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

The departure of Prieto from government was strikingly reminiscent of that of his old rival, Largo Caballero. The anarchists also supported Prieto, despite their great ideological differences, out of a fear of the communists. The April government crisis created a bitter enmity between Prieto and Negrín, his former disciple, which was to continue on into exile.

When Negrín informed the president of the Republic of the crisis, Azaña called a meeting at the Pedralbes Palace, and in the course of a long speech, full of sous-entendus, he made clear that they would have to give up hope of prevailing through military strength.²⁸ He was already considering a government of capitulation headed by Prieto or Besteiro. Negrín confronted Azaña, insisting on his unshakeable determination to resist to the end. So did the communist leader, José Díaz, who blurted out with such vehemence that the president ‘was on the point of abusing his constitutional powers’ that Azaña was thoroughly disconcerted.

On 6 April 1938 Azaña asked Negrín once again to form a government. It was supposed to be a ‘government of unity’, hoping to recreate the Popular Front, although it was described later as the ‘war government’. Negrín took on the role of minister of defence as well as his presidency of the council of ministers.²⁹ The fact that only one communist remained in the cabinet had much to do with Stalin’s reaction, alarmed by the Sino-Japanese war and Nazi expansionism. The hope of reaching an accommodation with Britain and France still remained the chief reason for keeping the communist profile as low as possible. (In France too, Maurice Thorez had been ordered by the Comintern not to be part of the Blum government.) Stalin, however, was persuaded to allow Uribe to stay in the cabinet.

Despite the government’s outward impression of political unity, the real power was wielded by negrínistas and, above all, communists. Antonio Cordón was appointed under-secretary for war; Carlos Núñez under-secretary for air; Eleuterio Díaz Tendero the head of personnel in the ministry of defence; Manuel Estrada the head of information; Prados head of the naval staff; Jesu ´s Hernández commissar of the Army of the Centre. All were members of the Spanish Communist Party. But Negrín also appointed a couple of prietistas, such as Játiva, who became under-secretary of the navy and Bruno Alonso, who was made commissar of the fleet.

The communists may not have controlled all the posts in the armed forces, but they certainly held the key administrative ones, to say nothing of the main field commands, with Juan Modesto, Enrique Líster, Valentín González, Etelvino Vega, Manuel Tagüeña, General Walter and so on.

The air force and tank corps were also completely under Soviet control, so every military operation required communist approval. Palmiro Togliatti, in a report back to the Comintern, argued that the Spanish Communist Party should ‘take over the whole apparatus of the ministry of defence and the whole of the army’. In the meantime the republican formations, which had been pushed back into Catalonia during the Aragón campaign, needed time to regroup and rearm, before they could hope to be effective in any way. The Aragón débâcle, following swiftly behind the enormous cost of Teruel, had virtually incapacitated the People’s Army, as Prieto had warned. Little could be done to delay the advance of the Navarrese and Moroccan Corps across northern Aragón, and the loss of the hydroelectric plants in the Pyrenees to the west of the River Segre brought Catalonian industry to a standstill.

In the early part of 1938 the government of Neville Chamberlain (who had succeeded Baldwin in May 1937) took the policy of appeasement to such a point that Anthony Eden resigned as foreign minister on 20 February. This event confirmed the dictators in their belief that they had nothing to fear from Great Britain. Chamberlain’s insistence on an Anglo-Italian treaty, in the hope of drawing her away from the influence of Germany, demonstrated convincingly that Axis intervention in Spain would not be challenged, whatever Negrín’s government might propose at the League of Nations.