The operation failed partly because the nationalists appeared to have got wind of what was being prepared, but mainly because the republican command had greatly underestimated the speed of the nationalists’ reactions and the effectiveness of their air power. The nationalist Fiat fighter force, led by García Morato, even managed to machine-gun Moriones’s headquarters.6 The Soviet pilots of the republican aircraft, on the other hand, demonstrated a distinct lack of aggressive action. Colonel Moriones in his report wrote, ‘Our own aircraft carried out bombing attacks from a great height and carelessly…our fighters kept at a respectable distance and rarely came down to machine-gun the enemy…enemy aircraft were highly active and extraordinarily effective.’7
This action in the Guadarrama produced the first example of unrest in the ranks of the International Brigades as a result of being sacrificed for little benefit. And the brutality of their commanders when some of their men broke in the face of strafing by nationalist fighters was extreme. Captain Duchesne, who commanded the punishment company of XIV International Brigade, ‘designated five men at random and shot them, one after another, in the back of the head with his pistol in Soviet style’.8
When the 69th Division retreated from Cabeza Grande, an infuriated Walter (before he was relieved) had ordered ‘the machine-gunning of those who pull back, executions on the spot, and the beating of stragglers’.9
The second tactical operation to take pressure off the northern front was an attack on Huesca with the newly constituted Army of the East commanded by General Pozas. General Lukács was ordered up from Madrid with XII International Brigade, which included the Garibaldi Battalion, as well as four other brigades from the Central Front. He was put in charge of the operation, but found that many of the soldiers were badly armed, and that they would have little artillery or armoured support.
Lukács launched the offensive against Huesca on 12 June. The infantry had to attack across a kilometre of open ground. The nationalists, who were well dug in, forced them back with machine-gun fire and artillery. To compound the disaster, the vehicle in which General Lukács and his aides were travelling was hit by a shell. Lukács and his driver were killed, and Gustav Regler, the commissar of XII International Brigade, was badly wounded.10
At dawn on 16 June the republican troops launched a new attack against the villages of Alerre and Chimillas, but the intensity of enemy fire forced them back. On 19 June, after another two days of desultory firing, the offensive was cancelled. The Navarrese brigades had just entered Bilbao. Walter reported that XII International Brigade’s performance ‘was nothing like what it had been during earlier battles.’11
The Huesca offensive, recounted by Gustav Regler in his book The Great Crusade, contributed to a defeatist mood in republican ranks. It had taken place soon after the events of May in a sector where there were many anarchist formations and the POUM’s 29th Division, which included the British centuria led by George Kopp, who had just been arrested and accused of espionage. Newspapers from Valencia and Barcelona were intercepted so that the troops should not hear of the denunciations of members of the POUM as traitors.12
Total losses for the Huesca offensive rose to nearly three times those of the Segovia offensive. The losses among anarchist and POUM members were very heavy. (Orwell himself received a bullet through the throat, a wound which took him out of the war.) As it had been a communist-led operation and the nationalists appeared to have been forewarned, this only increased their suspicions and their bitterness.
The major operation, however, which the republican government planned to replace the Estremadura offensive, was to take place against Brunete, a village some 25 kilometres to the west of Madrid. The idea was to penetrate the weakly held nationalist lines and cut off the salient, which extended to the edge of the capital. The Communist Party had been carefully preparing the Brunete offensive to demonstrate its power and military effectiveness.
