Quinto was attacked by the 25th Division, which managed to take it on 26 August, despite the nationalist troops’ courageous defence of the chapel of Bonastre. With the 11th Division locked in a stalemate in Fuentes de Ebro, the 35th Division had to be sent to its aid. Republican commanders were obsessed once again with crushing every defensive position, when they should have forged ahead towards the main objective and left them to second-line troops. At this point Modesto proposed changing the original plan of taking Saragossa into one of capturing Belchite, which was defended by only a few hundred men. These nationalist defenders had good machine-gun positions, some of them made in ferro-concrete and others in specially prepared houses, as well as the seminary and church of San Agustín.
The attack on Belchite began at ten in the morning on 1 September. It was supported by artillery and aircraft flown by the first Spanish pilots to graduate from training schools in the Soviet Union. Much of the town was reduced to rubble. Then the tanks advanced, a very unwise manoeuvre, since they were extremely vulnerable in streets partially blocked by collapsed buildings. The next day resistance was crushed in the seminary and the fighting revolved around the church of San Agustín. The Calle Mayor became the main line of fire while the nationalists defended their positions in the calle Goya and the town hall from behind sandbagged emplacements. The desperate fighting continued until 6 September when the whole of Belchite was a smoking ruin of death, smashed masonry, dust and corpses, both human and animal. The ‘nauseating stench’ drifted out over the countryside around.14
The whole operation had lasted thirteen days, during which the republican troops lacked water in stifling heat amid the overwhelming smell of rotting bodies so powerful that those who had gas masks wore them in spite of the temperature.15 The delays caused by the nationalists’ fierce defence of Quinto and Codó had given them time to bring up Barrón’s 13th Division and Sáenz de Buruaga’s 150th Division. This was a repeat of the republicans’ mistakes at Brunete. They wasted totally unnecessary numbers of men and time reducing resistance points that should have been contained and bypassed. The small nationalist garrisons never posed a serious threat to Modesto’s rearguard if he had continued the advance. In the end this huge effort by the republicans, who enjoyed overwhelming superiority, succeeded only in advancing ten kilometres and taking a handful of villages and small towns. It was a total failure in its main objectives of taking Saragossa and diverting the nationalists from their campaign in the north.
Once again the Republic suffered a considerable loss of badly needed armament, especially the tanks. And once more Stalinist paranoia blamed the failure on a ‘Trotskyist’ fifth column. General Walter considered the situation worse than at Brunete. ‘The 35th Division’s medical unit’, he reported, ‘registered several instances of wounded internationalists who were in Spanish hospitals for treatment dying because of maliciously negligent or completely unnecessary surgical operations and diagnoses and methods of treating the sick that were patently the work of wreckers.’ In addition, ‘a large-scale Trotskyist spy and terrorist organization’ was suspected in XIV International Brigade. They were supposedly planning to murder Hans Sanje, its commander, and Walter himself. Walter called the NKVD in Barcelona to come to investigate, but ‘Brigade Commander Sanje took it upon himself to carry out the investigation. He went to work so ardently and clumsily that the arrested man, a French lieutenant, quickly died during interrogation, taking with him the secret of the organization.’16
General Pozas held Walter responsible for the failure of the operation, by concentrating on secondary objectives and not the main one. Prieto was furious at the handling of the battle and his bitter criticism aroused the Party’s anger against him. Along with a growing number of senior officers, he had begun to recognize that communist direction of the war effort was destroying the Popular Army with prestige operations which it could not afford and triumphalist propaganda that was counterproductive. The Catalonia press claimed on 4 September, while the fighting still raged in Belchite, that ‘an intelligent and relevant act of the government has given for the first time mobility to all battle fronts. The Spanish people are starting to sense the longed-for and welcome consequences of an efficient policy of national unity facing the fascist invasion.17
The Aragón offensive had certainly come too late to help the defence of Santander. Nor did it delay the start of the third and final stage of the war in the north. Well aware of the importance of reducing the remaining Asturian territory before winter set in, General Dávila redeployed his forces rapidly to continue the advance westwards from Santander.
