The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (54 page)

While the communists blamed the disturbances on ‘Trotskyist-Fascist’ provocations, the CNT and the POUM accused the PSUC of having planned the attack on the Telefónica to provoke a revolt and crush their opponents. The timing was perfect for the communists, by then desperate to get rid of Caballero and longing to crush anarchist power in Catalonia, which they estimated was weakening rapidly. But this is far from certain. If this had been the case, the communists would have mustered a far greater force in Barcelona well in advance and, according to Companys, armed police in the city on 3 May numbered no more than 2,000.

In any case it was a defeat for the CNT and the POUM. Their newspapers now faced a strict censorship. The POUM in particular was unable to reply to the barrage of invective, however ludicrous. They were accused even of planning the assassination of Prieto and the communist General Walter, ‘one of the most popular commanders in the Spanish army’. The very brazenness of the lies had an initial effect of disorientating people. They were tempted to believe what they heard on the grounds that nobody would dare to invent such allegations. Jesús Hernández, the communist minister who turned against the Party after the war, said with some exaggeration, ‘If we were to decide to show that Largo Caballero, or Prieto, or Azaña, or Durruti were responsible for our defeats, half a million men, tens of newspapers, millions of demonstrators, and hundreds of orators would establish as gospel the evil doing of these citizens with such conviction and persistence that in a fortnight all Spain would agree with us.’ However, several of the Spanish communist leaders were uneasy at the brash tactics insisted upon by their Soviet and Comintern advisers.

La Pasionaria realized that such methods were ‘premature’ in Spain, where the communists did not have a total control of the media.

On 9 May, just after the ceasefire in Barcelona, JoséDíaz of the Party’s central committee advanced their strategy of deposing Largo Caballero and dealing ruthlessly with the POUM. ‘The fifth column has been unmasked,’ he declaimed, ‘we need to destroy it…Some call themselves Trotskyists, which is the name used by many disguised fascists who use revolutionary language in order to sow confusion. I therefore ask: If everyone knows this, if the government knows it, then why does it not treat them like fascists and exterminate them pitilessly? It was Trotsky himself who directed the gang of criminals that derailed trains in the Soviet Union, carried out acts of sabotage in the large factories, and did everything possible to discover military secrets with the object of handing them over to Hitler and the Japanese imperialists. And, in view of the fact that all this was revealed during the trial…’ With these words the communists revealed their plans for a spectacular arraignment of the POUM. A renewed attack on the POUM by Trotsky’s Fourth International was, of course, ignored by the Stalinists who were determined that their label should stick.
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At a cabinet meeting on 15 May (two days before measures introduced by Largo Caballero against communist infiltration of the commissar department became effective) the communist minister, Uribe, demanded on Moscow’s orders that the POUM be suppressed and its leaders arrested. Largo Caballero refused, saying that he would not outlaw a working-class party against whom nothing had been proved. The anarchist ministers backed him and proceeded to charge the communists with provoking the events in Barcelona. Uribe and Hernández walked out, followed by the right socialists Prieto and Negrín, the Basque nationalist Irujo, A

´ lvarez del Vayo and Giral.
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Largo Caballero was left with the four anarchist ministers and two of his old socialist colleagues.

Azaña had been warned by Giral eight days earlier that the social democrats and liberals would back the communists at the next cabinet meeting. They took this decision partly because they identified with the communist policy of increased central government power and partly because they felt that any other course would put the Republic’s arms supply at risk. Prieto insisted that as the coalition was broken, Largo Caballero must consult the president, but Azaña wished to avoid any complications. He told Largo to carry on so that continuity of planning might be maintained on the Estremadura offensive, which was due to be launched later in the month. The anarchist press joined their leaders in supporting Largo Caballero and his ‘firm and just attitude which we all praise’. But without Soviet approval of the government there would be no arms. Largo Caballero had not appreciated his growing isolation. He knew about A

´ lvarez del Vayo; he may well have suspected Negrín; but, although he had quarrelled frequently with Prieto, he never expected him to come out on the communists’ side.

