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

Most regular officers preferred to co-operate with the communists because they were horrified by the militia system. On the whole these loyalist officers tended to be the older and more bureaucratic members of the metropolitan army, since the younger, more aggressive elements had sided with the rising. But only colonial soldiers had received any practical experience. The pre-war home army had seldom even carried out manoeuvres.

The republican commanders therefore had little to offer but secondhand theories left over from the First World War. Along with the communists and the government, who wanted all forces controlled through a central structure, they insisted that the militias adapt to an orthodox model. Eventually the militias would have to agree. They could not resist the enemy for long without major changes and their theorists had failed to put forward any alternative strategy. The government and its allies had an additional motive for wanting to create a regular military organization. They believed that the Republic must impress foreign governments as a conventional state possessing a conventional army.

PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT I

The famous photograph of the young King Alfonso XIII getting to know his people.

Crowds celebrating in Madrid on 14 April 1931 when Alfonso abdicated and left Spain for ever.

The king with General Miguel Primo de Rivera, who seized power with his approval in 1923.

Lerroux, President Alcalá Zamora and Gil Robles in 1934.

Civil guards arrest a socialist in Madrid, October 1934.

Civil guards escort their prisoners after the failed revolution in Asturias of October 1934.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera (seated centre) and fellow Falangists.

April 1936. Shooting breaks out during the funeral of a civil guard officer suspected of an attempt to kill President Azaña.

On 18 July 1936, the day after the rising began in Morocco, Franco reaches Ceuta from the Canary Islands to take over command of the Army of Africa.

19 July 1936. Carlist volunteers flock to the main square of Pamplona to become General Mola’s main force.

Assault guards and anarcho-syndicalist workers of the CNT with a captured field-gun in Barcelona.

POUM militia in the Carlos Marx barracks in Barcelona.

Junkers 52 sent by Hitler with Moroccan regulares during the airlift to Seville, July 1936.

A bandera of the Foreign Legion rounds up villagers during Yagüe’s advance north, August 1936.

28 September 1936. Colonel Varela’s troops advance into Toledo.

Colonel Moscardó, Varela and Franco celebrate the relief of the Alcázar of Toledo.

Franco, as saviour of the Alcázar, became the unchallenged leader of the nationalists. Yagüe (in glasses), Franco (saluting) and Serrano Súñer just behind him.

Luftwaffe pilots with their Heinkel He-45 fighter-bombers.

PART THREE The Civil War Becomes International

Arms and the Diplomats

The failure of the military coup by the rebels, matched by the failure of the government and unions to crush it, meant that Spain faced a long and bloody war. The need for weapons in this much longer struggle forced both sides to seek help abroad, the first major step in the internationalization of the Spanish Civil War.

Of the three most important neutral governments, the British played the most crucial role. An isolationist United States was wary of international commitments. The French government of Léon Blum was alarmed by Hitler’s rearmament and, despite France’s pact with Russia, relied primarily on Great Britain for mutual defence. Yet when Blum received a telegram on 19 July from José Giral’s government in Madrid requesting arms, his first reaction was to agree to help. The Republican government wanted twenty Potez bombers, eight Schneider 155mm fieldguns, Hotchkiss machine-guns, Lebel rifles, grenades and ammunition.¹ He prepared their despatch in secret with Pierre Cot, the minister of aviation.

The reasons for such discretion were that Blum’s Popular Front coalition had been in office for only six weeks, and street fighting in France took place between left-wingers and fascist groups, such as the Croix-de-Feu. The violence, although not comparable to that in Spain during the spring, still made senior army officers restless. Generals Gamelin, Duval and Jouart, as well as the powerful industrialists of the Comité des Forges, warned that the slightest suggestion of involving the country in the Spanish conflict risked provoking a major storm.² The Catholic writer François Mauriac warned in the Figaro: ‘Take care! We will never forgive you for such a crime.’³