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

One of the most tragic episodes involved the men of the Lincoln Battalion, who had arrived in the middle of February fresh in their ‘doughboy’ uniforms. They were put under the command of an English charlatan who pretended to have been an officer in the 11th Hussars. He ordered them into attack after attack, losing 120 men out of 500. The Americans mutinied, nearly lynched the Walter Mitty character who had been imposed on them and refused to go back into the line until they could elect their own commander. Soon after these last attacks at the end of February the front stabilized, because both sides were now completely exhausted. The Valencia road had not been cut and the nationalists had suffered heavy losses among their best troops. (It would seem that casualties were roughly equal on both sides, although estimates varied from 6,000 up to 20,000.)

The Battle of the Jarama saw a closer co-ordination between ground and air forces on the nationalist side, but not on the republican, as a commissar with the Soviet squadrons reported back to Moscow: ‘The air force keeps working all day under a great strain, giving its greatest effort to the fighting. It defeats the enemy in the air [an over-optimistic claim] and on the ground, tank units break the front line. All that the infantry needs to do is to secure the results of the air and armoured operations. But the weak rifle units fail to do this. Our men, when they learn about this, feel that their work is being wasted. For example, the fighter pilots said after the air battles over the Jarama: “We don’t mind making another five or six sorties a day, if only the infantry would advance and secure the results of our work.” After our fighters had had a successful day of fighting over the Jarama sector, the pilots asked what the rifle units had achieved, and when they found out that the infantry had even retreated a little, this caused a lot of unhappiness. Pilot Sokolov became very nervous, he even wept.’¹¹

The nationalists had used the Condor Legion Junkers 52 to counter the T-26 attack on the Pindoque bridge and Modesto’s advance on La Marañosa. The republican air force had managed to maintain an effective umbrella for most of the early days of the battle, but after 13 February their supremacy was challenged by the Fiat CR 32s of the nationalists, which engaged the Chatos in a large-scale dogfight over Arganda. Five days later the ‘Blue Patrol’ Fiat group, led by the nationalist ace Morato, was transferred to the front. Together with Fiats of the Legionary Air Force they inflicted heavy losses on a republican group comprising a Chato squadron with a flight of American volunteers, a Russian Chato squadron and a Russian Mosca squadron. It would appear that the Soviet pilots were ordered to act with great caution as a result of these disastrous engagements, in which eight Chatos were shot down while the nationalists lost only one Fiat.¹²

After digging in, this second stalemate became a monotonous existence in the damp olive groves. It was a life of rain-filled trenches, congealed stew, occasional deaths from odd bursts of firing and useless attempts to get rid of lice in the seams of clothes. The commissars tried to keep up morale with organized political ‘discussions’ and by distributing pamphlets or Party newspapers. The lack of fighting also brought to the International Brigades at the front such diversely famous visitors as Stephen Spender, Henri Cartier-Bresson, the scientist Professor J. B. S. Haldane and Errol Flynn.

The events of recent months, especially the fall of Málaga, provoked dissension within the government over the handling of the war. The communists led a determined attack on General Asensio Torrado, the under-secretary of war, whose conduct Largo Caballero had successfully defended against criticism the previous October. (Earlier the communists had tried to flatter Asensio Torrado as the ‘hero of the democratic republic’, but he rejected their advances and took measures against them, such as insisting on an inquiry into irregularities in their 5th Regiment’s accounts and trying to stop their infiltration of the Assault Guard.) As they could not accuse him of incompetence after the qualified success at the Jarama, they attacked him for not having sent enough ammunition to prevent the fall of Málaga.

Álvarez del Vayo openly supported the communist ministers, thus finally ending his friendship with the prime minister. The anarchist ministers did nothing to help the general because they felt he had consistently discriminated against their troops. The republicans and right socialists also disliked him, mainly because of Largo’s obsessive reaction to any criticism of his chosen subordinate. The general was finally removed on 21 February. His place was filled by Carlos de Baráibar, a close colleague of Largo Caballero. The communists were disappointed not to have one of their own men appointed.