The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (35 page)

Rodimtsev visited the front and encountered a young woman machine gunner and anarchist
dinamiteros
festooned with grenades. One of them fired a pistol in the air, demanding to see his documents. Rodimtsev was attached to Líster’s brigade and he found its headquarters in an abandoned village. Some of the staff were having a siesta. Others were out in a meadow singing a melancholy song. Their commander came over. ‘Líster was stocky and swarthy,’ wrote Rodimtsev. ‘He had a high protruding forehead, black hair which was long and its ends bleached by the sun. When he smiled, dimples appeared in his cheeks, which made his face look kindly and almost childlike. He said in Russian with a slight accent, “Hello, Pablito. I’ve been expecting you. I had a telephone call in the morning to say that you had left.” He introduced me to his commissar and officers. They clapped me on the shoulder, and shook my hand vigorously. All had a few words of Russian: “Come here. Have a coffee. Have a cigarette.”’ Líster warned him in a whisper that he must be careful. There were ‘people around from the “fifth column”.’
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The ‘fifth column’ was a phrase attributed to General Mola, who apparently claimed to a journalist that he had four columns attacking the capital and a ‘fifth column’ of sympathizers within the city ready to revolt.

The rhythm of the nationalist advance was so fast that on 21 October, three days after reaching Illescas, the column of Heli de Tella, supported by Monasterio’s cavalry, occupied Navalcarnero, 30 kilometres from Madrid. The militiamen, faced with Ansaldo light tanks, had fled from their triple line of trenches on the western side of the town.

In his final orders for the attack on Madrid, Franco emphasized the need to concentrate forces to provoke the fall of the city. On 23 October Junkers 52s bombed Getafe and Madrid itself for the first time. ‘Everyone who can flee the city is fleeing,’ wrote Koltsov in his diary the next day. ‘By means fair or foul, all the rich people, all top officials escape. Only four or five correspondents have stayed. The streets are completely dark in the evenings. Everywhere patrols are checking people’s passes, and it’s become dangerous to drive around unarmed. Aragon arrived suddenly from Paris. He came accompanied by Elsa Triolet.’
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Four days later the nationalists took Torrejón de Velasco, Seseña, ˜ón. The next day, 28 October, Largo Caballero, in an astonishing radio broadcast designed to boost morale, revealed the republican plans: ‘Listen to me, comrades! Tomorrow, 29 October, at dawn, our artillery and our tanks will open fire on the enemy. Then our air force will appear, dropping bombs on them and machine gunning them. At the moment of the air attack, our tanks will attack the enemy’s most vulnerable flank sowing panic in their ranks…Now we have tanks and aircraft! Forward comrades of the front, heroic sons of the working people! Victory is ours!’
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Next morning, as he had said, fifteen T-26 tanks commanded by Captain Pavel Arman of the Red Army attacked Seseña. They were the spearpoint of the first mixed brigade commanded by Líster. Pavel Arman was an adventurous character who, despite his heroism in Spain, later fell foul of the Stalinist authorities and died fighting on the Eastern Front. The crews were mainly made up of Russian instructors, with their Spanish trainees acting as gunners.
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Taken by surprise, the nationalist infantry retreated and Monasterio’s cavalry suffered a number of casualties. But a detachment of
regulares
, having made a batch of petrol bombs, managed to knock out three tanks, a fifth of Arman’s force. The skirmish was claimed as a victory and Arman was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, but the attack had failed completely because Líster’s men could not, or would not, keep up with the tanks. Koltsov, who was present, wanted to find out what had gone wrong. ‘Líster was standing by the door of the little house in Valdemoro waiting for the group to return. He explained, a grimace upon his face, that his units had been moving well at first, but after 1,500 metres, they had felt tired and sat down. They began to “get stuck” in little groups among the hills. Once they lost sight of the tanks, the infantry on the main axis stopped, then they moved forward again, reached Seseña and after encountering a rather weak fire there, turned back…While the tankists were being congratulated, bandaged and fed, they kept asking quietly why the infantry had never caught up with them.’
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At the beginning of November Largo Caballero again asked the anarchists to join the government, since they constituted the largest group involved in the fight against the nationalists. The other Popular Front parties supported this attempt to end the anti-state within the state. The only Torrejón de la Calzada and Grin prominent dissenter was President Azaña, whose intense dislike of the anarchists appears to have dated from the Casas Viejas incident, the event which had led to the fall of his first government.

