The nationalist forces defending the Teruel salient consisted of the 52nd Division which, even when supplemented with volunteers from the city, amounted to less than 10,000 men. Colonel Domingo Rey d’Harcourt, the commander, had established a line of trenches and strong points, supported by others situated on hills, such as La Muela, which dominated Teruel. General Rojo’s plan of attack was to encircle the town with the 11th and 25th Divisions attacking from the north-east towards the villages of Caudé and Concud, while the 34th and 64th Division from XVIII Corps would attack from the south-east towards the Pico del Zorro and La Muela de Teruel. Two more divisions, the 40th and 68th from XX Corps, would advance on Escandón and El Vértice Castellar. If the manoeuvre went according to plan, Teruel would be cut off from nationalist territory. In the next stage, units from XVIII and XXII Corps would establish a line of defence to repel the inevitable nationalist counter-attacks, while XX Corps, supported by tanks, would fight into the city.10
The provincial capital of Teruel, a gloomy town in bleak terrain, was famous for its cold in winter, but in mid December of 1937 the conditions were almost Siberian. Snow was falling at dawn on 15 December when the 11th Division, in which the communist poet Miguel Hernández was serving, broke through the weak nationalist lines. By 10 a.m. they had taken Concud. The republican forces achieved complete surprise, partly as a result of the weather and partly by forgoing a preliminary bombardment.
Many of the attacks, however, were often wasted. On 17 December the 3rd Tank Company of Captain Gubanov started an assault five times, but the infantry failed to support it. The international tank regiment consisted mainly of Soviet volunteers who were fighting at the most dangerous sectors of the front.11 Captain Tsaplin was particularly heroic. His tank was hit, with one of his tracks damaged only 50 metres from the enemy trenches. He stayed in his tank for eight hours, ‘resisting the ferocious attacks of the enemy. When he ran out of ammunition, he disabled the tank, climbed out and escaped.’12
XVIII Corps, having cut through the weak opposition and bypassed the town, captured the Muela de Teruel at midday on 18 December. Two days later its troops joined up at San Blas with XXII Corps and began to prepare the defensive line north-west of the city. On 19 December the 40th Division, which had experienced heavy fighting in Escandón, reached the outskirts of Teruel. Prieto and Rojo arrived that day to visit the front, accompanied by a large retinue of foreign journalists including Hemingway, Matthews and Robert Capa, waiting for the moment when they could announce to the world that the People’s Army had captured a provincial capital.13
The nationalist high command was taken aback on hearing of the offensive. ‘Alarming news,’ wrote Richthofen in his war diary. ‘The reds have breached the front near Teruel.’14 Franco was the most disturbed. He was torn between continuing with his plan to attack Madrid, as he was counselled by his German and Italian advisers, or react to the red cape brandished in his face by the republicans. To the intense frustration of his advisers, Franco could not allow the republicans to enjoy their minor triumph. ‘The Generalissimo’, reported the Condor Legion to Berlin, ‘decided from the start, for reasons of prestige of a special political nature, and at the cost of the already prepared attack via Guadalajara towards Madrid, to re-establish the front around Teruel along the line as it was on 15 December.’15 Franco’s first instinct was to send in the Condor Legion immediately, but Richthofen was cautious. ‘Weather situation is quite serious,’ he noted.16
To seal the breach, Franco sent Aranda to Teruel with three divisions and ordered Dávila to move the 81st Division from the upper Tagus. On 20 December he issued a directive putting together an army for the relief of the city. It would be commanded by Dávila and include the Army Corps of Galicia, which would operate north of the River Tuna, and the Corps of Castille, reinforced with two Navarrese divisions, which would deploy to the south. These forces would be supported by all the artillery and air units available, especially the Italian artillery and the Condor Legion. But for almost a whole week aircraft were grounded by bad visibility and unusually harsh frosts, affecting engines, wings and runways. Only the Condor Legion’s anti-aircraft batteries could be sent into action against the breakthrough.