All five International Brigades and the communists’ best-known formations were given key roles, and every important officer had a Soviet adviser at his elbow. Miaja was overall commander. Under him were Modesto’s V Corps on the right with Líster’s 11th Division, El Campesino’s 46th Division, and Walter’s 35th Division; Jurado’s XVIII Corps on the left with 10th, 15th and 34th Divisions. (Jurado, the only non-communist senior commander, became ill and was replaced by Colonel Casado during the battle.) There was also a forward reserve of Kléber’s 45th Division and Durán’s 69th Division. In support of this force of 70,000 men, Miaja could count on 132 tanks, 43 other armoured vehicles, 217 field guns, 50 bombers and 90 fighters, although only 50 turned out be serviceable.13 It was by far the largest concentration of strength yet seen in the war. To the south of Madrid, II Corps commanded by Colonel Romero was to attack towards Alcorcón to meet up with XVIII Corps. And II Corps was to make a diversionary attack in the area of Cuesta de la Reina. ‘If we cannot succeed with such forces,’ wrote Azaña with his usual lucid pessimism, ‘we will not be able to manage it anywhere.’14
The great operation, however, concealed crucial weaknesses. The People’s Army supply services were not used to coping with such large numbers and the Segovia offensive had shown up the bad communications between commanders as well as their lack of initiative. This last defect, which was to prove so serious in the Brunete offensive, is usually attributed to a fear of making independent decisions among Party members. Such caution may seem surprising in aggressive 30-year-olds like Modesto and Líster. Yet among this new breed of formation commander only Modesto and El Campesino had seen service in Morocco as NCOs, while Líster had received some training in Moscow. Their first experience of military command had come during the sierra engagements of the previous summer. They had often shown themselves daring and resourceful at battalion level, but now they commanded formations with anything up to 30 battalions and had to cope with unfamiliar staff procedures. Azaña disliked the fact that these ‘crude guerrillas’, ‘improvised people, without knowledge’, pushed aside regular officers. Despite all their efforts, they could ‘not make up for their lack of competence’.15 But if the new leaders of the People’s Army were intimidated by their responsibilities or conscious of their limitations, they certainly did not allow it to show. As with the International Brigades at the Jarama, ignorance was hidden behind a bluff confidence sustained by a ferocious discipline.
The offensive started in the early hours of 6 July, when the 34th Division from XVIII Corps attacked Villanueva de la Cañada. The Nationalist resistance was unexpectedly fierce, and when the troops seemed reluctant to keep going into the assault, Miaja gave orders to ‘take Cañada at all costs and if the infantry will not go forward place a battery of guns behind our own troops to make them’. Though outnumbered by nine to one, the defenders held off the republicans for a whole day.
Líster’s 11th Division swung past this action and attacked Brunete, defended by a very small nationalist force and a handful of medical orderlies.16 He took the village on the morning of 7 July, but then failed to advance towards Sevilla la Nueva and Navalcarnero. He was concerned that El Campesino’s 46th Division had failed to crush the Falangist battalion defending Quijorna to his right rear. (A similar hold-up due to a brave defence occurred on XVIII Corp’s left flank at Villanueva del Pardillo.) Instead of advancing while the way ahead lay open. Líster and his Russian adviser, Rodimtsev, ordered their troops to dig in just south of Brunete, where they waited for El Campesino’s troops to finish off the Falangists in Quijorna. That took three days, partly because they had not surrounded it properly. This gave Varela time to send a Moroccan tabor of regulares to reinforce the Falangists.17
In the meantime two republican reconnaissance soldiers captured by the nationalists admitted that Navalcamero was indeed the objective.18 The town had no defences and no garrison, save a handful of civil guards and supply detachments. Líster’s delay saved the nationalists. Within 24 hours of the offensive starting, Varela could count on Barrón’s 13th Division and the
next day Sáenz de Buruaga’s 150th Division arrived from the north in several hundred trucks, acquired on credit from the United States.19
He ordered the 150th Division to attack between Brunete and Quijorna. This threat was met by Walter’s 35th Division, which filled the gap between Líster and El Campesino.
On the left flank 15th Division, supported by artillery and aircraft, attacked towards Villanueva de la Cañada and managed to take the village at ten o’clock that night, after heavy fighting against the nationalist division defending that sector. At the end of that first day the nationalist front had been forced back only in the centre, where part of Líster’s 11th Division advanced to within two kilometres of Sevilla la Nueva. Nationalist resistance around Quijorna and Villafranca del Castillo, held by no more than a centuria of Falangists from Salamanca,20 had been fierce. The republican advance could only be sustained if the enemy line was broken and the two attacking corps could join up. The republicans had a numerical advantage at this stage in men, artillery and aircraft. But Líster still did not dare advance further with both his flanks exposed.
