The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (96 page)

35 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 11 May, 1937, DGFp. 284–5.

36 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 23 May, 1937, DGFp. 294.

37 Faupel to Wilhelmstrasse, 11 May, 1937, DGFp. 284.

CHAPTER 30
: Arriba España!

1 Luis Suárez,
Franco: la historia y sus documentos
, p. 94.

2 This first government was made up as follows: vice-president and minister for foreign affairs, General Gómez Jordana; minister of the interior and secretary-general of the council, Ramón Serrano Súñer; minister of justice, Tomás Domínguez; minister without portfolio, Count de Rodezno; minister of national defence, General Fidel Dávila; minister of public order, General Martínez Anido; minister of finance, Andrés Amado; minister of public works, Alfonso Peña Boeuf; minister of national education, Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez; minister of agriculture, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta; minister of organization and unions, Pedro González Bueno; minister of industry and commerce, Juan Antonio Suanzes.

3 Preston,
Franco, caudillo de España
, p. 371.

4 Carlos Fernández,
El General Franco
, p. 109.

5 Callahan,
La Iglesia católica en España
, p. 302.

6 Colonel Martín Pinillos, see Javier Rodrigo,
Prisioneros de Franco
.

7 Coal and steel production underwent a ‘rapid recovery and by 1938 volume output surpassed those of 1935’. See J. M. Bricall, ‘La economia española, 1936–1939’inTuñón de Lara,
La guerra civil española 50 años después
, p. 377.

8 Carreras and Tafunell,
Historia económica de la España contemporánea
, p. 267.

9 Abella,
La vida cotidiana
…, p. 241.

10 Luis Suárez,
Franco: la historia y sus documentos
, vol, iii, p. 67.

11 Rojo,
Alerta los pueblos
, p. 40.

12 8 September 1936, DGFP, p. 87.

13 Richthofen war diary, 21 November, 1937, BA-MA RL 35/38.

14 German ambassador in France to Wilhelmstrasse, 17 March 1938, DGFP, p. 621.

15 Richthofen war diary, 17 January 1939, BA-MA RL 35/38.

16 Ciano,
Diarios
, p. 166.

17 Ibid., p. 167.

18 Fraser,
Recuérdalo tú…
, p. 659.

19 Jesús Salas,
La guerra de España desde el aire
, p. 332.

20 Coverdale,
La intervencíon italiana
…, p. 317.

21 XVI Corps under Palacios, García Vallejo’s XVII, Vidal’s XIX, Durán’s XX, and Ibarrola’s XXII, as well as Group ‘A’ under Güemes and Group ‘B’ under Romero, together made up the Army of Levante under Colonel Leopoldo Menéndez.

22
Ciutat, Relatos y reflexiones
, p. 199.

23 Preston,
Franco, caudillo de España
, p. 387.

24 Francisco Franco,
Palabras del Caudillo
, Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular, Madrid, 1943.

25 ‘Spain arise! Long live Spain!’

CHAPTER 31
: The Battle of the Ebro

1 Franco cracked down on anybody who favoured negotiation with the enemy. He saw it as treason to the nationalist cause. See Saña,
Serrano Súñer
, p. 91.

2 V Corps consisted of the 11th, 45th and 46th Divisions; XV Corps of the 3rd, 3xh and 42nd Divisions; and XII Corps (commanded by Etelvino Vega) of the 16th and 44th Divisions.

3 Each division in theory had 10,000 men with 5,000 rifles, 255 machine-guns, 30 mortars, four anti-tank guns, three artillery groups of nine field guns, and a battalion of engineers to organize the crossing.

4 For the progress of the battle: see Francisco Cabrera Castillo,
Del Ebro a Gandesa. La batalla del Ebro, Julio–noviembre 1938
, Madrid, 2002; Julián Henríquez Caubín,
La batalla del Ebro
, México, 1966; J. M. Martínez Bande, La batalla del
Ebro
, Madrid, 1988; Lluís M. Mezquida i Gené,
La batalla del Ebro
, Tarragona, 2001; Estanislau Torres,
La batalla de l’Ebre i la caiguda de Barcelona
, Lérida, 1999; Gabriel Cardona and Juan Carlos Losada,
Aunque me tires el Puente
, Madrid, 2004; and above all, Jorge M. Reverte,
La batalla del Ebro
, Barcelona, 2003.

