The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ 9 February, around 300 Republican loyalists under the command of González Ubieta, 100 women and 50 children, and what Sartorius described as ‘some really repugnant types’, were taken to Marseilles. Menorca was of secondary importance in the war but the significance of what Sartorius and Muirhead-Gould achieved was that it sent a misleading message to the Republican officer corps that a bloodless surrender would be possible.24

      The decision of Rojo not to return to Spain was deeply damaging to Negrín’s hopes of securing the full backing of the forces of the centre-south zone for his plan to use the threat of last-ditch resistance to help secure reasonable peace terms from Franco. In fact, Rojo’s stance was more disastrous even than it seemed at the time given that his most likely replacement, Manuel Matallana, was already working in favour of the rebel cause. According to Zugazagoitia, Rojo refused to return to Spain with the words, ‘The only reason for obeying the order to return is the duty of obedience but you surely realize that just because a superior officer orders us to jump out of a window we do not have to do so.’ He told Zugazagoitia and the Consul in Perpignan, Rafael Méndez Martínez, that ‘he was not prepared to preside over an even bigger disaster than the one in Catalonia’. When he was informed of this, Negrín had Méndez draw up a document, witnessed by Zugazagoitia, registering both his instructions to Rojo and Jurado and their reasons for disobeying them. Zugazagoitia was deeply shocked by Rojo’s comments. Although he could not believe that they reflected cowardice on his part, he later wondered if Rojo knew what was being planned by Casado and was passively complicit. For Togliatti, Rojo was simply a deserter.25

      After the retreat into France, Uribe was commissioned by the PCE leadership to speak to Rojo and:

      try to show him that his views were mistaken and to convince him of the need to continue the war, explaining the possibilities that we still had. I was also instructed to make him see his responsibilities which he should fulfil before going to the central zone with the Government. Our conversation lasted three hours. I could get nothing out of him. He was unshakeable in his judgement that, from a military point of view, the Republic could do nothing, the war was over and the best that could be done was to seek a way of ending it on the best possible terms. As far as he was concerned personally, he had made his decision on the basis of the military situation and nothing would make him change his mind. None of the arguments used in the conversation, including discipline and honour, had the slightest effect. Rojo had decided not to go the central zone and he did not go.26

      The Republican Ambassador in Paris, Marcelino Pascua, sent telegrams to Negrín that were highly critical of Rojo. Even more critical comments were passed between Zugazagoitia and Pascua in their private correspondence. Recalling Rojo’s remarks about the limits of obedience, Zugazagoitia wrote: ‘the fact is the General’s statements were among the most shocking that I heard in the entire war’. He questioned Rojo’s role in the fall of Barcelona, asking why he had sacked General Hernández Saravia, who had arrived in the city with the intention of organizing a last-ditch resistance such as that which had saved Madrid in 1936. Above all, both Zugazagoitia and Pascua were outraged by the way in which, in his book ¡Alerta los pueblos! written immediately after the war, Rojo fudged the issue of his personal responsibility. In it, he denied that he had received orders to return to Spain. In fact, Negrín sent a telegram to Marcelino Pascua on 16 February instructing him to tell General Rojo and Colonel Jurado again that they must return to Spain. Pascua gave the telegram to Rojo. Similar telegrams were sent to the Republican consuls in Toulouse and Perpignan for delivery to him.27

      Juan López, who was in France as part of the stranded CNT–FAI delegation, was in the Republican Consulate in Toulouse when he overheard a telephone conversation between the Consul and Rojo, who was in Perpignan. He heard the Consul say: ‘I have received a telegram from the prime minister instructing me to let you know that you must come here to Toulouse to arrange your return to Spain.’28 The publication of Zugazagoitia’s book with its account of Negrín’s call for Méndez to notarize the refusal of Rojo and Jurado to return to Spain ensured for him Rojo’s enduring resentment.29

      In ¡Alerta los pueblos!, Rojo claimed that he and Negrín had parted amicably and that he had remained in France ‘to finish my task’. His vain hope had been to see the French implement promises to allow the refugee troops and their equipment to return to Spain. He went on to describe the calamitous situation of the thousands of Republican soldiers now in improvised, overcrowded and insanitary concentration camps on the beaches of southern France. The Republicans herded there lacked adequate shelter, food, clean water and basic medical provision. His distress at what he saw impelled him to write to Negrín on 12 February a bitter letter of complaint and protest. In it, he expressed his disgust that, while plans had been made for the evacuation of President Azaña, the President of the Cortes, the Basque and Catalan governments, parliamentary deputies and large numbers of functionaries, nothing had been done to plan for the evacuation of ordinary citizens. He was appalled by the camps, ‘where today hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees and tens of thousands of soldiers, including middle- and high-ranking officers, are perishing’. He was outraged by evidence that Republican functionaries were simply not doing their job – a point reiterated in many of the memoirs of the period.30

      Rojo’s letter of 12 February reflected his obsession with the plight of the refugees in the camps and the way the French authorities pursued and humiliated those who had managed to avoid internment. He reproached Negrín for not having accepted his advice to surrender in Catalonia before the present situation arose. The letter underlined his refusal to return to Spain and his determination to continue working on behalf of the exiled troops: ‘I have not returned because I have no wish to be part of the second disaster to which the Government will almost certainly condemn our army and our people. I have stayed here believing that it is necessary that someone look out for the fate of our men. I was right to fear that we would be abandoned.’ He went on to make several demands of the Prime Minister. He began by asking that Negrín accept ‘the total and absolute renunciation of my post’. He went on to make suggestions that he believed would avoid a humanitarian catastrophe: that a government minister be sent to take charge of the refugee situation; that, in the interim, the Ambassador Marcelino Pascua be required to come to Perpignan; and that more funds be made available. Finally, he threatened that, if these demands were not met, he would deal directly with Franco to arrange the repatriation of the refugees and would publicize the situation, threatening to take ‘serious decisions if something was not done to improve the state of affairs’. He did not implement his threat, he said in the book, so as not to make things worse. The letter bore an olive branch for Negrín: ‘Perhaps among those whom I accuse of being responsible for this dereliction of duty, you are not the only exception because I am aware of your constant preoccupation, your sleepless nights, your integrity and I know how you have had to fight, along with a handful of ministers, against the insuperable fear that had invaded every level of the higher reaches of the State.’31

      General Rojo wrote with some pride of the retreat: the army ‘had carried out a methodical withdrawal … it had held off the enemy, continuing to fight throughout, without letting the weakening of morale open the way to collective indiscipline or panic, without the demoralization spreading through its rearguard, and crossing into the neighbouring country in good order led by its officers’. The Minister of Culture in the Catalan Generalitat, Carles Pi Sunyer, wrote: ‘It is only fair to underline in honour of both Negrín and the army that it retreated in good order and with strict discipline without the epic grandeur of the withdrawal being stained by any explosion of vengeful violence.’32

      Just before he entered France on 9 February, Negrín had said to the faithful group that accompanied СКАЧАТЬ