27
The Destruction of the Northern Front and of Republican Idealism
On 29 August, while the battle of Belchite was reaching its height, the Provincial Council of Asturias assumed all military and civil powers. It proclaimed itself to be the Sovereign Council of the Asturias, under the presidency of Belarmino Tomás. Its first act was to replace General Gámir Ulibarri with Colonel Adolfo Prada, who took command of the remnants of the Army of the North, now less than 40,000 men strong.
Prada’s chief of staff was Major Francisco Ciutat and its main formation was XIV Corps, commanded by Francisco Galán. The republican air force in the north was down to two flights of Moscas and less than a squadron of Chatos.1 Republican territory was now reduced to some 90 kilometres deep between Gijón and La Robla, and 120 kilometres along the coast, with the Oviedo salient sticking into the western flank.
Dávila’s attack on this last piece of republican resistance in the north came from the east and south-east aimed at Gijón. His force was at least twice the size of the republicans’ and included Solchaga’s four Carlist brigades, three Galician divisions under Aranda and the Italian CTV. They were supported by 250 aircraft, including the Condor Legion.
Nevertheless, the advance, which began on 1 September, averaged less than a kilometre a day, even with the nationalists’ crushing air superiority. The Picos de Europa and the Cordillera Cantábrica gave the republican defenders excellent terrain to hold back the enemy and they did so with remarkable bravery. It has been said that they fought so desperately only because the nationalist blockade gave them no hope of escape, but this can never have been more than one factor. When most of the senior officers managed to escape in small boats, the rank and file fought even more fiercely.
Solchaga’s Carlists did not reach Llanes until 5 September. These Navarrese brigades then launched themselves against the El Mazuco pass, which they seized and lost and then recaptured, then lost again. The defence of the pass, led by a CNT worker from La Felguera, continued for 33 days. The Carlists finally took it at bayonet point, suffering many losses. Meanwhile, the Condor Legion relentlessly bombed and strafed the republican rear,2 finding it too difficult to hit their mountain positions with conventional bombs. The German squadrons experimented with a prototype of napalm, consisting of cans of petrol attached to incendiary bombs.
On 18 September Solchaga’s Carlists opened the bloodiest part of the whole campaign. After fierce fighting, the 1st Navarre Brigade managed to enter Ribadesella; on 1 October the 5th Navarre Brigade occupied Covadonga; and ten days later they cleared the west bank of the upper Sella. On 14 October Arriondas fell. In the meantime Colonel Muñoz Grandes managed to break through Tama, one of the best fortified positions of the Asturian miners, and advance to Campo de Caso, thus sealing the encirclement. The Condor Legion completed the work, machine-gunning the republicans falling back on Gijón. On 20 October Solchaga’s forces joined up with those of Aranda.3
The republican government in Valencia instructed Colonel Prada to begin a general evacuation, but Franco’s fleet, waiting for the collapse, asked the Condor Legion to bomb the republican destroyer Císcar, sent to take off as many people as possible. The Císcar sank and foreign ships were intercepted by the nationalist warships. Many senior officials and officers managed to escape on gunboats and other small vessels to France. Yet the bulk of the republican troops conti
nued fighting ferociously until the afternoon of 21 October, when the 4th Navarre Brigade entered Gijón. Part of the republican troops slipped away into the mountains where they joined up with remnants of units which had escaped from Santander. Guerrilla warfare continued in the Cordillera for another six months, tying down considerable bodies of nationalist troops.
Once the Nationalists had taken Gijón, the process of ‘cleaning up the reds’ began in earnest throughout the region. The bullring in Gijón filled with prisoners, as did the Luarca theatre and other buildings in the city. The execution squads worked without rest.4 The northern front had ceased to exist. For Prieto, the basic cause of the defeat lay in the lack of a unified command.5 The minister of defence promoted Rojo to general and offered his resignation to Negrín who refused to accept it.