When, on 14 May, Azaña asked Largo Caballero to continue as prime minister, the old unionist knew that he would not be able to form another administration with the existing distribution of ministries. He therefore returned to the idea of a basically syndicalist government. This was similar to the National Defence Council, which the anarchists had proposed the previous September, with Largo Caballero at its head and the bulk of the ministries split between the UGT and the CNT. He had resurrected the idea in February, when he first became alarmed at the growth of communist influence, but Azaña had angrily rejected the proposal. Soviet control of their arms supply made the proposal totally impracticable. Largo Caballero was therefore allowed to continue only if he gave up the war ministry, as Stalin wanted. This he refused to do, believing that his presence there was the last barrier to a communist coup.

On 17 May Largo Caballero resigned, the final point in a long governmental crisis. Some historians argue that the origins of the ministerial crisis of May 1937 went back to the rising of October 1934 and that Caballero was not destroyed by the communists, but by the split with the moderate wing of the socialist party.
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The communists had approached Negrín at the end of the previous year and obtained his agreement to be the next prime minister.
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General Krivitsky, the NKVD defector, claimed that this had first been prepared the previous autumn by Stashevsky. The other important communist renegade, Hernández, asserts that the decision was taken at a Politburo meeting early in March when foreign communists including Marty, Togliatti, Gerö and Codovilla outnumbered Spanish Communist Party members. Prieto and the liberal republicans agreed with their choice, and Azaña asked Juan Negrín to form an administration on 17 May.

Negrín kept the ministry of finance as well as his new position of president of the council of ministers. Prieto was minister of defence, Julián Zugazagoitia minister of the interior, Giral foreign minister and Irujo, the Basque conservative, minister of justice. To hide communist influence according to Stalin’s instructions, the Party received just two minor portfolios: Jesús Hernández as minister of education and health, and Vicente Uribe as minister of agriculture.
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The governing system of the Republic became what Negrín and the communists later described as a ‘controlled democracy’. This basically meant government from above in which the leaders of the main parties negotiated the distribution of ministries. Normal political life and argument was made difficult under war conditions, and contact between leaders and party members was severely restricted. Azaña complained at the lack of parliamentary debate and its result: ‘The newspapers seem to be written by the same person, and they don’t print anything more than diatribes against “international fascism” and assurances of victory.’
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The infrequent proceedings of the Cortes were no more than the trappings of democracy. Only the surviving members from the Popular Front parties remained to take part in its cosmetic role.

Negrín tends to be portrayed either as a puppet of Moscow or else as a man who, recognizing necessity, tried to ride the communist tiger for the benefit of the Spanish Republic. Both interpretations are misleading. Juan NegrínLópez was born in 1892 into a rich upper-middle-class family in the Canary Islands. In his youth he showed sympathy for the autonomist movement in the Canary Islands and agreed with the PSOE’s federalist programme. He was, above all, convinced of his own abilities and there are signs that he felt unsatisfied with the seemingly effortless success of his medical career which, after studies in Germany, led to his becoming professor of physiology at Madrid University at the age of 29. He soon became more actively involved in politics and his talents were undoubtedly greater than those of the professionals. Like many men who are conscious of their ability, he showed himself to be a firm believer in hierarchy, an authoritarian with few scruples who knew what was best for others. Not surprisingly he soon acquired a strong taste for power, once it was offered to him. In his case it appeared to run parallel to gross tastes for food and sex rather than act as a substitute.

Negrín’s credentials and his ‘iron hand’ were applauded by official circles in London and Washington. Yet this government, which was welcomed by Churchill for its ‘law-and-order stance’, was to leave the NKVD-controlled secret police unhindered in its persecution of persons who opposed the Moscow line and to sacrifice the POUM to Stalin in order to maintain arms supplies in his determination to win the war.

