On the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War it is estimated that
the Republic had retained the loyalty of about half the soldiers in
the Spanish Army. However, only a small percentage of the officers
refused to fight with the Nationalist
Army. These were
often members of the left-wing Union Militar Republican Antifascisca
(UMRA).
There were also two internal
paramilitary police forces: the Civil Guard
and the Assault Guard. The Civil Guard,
an elite paramilitary police force, had 34,320 men and officers. It
is estimated that 14,000 joined the Nationalists and 20,000 remained
with the Popular Front government. The
Assault Guard had around 30,000 men. Of these, only 3,500 refused
to join the Nationalist uprising.
To protect the To protect
the Popular Front government, José
Giral, the new prime minister, gave orders for arms to be distributed
to left-wing organizations and trade unions that opposed the military
uprising.
The Republican Army was
formed from the soldiers who remained loyal to the government, militia
battalions and conscripts. There was a large number of battalions
that were created by various political groups. For example, the Anarchist
Brigades and the Communist controlled Fifth
Regiment. In the Basque provinces the militias were organized
mainly by the regionalist parties.
When Francisco
Largo Caballero came
to power in September 1936 he attempted to create a new Republican
Army. With the help of two senior officers, General José
Asensio and General Vincente Rojo, he
established a central command and appointed generals to command specified
areas in Spain. Militias were placed under military law and schools
were established to train future officers in the army.
Political commissars were
created in the Republican Army in October 1936. These men served as
education officers for soldiers who did not have a full understanding
of fascism. This included the publication of army newspapers and the
teaching of literacy.
In October 1936 large quantities
of Soviet tanks and aircraft began arriving in Spain. They were accompanied
by a large number of tank-drivers and pilots from the Soviet
Union. All told, about 850 Soviet advisers, pilots, technical
personnel and interpreters took part in the Spanish
Civil War.
A total of 59,380 volunteers
from fifty-five countries served in the International
Brigades during the war. This included the following: French (10,000),
German (5,000), Polish (5,000), Italian (3,350), American (2,800),
British (2,000), Canadian (1,000), Yugoslavian (1,500), Czech (1,500)
Hungarian (1,000) and Scandinavian (1,000). These men were organized
into the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of the Mixed Brigades.
Volunteers included Bill
Alexander, George
Orwell,
André
Marty, Christopher
Caudwell, Jack Jones, Len
Crome, Oliver
Law,
Tom
Winteringham
and John Cornford. Volunteers
came from a variety of left-wing groups but the brigades were always
led by Communists. This created problems with other Republican groups
such as the Workers
Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and
the Anarchists.
The performance of the
Republican Army gradually improved but the lack of experienced junior
officers meant that they were rarely able to take full advantage of
breaking through Nationalist frontlines. In the spring of 1938 the
Republicans were unable to block the Nationalist drive to the Mediterranean.
Republican forces were also badly beaten in Aragon and Catalonia and
at the beginning of February 1939, they began crossing into France.
Members of the Republican
Army that were captured were treated harshly. Volunteers, militia
officers, political commissars, professional non-commissioned officers,
and any soldier who was not a conscript were court-martialled for
military rebellion.
After the war it is believed
that the government of General Francisco
Franco arranged
the executions of 100,000 Republican prisoners. It is estimated that
another 35,000 Republicans died in concentration camps in the years
that followed the war.
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(1)
A
member of the Labour Party, Emanuel
Shinwell initially
argued that the British government should give support to the Republicans
in the Spanish
Civil War. He wrote about his views in his autobiography, Conflict
Without Malice (1955)
While the war was at its height several of us
were invited to visit Spain to see how things were going with the
Republican Army. The fiery little Ellen Wilkinson met us in Paris,
and was full of excitement and assurance that the Government would
win. Included in the party were Jack Lawson, George Strauss, Aneurin
Bevan, Sydney Silverman, and Hannen Swaffer. We went by train to the
border at Perpignan, and thence by car to Barcelona where Bevan left
for another part of the front.