The real effects of the conquest of the north were not to become apparent until the new year, when the nationalists started to deploy the Carlist formations, the Italian corps and Aranda’s Galician troops in the southern zone. Nationalist warships in the Bay of Biscay were transferred to the Mediterranean, increasing its control of the coastline there. A new naval and air command under Admiral Francisco Moreno was set up in Palma de Mallorca.6 But for Franco, one of the most important gains lay in the coal and other mines, much of whose produce would go to paying his debt to Nazi Germany.
The considerable growth in nationalist manpower at this time was assisted by drafting more than 100,000 prisoners from the northern campaign into their infantry units as well as labour battalions. This manner of increasing their forces was not always successful, because a large proportion deserted as soon as they reached the front line. There were at least two cases of rebellion caused by left-wingers in their ranks. At Saragossa anarchists drafted into the Foreign Legion started a revolt and attempted to release their comrades from prison. And 200 sailors in El Ferrol, chiefly on the España, had been discovered preparing a mutiny during the previous winter. In both cases all those involved were executed.
Meanwhile in republican Spain the autumn of 1937 witnessed the continued decline of anarchist power, the isolation of the Catalan nationalists, discord in socialist ranks and the development of the secret police. Negrín’s government presided over these developments and as a result of communist power the repression of dissenters was far greater than it had been during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. The prime minister’s pretended ignorance of secret police activities was unconvincing while, as Hugh Thomas has pointed out, his attempt to restrict political activity through censorship, banning and arrests was parallel to Franco’s establishment of a state machine where ideological divergence was also contained.7 Nevertheless, most of the Republic’s supporters abroad who had defended the left-wing cause on the grounds of liberty and democracy made no protest at these developments.
The need to collaborate with the Soviet Union, together with the seriousness of the military situation, was later used by Negrín’s supporters to justify the actions of his administration. But it was Negrín who had persuaded Largo Caballero to send the gold reserves to Moscow, so he bore a major responsibility for the Republic’s subservience to Stalin in the first place. Yet during his administration the flow of Soviet military aid decreased dramatically. This was partly the result of the nationalists’ naval blockade, but it was also a consequence of Stalin’s increasing desire to extricate himself from Spain when he realized that the British and French governments were not going to challenge the Axis. And now the Soviet Union was helping China against Japanese aggression. Paradoxically, Stalin’s unease was probably increased by Negrín’s obvious hope that the Republic would be saved by a European war.
President Azaña had encouraged the prime minister’s firm rule in the early days of his administration, but his attitude was to change when he came to understand Negrín’s character better. Both men disliked Companys and Azaña supported Negrín’s plans to bring Catalonia under central government control. The president still resented Companys’s initial success in increasing the Generalitat’s independence during the turmoil of the rising. The reduction of Catalonia’s identity was both symbolized and effected by moving the Republic’s government from Valencia to Barcelona, and Negrín took every opportunity to emphasize the Generalitat’s reduced status.8 ‘Negrín avoided almost any direct contact with Companys,’ wrote the communist Antonio Cordón, then under-secretary for the army. ‘I don’t remember any event or ceremony in which they took part together.’9
Largo Caballero realized after his fall from power that the Socialist Party and the UGT were in an even worse state than he imagined. He still had his loyal supporters, especially the inner circle of Luis Araquistáin, Carlos de Baráibar and Wenceslao Carrillo (the father of Santiago Carrillo). But many right socialists, a powerful faction within the UGT, and the majority of the Joint Socialist Youth were collaborating closely with the communists.10 Some groups responded to their call for unification. A joint newspaper, Verdad (meaning ‘truth’ and intended as a Spanish Pravda), had been founded in Valencia. It was the first to praise the socialists in Jaén, who had established their own party of socialist-communist unification called the PSU (United Socialist Party).
