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

Quinto was attacked by the 25th Division, which managed to take it on 26 August, despite the nationalist troops’ courageous defence of the chapel of Bonastre. With the 11th Division locked in a stalemate in Fuentes de Ebro, the 35th Division had to be sent to its aid. Republican commanders were obsessed once again with crushing every defensive position, when they should have forged ahead towards the main objective and left them to second-line troops. At this point Modesto proposed changing the original plan of taking Saragossa into one of capturing Belchite, which was defended by only a few hundred men. These nationalist defenders had good machine-gun positions, some of them made in ferro-concrete and others in specially prepared houses, as well as the seminary and church of San Agustín.

The attack on Belchite began at ten in the morning on 1 September. It was supported by artillery and aircraft flown by the first Spanish pilots to graduate from training schools in the Soviet Union. Much of the town was reduced to rubble. Then the tanks advanced, a very unwise manoeuvre, since they were extremely vulnerable in streets partially blocked by collapsed buildings. The next day resistance was crushed in the seminary and the fighting revolved around the church of San Agustín. The Calle Mayor became the main line of fire while the nationalists defended their positions in the calle Goya and the town hall from behind sandbagged emplacements. The desperate fighting continued until 6 September when the whole of Belchite was a smoking ruin of death, smashed masonry, dust and corpses, both human and animal. The ‘nauseating stench’ drifted out over the countryside around.¹⁴

The whole operation had lasted thirteen days, during which the republican troops lacked water in stifling heat amid the overwhelming smell of rotting bodies so powerful that those who had gas masks wore them in spite of the temperature.¹⁵ The delays caused by the nationalists’ fierce defence of Quinto and Codó had given them time to bring up Barrón’s 13th Division and Sáenz de Buruaga’s 150th Division. This was a repeat of the republicans’ mistakes at Brunete. They wasted totally unnecessary numbers of men and time reducing resistance points that should have been contained and bypassed. The small nationalist garrisons never posed a serious threat to Modesto’s rearguard if he had continued the advance. In the end this huge effort by the republicans, who enjoyed overwhelming superiority, succeeded only in advancing ten kilometres and taking a handful of villages and small towns. It was a total failure in its main objectives of taking Saragossa and diverting the nationalists from their campaign in the north.

Once again the Republic suffered a considerable loss of badly needed armament, especially the tanks. And once more Stalinist paranoia blamed the failure on a ‘Trotskyist’ fifth column. General Walter considered the situation worse than at Brunete. ‘The 35th Division’s medical unit’, he reported, ‘registered several instances of wounded internationalists who were in Spanish hospitals for treatment dying because of maliciously negligent or completely unnecessary surgical operations and diagnoses and methods of treating the sick that were patently the work of wreckers.’ In addition, ‘a large-scale Trotskyist spy and terrorist organization’ was suspected in XIV International Brigade. They were supposedly planning to murder Hans Sanje, its commander, and Walter himself. Walter called the NKVD in Barcelona to come to investigate, but ‘Brigade Commander Sanje took it upon himself to carry out the investigation. He went to work so ardently and clumsily that the arrested man, a French lieutenant, quickly died during interrogation, taking with him the secret of the organization.’¹⁶

General Pozas held Walter responsible for the failure of the operation, by concentrating on secondary objectives and not the main one. Prieto was furious at the handling of the battle and his bitter criticism aroused the Party’s anger against him. Along with a growing number of senior officers, he had begun to recognize that communist direction of the war effort was destroying the Popular Army with prestige operations which it could not afford and triumphalist propaganda that was counterproductive. The Catalonia press claimed on 4 September, while the fighting still raged in Belchite, that ‘an intelligent and relevant act of the government has given for the first time mobility to all battle fronts. The Spanish people are starting to sense the longed-for and welcome consequences of an efficient policy of national unity facing the fascist invasion.¹⁷