5 The 50th Division was commanded by Colonel Luís Campos Guereta and the 105th Division by Colonel Natalio López Bravo.

6 Francisco Franco Salgado,
Mis conversaciónes privadas con Franco
, pp. 262-3.

7 Blanco,
La incompetencia militar
…, p. 476.

8 Skoutelsky,
L’espoir guidait leurs pas
, p. 104.

9 Castells,
Las Brigadas Internacionales
, pp. 355ff.

10 Fraser,
Recuérdalo tú
…, p. 661.

11 Jesús Salas,
La guerra desde el aire
, pp. 356ff.

12 Miguel Mateu, personal testimony.

13 Quoted by Reverte,
La batalla del Ebro
, p. 112.

14 Castells,
Las Brigadas
…, p. 358.

15 RGVA 33987/3/1149, p. 284.

16 Legion Condor
Lageberichte
BA-MA RL 35/5 H 7202.

17 Rolfe,
The Lincoln Battalion
, p. 131.

18 Legion Condor
Lageberichte
BA-MA RL 35/5 H 7162.

19 Reverte,
La batalla del Ebro
, p. 141.

20 BA-MA RL 35/5 H7197.

21 See Tagüeña,
Testimonio de dos guerras
, p. 230,

22 Ramón Salas,
El Ejército Popular de la República
, p. 1974.

23 Legion Condor
Lageberichte
BA-MA RL 35/5 H7175.

24 Reverte,
La batalla del Ebro
, p. 219.

25 Legion Condor,
Lageberichte
BA-MA RL 35/5 H7122.

26 Castells,
Las Brigadas
, p. 359.

27 Luís María de Lojendio,
Operaciones militares de la guerra de España
, Madrid, 1940.

28 Ciano,
Diarios
, p. 168.

29
Crónica
, vol. v, p. 111.

30 Boletín del V Cuerpo del Ejército del Ebro.

31 Reverte,
La batalla del Ebro
, p. 564.

32 Togliatti,
Escritos sobre la guerra de España
, p. 253.

33 Stepánov,
Las causas de la derrota
…, p. 142.

CHAPTER 32
: The Republic in the European Crisis

1 Azaña,
Diarios completos
, p. 1238.

2 Ibid., p. 1240.

3 Negrín to Rafael Méndez (Rafael Méndez in
Indice
, November–December 1971).

4 Azaña,
Diarios completos
, p. 1240.

5 Thomas,
La guerra civil española
, p. 911.

6 DGFP, p. 629.

7 Ciano,
Diarios
, p. 180.

8 Ibid., p. 183.

9 Azcárate,
Mi embajada
…, p. 240.

10 Colonel Ribbing’s report from Spain, General Staff, Former Secret Archive, Foreign Department, KA E III 26, vol. 1, p. 22.

11 Ibid.

12 Also in the United States, the FBI investigated US nationals who had served in the International Brigades, and later, during Senator McCarthy’s ‘witch-hunts’, Milton Woff, Alvah Bessie, Edwin Rolfe, John Gates, Robert Thompson, Irving Margollies and other members of the Lincoln Brigade were persecuted, with some imprisoned, while others found it very hard to obtain employment.

13 Finally in 1952, André Marty was expelled from the French Communist Party.

14 Ibárruri. Pamphlet published in Barcelona in 1938, quoted by Thomas,
La guerra civil española
, p. 916.

15 Castells,
Las Brigadas
…, pp. 383–4. Many of those communists who fought in Spain played important roles in their home countries during and after the war: Pietro Nenni, who became minister of foreign affairs in Italy; Luigi Longo, vice-president of the Italian Communist Party; Charles Tillon, minister for air in France between 1945 and 1948; Rol-Tanguy, the communist leader of the Paris uprising just before its liberation in August 1944; Enver Hodja, the dictator of Albania; Walter Ulbricht, the leader of East Germany; Josip Broz ‘Tito’, the leader of Yugoslavia; Erno Gerö, ‘Pedro’, minister of communications in Hungary; Ladislas Rajk, minister of the interior in Hungary and a number of others. Many would be purged. In Stalin’s eyes, service in Spain signified foreign contagion.

16 Colonel Ribbing’s report from Spain, General Staff, Former Secret Archive, Foreign Department, KA E III 26, vol. 1, p. 14.

17 Zugazagoitia,
Guerra y vicisitudes
, p. 487.

18 Gorkín, Arquer, Andrade, Escuder, Rebull, Adroher and Bonet.

19 15 December 1938, RGVA 35082/1/221, p. 2.

20 25 November 1938, RGVA 33987/3/1081, pp. 30–44, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, p. 506.

21 RGVA 33987/3/1081, p. 16.

22 Ibid., p. 80, quoted in Radosh and Habeck, pp. 498–9.

CHAPTER 33
: The Fall of Catalonia

1 The Army of the Centre had around 100,000 men, while the Estremadura front had 50,000 and Andalucia 20,000. The Army of Levante had 21 under-strength divisions and four and a half in reserve. At the beginning of December 1938 the People’s Army possessed no more than 225,000 rifles, 4,000 light machine-guns and 3,000 machine-guns (Ramón Salas,
Historia del Ejército Popular
).

