The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ lose a valuable collaborator who would have been immensely useful because of his reputation, and the influence that he wielded over the career officers and the subversives who were already plotting received a major boost from Rojo’s desertion. They knew all about his views and his refusal. Rojo himself had made sure to let them know. In any case, it was evident that he had not accompanied the Government back to Spain. In contrast, the Communist officers had returned to what remained of Republican territory to do their duty.42

      Hidalgo de Cisneros stayed on for several days vainly negotiating with the French authorities for his men to fly back to Spain in their own aircraft. At the Paris Embassy, he met both Rojo and Enrique Jurado. Azaña asked for all three to meet him and explain the military situation in the wake of the fall of Catalonia. All three gave bleak reports, of which the most pessimistic was that by Jurado. When Azaña asked them to put their thoughts in writing, Hidalgo suspected that the President was simply looking for a justification for his resignation. After consulting with the Ambassador, Marcelino Pascua, Hidalgo refused, stating that such a report should come from the Minister of Defence, that is to say Negrín. Rojo and Jurado used the same excuse. Azaña was greatly displeased. When Hidalgo returned to Madrid, he recounted this to a furious Negrín, who immediately sent a telegram to Azaña saying that he would hold him responsible for the consequences of behaviour that he regarded as tantamount to treachery. In fact, Rojo had already given Azaña a deeply gloomy oral assessment of the situation which almost certainly reinforced the President’s already firm determination not to return to Spain. Indeed, Azaña would later claim that this was the case.43 Negrín was understandably annoyed and so Rojo wrote a letter to him explaining that he had been virtually ambushed by Azaña during what he had assumed would be merely a formal visit in accordance with protocol. Along with his letter, Rojo enclosed a detailed report on the economic, human and military reasons why continued resistance in the centre-south zone was futile. It seems that he was unaware of the extent to which the rhetoric of resistance was a ploy by Negrín to enhance his diplomacy. Before receiving the letter, Negrín sent, via Marcelino Pascua, a firm instruction to Rojo to make reports to Azaña only via the Minister of Defence, that is to say, Negrín himself. Rojo then wrote another letter reiterating that he had fallen into a trap set by Azaña. The letter also contained a detailed report on the condition of the refugees. Rojo sent copies of these various reports to Matallana, which meant that their gloomy conclusions were known both to other members of Casado’s conspiracy and, of course, to the Francoist SIPM.44

      Rojo subsequently claimed that he had stayed on in France because his orders were to remain and do everything possible to ameliorate the situation of the thousands of Republican soldiers now in exile. It is true that he distributed funds to officers for them to buy food, but he also ignored the multiple orders from Negrín to return.45 Rojo declared later that ‘there was no shortage of heavy hints that I should also return’. This was an utterly disingenuous reference to explicit instructions issued by Negrín, not to mention the conversations recounted in their memoirs by Cordón, Tagüeña and Zugazagoitia.46

      According to Martínez Barrio, the President of the Cortes, who saw Azaña every day in the Paris Embassy, the text of the telegram sent to the President by Negrín in mid-February was cold, formal and rather threatening. Azaña, who regarded the war as effectively over, had reacted furiously: ‘A fine programme he’s offering me! To enter Madrid, accompanied by Negrín and Uribe, with Pasionaria and Pepe Díaz on the running board of the car.’ (José Díaz was secretary-general of the PCE.) Martínez Barrio pointed out to Azaña that, if he refused to accept Negrín’s insistence that he return to Spain, it was his constitutional duty either to resign as President or else to appoint a new prime minister. Had Azaña resigned then, Martínez Barrio felt that, as his automatic successor, he could have helped Negrín seek a reasonable peace. As it was, Azaña was sunk in lethargy and did not respond. Some days later, Negrín sent another ‘even ruder and more humiliating’ telegram ‘in the name of the Spanish people’ accusing the President of failing in his constitutional duty and demanding his immediate return. Azaña replied on 25 February denying that his absence from Spain had in any way weakened the government or encouraged any of the Great Powers to hasten their recognition of Franco. Before Negrín could reply, Azaña had left the Embassy. He attended a concert at the Opéra Comique with Cipriano Rivas; returning to the Embassy merely to collect their luggage, the two men left together for the Gare de Lyon. Their departure eagerly recorded by an army of journalists and photographers, they took the night train to Collonges-sous-Salève near the Swiss border. As Azaña had done on previous occasions in his political career, he fled from the pressures besetting him, and his flight would be severely damaging to the Republic.47 The Minister of Justice, Ramón González Peña, declared that Azaña’s behaviour was high treason. Negrín even toyed with the unrealistic idea of having Azaña put on trial.48

5

       Casado Sows the Wind

      Meanwhile, the hostility between the Communists and Casado was becoming ever more public. In fact, Casado had long been attempting to foment dissent between the Communists and the other component groups of the Popular Front. A fruitful opportunity had arisen when the PCE harshly criticized Largo Caballero, who after crossing into France on 29 January 1939 had decided to remain in Paris. As he had abandoned Madrid once before, on 6 November 1936, claims that he had sent his papers and household linen and silver in an ambulance two days before crossing the frontier with his family fuelled accusations of cowardice.1 On 2 February, the PCE issued a manifesto severely censuring his absence at a time when his presence in Madrid might have contributed to raising morale:

      The Politburo denounced before the working class and the Spanish people the shameful flight from our national territory of Sr Largo Caballero who, aided by a small group of enemies of the unity of the Spanish people and its organizations, has done everything in his power to sabotage the work of the Government and break the unity and resistance of our people and now crowns his previous criminal activity with this desertion.

      In addition to banning the distribution of the manifesto, Casado held a meeting of the Madrid Popular Front at which he deliberately fuelled Socialist hostility towards the Communists by making a theatrical show of stressing his indignation at the way in which Largo Caballero had been depicted. He claimed, falsely, that the manifesto had called the veteran leader ‘a thief and a murderer’.2

      With the more realistic and prudent Palmiro Togliatti still in France – after the loss of Catalonia – PCE leaders in Madrid made unrestrained and belligerent declarations about last-ditch resistance. The Comintern adviser present, the Bulgarian Stoyan Minev, alias ‘Boris Stepanov’, was also talking in terms of sidelining Negrín and establishing a revolutionary war council to put an end to capitulationism. Stepanov was doing no more than articulating the party leadership’s visceral resentment of the way they were being blamed for the course of the war. This was made clear in the course of a meeting of the PCE provincial committee held in Madrid between 9 and 11 February. In an unrestrained speech, Dolores Ibárruri attacked Largo Caballero, Casado and Miaja. She referred to the two officers as ‘distinguished mummies’. Vicente Uribe went further, denouncing the cowardice of those who were doing the job of the enemy by spreading the notion that peace without reprisals was possible. His proposal that the Communist Party take power to purge such defeatists and strengthen the war effort was a symptom of impotence, an empty threat designed to inhibit the conspirators. The inevitable effect of its threatening tone was further to isolate the PCE and make Casado readier to act. His initial response was to attempt to censor Mundo Obrero’s report on the СКАЧАТЬ