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

Prieto combined this frenzy of moral courage and political decisiveness with a terrible pessimism, at times worse than that of Azaña and much less discreet. The minister of defence did not restrain himself from assuring the French ambassador, Labonne, that the war was as good as lost. His tendency to say in public exactly what he thought became a grave problem for Negrín. This was the beginning of the end of their friendship.

Prieto had hoped that the seizure of Teruel would provide a position of strength from which to start negotiations with Franco, but like Negrín a few months later, and Colonel Casado at the very end of the war, he totally underestimated Franco’s obsessive desire to crush his enemies utterly and impose his vision of Spain on the whole country. The collapse of the offensive and its disastrous sequel in Aragón left him utterly demoralized.

The communist press began to attack his policy of depoliticizing the army. In February, his cabinet colleague Jesús Hernández wrote an article in Frente Rojo denouncing him as a defeatist.²⁴ As the communist attacks, including those of La Pasionaria, increased, Prieto told Negrín that he could not work with Hernández. Negrín raised the matter at the council of ministers, supporting Prieto, and the communists had to comply, for the time being.

On 12 March Negrín went to Paris to meet French ministers, principally Blum, Daladier, Auriol and Cot. He was hoping to ask them to intervene in Spain with five divisions and 150 aircraft. The French military attaché in Spain, Colonel Morel, had already warned his government of the nationalists’ overwhelming air superiority and the need to provide the republicans with at least 300 aircraft to restore the situation. But the French government was alarmed by the Anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria, which Hitler carried out on the day Negrín reached Paris. They had no intention of intervening in Spain and risking a European conflagration. All that Negrín achieved was the agreement of the French government to open the border to allow through armament deliveries which had been held up.

On 16 March, on his return, Negrín called a cabinet meeting at the Pedralbes Palace in Barcelona. It happened to be the morning before the major Italian air raids. Just before the meeting, Negrín insisted that Prieto and Giral, who had also expressed his fears of inevitable defeat, should both support him. The next day, however, Azaña expressed his own concerns and asked Prieto to voice his views on the weakness of the People’s Army, the critical situation in which the Republic found itself and the need to reach an agreement on ending the war. Prieto not only agreed, but painted a desolate and accurate picture of the opinions of the military commanders he had consulted. He went so far as to propose that the Republic should freeze its assets abroad to be ready for the needs of the future exiles. Negrín was completely undermined in his arguments with the president of the Republic, who considered him a ‘visionario fanta

´stico’ in his view that the Republic should fight on.

At this tense moment the council was informed that a huge demonstration had assembled outside the Pedralbes Palace. This had been prepared several days before at a meeting between communist leaders–Mije, La Pasionaria and Díaz–and representatives from the other working-class organizations, including the CNT and the FAI.²⁵ Negrín had been warned in advance of this demonstration to demand the resignation of ‘defeatist’ ministers. He left the room and went out to reassure the crowd that the struggle against the fascists would continue right up to the end. The demonstrators dispersed.

On 18 March, after the terrible bombing raids, representatives of the UGT and CNT signed an agreement submitting industrial planning to government control. It was probably the greatest concession the anarcho-syndicalists had made during the war. Promoted by Mariano Vázquez, it was the most explicit recognition of the state. On 29 March Prieto had a meeting with Negrín. He insisted that the war was lost and predicted the collapse of the Republic. Negrín was appalled. He said to a colleague, ‘Now I don’t know whether to tell my driver to take me home or to the frontier. That was how frightful Prieto’s report was.’²⁶ According to Zugazagoitia, this report convinced Negrín that he had to ask Prieto to resign from the ministry of defence. He offered him a minor post in the government, but to the rejoicing of the communists, Prieto refused.²⁷ Prieto, the Cassandra of the Republic, was to be proved right within the year.