2 Negrín could also count on the support of a small group within the CNT around Mariano Vázquez, a larger group within the UGT and a fraction of the PSOE, led by its general secretary, Ramón Lamoneda.

3 Saborit,
Julián Besteiro
, Buenos Aires, 1967, p. 421.

4 Stevenson to Lord Halifax, 31 October 1938 in
BDFA
, vol. 27, Spain, July 1936–January 1940, p. 222.

5 Miralles,
Juan Negrín
, p. 302.

6 Ibid., p. 303. Negrín had asked for this arms shipment on 11 November in a letter delivered personally to Stalin by Hidalgo de Cisneros. Five annexes to the letter listed their needs, including 2,150 field guns, 120 anti-aircraft guns, 400,000 rifles, 10,000 machine-guns, 260 fighters, 150 bombers, 300,000 shells and so on. The shipment left Murmansk and reached Bordeaux on 15 January, by which time Tarragona had already fallen. Only a small part crossed the frontier and the republicans did not even have time to open the crates.

7 Ciano,
Diarios
, p. 223.

8 Thomas,
La guerra civil española
, p. 940.

9 Ciano,
Diarios
, p. 235.

10 At the end of 1938 the nationalists and their allies mustered fourteen squadrons of Fiat CR 32 fighters and three squadrons of Messerschmitts with twelve aircraft each. Added to the Fiat force based in the Balearics, this gave them over 200 fighters (a total roughly equal to their combined bomber forces of Junkers 52s, Heinkel IIIs and Savoia-Marchettis).

11 Salas,
La guerra de España
, pp. 445–6.

12 Ibid., p. 404.

13 Richthofen war diary, BA-MA RL 35/38.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Stepánov,
Las causas de la derrota
, p. 150.

17 Cordón,
Trayectoria
, p. 375.

18 Bolloten,
La Revolución española
, p. 932.

19 Rojo,
¡Alerta los pueblos!
, p. 121.

20 Ibid., p. 125.

21 Quoted in
Recuérdalo tú
…, p. 674.

22 Abella,
La vida cotidiana…La España republicana
, p. 415.

23
Quan érem capitans
, Barcelona, 1974, p. 149.

24 Guillermo Cabanellas,
La guerra de los mil días
, Barcelona, 1973, vol. ii, p. 1047.

25 Ciano,
Diarios
, p. 258.

26 Benet,
Catalunya sota el règim franquista
, Paris, 1973, vol. i, p. 222.

27 Fraser,
Recuérdalo tú
…, p. 674.

28 Benet,
Catalunya sota el règim franquista
, p. 229.

29 BA-MA RL 35/7.

30 Ibid.

31 Emil Voldemarovich Shteingold, ‘My Last 10 Days in Spain’, RGVA 35082/3/32, pp. 1–5.

32 Zugazagoitia,
Guerra y vicisitudes
…, p. 523.

33 Daladier had proposed that a free zone was established on Spanish soil in which to intern refugees, but this was rejected by Negrín as well as by Franco.

34 BA-MA RL 35/8.

35 BA-MA RL 35/7.

36 Regler,
Owl of Minerva
, p. 321.

CHAPTER 34
: The Collapse of the Republic

1 Luis Romero,
El final de la guerra
, Barcelona, 1976, p. 134.

2 Ibid., pp. 124–5.

3 Elorza and Bizcarrondo,
Queridos camaradas
, p. 430.

4 Stepánov,
Las causas de la derrota
…, pp. 168–9.

5
Mundo Obrero
, 12 February 1939.

6 Togliatti,
Escritos sobre la guerra de España
, p. 275.

7 Tuñón,
Historia de España
, vol. ix, p. 506.

8
ABC
, Madrid, 14 February 1939.

9 Alpert,
El ejército republicano
, p. 313.

10 See Miralles,
Juan Negrín
, p. 311; Togliatti,
Escritos
…, p. 279; Elorza and Bizcarrondo,
Queridos camaradas
, p. 431.

11 Colonel Ribbing’s report from Spain, General Staff, Former Secret Archive, Foreign Department, KA E III 26, vol. 1, p. 22.

12 The gold handed over was worth almost $27 million. See Joan Sardà,
El Banco de España
, p. 452.

13
Memoirs
, New York, 1948.

14 Azaña,
Obras Completa
, vol. iii, p. 567.

15 Also Colonel Moriones, of the Army of the Centre, Colonel Camacho, head of the air force in the zone, and General Bernal, commander of the naval base of Cartagena.