes of those in the International Brigades was the persecution of the POUM. Communist ranting against the POUM continued unabated. ‘We have in our country’, declared one Party orator late in 1937, ‘a long chain of very recent facts that prove that Trotskyists have long been engaged in these grotesque criminal activities and as the difficulties increase and decisive battles approach, they start, more and more openly, to popularize the enemy’s slogans, to sow the seeds of defeatism, mistrust and split among the masses, and engage more actively than ever in espionage, provocation, sabotage and crime.’
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The Party’s version of events was so obviously dishonest that only those terrified of the truth could believe it. The majority, however, realizing that they had been duped, resented the insult to their intelligence. They had to hold their tongues while in Spain so as to avoid the attentions of the SIM. Then, when they did reach home they usually remained silent, rather than undermine the republican cause as a whole. Those who spoke out, like Orwell, found the doors of left-wing publishers closed to them.

Uncritical supporters of the Republic were forced to justify the Moscow line. Nevertheless, the attempt to export the show-trial mentality to Spain ignored the fact that, however authoritarian Negrín’s government might be, it was not totalitarian. As a result, the sealed maze of distorting mirrors that had replaced reality in the Soviet Union was not duplicated in Spain.

PART SIX

The Route to Disaster

The Battle of Teruel and Franco’s ‘Victorious Sword’

T
owards the end of 1937 the nationalists’ increase in military superiority became apparent. The occupation of the northern zone had indeed proved to be the essential intermediate step if they were to be assured of victory. For the first time in the war they equalled the republicans in manpower under arms (between 650,000 and 700,000 on each side) and the scales were to continue moving further in their favour. The conquest of the Cantabrian coast had not only released troops for redeployment in the centre; it had also yielded vital industrial prizes to the nationalists. The most important were the arms factories in the Basque country, the heavy industry of Bilbao, and the coal and iron ore of the northern regions (though much of the latter was taken in payment by Germany).

The nationalist army was reorganized, with five army corps garrisoning the fronts, and the five most powerful, including all their elite formations, organized into an offensive Army of Manoeuvre.
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Although faced with this formidable war machine, the republican general staff and the Soviet advisers refused to admit that their ponderously conventional offensives were gradually destroying the People’s Army and the Republic’s ability to resist. They would not see that the only hope lay in continuing regular defence combined with unconventional guerrilla attacks in the enemy rear and rapid raids at as many points as possible on weakly held parts of the front. At the very least this would have severely hindered the nationalists’ ability to concentrate their new Army of Manoeuvre in a major offensive.

Most important of all, it would not have presented large formations of republican troops to the nationalists’ superior artillery and air power. A blend of conventional and unconventional warfare would have been the most efficient, and least costly, method of maintaining republican resistance until the European war broke out. Nevertheless, the pattern of set-piece offensives continued until the Republic’s military strength was finally exhausted on the Ebro in the autumn of 1938. Propaganda considerations still determined these prestige operations and the principle of the ‘unified command’ was vigorously maintained by the communists, the government and regular officers, even though it had hardly demonstrated effective leadership.

The inflexibility of republican strategy became even more serious at the end of 1937, when nationalist air support was increased. Spanish pilots took over the older German aircraft, especially the Junkers 52s, the Italian S-79s and S-81s, and four nationalist fighter squadrons were now equipped with Fiats.
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The Italian Legionary air force had nine Fiat squadrons and three bomber squadrons on the Spanish mainland, apart from those based on Majorca. Soviet intelligence was certain that Mussolini’s son, Bruno, who arrived in Spain in October, commanded one of the S-79 bomber squadrons supporting the CTV on the Aragón front.
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The Condor Legion replaced the Junkers 52 with the Heinkel 111 entirely. In addition, it had a reconnaissance squadron of Dornier 17s, two squadrons of Messerschmitt 109s and two with the old Heinkel 51. All told, the nationalists and their allies deployed nearly 400 aircraft.
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The republican air force was inferior in numbers and in quality after its losses in the north and at Brunete. It was reduced to a few squadrons of Chatos and Moscas, and two squadrons of bombers.
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The nationalists’ main fighter, the Fiat, had shown itself to be rugged and highly manoeuvrable, while the Messerschmitt was unbeatable if handled properly. Finally, republican pilots, especially Soviet ones, did not seem prepared to take the same risks in aerial combat as the nationalists. Whole Mosca squadrons sometimes fled from the determined attack of a few Fiats.