On 21 December fierce street fighting began in Teruel itself. The republican 68th Division with T-26 tanks seized the suburb round the bullring. Slightly blurred photos of republican tanks in Teruel were published around the world. The nationalist garrison under Rey d’Harcourt pulled back towards the centre of the city and prepared to defend the buildings around the Plaza de San Juan and its church. These included the Comandancia Militar, the Civil Governor’s office, the Banco de España, the Hospital de la Asunción and many other public buildings. Colonel Barba commanded the defence of the Seminary, the Convent of Santa Clara and the churches of Santiago and Santa Teresa. The republican infantry advanced into the city behind a curtain of machine-gun fire. ‘You could make out the dinamiteros running up the first streets,’ wrote Herbert Matthews of the New York Times, ‘and the flashes of their explosive charges exploding inside houses. A great moment had arrived: one of those dramatic moments in history and journalism.’17 But such excited optimism was badly misplaced. The winter fighting in Teruel rapidly turned into the most horrific of all the battles of the civil war.
The republicans had to advance up frozen streets, dodging from one pile of rubble to another under nationalist fire. House after house had to be cleared, using grenades and small arms. Holes were blasted in floors during the fighting, and in side walls as soldiers made their way from house to house, avoiding the killing zone of the street outside. Civilians cowering in cellars were in just as much danger of being killed or maimed by grenades, or buried in masonry from the explosive charges. ‘We suddenly saw’, recorded one republican soldier, ‘someone holding a baby out of a window, shouting at us not to fire because there were civilians in the house.’18
The republicans, following Prieto’s personal instructions to protect the civilian population, were evacuating women and children back to the cellars of the houses near the Plaza del Torico. But many of the women, despite the risk of being shot, looted what they could. In the temperatures, which dropped to around minus 15 centigrade, there was little water available in the city, with pipes frozen solid. Furniture was smashed to provide fuel to melt snow, as well as create a little warmth. Fighting continued during the night, with soldiers on either side bayoneting each other in the intimate anonymity of close-quarter combat. Conditions in Stalingrad, five years later, would not be much worse.
From 22 December the republican artillery was firing at point-blank range into the public buildings held by nationalist defenders. Miners, directed by Belarmino Tomás, were trying to lay charges under those occupied by Rey d’Harcourt and Barba. When the civil governor’s offices were taken ‘some of the defenders slipped into the adjoining building, the Hotel de Aragón, where they carried on this cruel struggle. In the civil governor’s building some prisoners were taken and many corpses brought out. The majority were children who had died of hunger.’19 The war photographer Robert Capa described the scene: ‘More than fifty people, women and children, most of them blinded by the light, showed their cadaverous faces stained with blood and dirt. They had spent fifteen days below ground, living in continual terror, living off the scraps of food left by the soldiers and a few sardines. Very few had the strength to get up; they had to be helped away. It is impossible to describe such a painful scene.’20
Teruel was still not completely occupied by the republicans, but the government proclaimed victory. On Christmas Eve promotions and awards were made: Hernández Saravia was made a general and Rojo was decorated. The communists claimed the victory for themselves. Even Prieto suffered an attack of optimism and joked that he was now minister of defence and attack.21 Professor Haldane, a great supporter of the Republic, had invited the famous singer Paul Robeson to Teruel, and for most of a night he sang spirituals to the British battalion.22
The
terrible weather conditions prevented the nationalists from launching their counterattack until 29 December. This opened with the greatest artillery bombardment yet seen in the war. That day the visibility had improved, the blizzards had died down and the nationalist squadrons were able to operate at full strength, dropping 100 tons of bombs on the republican positions. The republican Moscas were not even able to approach the bombers because of the strong escort of Fiat fighters. The combination of aerial and ground bombardment lasted two hours.23 As soon as the firing ceased, ten nationalist divisions attacked south-east-wards but the republican line held. The Condor Legion acknowledged that the effect was ‘not great’. The Galicia Corps gained only 300 to 400 metres of ground, while the Corps of Castille ‘remained on their start line’.24
The weather improved next day and the nationalist artillery thundered again. The Condor Legion’s Heinkel 51s attacked the ‘trench systems and reserve positions’, while the highly accurate 88mm guns of its flak batteries focused on key points. ‘As we had already tried out in the Asturias,’ the Condor Legion staff reported to Berlin, ‘the enemy was rendered incapable of fighting when shot up in their trenches by a combination of strafing and flak.’25
During 31 December 1937, fresh blizzards reduced visibility to just a few metres. That night the temperature dropped to below minus 20 centigrade. Despite the weather, the Condor Legion managed to get both bombers and Heinkel 51s off the ground, even though it meant carefully chipping the ice off the wings. Tanks and vehicles were frozen to a standstill. And soldiers who resorted to alcohol to warm up died of cold if they fell asleep. Casualties from frostbite rose dramatically.