The PSOE newspaper, El Socialista, and even Largo Caballero’s Claridad, had already been taken over by the pro-communist wing of the party. But the most disturbing event for Largo Caballero came at the end of September, when his supporters were disqualified from voting at the national plenum of the UGT. Nevertheless, many pro-communist socialists, including even Negrín, still held back from the fateful step of outright union with the PCE. Largo Caballero’s speech on 17 October (the first he had been allowed to make since May) explained the fall of his government and gave strong warnings of the dangers the party faced. Largo Caballero did not, however, recover any power, for he was kept off the executive committee, and his supporters on it remained in a minority. At the end of October he moved to Barcelona where, in a form of internal exile, he busied himself in minor affairs.11
Probably the most ominous of all the developments in republican territory at this time was the rationalization of the security services, on 9 August 1937, into the SIM, Servicio de Investigación Militar.12 Prieto had been the architect of this restructuring to increase central control. He believed that the fragmented growth of counter-espionage organizations was uncontrolled and inefficient. One intelligence chief complained that ‘everyone in our rearguard carried on counter-espionage’. Independent services with their own networks of agents were run by the army, the Directorate-General of Security, the carabineros, the foreign ministry, the Generalitat and the Basque government in exile (now based in Barcelona). Even the International Brigades had their own NKVD-run branch of heretic hunters based at Albacete. Its chief, ‘Moreno’, was a Yugoslav from the Soviet Union who was shot on his return.13
The new department was out of its creator’s control as soon as it was constituted in August, since the communists had started to infiltrate and control the police and security services in the autumn of 1936. The first directors, the socialists Ángel Díaz Baza and Prudencio Sayagüés, were not up to the work, while others such as Gustavo Durán, whom Prieto named chief of the SIM for the Army of the Centre, had to be removed because he recruited only communists. The next director was Colonel Manuel Uribarri, who reported solely to Soviet agents and managed to flee to France with a booty of 100,000 francs.14 Only the following year was communist control reduced. The organization did indeed manage to destroy a number of nationalist networks–‘Concepción’, ‘Círculo Azul’, ‘Capitán Mora’, ‘Cruces de fuego’ and others–but there can be no doubt that during its first eight months of existence the SIM, later described as ‘the Russian syphilis’ by the German writer Gustav Regler, was a sinister tool in the hands of Orlov and his NKVD men.
SIM officers included both unquestioningly loyal Party members and the ambitious. Its unchallenged power attracted opportunists of every sort to its ranks. The core of executive officers then created a netw
ork of agents through bribery and blackmail. They even managed to plant their organization in resolutely anti-communist formations as a result of their control of transfer and promotion. For example, a nineteen-yearold rifleman in the 119th Brigade was suborned and then promoted overnight to become the SIM chief of the whole formation with a greater power of life and death than its commander.15
Because of the destruction of records, it is difficult to know the total number of agents employed by the SIM. There were said to have been 6,000 in Madrid alone and its official payroll was 22 million pesetas. Its six military and five civilian sections, including the ‘Z Brigade’, covered every facet of life and its agents were present in every district and command.16 The most feared section was the Special Brigade, which was responsible for interrogation. When its infamous reputation became known abroad, it simply changed its name. The government insisted that it had been disbanded, but in fact there was an increase in the number of its victims who ‘crossed over to the enemy’ (the euphemism for death under torture or secret execution). It worked with a network of ‘invisible’ agents both at the front and in the rear.17
In the central region the SIM made use of mainly secret prisons which had belonged to the DEDIDE. The first was the religious college of San Lorenzo, which held 200 suspects. The second was Work Camp No. 1 in Cuenca. Those who had the misfortune to be held there are united in their evidence: maltreatment, the use of cold and hunger to extract confessions, punishment cells called ‘the icebox’ and the ‘fridge’, in which prisoners were left naked with water up to their knees, or they were sprayed with freezing water during winter months.18