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

The need for much closer liaison between advancing ground troops and their air support had also become obvious to both sides by the time of the Battle of Jarama, yet the Red Army refused to install radios in non-command tanks throughout the Second World War and for most of the Cold War. The only real lesson that Soviet advisers learned was on the advantage of concentrating centrally controlled, long-range artillery, a tactic which finally had a chance to pay off during the Battle of Stalingrad.³

One of the most debated questions is whether foreign intervention was decisive or not. Hitler’s decision to send Junkers 52 transports to help Franco carry the first detachments of regulares and Foreign Legion across the Straits of Gibraltar was certainly important, but it is hard to say that it was decisive. The republican navy’s incompetence and lack of initiative during the revolutionary chaos of the early weeks meant that the Army of Africa would have got across eventually. And since the republican forces were incapable of launching an offensive, time was not as crucial as it would otherwise have been. The argument that the rebellion of the generals would have collapsed in the summer of 1936 is unconvincing, unless one brings in that other form of intervention, the supply of ammunition from Portugal. Franco and his fellow rebel generals had gone too far to pull back, and so long as they had enough ammunition the battle would have continued until a critical mass of africanistas had reached the mainland.

Soviet intervention may well have helped save Madrid for the Republic in November 1936, as Franquist historians claim, but overall, there can be no doubt that German and Italian forces greatly shortened the war in the nationalists’ favour. To say that they won the war for Franco entirely would be going too far. The Condor Legion above all accelerated the conquest of the north, a development which enabled the nationalists to concentrate their forces in the centre of Spain. But the truly devastating effectiveness of the Condor Legion came in countering the major republican offensives of 1937 and 1938, battles which were to break the back of the republican armed forces. These perfect opportunities for the deployment of air power to maximum effect were, however, provided by the disastrous leadership of the communist commanders and their Soviet advisers.

The organization and objectives which the People’s Army assumed in the winter of 1936 were moulded more by internal and external political pressures than by military considerations. The communists’ demands for a unified command and discipline were entirely logical from a military point of view (while, of course, presenting them with the best way to seize the levers of power). But the idea that the only possible strategy consisted of set-piece offensives, straight out of French training manuals from the First World War, proved to be almost as grave a liability as the militias’ belief in the triumph of revolutionary morale. Even worse, the decisions to take the offensive were not guided by coherent thinking. In almost all cases these attacks were vain attempts to take the pressure off other threatened sectors and were launched for propaganda considerations. Once the attack had achieved surprise, the People’s Army commanders then allowed the momentum of the offensive to be lost by besieging villages and small towns. In a matter of a few days the nationalists managed to redeploy their troops and the Condor Legion.

The Condor Legion, as its war diaries confirm, found that Soviet pilots and the republican air force lacked confidence in combat and proved more of a nuisance than a danger. So its squadrons were able to bomb and strafe the People’s Army’s elite formations at will, since they were usually trapped in a small area on a completely exposed terrain. Yet the republican leadership, even though all surprise and momentum had been lost, could not withdraw its precious troops and tanks, because of the grossly exaggerated propaganda claims that had been made when announcing the offensive. Thus the Battles of Brunete, Belchite, Teruel and the Ebro were all disastrous repetitions. To make matters far worse, the Stalinist paranoia of the Soviet advisers and Spanish communist leaders attributed all reverses to Trotskyite treason and ‘fifth columnists’. Preposterous theories were concocted, innocent officers and soldiers arrested and shot, and reports were sent back to Moscow which revealed delusions that went well over the edge of sanity. It is hardly surprising that republican morale suffered so desperately.