It soon became clear to
me that the bravery of the Republican soldiers was not going to be
enough. Ill-equipped, only partially trained, lacking arms (I was
always asking to see heavy artillery and was always promised that
I should see it - later), the Army seemed to me to be doomed to defeat
unless a miracle happened or the democracies intervened.
(2)
Bill Paynter, article published in Volunteer for Liberty (5th
October 1937)
The Government forces are now on the offensive, and this in itself
bears witness to the tremendous growth and development of the Popular
Army. We cannot pay too high a tribute
to the people of Spain and the Popular Front Government, when we remember
that this powerful
army has been forged even while, with immense handicaps, the Fascists
were being kept at
bay. Only the profound faith and determination of a democratic people
in the cause they
were fighting could have accomplished this. Such an example should
sharpen our intelligence
and better equip us to participate in the progressive movements of
our own countries.
This experience should
give us confidence for the future. Even closer relationships must
be developed between the British in the Battalion and the Spanish
comrades. In training, in
reserve, on rest, in battle, there must be no separation by nationalities.
We must see the fight
as one of a people for whom national barriers do not exist.
Without this close cohesion
of all sections, companies, the Battalion cannot be an effective fighting
unit. We have therefore to remove bad habits of the past and attain
a more intimate knowledge and relationship with our Spanish comrades.
With such unity in the command and throughout the Battalion every
order and command will be responded to by a united and powerful Battalion.
Our Battalion has earned
a name on the battlefronts of Spain of which we can be justly proud.
We have taken part in the most decisive battles in the war, and contributed
much toward producing the present favourable position for the Government
forces. The most decisive battles are just ahead. It is our duty here
and at home to continue to assist our Spanish comrades in every possible
way until final victory has been won.
With this as our aim we
shall be able to continue and accomplish our historic tasks
here in Spain, and at the
same time inspire the people of Britain into decisive action alongside
the peoples of the world to crush Fascism and reaction wherever it
raises its head.
(3)
Edward
Knoblaugh,
Correspondent in Spain (1937)
Largo Caballero began to realize the need for
immediate drastic action. As president of the U.G.T., he summoned
the sub-leaders of this Revolutionary Socialist group and impressed
upon them the desperateness of the situation. The result was a round-table
conference among the U.G.T., the heads of the Syndicalists National
Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.), The Federation of Iberian Anarchists
(F.A.I.), The Trotsky Communists (Partido Obrero Unificado Marxists
- P.O.U.M.), The Stalin Communists and the Left Republicans. In the
first agreement which these divergent factions had been able to reach
since the beginning of the war they approved the immediate mobilization
of all able-bodied men in Loyalist territory. A decree to this effect
was issued. Whether they wanted to join or not, all men between the
ages of 20 and 45 were pressed into military service. From this moment
on, the Loyalist army ceased to be a voluntary army.
(4)
Tom
Murray,
Voices From the Spanish Civil War (1986)
The role of the commissar
of course is an extremely interesting one and a valuable aspect of
a popular army. You see, in the days of Cromwell and the Roundheads,
they had what was similar to commissars, but they weren't called commissars
- they were really religious to some extent. But it's noteworthy that
the commissar in the Spanish army had a dual role. He had an equal
military status with the commander of the unit to which we was attached
as commissar. But he never interfered with the commander unless he
felt that something required to be corrected. All the time I was a
commissar Jack Nalty, an Irishman, was our company commander, and
a very capable man he was. Unfortunately, he was killed in the last
stages of the War. Jack Nalty and I of course ran this organization
of the Company and only on one occasion did I exercise my authority
as a commissar against him. He was dead beat and we were marching
along a road with the machine guns and I was becoming more and more
conscious of the feeling that we were going in the wrong direction.
I said to him, "Well now, don't you think you should halt the
Company and let us think about it?" Oh, he wasn't in favour.
