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

The Málaga disaster brought tensions to a head between the communists and Largo Caballero, whom the Comintern and Soviet advisers referred to in their reports to Moscow as ‘the Old Man’. They were furious at Caballero’s attempts to restrict communist power within the army, partly because he could not forgive their successful infiltration of the Socialist Youth and the consequent loss of the whole organization to the PCE. André Marty even suggested later that Caballero and Prieto were in the pocket of the British who were urging them to resist the communists.¹⁷

‘He [Caballero] fears the exceptional influence that the Party has in a significant part of the army and strives to limit this,’ Berzin reported to Moscow on 12 January 1937. He went on to claim that General Asensio, the assistant minister for war, and General Cabrera, the chief of staff, ‘despite repeated exposures of their sabotage in the carrying out of useful measures for fortified fronts, up to now enjoy great trust from the premier and war minister, left socialist Largo Caballero. Some of them have not been exposed, but are undoubtedly agents of Franco…The fall of Málaga in particular was, for the most part, caused by treason.’ He levelled similar accusations against the anarchists and the ‘counterrevolutionary Trotskyists’ of the POUM, a leitmotif in almost every report back to Moscow. ‘It goes without saying that it is impossible to win the war against the rebels if these scum within the republican camp are not liquidated.’¹⁸ Colonel Krivoshein, in a report forwarded to Stalin by Voroshilov, concluded that ‘the Communist Party ought to come to power even by force, if necessary’.¹⁹

The communists were also outraged by the ‘impudently slanderous position’ taken by Prieto, the minister for the navy, ‘at the last council of ministers (where he in essence repeated almost word for word the attacks of the Trotskyist La Batalla against the Soviet Union)’.²⁰

The transformation of the militia columns into a formalized army started in earnest in December 1936. At the beginning of 1937 republican forces totalled about 320,000 men, although only about half this number were at the various fronts at any one time. These forces were split among the central and southern zone with about 130,000, the three northern zones (Euzkadi, Santander and the Asturias) with over 100,000 and Aragón with about 30,000. The remaining 80,000 or so in rearguard areas included the Assault Guard, the National Republican Guard, formed from loyal civil guards, the carabinero frontier police and the MVR, the Militias of Rearguard Vigilance, which were a government incorporation of irregular forces. The carabineros came under Negrín, the minister of finance, who built them up as a personal force to about 40,000 strong. The main reason for lack of precision in army figures is inaccurate reporting, both of ration returns (minor and major frauds were carried out by staff and quartermasters) and of unit strengths (commanding officers sometimes adjusted the figures for personal and political reasons).

These greatly increased figures were achieved mainly by increasing the call-up of the classes of 1933, 1934 and 1935. It is impossible to gauge what proportion of the intake was prompted by idealism, circumstances, or even hunger, for the rations were considerably better than those which the civilian population enjoyed. An English International Brigader in hospital later observed that the local people were so desperate that they would eat what they had left on their plates, even if it had been chewed. Meanwhile, with a mixture of encouragement, manipulation and blackmail, the militias were forced into the command structure already prepared on paper. Columns were turned into battalions and brigades during the winter of 1936. In the spring of 1937 divisions and even army corps started to be formed.

The other development which went ahead rapidly was the practice of attaching commissars to every brigade and battalion headquarters. The commissars’ official role was to watch over regular commanders and look after the welfare of the troops. However, Álvarez del Vayo, the foreign minister and secret communist supporter, persuaded Largo Caballero to make him commissar-general and with his assistance the communists managed to take control of this powerful branch. By the spring, 125 out of 168 battalion commissars were from the Party itself (PCE and PSUC) or from the Joint Socialist Youth.