On this last day of 1937 the two Navarrese divisions commanded by García Valiño and Muñoz Grandes retook the Muela de Teruel. General Rojo informed Prieto of the development by teleprinter and he replied in an ill humour.26 But worse was still to come. That night, Major Andrés Nieto, commander of the 40th Division who had been appointed military commandant of the city, inexplicably ordered his troops to abandon Teruel. The besieged nationalists do not appear to have realized what had happened. ‘For several hours’, observed Zugazagoitia, ‘Teruel belonged to nobody.’27 General Walter was scathing. He called it ‘a difficult, panic-stricken day when the republican forces fled from the front and cleared out of Teruel itself. [This] was to a significant degree the result of a panic organized by fascist agents among our units.’28
On 1 January 1938, General Rojo ordered Modesto to bring up V Corps to halt the nationalists’ advance on the city. Hellish blizzards filled the trenches with snow and made movement almost impossible. Troops in the open stood out as dark silhouettes and became easy targets. Conditions were so bad that the Condor Legion could not take off. The Germans were highly critical of the Italian artillery, which fired from maps and did not observe the fall of shells ‘which at no point during the attack’ found their targets.29
Republican troops reoccupied most of the city and the fighting began again. Just over a week before, on 23 December, Franco had sent a message to to Colonel Rey d’Harcourt to stimulate his resistance with the promise of immediate reinforcement. ‘Have confidence in Spain, as Spain has confidence in you.’30 But Teruel was not the Alcázar de Toledo and the republican forces were not the militias of 1936. On 7 January, after 24 days of fighting, Rey d’Harcourt surrendered. The nationalists blamed the loss of Teruel on ‘the weakness and incompetence of the sector commander who agreed with the reds to surrender his post of duty’.31 The republican authorities evacuated the wounded, some 1,500 people, and took most of the civilian population in trucks to Escandón in terrible weather conditions.
Ten days after the surrender of Teruel the nationalists launched a counter-attack from the north towards the Alto de Celadas and El Muletón, which dominated the valley of the River Alfambra. The onslaught with aircraft and artillery was immense. Over a hundred aircraft fought in the skies over the Alfambra valley. Walter brought up the International Brigades in the 35th Division to halt Aranda’s Galician Corps. XI International Brigade fought well and deserved ‘the highest praise’, Walter reported.32
Two days later, on 19 January, the 5th Navarrese Division attacked El Muletón defended by XV International Brigade. Republican casualties were very heavy, but they re-formed their line. The order was given to counter-attack, but commanders expected far too much of their troops. They were almost out of ammunition due to the difficulties of resupply, they had received very little food and had to eat snow as there was no drinking water, nor wood for fuel to melt it. Only in Teruel itself could wood be found, stripped from houses. On that same day soldiers of the 84th Mixed Brigade, part of the 40th Division, refused to return to the front. Altogether, 46 of them were executed without trial the following dawn.33
On 5 February, ‘in perfect weather conditions’ for flying,34 the nationalists launched their major attack towards the Alfambra. General Juan Vigón directed this operation with three corps, those of Galicia, Morocco and Navarre, together with the Italian CTV and Monasterio’s cavalry division. Some 100,000 men and nearly 500 guns were concentrated in the Sierra de Palomera along a front of 30 kilometres.
