The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (63 page)

Two days later, on 19 January, the 5th Navarrese Division attacked El Muletón defended by XV International Brigade. Republican casualties were very heavy, but they re-formed their line. The order was given to counter-attack, but commanders expected far too much of their troops. They were almost out of ammunition due to the difficulties of resupply, they had received very little food and had to eat snow as there was no drinking water, nor wood for fuel to melt it. Only in Teruel itself could wood be found, stripped from houses. On that same day soldiers of the 84th Mixed Brigade, part of the 40th Division, refused to return to the front. Altogether, 46 of them were executed without trial the following dawn.
³³

On 5 February, ‘in perfect weather conditions’ for flying,
³⁴
the nationalists launched their major attack towards the Alfambra. General Juan Vigón directed this operation with three corps, those of Galicia, Morocco and Navarre, together with the Italian CTV and Monasterio’s cavalry division. Some 100,000 men and nearly 500 guns were concentrated in the Sierra de Palomera along a front of 30 kilometres.

Peter Kemp, the English volunteer now serving in the Foreign Legion, gives a vivid description of the beginning of this offensive. It was a bright, freezing dawn in the Sierra de Palomera as divisions of red-bereted Carlists and green-coated Legionnaires waited for the bombers to soften up the enemy. Only the sound of the pack-mules’ accoutrements broke the silence. Then, waiting on the ridge, the nationalist troops heard the heavy drone of the Italian bombers coming from their rear. To their sudden horror, they realized that the Savoia-Marchettis had mistaken them for the enemy. Two waves in succession bombed the rocky mountainside, despite the recognition strips and arrows laid out behind. The nationalists’ casualties, however, were much lighter than might have been expected. The operation was hardly delayed.

The attack was accompanied by Monasterio’s 1st Cavalry Division, which made the one great mounted charge of the war in the valley below them. The republican troops manning this part of the front had never seen action before and they were broken immediately by the onslaught. The nationalist formations then swung south, forcing the main republican force to withdraw rapidly. The republicans suffered nearly 20,000 casualties and lost a huge quantity of arms and equipment. On 19 February the nationalists cut the Teruel–Valencia road, leaving El Campesino’s 46th Division surrounded in Teruel. At dawn on 22 February the last republicans slipped out of the city, trying to break through the nationalist lines. Three days later Modesto managed to form a defence line along the right bank of the Alfambra, but this was not the end of the battle. Further operations continued for another four weeks, grinding down the republican forces and pushing them back.

The Battle of Teruel, with its cold and street fighting, was one of the most terrible in a terrible war. The nationalists suffered around 40,000 casualties, a quarter of which were from frostbite. The republican losses had been even more appalling, around 60,000 men altogether.
³⁵
In the air battles, the nationalists destroyed far more republican planes than they lost themselves, twelve on 7 February alone,
³⁶
but the greatest danger for all pilots was the weather, which accounted for more crashes than enemy action.

The republican infantry suffered its worst casualties after Teruel itself had been taken. This underlined the tragedy and futility of the whole operation. The Republic had set out to seize a city of no strategic value, which it could never have hoped to hold, all at a catastrophic cost in lives and equipment. Once again, the obstinacy of republican leaders, trapped by premature claims of victory for propaganda purposes, sacrificed a large part of their best troops for no purpose. The pathetic state of the survivors, and their demoralization and exhaustion, was to lead straight to another greater disaster in a matter of weeks.

Republican commanders argued furiously among themselves over who was to blame. The report of the political department of the People’s Army listed numerous causes: the strength of the enemy air force, its combined effect with artillery, the reduced republican strength, their inferiority in weapons, the decline in morale and so on.
³⁷
Nothing was said about the ineptitude of the plan or the incompetence of commanders.