The Soviets, who had been withdrawing pilots for service in the Chinese–Japanese conflict, were handing over more and more machines to Spanish pilots who arrived back from training in Russia. Two of the Mosca squadrons were now entirely Spanish, while the four Chato squadrons had Spanish pilots. These biplanes were being manufactured at Sabadell-Reus, near Barcelona, but the replacement of Moscas was limited by the increasingly effective blockade in the Mediterranean. (The nationalists’ cruiser
Baleares
had sunk a whole convoy from Russia on 7 September.) The republicans did, however, receive a consignment of 31 Katiuska bombers, bringing their bomber force up to four squadrons of Natashas and four of Katiuskas.

The Republic’s only aerial success had come during an intense series of strikes each side made against its opponent’s airfields. On 15 October during a further unsuccessful attack on Saragossa, republican fighters and bombers attacked the nationalist airfield near Saragossa, wiping out almost all the aircraft at dispersal. As a defensive measure against counterstrikes the republican air force made great use of dummy aircraft and switched their machines from one airfield to another.

Having crushed the northern zone, Franco felt justified at mounting another offensive on Madrid at the end of 1937. His new strength more than compensated for the Republic’s advantage of having interior lines in this region. The nationalist Army of Manoeuvre was deployed behind the Aragón front for an assault south-westwards down the Saragossa–Madrid road, which the Italians had used as their centre line on Guadalajara in March. Varela’s Army Corps of Castille was on the left, the Italian CTV in the centre, the Army Corps of Morocco on the right, the Condor Legion and the Legionary Air Force in support, and the two Army Corps of Galicia and Navarre in reserve. But the nationalist alliance was undergoing a crisis, as Richthofen observed on 3 December, because of ‘incredible tensions between Spaniards and Italians’.
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The threatened sector of the Guadalajara front was held by the Republic’s IV Corps, now commanded by Cipriano Mera. As had happened before the battle of Brihuega, Mera was helped by fellow anarchists who crossed the lines into enemy territory gathering intelligence. This time the information was far more valuable. Nationalist sources later said that Mera himself had crossed, disguised as a shepherd, and had read the operational plans in their headquarters. In fact, as Mera himself recounts, the spying mission was suggested and carried out by a young anarchist called Dolda who did not go near their headquarters. Reports from CNT members in nationalist Aragón, whom he visited secretly, warned of major troop concentrations from Saragossa to Calatayud. Dolda’s return via Medinaceli confirmed his hunch that the nationalists were preparing for the biggest offensive yet and that it was to be directed at the Guadalajara sector. Dolda returned back through the lines by 30 November. He briefed Mera, who in turn informed Miaja.

Rojo then shelved his plans for an Estremadura offensive towards the Portuguese frontier to split the nationalist zone in two. Instead, an attack to disrupt the nationalist Guadalajara operation was examined. The town of Teruel was chosen for a pre-emptive strike because it formed the corner where the Aragón front turned back north-westwards to run through the province of Guadalajara. One of the great dangers of this project was the proximity of Franco’s Army of Manoeuvre, which could be redeployed quite rapidly. Rojo, however, described the operation as an ‘offensive-defensive’ battle, aiming for a ‘limited destruction of the adversary’ and to obtain a ‘definite advantage for further exploitation’.
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Rojo gave orders to transfer the Republic’s strike force to the Teruel front: XVIII Corps commanded by Enrique Fernández Heredia, Leopoldo Menéndez’s XX Corps and the XXII Corps under the command of Juan Ibarrola. In addition, XIII Corps and XIX Corps were brought in. Colonel Juan Hernández Saravia, the commander of the Army of Levante, was to direct the operation. In all, Rojo deployed 40,000 men.
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The tank force, in the inefficient Soviet manner, was split up among the attacking divisions and not concentrated.