While Líster waited, General Gal’s 15th Division advanced strongly on Boadilla del Monte. But on their line of advance his men came across a small hill, which they called ‘Mosquito hill’ because of the whistling bullets. It was to form as terrible a memory as ‘Suicide Hill’ at the Jarama. The troops of Asensio were waiting for them, supported by two Navarrese brigades, as well as the Galician 108th Division, which had just arrived. A desperate battle ensued, which cost many casualties on both sides. Oliver Law, the black commander of the Americans’ Washington Battalion, was killed that night and buried there. Meanwhile, republican troops had finally occupied Quijorna, which by then was little more than a pile of smoking ruins.
Although at the start of the battle the republican air force enjoyed air superiority, with up to thirty fighters in each sortie, the nationalists dominated the skies from 11 July.21 Their aircraft, first the Junkers 52s, Fiats and Heinkels 51s piloted by Spanish airmen, then the Condor Legion, hammered the eight republican divisions concentrated on less than 200 square kilometres of the bare Castilian plain. The first target of the nationalist planes were the T-26 tanks, which presented easy prey in the open. Within two days, once the nationalists had established their maximum rhythm of sorties, the republicans were left with only 38 armoured vehicles. Day and night, Junkers 52s and Heinkel 111s bombed the republican lines at will. From 12 July the Condor Legion deployed its Messerschmitt 109s, flown by pilots such as Adolf Galland, later one of the great Second World War aces. The Chatos and Moscas did not stand a chance against them. On that day ‘more than 200 aircraft could be seen in the air at the same time’.22
On 10 July XII International Brigade finally took Villanueva del Pardillo, which had been bravely defended by a battalion of the San Quentin infantry regiment. Meanwhile the nationalists counter-attacked to the south-east between Quijorna and Brunete with 10th and 150th Divisions. They had come up against General Walter’s 35th Division, which had been pushed forward to seal the gap between the troops of El Campesino and Líster. During this fighting 3,000 republican soldiers were killed and the International Brigades were totally exhausted.23 On 16 July a bomb splinter hit George Nathan, the commander of the British battalion, in the shoulder and he died a few hours later. His devastated comrades buried him on the banks of the Guadarrama.
Republican troops were also desperately short of ammunition and without water in the July heat. Miaja’s staff had woefully underestimated the resupply needs for such a battle. The lessons of the La Granja offensive had not been learned. The Castilian landscape, bleached a pale brown by the sun, became a furnace, especially for the tank troops. The inside of each vehicle was like an oven. The infantry also suffered from the lack of vegetation for camouflage and the difficulty of digging trenches in the baked earth. Corpses, swollen and black from the sun, lay in all directions and the stretcher-bearers suffered heavy casualties trying to remove the wounded.
During that week, little ground was lost or gained in a terrible stalemate. But then on 18 July, the anniversary of the rising, the nationalist infantry, supported by 60 batteries of artillery and aircraft, attacked on all sectors. Richthofen, who had hurried back from his leave to take command of the Condor Legion squadrons, recorded, ‘18 July. Attack on the red infantry who are much better than expected. Air attacks very good despite strongest red flak as never experienced before. 4 Brigade gets ahead well. Heavy losses on both sides. 4 Brigade has lost eighteen officers by lunchtime and about 400 men. Art[illery] shot badly. Three waved bombing attack went off well, but it did not help. Right wing did not engage at all as art[illery] still not in position. Manaña!’24
‘19 July,’ he wrote the next day, ‘Red flyers drop heavy bombs even on their own red infantry! Their command post also got its share. The reds have attacked 4 Brigade heavily but they are beaten back. Red attacks to the south at Brunete. Right wing cannot move forward. Our flyers are deployed against the red positions around Brunete.
‘20 July. We fly and attack red airfields to keep the opponents down. Richthofen and Sander [Sperrle] with Franco for a big conference with his generals, army commander, and aviation General Kindelán. Clean up here and then quickly back to the north. Franco hopes that the heavy losses are demoralizing the reds. Franco demands that Richthofen concentrates on heavy artillery.’ What emerged clearly once again was that the German and nationalist pilots were far better trained and more resourceful than their opponents. Even the Heinkel 51, which was inferior to the Soviet aircraft, was inflicting greater losses. Nationalist aircraft attacked the International Brigades near the River Guadarrama. That day Julian Bell, the nephew of Virginia Woolf, died, having arrived in Spain only a month before.