The Communist Party tried to put the major part of the responsibility on Prieto or Rojo. Comintern advisers even blamed Prieto for ‘distancing himself from the communists’.
³⁸
With his usual sinister insinuation, Stepánov reported to Moscow that the failure at Teruel was due, among other things, to the ‘erroneous or treasonous conduct of the general staff, Rojo in particular’.
³⁹

During the early spring of 1938, the Republic had only two consolations. One was the opening of the French frontier on 17 March to allow through military equipment. The other came from an unexpected source: the republican fleet, which throughout the war had done little to challenge the nationalist and Italian blockade, mainly because of the inertia and inefficiency of its ships’ crews. Meanwhile, the nationalist fleet had grown with the help of Mussolini, who sent two submarines. These were renamed the
Mola
and the
Sanjurjo
, hardly reassuring choices for traditionally superstitious submariners. In addition, seven Italian ‘Legionary’ submarines continued to operate throughout the Mediterranean, ready to hoist the royal Spanish flag if forced to the surface. Mussolini also gave Franco four destroyers and, later in 1938, an old cruiser, the
Taranto
.

The end of the war in the north meant that the nationalist Mediterranean fleet was reinforced by units from the Cantabrian coast, including the cruiser
Almirante Cervera
and two seaplane squadrons of Heinkel 60s. One of these went to Palma de Mallorca, where Admiral Francisco de Moreno had set up his joint-staff headquarters with the Italian navy and air force. Palma was used as the principal Italian bomber base for attacks on shipping and republican coastal cities, chiefly Barcelona and Valencia. The Italians dominated the partnership and the island was almost entirely under their occupation. It had been their private fief ever since the early days of the war, when a Bluebeard-like Italian fascist calling himself the Conte Rossi terrorized the island.
⁴⁰

It was against this formidable control of the western Mediterranean that the republican navy took everyone by surprise in March. How large a part luck played in their success is difficult to estimate. A flotilla of torpedo boats, backed by two cruisers, the
Libertad
and the
Méndez Nuúñez
, and nine destroyers left Cartagena on 5 March to strike at the nationalist fleet in Palma de Mallorca. Meanwhile, a nationalist squadron escorting a convoy from Palma was heading in their direction. It comprised three cruisers, the
Baleares
,
Canarias
and
Almirante Cervera
, three destroyers and two minelayers. The two forces made contact just before 1 a.m. on 6 March. Three of the republican destroyers sighted the
Baleares
, the flagship, and fired salvos of torpedoes. The nationalist cruiser sank rapidly; Admiral Vierna was among the 726 men lost. Although this was the largest battle at sea, it did not have important results because the nationalists soon refitted the old cruiser
República
and renamed her the
Navarra
. Their navy was much more cautious as a result of this action, but its control of the coast was not affected. And only a few days later Heinkel bombing raids on Cartagena crippled the Republic’s only capital ship, the
Jaime I
.

News of the loss of the
Baleares
reached the nationalist Army of Manoeuvre just as it was about to launch the most devastating offensive yet seen in the war. It is not certain whether Franco decided after Teruel to give up short cuts to victory once again, and continue with the strategy of dismantling key regions, or whether he was persuaded to take advantage of the weakness of the People’s Army before it could recover from the effects of the winter battle. The opportunity of dealing the enemy’s most experienced formations a further severe blow, while at the same time separating Catalonia, the main source of republican manpower and industry, from the rest of the zone, was obviously attractive. This could then be followed by the reduction of Catalonia and the severing of the Republic from France. Without Catalan industry and supplies from abroad, the central region would fall in a short space of time. It was a less spectacular strategy than a breakthrough to Madrid, but it was more certain of success.

The nationalists began this campaign with a major advantage. They had redeployed their formations far more rapidly than the republican general staff thought possible. Although warned of the threat by spies, the republican commanders somehow convinced themselves that the Guadalajara front was still the nationalists’ target. They assumed, also, that the enemy’s troops must be as exhausted after Teruel as their own. Within two weeks of the recapture of Teruel, General Dávila’s chief of staff, General Vigón, had finalized his plans. The Army of Manoeuvre positioned itself behind the start line, which consisted of the southern half of the central Aragón sector. Starting on the left flank, which was marked by the south bank of the Ebro, there were Yagüe’s Moroccan Corps, the 5th Navarrese Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, the Italian CTV and Aranda’s Galician Corps. Three other corps were deployed, those of Castille, Aragón and Navarre. Altogether, Dávila had 27 divisions, comprising 150,000 men, backed by nearly 700 guns and some 600 aircraft.

