The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston
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Republicans, there were no spectacular advances, only retreats and two frustrating operations – the siege of the rebel garrison of Toledo in the fortress of the Alcázar and the futile attempt of anarchist militia columns from Barcelona to recapture Zaragoza, which had fallen quickly to the rebels.
The Spanish Republic was fighting not only Franco and his armies but increasingly also the military and economic might of Hitler and Mussolini. Snubbed by France and Britain, the Republican premier, Giral, turned to Moscow. The initial reaction of the Soviet Union was one of deep embarrassment. The Kremlin did not want the events in Spain to undermine its delicately laid plans for an alliance with France. However, by mid-August, the flow of help to the rebels from Hitler and Mussolini threatened an even greater disaster if the Spanish Republic fell. That would severely alter the European balance of power, leaving France with three hostile fascist states on its borders. Stalin’s reluctant decision to aid Spain was thus based on raison d’état. Distance and organizational chaos meant that it was mid-September before the transportation of any equipment to Spain. The first shipment of ancient rifles and machine guns arrived on 4 October. Only at the end of September, after the Republic had agreed to send its gold reserves to Russia, was the decision taken to send modern aircraft and tanks – which had to be paid for at inflated prices.
In the meantime, the all-Republican cabinet of Professor Giral had given way to a more representative government of Republicans, Socialists and Communists under the premiership of the veteran trade unionist Francisco Largo Caballero. Although popular among workers, Largo Caballero lacked the energy, determination and vision to direct a successful war effort. He failed to see that an effective war effort required a centralized state apparatus.21 While the Republic floundered in search of foreign assistance and its disorganized militias fell back on the capital, the rebels tightened up their command structure. On 21 September at an airfield near Salamanca, the leading rebel generals met to choose a commander-in-chief both for obvious military reasons and to facilitate relations with Hitler and Mussolini. Already enjoying good communication with the Führer and the Duce, Franco was their choice. On the same day, Franco decided to divert his columns, now at the gates of Madrid, to the south-east to Toledo. He thus lost an unrepeatable chance to sweep on to the capital before its defences were ready. However, by relieving the Alcázar, he clinched his own power with an emotional victory and a great media coup. He was also able to slow down the pace of the war in order to carry out a thorough political purge of captured territory. On 28 September, he was confirmed as head of the rebel state. Thereafter, he ruled over a tightly centralized zone. In contrast, the Republic was already severely hampered by intense divisions between the Communists, the middle-class Republicans and moderate Socialists on the one hand, who were rebuilding the state apparatus to make a priority of the war effort, and the anarchists, Trotskyists and left Socialists on the other, who wanted to put the emphasis on social revolution.
On 7 October the Army of Africa resumed its march on a Madrid inundated with refugees and beset by major supply problems. In an effort to rally the population, on 4 November, Largo Caballero added two anarcho-syndicalist ministers to his cabinet in the hope of widening popular support for the beleaguered Republic. Franco’s delay permitted the morale of the defenders of Madrid to be boosted by the arrival in early November of aircraft and tanks from the Soviet Union together with the columns of volunteers known as the International Brigades. The siege of Madrid saw heroic efforts by the entire population. On 6 November, expecting the capital to fall quickly, the government fled to Valencia. The city was left in the hands of General José Miaja. Backed by the Communist-dominated Junta de Defensa, the unkempt Miaja rallied the population while his brilliant chief of staff, Colonel Vicente Rojo, organized the city’s forces. The first units of the International Brigades reached Madrid on 8 November, and consisted of German and Italian anti-fascists, plus some British, French and Polish left-wingers. Sprinkled among the Spanish defenders at the rate of one to four, the brigadiers both boosted their morale and trained them in the use of machine guns, in the conservation of ammunition and in the methods of using cover. They successfully resisted Franco’s African columns and, by late November, he had to acknowledge his failure. The besieged capital would hold out for another two and a half years until the fateful sequence of events triggered by Colonel Casado.