The Condor Legion’s bombers and fighters had little trouble finding targets on the exposed plain. While the Heinkel 111s flew sorties against artillery batteries, headquarters and forming-up areas, the Heinkel 51s strafed, bombed and shot up republican tanks using their 20mm cannon. In addition each fighter carried a load of six ten-kilo fragmentation bombs. Flying wing-tip to wing-tip, they released their loads simultaneously. Trenches, unless dug in a zigzag pattern, provided little protection. One German squadron leader boasted that in a 200-metre stretch of trench, 120 bodies had been found after one of their attacks.25
From 23 July nationalist troops, supported by concentrated artillery fire, tanks and aircraft, went over to the offensive. The next day they reached the edge of Brunete. ‘Because of bombing attacks,’ wrote Richthofen, ‘the terrain is full of smoke and visibility is bad. As the mist clears, there is a red counter-attack. Red flyers in the air very strong. Heavy infantry losses on our side. Today for the first time all aircrew are deployed. As the red infantry is thrown back by this deployment of air power, seven new battalions arrive to support them.’26
The ‘red infantry’ thrown back was presumably Líster’s division which, despite its reputation for iron discipline, collapsed on 24 July, as the chief Soviet adviser reported back to Moscow later: ‘Líster’s division lost its head and fled. We managed with great difficulty to bring it back under control and prevent soldiers fleeing from their units. The toughest repressive measures had to be applied. About 400 of those fleeing were shot on 24 July.’27 ‘There was a general panic and flight,’ Walter reported to Moscow. ‘The International Brigades, except for XI and units of XV, which held their positions, were not much slower in their inexplicable but hasty movement backwards.’28
‘All the red attacks have been rebuffed,’ Richthofen noted exultantly next day. ‘Countless red casualties, which are already decomposing in the heat. Everywhere shot-up red tanks. A great sight! Our Heinkel 51s and Spanish fighters attack north of Brunete.’ Two days later he claimed the victory as one for the Condor Legion and the nationalist air force: ‘The situation here has been saved by the aircrews. The ground forces are not up to it.’29
The general staff and the communists procl
aimed that the Brunete offensive was a masterpiece of planning. General Rojo even suggested that it had ‘a beautiful technical rigorousness, almost perfect’.30 This was optimistic to say the least. Brunete was intended to be an encirclement operation, taking the enemy by surprise, in many ways a foretaste of the Second World War. The theory of ‘deep penetration’, using tank units as armoured fists, had already been developed by the finest minds in the Red Army. The tactic had been used by Arman’s attack at Seseña the previous autumn. But there was no question of using such a technique at Brunete in July 1937. Marshal Tukhachevsky, its greatest proponent, had been tortured into confessing to treason and espionage for the Germans. A month before the battle of Brunete he had been tried and executed along with seven colleagues. They were shot in sequence just after they left the courtroom. No Soviet adviser, therefore, dared follow his tactical theories.
The divisions were spread out and so were the tanks. And instead of leaving strong points to be dealt with by a second line, the breakthrough force was allowed to halt. Most astonishing of all was that the attack from the north was supposed to be met by another attack coming from the southern suburbs of Madrid towards Alcorcón to complete the encirclement. This never got off the ground, so the plan was rendered virtually useless from the start. Not only did the planners grossly underestimate the enemy’s ability to react quickly, they also failed to foresee that as soon as the nationalists achieved air superiority their already overstretched supply system would collapse.
As well as the basic problems of staff failures and republican inferiority in the air, communications between headquarters were disastrously bad. Field telephone lines were continually cut by shelling and runners could not be expected to get through when there was no cover. But these natural hazards of warfare without radios were compounded by the lack of initiative shown by republican commanders. Nationalist field commanders, on the other hand, reacted instinctively and rapidly to the situation as it developed and did not wait for orders from above. Nor did they blindly follow instructions that were out of date when circumstances on the ground had changed dramatically.