Peter Kemp, the English volunteer now serving in the Foreign Legion, gives a vivid description of the beginning of this offensive. It was a bright, freezing dawn in the Sierra de Palomera as divisions of red-bereted Carlists and green-coated Legionnaires waited for the bombers to soften up the enemy. Only the sound of the pack-mules’ accoutrements broke the silence. Then, waiting on the ridge, the nationalist troops heard the heavy drone of the Italian bombers coming from their rear. To their sudden horror, they realized that the Savoia-Marchettis had mistaken them for the enemy. Two waves in succession bombed the rocky mountainside, despite the recognition strips and arrows laid out behind. The nationalists’ casualties, however, were much lighter than might have been expected. The operation was hardly delayed.
The attack was accompanied by Monasterio’s 1st Cavalry Division, which made the one great mounted charge of the war in the valley below them. The republican troops manning this part of the front had never seen action before and they were broken immediately by the onslaught. The nationalist formations then swung south, forcing the main republican force to withdraw rapidly. The republicans suffered nearly 20,000 casualties and lost a huge quantity of arms and equipment. On 19 February the nationalists cut the Teruel–Valencia road, leaving El Campesino’s 46th Division surrounded in Teruel. At dawn on 22 February the last republicans slipped out of the city, trying to break through the nationalist lines. Three days later Modesto managed to form a defence line along the right bank of the Alfambra, but this was not the end of the battle. Further operations continued for another four weeks, grinding down the republican forces and pushing them back.
The Battle of Teruel, with its cold and street fighting, was one of the most terrible in a terrible war. The nationalists suffered around 40,000 casualties, a quarter of which were from frostbite. The republican losses had been even more appalling, around 60,000 men altogether.35 In the air battles, the nationalists destroyed far more republican planes than they lost themselves, twelve on 7 February alone,36 but the greatest danger for all pilots was the weather, which accounted for more crashes than enemy action.
The republican infantry suffered its worst casualties after Teruel itself had been taken. This underlined the tragedy and futility of the whole operation. The Republic had set out to seize a city of no strategic value, which it could never have hoped to hold, all at a catastrophic cost in lives and equipment. Once again, the obstinacy of republican leaders, trapped by premature claims of victory for propaganda purposes, sacrificed a large part of their best troops for no purpose. The pathetic state of the survivors, and their demoralization and exhaustion, was to lead straight to another greater disaster in a matter of weeks.
Republican commanders argued furiously among themselves over who was to blame. The report of the political department of the People’s Army listed numerous causes:
the strength of the enemy air force, its combined effect with artillery, the reduced republican strength, their inferiority in weapons, the decline in morale and so on.37 Nothing was said about the ineptitude of the plan or the incompetence of commanders.
The Communist Party tried to put the major part of the responsibility on Prieto or Rojo. Comintern advisers even blamed Prieto for ‘distancing himself from the communists’.38 With his usual sinister insinuation, Stepánov reported to Moscow that the failure at Teruel was due, among other things, to the ‘erroneous or treasonous conduct of the general staff, Rojo in particular’.39
During the early spring of 1938, the Republic had only two consolations. One was the opening of the French frontier on 17 March to allow through military equipment. The other came from an unexpected source: the republican fleet, which throughout the war had done little to challenge the nationalist and Italian blockade, mainly because of the inertia and inefficiency of its ships’ crews. Meanwhile, the nationalist fleet had grown with the help of Mussolini, who sent two submarines. These were renamed the Mola and the Sanjurjo, hardly reassuring choices for traditionally superstitious submariners. In addition, seven Italian ‘Legionary’ submarines continued to operate throughout the Mediterranean, ready to hoist the royal Spanish flag if forced to the surface. Mussolini also gave Franco four destroyers and, later in 1938, an old cruiser, the Taranto.