The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ proceedings of this meeting further intensified Casado’s hostility towards the Communists. He had tried to prevent it taking place, which was a dictatorial abuse of the powers associated with the state of martial law decreed in late January. Deeply irritated by the Communist leadership’s references to the failure of the Brunete offensive and the strong possibility of disloyalty within the military, Casado was all the more furious because Dolores Ibárruri had called him a ‘mummy’. He shouted: ‘I should have no hesitation!… They had better look out! I have foreseen all the consequences. In case anything happens to me, I have a list of all my enemies and at least thirty of them will die!’ Edmundo Domínguez was convinced that Casado’s bluster reflected fear of his machinations being discovered.4

      On his return from France on 10 February, Negrín was furious. He viewed the PCE’s calls for an exclusively Communist-led resistance as disloyalty. On the 15th, Líster reported to Negrín in Madrid. The Prime Minister received him in his bathroom where he was shaving. There was nothing unusual in that. On a regular basis, while shaving and or even while soaking in the bath, Negrín would conduct business. He was not bothered by the niceties of protocol and, with so many responsibilities and so little time, he would listen to reports or take advice where he thought it was useful, and one such place was in his bathroom. The American journalist Louis Fischer, who advised him on the foreign press, described how Negrín would invite him to his quarters to talk and he would often find him in the bathroom shaving, clad only in his pyjama bottoms. He would then take a bath while Fischer sat on a stool or leaned against the wall chatting with him: ‘Occasionally a secretary would come in with a telegram, bend over the bath-tub and hold it while Negrín read it. Negrín was very natural and simple about all this.’5

      Now, on 15 February, after expressing his appreciation that Líster had returned to the central zone, they talked about the prospects of further resistance. Saying that the pair of them were likely to end up being shot, Negrín gave Líster a gloomy outline of situation. ‘He told me that a whole series of senior military commanders and political and trade union leaders – anarchists, Socialists and Republicans – were ready to capitulate. Wherever they looked, all they saw were difficulties and, instead of working to strengthen the discipline and morale of the troops and of the civilian population, they spent their time spreading defeatism and conspiring.’ Negrín confided in Líster that Rojo had written him a letter presenting his resignation and threatening to make a public statement if he (Negrín) did not put an end to the war and provide more money for the troops exiled in France. Significantly, Negrín added that Rojo had sent a copy of his letter to Matallana. Regarding the situation within the government, Negrín ‘bitterly criticized some of his ministers, saying that they were cowards and did little but squabble among themselves about petty issues. He added that those who continued to behave with dignity were Uribe, José Moix Regàs, the Minister of Labour, and Vayo.’6

      The following day, 16 February, according to a report by Togliatti, Negrín spoke on the telephone to Uribe saying, ‘I am told that the Communists in the Popular Front have declared that whether they respect or not the orders of the government depends what the Party decides.’ He said angrily: ‘I will shoot all the Communists.’ According to a similar account of this confrontation given by Stepanov, Negrín rang Uribe and asked him if it was true that the PCE politburo had decided that government measures would be accepted only with its approval. Before Uribe could reply, Negrín said that, if it was true, he would have the entire politburo arrested and put on trial. Shortly after this conversation with Uribe had taken place, Togliatti returned from France and he was able to smooth things over with Negrín.7

      During the three and a half weeks that Negrín spent in Spain after his return to the centre-south zone, he seemed to be afflicted with a degree of uncertainty. The man appointed on 24 February to be head of the corps of political commissars, Bibiano Fernández Osorio Tafall, although a member of Azaña’s Left Republican party Izquierda Republicana, was a supporter of the policy of resistance.8 He confided in Cordón his concern that Negrín was wasting time reorganizing government departments instead of creating a general staff of loyal officers. Cordón saw this as the Prime Minister suffering one of his occasional bouts of indecision. Indeed, he concluded that Negrín had returned to Spain ‘not with a sense of being a resolute leader firmly determined to take the reins and steer events, but with the rather heroic attitude of a decent man who accepts a sacrifice, even though he is sure of its futility, in the more or less vague hope that it will not be rendered pointless at the last minute’. In an earlier version of his memoirs, Cordón speculated that Negrín had returned to ease his conscience. Cordón’s concern about what he saw as Negrín’s indecision derived from a conviction that, although the situation was desperate, resistance was still possible and indeed the only way to save thousands of lives.9 After the end of the war, the senior PCE politburo member, the organization secretary Pedro Checa, told Burnett Bolloten (then engaged in writing a pro-Communist history of the Spanish Civil War) that Negrín did not really believe in the possibility of resistance.10 Checa was probably right, but, as Zugazagoitia pointed out, Negrín did believe that a rhetoric of resistance could help bring about a better peace settlement.

      A letter from Negrín to Prieto dated 23 June 1939 substantiates the comments of both Ossorio Tafall and Cordón. ‘Once I reached the centre-south zone I endeavoured to raise morale, reorganize services so as to meet the new circumstances, gather the elements necessary for an effective resistance. The measures adopted … would have allowed us to keep fighting until now. Keep fighting, I say, because, even if we could not win, there was no other way to save what we could or at least save our self-respect.’11 This had been confirmed even before that. Álvarez del Vayo had written to Marcelino Pascua on 25 February stressing the importance of giving the British government the sense that the Republic had the capacity for a lengthy resistance in the centre-south zone so that London would put pressure on Franco to agree to no reprisals as the basis of a peace settlement.12 When, after Casado’s coup, Fernando de los Ríos, the Republican Ambassador in Washington, recognized his Consejo Nacional de Defensa as a legitimate authority, Negrín sent him an angry telegram in which he reminded him that the whole point of the rhetoric of resistance was to gain time for a coordinated evacuation and some guarantees against reprisals.13

      Prieto’s reply to Negrín’s letter on 3 July quoted a report written after Casado’s 5 March coup by a close collaborator of Besteiro, Trifón Gómez, quartermaster general of the Republican army and president of the Railwaymen’s Union. He supported the coup but had taken little part other than to try to negotiate refuge in Mexico for the Republicans who had to flee. His efforts in Paris to this end were rendered futile by Besteiro’s refusal to allow any government resources to be used to pay for the passage of those who had to flee. Besteiro believed that the national wealth was needed in Spain for post-war reconstruction and that Franco would treat those who stayed behind in Spain all the better for having thus safeguarded resources. That short-sightedness seemed not to diminish the loyalty to Besteiro of Trifón Gómez. Through the visceral anti-communism of his report can be discerned the impotence of Negrín’s government after his return from Catalonia.

      Only men blinded by vanity and arrogance could fail to see that everyone was against them when they returned to the centre-south zone; everyone except the gang of Communists who continued to manipulate Negrín, driving a wedge between him and the Socialists and forcing him to oppose the will of the rest of the Spaniards … Negrín’s government was a phantom. Not one Ministry worked; none of the Ministers had the slightest desire to establish themselves; their one obsession was to secure for themselves a way of getting out of Spain … The government had no will to lead and, СКАЧАТЬ