He says, "We're all right." "Well," I says, "I'm
afraid that I've got to exercise my authority as commissar,"
and I halted the Company. A runner from the British Battalion, whose
commissar was Bob Cooney, had been sent down in fact to see where
we were. And right enough, if we'd gone round another corner we'd
have been bang into a group of Fascists with machine guns. That was
the only occasion on which I exercised my authority to supersede the
function of the commander of the company. But it illustrates the high
responsibility which rested on the shoulders of the commissar.
The commissar was the
master of all trades, as it were. Our job was to look after the welfare
of the personnel, their clothing, their recreation, their food, the
distribution of food, and the general military efficiency. The military
efficiency of course was the primary consideration over-shadowing
everything else, and we had the job of dealing with any people who
were browned off or who had been there maybe for a long time and had
come back into the company from the
front, from the earlier actions before the rest of us were there at
all. And some of them of course were exhausted, mentally and physically
exhausted and we had to get them back to a normal state by whatever
form of special treatment that was desirable.
One of the jobs of the
commissar when people were killed was to take their personal effects
off their bodies and send them home to their people. Also our job
was to bury the dead. And as a matter of fact, up on these sierras
or mountains, Sierra Pandols, you could scarcely get enough earth
to cover them. It was a most difficult job finding ways and means
of covering the dead bodies.
Then another job that the
commissar had to do was to create a wall newspaper. And we had wall
newspapers with all kinds of press cuttings and contributions from
various people who were writing up little stories and so on, and writing
up reminiscences and their observations and so on. And the wall newspaper
was always a popular rendezvous for people to meet and discuss things.
(5)
Ernest
Hemingway
was interviewed by a representative
of the Spanish Press Agency on 11th May 1937.
All civil wars are naturally long. It takes months, sometimes years,
to create a war organisation of the front and the rear and to turn
thousands of ardent civilians into soldiers. And this transformation
can only take place by their going through the living experience of
battle. If you neglect this fundamental rule you risk getting a false
idea of the character of the Spanish civil war.
A great number of American
newspapers, admittedly in good faith, not very long ago were giving
their readers the
impression that the Government was losing the war owing to its military
inferiority at the outbreak of the conflict. The error of these American
newspapers was to mistake the character of the civil war, and not
to deduce from it the logical conclusions of the history of the American
Civil War.
The Spanish military situation,
following the encouraging days of March, has consistently improved.
A new regular army
is taking shape which is a model of discipline and courage and which
is secretly developing new cadres in the military
academy and schools. I sincerely believe that this new army, born
of the struggle, will shortly be the admiration of all Europe, despite
the fact that hardly two years ago the Spanish army was considered
an agglomeration of individuals resembling actors in a comic opera.
As a war correspondent
I must say that in few countries does a journalist find his task facilitated
to such a degree as
in Republican Spain, where a journalist can really tell the truth
and where the censorship helps him in his work, rather than impeding
him. While the authorities in the rebel zone do not permit journalists
to enter conquered cities until days after, in Republican Spain journalists
are asked to be eye-witnesses of events.
(6)
Eleanora Tennant, Spanish Journey (1936)
In a small village beyond the town of Merida, Jose halted the car
so that I might examine a wall surrounding the village cemetery which
had been used by Red firing-squads as a place of execution. This wall
was about 7 feet high, and part of the wall, about 12 feet in length,
was pitted with hundreds of bullet-holes. Only a space about a foot
in width at the top and a foot wide at the bottom was free of bullet-marks.
Talavera had suffered
the usual Red atrocities before the Nationalists arrived. More than
100 of the inhabitants were shot, including a number of priests and
nuns. Many of these suffered appalling tortures. The prison conditions
as recounted by a refined English woman (married to a Spaniard), who
had been in Talavera under the Reds, are too horrible to record in
detail. Suffice to say that over 50 men and women were imprisoned
for many weeks in one small room and never allowed to leave it under
any pretext. Hardly any furniture and no conveniences of any kind
were supplied. The centre of the room had to be used as a public latrine.
The atmosphere became so unbearable that some died and others continually
lost consciousness.