On 9 March the nationalist campaign opened with a massive ground and air bombardment. By the time the nationalist infantry reached the republican trenches, their occupants were hardly in a state to hold a rifle. The superiority of nationalist artillery, to say nothing of the Condor Legion, the Aviazione Legionaria and the Brigada Aerea Hispana, left the republicans at a total disadvantage. This campaign saw the Junkers 87, the Stuka dive-bomber, in action for the first time. Luftwaffe officers in Spain claimed that it could drop its load within five metres of a target.

Those republican defenders who endured such bombardments then had to face von Thoma’s tanks, which were used with great effectiveness: ‘the real blitzkrieg’.
⁴¹
Nationalist infantry casualties were the lowest of any major offensive during the war. In fact, after many of the bombardments the Foreign Legion had little to do except bayonet the shocked survivors in their trenches. General Walter once again blamed the disaster on ‘the immense and intensive activity and work of defeatist elements and agents of the fifth column within republican units…Those were the days when the most stinking, fetid, treacherous activity by all the bastards of all shades and colours flourished the most.’
⁴²
Another report to Moscow, however, admitted that ‘we thought [that the nationalist attack] was only a feint and stubbornly continued to expect a general battle at Guadalajara’.
⁴³
This, needless to say, was a rather more accurate appreciation of the situation.

On the first day of the offensive Yagüe’s Moroccan Corps, supported by tanks, smashed through the 44th Division and advanced 36 kilometres along the south side of the Ebro. Belchite, still in ruins, fell to the Carlist
requetés
of the second wave on the next day, 10 March. Yagüe, meanwhile, maintained the momentum of his attack. Any defensive line which the republicans patched together crumbled almost as soon as it was formed. The same day the Condor Legion sent all its Heinkel 111s, Dornier 17s and Heinkel 51s to attack republican airfields. They apparently inflicted with ‘astonishing effect severe damage to the enemy air force on the ground’. The next day the 5th Division’s rapid advance from Belchite was assisted with German tanks from the Gruppe Droehne and Condor Legion 88mm guns.
⁴⁴
Without worrying about threats to his flanks, Yagu ¨e pushed forward to Caspe.

After Teruel the republican forces were exhausted and badly equipped (many of them had still not received proper ammunition resupply), while the fresh troops in the front line were inexperienced conscripts. The retreat was more a rout than a withdrawal. ‘A large part of the army, which survived the fascist offensive,’ wrote Stepánov, ‘the overwhelming majority of whom were officers and commanders, were confounded and seized by panic, lost their heads and fled to the rear.’
⁴⁵

One or two brave stands were made, but demoralization quickly set in, as the republicans saw that they were incapable of resisting the nationalist onslaught either on the ground or from the air. The situation was made worse by the increase of anti-communist feeling after Teruel. Almost any story of communist perfidy was believed. Non-communist units thought that their ammunition supplies were being cut off deliberately. These suspicions stemmed from isolated incidents. During the battle of Teruel, for example, part of the 25th Division was refused replacement weapons and ammunition when one of their senior officers refused to join the Communist Party. There were also bitter arguments among field commanders and staff, particularly the communist officers, many of which dated from Teruel. Líster had refused to obey Rojo; El Campesino claimed that Modesto had deliberately left his division to be cut off during the withdrawal;
⁴⁶
and Modesto and Líster still hated each other, as they had done ever since the loss of the BT-5 tanks at Fuentes de Ebro.

During the chaos which ensued from the Aragón debâcle, the mutual recriminations involved both Marty and Líster, who each tried to justify his behaviour by accusing the other of treason and carrying out arbitrary executions. Leaders of the Spanish Communist Party demanded that several International Brigade commanders, including Walter and C