The arrival of Russian equipment and international volunteers in the autumn helped save Madrid. However, their presence was also to be used by Franco’s sympathizers to justify the intervention of Hitler and Mussolini and inhibit the Western powers. The motivation of both Germany and Italy was principally to undermine the Anglo-French hegemony in international relations, yet both dictators received a sympathetic ear in London when they claimed to be in Spain to combat bolshevism. Besieged, the Republic also had complex internal problems unknown in Franco’s brutally militarized zone. The collapse of the bourgeois state in the first days of the war had seen the rapid emergence of revolutionary organs of parallel power – the committees and militias linked to the left-wing unions and parties. A massive popular collectivization of agriculture and industry took place. Exhilarating to participants and foreign observers like George Orwell, the great collectivist experiments of the autumn of 1936 were an obstacle to the creation of a war machine. Opposing beliefs about whether to give priority to war or revolution would lie at the heart of the internal conflict that raged within the Republican zone until mid-1937. The Republican President, Manuel Azaña, and moderate Socialist leaders like the Minister of the Navy and Air Force, Indalecio Prieto, and the Minister of Finance, Juan Negrín, were convinced that a conventional state apparatus, with central control of the economy and the institutional instruments of mass mobilization, was essential for an efficacious war effort. The Communists and the Soviet advisers agreed – it made sense and they hoped that halting the revolutionary activities of Trotskyists and anarchists would reassure the bourgeois democracies being courted by the Soviet Union.
Preoccupied by internal dissensions, and still without a conventional army, the Republic was unable to capitalize on its victory at Madrid. Franco’s immediate response was a series of attempts to encircle the capital. At the battles of Boadilla (December 1936), Jarama (February 1937) and Guadalajara (March 1937), his forces were beaten back, but at enormous cost to the Republic. Concentration on the defence of Madrid meant the neglect of other fronts. Málaga in the south fell to newly arrived Italian troops at the beginning of February. The war in central Spain saw no easy victories. At Jarama, the rebel front advanced a few kilometres, but made no strategic gain. The Republicans lost 25,000 men, including some of the best British and American members of the Brigades, and the rebels about 20,000. In March, the rebels made further efforts to encircle Madrid by attacking near Guadalajara, 60 kilometres north-east of Madrid. An army of 50,000, the best-equipped and most heavily armed force yet seen in the war, broke through, but was defeated by a Republican counter-attack. Thereafter, as the Republic organized its People’s Army (Ejército Popular de la República), the conflict turned into a more conventional war of large-scale manoeuvre.
Even after being defeated at the battle of Guadalajara, in which a large contingent of Italian troops was involved, the rebels still held the initiative because each reverse for Franco saw the Axis dictators increase their support. This was demonstrated during the rebel campaign in northern Spain in the spring and summer of 1937. In March, Mola led 40,000 troops in an assault on the Basque Country backed by the terror-bombing expertise of the German Condor Legion. In a rehearsal for the Blitzkrieg eventually unleashed on Poland and France, Guernica was annihilated on 26 April 1937 to shatter Basque morale and undermine the defence of the capital, Bilbao, which fell on 19 June. Thereafter, the rebel army, amply supplied with Italian troops and equipment, was able to capture Santander on 26 August. Asturias was quickly overrun during September and October. Northern industry was now at the service of the rebels. This gave them a decisive advantage to add to their numerical superiority in terms of men, tanks and aeroplanes.
The defeats suffered by the Republic during early 1937 would lead eventually on 17 May to the establishment under the premiership of Juan Negrín of a strong government from which the anarcho-syndicalists were dropped. Already, as Minister of Finance and with the help of his under-secretary Francisco Méndez Aspe, Negrín had systematized the Republic’s exports of raw materials and its imports of weaponry and food. He had reorganized the Corps of Carabineros (border guards) to put a stop to smuggling and illegal exports. His contribution to the war effort cannot