Once again CNT-FAI leaders were faced with a fundamental dilemma. They believed the state could not change its nature, whatever the politics of its leaders; yet they were extremely worried by growing communist strength. Federica Montseny, an FAI intellectual, later explained to the American historian Burnett Bolloten: ‘At that time we only saw the reality of the situation created for us: the communists in the government and ourselves outside, the manifold possibilities and all our achievements endangered.’
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The CNT-FAI asked for five ministries including those of finance and war so as to protect themselves in the two areas where they felt most vulnerable. They settled, however, for four minor posts: health, which had previously only been a directorate-general, justice, industry and commerce. The ‘purists’ were persuaded to accept this compromise by the ‘reformist’ syndicalists, such as Horacio Prieto, the secretary of the CNT National Committee, Juan Peiró, the new ministry of industry, and Juan López, who took the ministry of commerce. Federica Montseny cast aside misgivings and the warnings of her father, to become Spain’s first woman minister. García Oliver proved an unconventional minister of justice. Legal fees were abolished and criminal dossiers destroyed.

The CNT-FAI leaders had only just taken up their posts when, on the morning of 6 November, Largo Caballero called a cabinet meeting and stated that the government must move to Valencia. Azaña had already abandoned the capital for Barcelona without warning and most ministers, especially Largo Caballero and Prieto, were convinced that Madrid would fall immediately. It was argued in cabinet that if they were captured, the Republic would have no legal leadership and the rebels would instantly achieve international recognition. (In fact, the fall of the capital alone would have had much the same result and Barajas aerodrome to the east was not threatened if they had wanted to escape at the last moment.) The new CNT-FAI ministers opposed this plan strenuously, saying that the government should not abandon the defenders. But the anarchists were alone in their objections and it was decided that the capital would be ruled by a junta in the absence of the administration.

While the government was preparing to quit the city, the streets were filled with peasants and their livestock. ‘Many refugees are moving through Madrid,’ noted Koltsov that day. ‘They are mostly from villages close to the capital. A big flock of sheep was driven past the “Palace” [Hotel], the parliament buildings and the Castellana. Sheep in the streets and plazas of Madrid surprise no one now.’
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General Pozas, the former commander of the Civil Guard and soon a Communist Party member, was given command of the Army of the Centre, while General Miaja was to lead the junta in charge of the capital. The orders to these two generals were put in the wrong envelopes, but luckily they opened them immediately instead of waiting as ordered. Pozas alleged that Miaja nearly wept with rage at what he saw as an attempt to sacrifice him in Madrid.

Meanwhile, on that night of 6 November the government loaded its files on to an enormous convoy of lorries which set off for Valencia. Fears that the Valencia road might be cut at any moment by a nationalist thrust were misplaced; instead the convoy was stopped by CNT militia at Tarancón. For desertion in the face of the enemy, the anarchists arrested A

´ lvarez del Vayo, the foreign minister, General Pozas, Juan Lopéz, their own CNT minister, and General Asensio, the under-secretary of war, who was reputed to have discriminated against anarcho-syndicalist militias. They also stopped the Soviet ambassador to tell him what they thought of communism. Eventually Horacio Prieto of the CNT National Committee persuaded the militia to let the convoy pass.

The effect of the government’s flight from Madrid was remarkable. The anarchist attitude immediately changed to ‘Long live Madrid without government!’ and the cry was echoed by others as a new feeling came over the capital. The sense of urgency which had marked the early days of the rising returned. The communists called for the formation of local committees, the very bodies which they had resolutely opposed before. The establishment of the Madrid junta was, in itself, a step back towards the fragmentation of power that had occurred in July. Slogans, which would have been taboo only a few days before, were now on the lips of every communist cadre. The gut instinct of defending the city against ‘the fascists and their Moors’ stirred the population. The parallel with the defence of Petrograd against the whites in the Russian civil war was repeatedly drawn and cinemas showed films like
Sailors of Kronstadt
and
Battleship Potemkin
. The communist deputy La Pasionaria was tireless in her exhortations to resistance, both on the radio and at mass rallies.