(7)
Statement issued by the Nationalist government on 3rd May 1937.
With the unanimity which might appear to suggest obedience
to orders many English and French newspapers are using a comparatively
minor event such as the hypothetical bombardment of a small town as
the basis of a campaign designed to present 'Nationalist' Spain as
anti-humanitarian and opposed to the principles of the laws of nations,
thus serving the ends of the Soviet faction which dominates the Spanish
'Red' zone. These newspapers clamour against the bombardment of open
towns, attempting to lay the blame for such outrages upon the 'Nationalists'.
'National' Spain energetically rejects so injurious a campaign and
denounces these manoeuvres before the world.
The newspapers now crying
aloud remained silent when in Madrid, under the presidency of the
'Red' Government, thousands of innocent beings were murdered. Over
60,000 died at the hands of the 'Red' hordes without any motive other
than the whims of a militiaman or a servant's dislike, in this way
perished old people, women, and children, all of them innocent. In
the Madrid prisons murders were committed without check under the
supervision of the 'Red' Government agents. There fell intellectuals,
politicians, many Republicans, Liberals, Democrats, and members of
the Right.
At Barcelona also 50,000
or 60,000 horrible murders have been committed, and there have been
many thousands more
killed in Malaga, Valencia, and other large towns after barbarous
tortures. This was not war. It was crime and vengeance. But then the
newspapers which are today defending so-called humanitarian principles
were silent or spoke timidly or even attempted to justify such barbarous
crimes. They were silent too when bishops and thousands of priests,
monks, and nuns were cruelly done to death and beautiful artistic
treasures were burned in the churches of Spain.
The hospitals at Melilla,
Cordova, Burgos, Saragossa, and recently the schools at Vallodolid
and towns miles from the
front have been bombarded by the 'Red' aeroplanes. There were numerous
victims among the women and children without any word of protest being
heard from the self-appointed champions of humanity. The city of Oviedo
has been literally destroyed by the 'Red Huns' and aeroplanes in the
same silence.
And now the Basque Soviet
allies have blown up Eibar, a hard-working industrial city before
the entry of our troops.
They used dynamite and liberally sprayed petrol until most of the
buildings were destroyed. But those who today weep
for Guernica remained unmoved and suffered no scandal. Irun suffered
a similar fate under the eyes of European journalists and witnesses
from Hendaye in the same negligent or culpable silence.
Guernica, less than four
miles from the fighting line, was an important crossroads filled with
troops retiring towards
other defences. At Guernica an important factory has been manufacturing
arms and munitions for nine months. It would
not have been surprising if the 'National' 'planes had marked Guernica
as an objective. The laws of war allowed it, the rights of the people
notwithstanding. It was a classical military objective with an importance
thoroughly justifying a bombardment. Yet it was not bombarded.
It is possible that a
few bombs fell upon Guernica during days when our aeroplanes were
operating against objectives
of military importance. But the destruction of Guernica, the great
fire at Guernica, the explosions which during the whole
day occurred at Guernica - these were the work of the same men who
at Eibar, Irun, Malaga, and countless towns of
Northern and Southern Spain demonstrated their ability as incendiarists.
The Spanish and part of
the foreign press duly reported the 'Red' Militia's threats to destroy
Madrid before the 'National'
troops entered it. The blowing up of great buildings which are today
still mined has been systematically prepared by
the 'Red' Government, which is indirectly served by those now clamouring
about Guernica. Let this manoeuvre at the service of 'Red' Spain cease
and let the world know that Guernica's case, though clumsily exploited,
turns against this Government of incendiarists and assassins, who
at Russia's orders pursue the systematic destruction of the national
wealth of Spain.
(8)
Manuel Portela Valladares, the Spanish prime minister between 30th
December 1935 and 19th February 1936, was interviewed in Barcelona
on 8th January 1938.