On its first day, Negrín’s government agreed to the closing of the POUM’s
La Batalla
newspaper. Soviet and Comintern advisers were under great pressure to achieve results quickly. Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Ortega, the new communist director general of security, took his orders from Orlov, not Zugazagoitia, the minister of the interior. On 16 June, when the POUM was declared illegal, the communists turned its headquarters in Barcelona into a prison for ‘Trotskyists’. The commander of the 29th Division, Colonel Rovira, was summoned to army headquarters and arrested. POUM leaders who could be located, including Andrés Nin, were also arrested. The wives of those who could not be found were taken in their place. These actions were given a veneer of legality by the retroactive decree a week later which created the Tribunals of Espionage and High Treason.

The POUM leaders were handed over to NKVD operatives and taken to a secret prison in Madrid, a church in the Calle Atocha. Nin was separated from his comrades and driven to Alcalá de Henares, where he was interrogated from 18 to 21 June. Despite the tortures he was subjected to by Orlov and his men, Nin refused to confess to the falsified accusations of passing artillery targets to the enemy. He was then moved to a summer house outside the city which belonged to Constancia de la Mora, the wife of Hidalgo de Cisneros and tortured to death. A grotesque example of Stalinist play-acting then took place. A group of German volunteers from the International Brigades in uniforms without insignia, pretending to be members of the Gestapo, charged into the house to make it look as if they had come to Nin’s rescue. ‘Evidence’ of their presence was then planted, including German documents, Falangist badges and nationalist banknotes. Nin, after being killed by Orlov’s men, was buried in the vicinity. When graffiti appeared on walls demanding ‘Where is Nin?’ communists would scribble underneath ‘In Salamanca or in Berlin’. The official Party line, published in
Mundo Obrero
, claimed that Nin had been liberated by Falangists and was in Burgos.
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Despite the protests in republican Spain and the petitions from abroad, Negrín, who cannot have believed such a version of events, did nothing when the communists claimed that they were ignorant of Nin’s fate. This shameful behaviour opened up a deep split in the new government. When Negrín repeated the communist version to Azaña the president did not believe a word. ‘Isn’t it too novelettish?’ he asked.
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With the passage of time since the Moscow show trials and the mood in Spain in 1937, it is very hard to understand how anybody could have believed the accusations of fascism thrown at the POUM, nor why the government did nothing to stop the Stalinists’ dirty war against Nin and his followers, who were tortured and ‘disappeared’. The ‘disciplined machine’ had taken over, but it now lacked the energy of popular support. For many, there seemed to be few ideals left to defend. The anarchist theorist Abad de Santillán remarked, ‘Whether Negrín won with his communist cohorts, or Franco won with his Italians and Germans, the results would be the same for us.’
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The Battle of Brunete

E
arly in 1937 Nikonov, the deputy chief of Red Army intelligence in Spain, had written enthusiastically to Voroshilov, ‘The war in Spain has revealed a number of extremely important aspects in the use of modern military equipment and has brought some valuable experience for studying operational, tactical and technical problems.’
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But both Soviet advisers and communist commanders had learned very little, as the Republic’s first major offensive of the war would demonstrate. The ‘active war policy’ of set-piece attacks adopted for propaganda reasons by the Comintern would rapidly destroy the Republic’s ability to resist.

During April 1937, when nationalist troops were advancing on the northern coast towards Bilbao, Largo Caballero’s general staff had begun to prepare an ambitious offensive in Estremadura, with 23 brigades and Pavlov’s tanks.
²
The plan had been drawn up by General Asensio Torrado before he was removed. The idea was a major attack in the south-west to split nationalist territory in two and to finish with the cycle of battles around Madrid, which always ended in a useless bloodbath. Another reason for choosing Estremadura and not New Castille was that the nationalist troops in the area were inexperienced, badly armed and spread out. For Franco, it would have been much more difficult to bring in reinforcements by rail when republican guerrillas operated behind his lines. On the other hand it would have been extremely hard for the republicans to have deployed their troops and tanks in secret so far from Madrid; it would have left the capital vulnerable; and resupplying an army in Estremadura would have been very difficult.