As in Barcelona in July, the decision to defend Madrid inspired mass bravery. The terror and loathing which the colonial troops aroused in the
madrileños
helped turn panic into a spirit of fierce resistance. In the Plaza de Atocha a large placard warned: ‘In Badajoz the fascists shot 2,000. If Madrid falls they will shoot half the city.’ Chains of women and children passed rocks and stones for the construction of barricades. Trenches were dug on the threatened western flank of the city. Houses in the south-west suburb of Carabanchel were prepared for a street-by-street defence.

At this moment of crisis, when the fighting reached the southern suburbs, there was a mass mobilization. Metal workers created the slogan ‘Every union syndicate a militia, every union member a militiaman’. The UGT and CNT syndicates formed themselves into battalions of railwaymen, barbers and tailors. There was a battalion of schoolmasters and a graphic arts battalion. Transport and buildings were requisitioned and, as in Barcelona, the Ritz Hotel was turned into a canteen for the homeless and refugees. The junta itself took over the palace of Juan March, where typists worked in the ballroom under huge chandeliers, which jangled ominously once the air raids and shelling started.

Miaja’s junta was a strange mixture. Nearly all the members were young and energetic, several being still in their twenties; as a result they were known as ‘Miaja’s infant guard’. On the other hand the old general, myopic, loquacious and incapable of staying with a subject, was no revolutionary. In fact, he had been a member of the Unión Militar Española, which played an important part in the early planning for the rising. However, he craved popularity and was easily flattered. The communists promoted him as the hero of Madrid, giving him an idealized treatment in their press throughout the world. Miaja was thrilled and even became a Party member to repay the compliment, though joining as many political organizations as possible seemed to be his major indulgence. Azaña laughed at Miaja’s ‘communism’, remembering that the general had told him only four years previously that socialists should be shot.
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A chill warning of future developments came with Rosenberg’s veto of any POUM representation on the junta. This overtly ignored the principle of political parity, which had so benefited the communists up to then. Rosenberg made it clear that there would be no Soviet weapons if the ‘Trotskyists’ were included. (Andrés Nin had, in fact, broken with Trotsky, who was critical of the POUM, but Nin remained an anti-Stalinist.) ‘Public order’ in Madrid was to take on a frightening aspect; NKVD officers remained in the capital after all the other non-military Russian personnel had left. The situation was worsened by Mola’s use of the phrase ‘fifth column’. Not surprisingly this ill-judged remark greatly increased the fear of treachery from within and unleashed another round of repression.

The Civil Guard, now the Republican Guard, was ruthlessly purged. This drastic act was encouraged by memories of their revolt at Badajoz on Yagüe’s approach. The Assault Guard were treated in a similar manner and sent down to Valencia. The communist 5th Regiment took control of the vast majority of security operations, and the security delegate, Santiago Carrillo, presided over a spate of arrests and summary executions which may have exceeded those of July and August. There is no doubt that there were many nationalist supporters in Madrid, but the overwhelming majority of attacks attributed to the fifth column came from a frightened population mistaking the direction of machine-gun fire or confusing artillery shells with ‘grenades dropped from windows’.

It is difficult to know whether the junta authorities acted out of genuine fear of a ‘stab in the back’, or whether they purposely exaggerated incidents in order to justify the security forces’ ruthless methods. Spy mania was at its height, and the telephones were cut off to prevent nationalist sympathizers from telephoning intelligence to the Army of Africa in the suburbs. The activities, real and imagined, of the fifth column could not, however, justify the decision to evacuate inmates of the Model Prison to Paracuellos del Jarama and then shoot them. Many were leading nationalist supporters.
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