My opinion is that the Republican
army is stronger than the
rebel army. I said this three months ago, and now the capture of Teruel
has proved it to the world. The northern front collapsed because it
was technically impossible to defend, because it lacked unity of command,
and because it was geographically inaccessible. In spite of his 80,000
Italians and 10,000 Germans, in spite of all the supplies provided
by these two great
nations, Franco is now being defeated because he has aroused the spirit
of independence in the Spanish people.
Ten thousand officers
are graduating from the Republican academies each year. War production
has been organised. The Republican command, which contains 6,000 officers
belonging to the former Spanish army, has growing intelligence and
technical services. But nothing is more tremendous than the spirit
of resistance which has withstood all defeats. The war of the Republic
is only now beginning. The Negrin Government has restored order in
Republican Spain to such a degree that the percentage of crimes is
lower than ever before. It has instituted full and normal constitutional
law and respect for this law.
(9)
Juan
Negrin, radio broadcast (27th February 1938)
The loss of Teruel was an episode
of the war brought about by the enormous quantity of arms and men
sent to the assistance of Franco by Italy and Germany. We need the
aid of no one. With the men, material, and ideals at our disposal
we are certain of ultimate victory, which has been so long postponed.
The delay in victory is due solely
to the intervention of foreign Powers and the injustice of the Non-Intervention
Committee which hinders our purchase of armaments.
We believe
that German and Italian superiority in armaments will not last long
and that the Spanish Government with its resources will supply the
Republican Army with all the aeroplanes and war material which are
required, superior to the
Fascists. The Spanish people have shown in history what they are capable
of when their country and liberties are in danger and at stake. The
country of so much suffering and of so great morale
will win in the long run.
(10)
Francisco
Franco, statement (18th
July, 1938)
Our fight is a crusade in which
Europe's fate is at stake. That is why since the beginning Russia
has taken her place unconditionally on the side of the Spanish Republic
by sending tanks and a thousand war-planes, and by mobilizing the
undesirables of all Europe to fight for the Red Army. Our triumph
is immense, in spite of the difficulties of the enterprise. No difficulties
have prevented the rescue of over three million Spaniards from Red
barbarism during the second triumphal year.
I beg
your affectionate remembrance of our brothers who are suffering from
the effects of lawlessness in the Red zone,
and your prayers for the martyrs of our cause. I pay tribute to those
who have fallen far from their own countries - the
natives, the volunteers, the legionaries who left their home to enrol
in the forces of the crusade and to demonstrate in Spain the fullness
of their countries' identification with the cause of firmness and
friendship professed by them towards Spain.
The Reds assassinated
over 70,000 in Madrid, 20,000 in Valencia, 54,000 in Barcelona. Such
crimes are the work of the Comintern and its agents Rosenberg, Marti,
Negrin, Del Vayo - all servants of Soviet Russia.
Spaniards have a duty
to remember that Christian charity is boundless for the deluded and
the repentant but they must
observe the dictates of prudence and not allow the infiltration of
the recalcitrant enemies of Spain. Those proceeding from a politically
infested area must undergo quarantine to avoid the contamination of
the community.
I denounce the new Red
campaigns of those posing as defenders of Spanish independence against
foreign invasion.
The foreign invasion came through the Catalan frontier, whence entered
the undesirables who sacked and destroyed Spanish towns and villages,
looted banks, destroyed homes, and stole our patrimony of art.
The Reds who pursued these
treacherous tactics in the Nationalist rear, in attempting to destroy
our unity, will continue these tactics after the war, when our vigilance
and our care for the purity of our creed must increase. The Nationalist
movement has ousted the old political intrigues and is guiding the
nation to greatness and prosperity.
Spain was great when she
had a State Executive with a missionary character. Her ideals decayed
when a serious leader was replaced by assemblies of irresponsible
men, adopting foreign thought and manners. The nation needs unity
to face modem problems, particularly in Spain after the severest trial
of her history.
Separatism and class war
must be abolished and justice and education must be imposed. The new
leaders must be
characterized by austerity, morality, and industry.
Spaniards must adopt the
military and religious virtues of discipline and austerity. All elements
of discord must be removed.
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