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

Giral’s request for arms received no reply. For the first two weeks of the Spanish Civil War the lack of comment on events from Moscow raised alarm in foreign communist circles. Stalin was about to purge the Red Army, Trotsky’s creation, and he was deeply concerned at the prospect of a foreign adventure which might provoke Hitler at such a time of Soviet weakness. But the exiled Trotsky made use of this silence to accuse Stalin of betraying the Spanish revolution and aiding the fascists. Whether or not it was Trotsky who goaded him into action, Stalin must have realized that Soviet communism would lose all credibility, and probably the loyalty of European parties, if nothing was done to help the Republic. Stalin therefore decided to send aid to the Spanish government, but little more than the necessary minimum. In this way he would neither frighten the British government, which he needed as a potential ally, nor provoke the Germans.

On 3 August ‘popular demonstrations’ and ‘spontaneous indignation meetings’ took place all over Russia. Factory workers made ‘voluntary contributions’ to help the Republic and the government sent its first nonmilitary supplies. Comintern officials, using false names, were also sent to Spain to make sure that the young Spanish Communist Party should not step out of line. Only at the end of September did Stalin decide to provide military help.²⁹ The first shipment left the Crimea on 26 September and did not reach Cartagena until 4 October.

Mexico, the other country to support the Republic, refused to join the non-intervention agreement. President Lázaro Cárdenas, despite his country’s limited resources, provided the republicans with 20,000 Mauser rifles, 20 million rounds and food. These rifles from Mexico were used to arm the militias facing the Army of Africa as it advanced on Madrid.³⁰

The Spanish war was no longer simply an internal struggle. Spain’s strategic importance, and the coincidence of the civil war with the Axis powers’ preparations to test their secretly developed weaponry in Europe, ensured that the war lost its amateur character. The nationalists were inundated with foreign advisers, observers, technical experts and combat personnel. Within a month of the rising Franco had received 48 Italian and 41 German aircraft. The Republic, on the other hand, received no more than thirteen Dewoitine fighters and six Potez 54 bombers. These aircraft were outdated, and lacked weapons and even mountings. The French government could not provide pilots, so the Republic had to resort to very expensive volunteers.

Malraux, the author of La Condition Humaine and supposedly a communist sympathizer, set up the air squadron España crewed by mercenaries and paid for by the republican government. This provoked the suspicion and contempt of the Comintern representative, André Marty, who regarded Malraux with a good deal of justification as an ‘adventurer’. When Soviet advisers arrived, they criticized him for ignoring republican commanders, making ‘absurd proposals’ and for knowing ‘little about aerial tactics’. They also berated his group for ‘a complete lack of discipline and lack of participation in battle’. To be fair, their obsolete aircraft stood little chance against Heinkel or Fiat fighters, but this did not stop Malraux from extracting exorbitant rates of pay for very little action, as the Soviet officers reported to Moscow. ‘He had recruited the pilots and technicians himself in France. Most of them have come here in order to make good money. Due to his insistence, the Spanish government was paying 50,000 francs a month to pilots, 30,000 francs to observers, and 15,000 to mechanics. This was during the period when the government had no air force at all and it was easy for Malraux to persuade them to pay whatever he wanted.’³¹

The Republic, ignorant of the murky world of mercenaries and the armament industry, suffered from numerous confidence tricksters. Malraux stands out, not just because he was a mythomaniac in his claims of martial heroism–both in Spain and later in the French Resistance–but because he cynically exploited the opportunity for intellectual heroism in the legend of the Spanish Republic.

Relations between foreigners and Spanish were seldom smooth on either side. Franco and his officers hated being indebted to their allies, while their often arrogant German advisers might perhaps have agreed with the Duke of Wellington’s comment on the Spanish officers attached to his staff that ‘the national weakness was boasting of Spain’s greatness’. The Republic, however, was to suffer far more from its only powerful ally, the Soviet Union.

Sovereign States