The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

The capital was saved and political passions aroused through much of the world, but it had certainly not proved ‘the grave of fascism’ as the communist slogan had hoped. The battle of Madrid marked only a change in the war. Checking the nationalists there turned a coup d’état into a full-scale civil war with international ramifications, almost a world war by proxy. This meant that even more help was needed from abroad. On 2 December 1936, Colonel von Richthofen recorded in his diary: ‘Salamanca wants German ground troops–at least two divisions.’ [In fact, one German and one Italian.]³⁴ But a cautious Hitler decided to restrict his aid to Franco to the Condor Legion.

PART FOUR World War by Proxy

The Metamorphosis of the War

History seldom proceeds in straight lines. In December 1936 a series of battles, more in the style of the First World War, began around Madrid, yet the last of the militia defeats, in the pattern of the previous summer, did not take place until February 1937, in the brief Malaga campaign.

Generalissimo Franco became trapped in an unimaginative strategy. The enormous expectations aroused in October for what German diplomats cynically called ‘the bullfight’,¹ and the failure to take Madrid in November, created an obsessive determination. He insisted to Faupel, the new German chargé d’affaires, ‘I will take Madrid; then all of Spain, including Catalonia, will fall into my hands more or less without a fight.’ Faupel described the statement as ‘an estimate of the situation that I cannot describe as anything but frivolous’.²

After Varela’s attacks had been checked and the bombing had failed to break the morale of the city, there were basically three options left. One was to try to encircle Madrid from the north-west, and at least cut off water supplies and electricity from the Sierra de Guadarrama. This was to be the first target for the nationalists. The other was to strike eastwards across the River Jarama from their large salient south of the capital. Republican territory around Madrid was like a peninsula, vulnerable at its base formed by the corridor of land along the Valencia road. This would be the second offensive. And with the central front curling back round the Sierra de Guadarrama and across the province of Guadalajara, there was the possibility of striking down at the Valencia road from the north-east. This would be the sector for the third nationalist offensive in March 1937.

On 29 November 1936 Varela launched the first of a series of attacks on the Corunna road to the north-west of Madrid. The intention was to achieve a breakthrough towards the sierra, before swinging right to the north of the capital. This first attack, mounted with some 3,000 Legion and Moroccan troops, supported by tanks, artillery and Junkers 52 bombers, was directed against the Pozuelo sector. The republican brigade retreated in disorder, but the line was re-established by a counter-attack backed by T-26s. Both sides then redeployed so as to reinforce their fronts to the west of Madrid.

The German tanks, however, do not appear to have been used very effectively by their Spanish nationalist crews. ‘Inexplicable tank operations,’ wrote Richthofen scathingly in his war diary on 2 December. ‘German panzer personnel drive the tanks up to the combat zone, then Spaniards take over. They take the tanks for a ride and fiddle around.’ He also observed the republican air force. ‘Red pilots avoid coming in range of our flak,’ he noted four days later.³ Richthofen, a cousin of the famous Red Baron air ace, was a hard, arrogant man, disliked by German and Spanish officers alike. He was to become infamous as the destroyer of many towns and cities: Durango and Guernica in Spain, then Rotterdam, Belgrade, Canea and Heraklion in Crete, followed by many cities in the Soviet Union, most notably of all, Stalingrad, where 40,000 civilians were killed.