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

Meetings of the Non-Intervention Committee began in London on 8 September, after numerous delays. These were caused mainly by Germany’s refusal to participate until a crash-landed Junkers 52 was returned by the Republic. The committee was organized by the British Foreign Office in London. Lord Plymouth was chairman and the rest of the committee consisted of the ambassadors of the signatory nations, which included every European country except Switzerland. The ambassador of the Republic in London, Pablo de Azcárate, referred to ‘confused discussions, embroiled and sterile at which denunciations and counter-denunciations took place’.¹⁶ Eden himself had to admit that ‘the lengthy meetings continued…accusations were met with flat denials and the results of both were sterile’.

The British foreign secretary tried to claim that in October ‘the Russians were openly sending supplies to Spain and the evidence we had at this time was more specific against them than against the dictators in Rome and Berlin’.¹⁷ Yet in Geneva at the end of September he had recorded that Álvarez del Vayo, the Republic’s foreign minister, ‘left with me documents and photographs to prove the extent to which Hitler and Mussolini were violating the agreement’. Even the German chargé d’affaires was concerned at the way Wehrmacht uniforms were being cheered openly on the streets of Seville. And considering the sympathies of the Royal Navy in Gibraltar, it was perhaps not surprising that a blind eye had been turned on the streams of Junkers and Savoias over Gibraltar, which had ferried the Army of Africa between Tetuán and Seville. The American ambassador to Spain, Claude Bowers, later condemned the whole procedure: ‘Each movement of the Non-Intervention Committee has been made to serve the cause of the rebellion…This Committee was the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known.’¹⁸

The Soviet Union and the Spanish Republic

During October 1936 the nationalists concentrated their best forces on the renewed attack towards the capital from the south-west. Their relentless advance made it look as if the Spanish Republic was mortally stricken, but the defence of Madrid soon became a rallying call throughout Europe to all those who feared and hated the triumphant forces of ‘international fascism’. The communist slogan that ‘Madrid will be the grave of fascism’ was powerfully emotive and the battle for the capital was to help the party to power. From 38,000 members in the spring of 1936, the Communist Party was to increase to 200,000 by the end of the year and 300,000 by March 1937.¹

The Spanish Communist Party was ordered by the Comintern leaders, Dmitri Manuilski and Georgi Dimitrov, to collaborate in the defeat of the rebellion and the defence of a democratic and independent Spanish Republic. This strategy, decided at the time that the Soviet Union was joining the Non-Intervention Committee, conformed to various political objectives: first, to combat the impression that Spain was undergoing a revolution to install a communist regime; second, to counter the claim of their enemy, relying on outside help, that theirs was a national movement; third, to try to reconcile Leninism with the traditional idea of Spanish liberalism.²

Nevertheless, the situation was hardly encouraging. The military position became worse day by day. Madrid appeared doomed after the defeat at Talavera while Bilbao was threatened after the loss of Irún and San Sebastián. The republicans had still not managed to take Oviedo, they had failed at Toledo and the anarchists’ offensive against Saragossa had come to a halt. They managed to hold on north of Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama, but that, like all republican successes, was purely a defensive action.

These setbacks and the strong German and Italian support for the nationalists made Dimitrov, the secretary general of the Comintern, consider intervention by the Soviet Union. On 28 August he wrote in his diary: ‘The question of aiding the Spanish (possible organization of an international corps).’ On 3 September he wrote: ‘The situation in Spain is critical.’ And on 14 September he noted: ‘Organize help for the Spanish (in a covert form).’³

For some years, the question of Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War has been polarized between two schematic versions: it was either a Comintern strategy to establish a Soviet regime serving the orders of Moscow, or on the other hand a heroic USSR, motherland of the proletariat, disinterestedly helping the legally constituted Republic. Neither of these two conflicting interpretations is correct, but the latter is definitely further from the rather complicated truth.⁴