The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ eventually launched on 23 December.41 The scale of war-weariness, resentment of the conflict’s human and economic costs and defeatism in the wake of Munich made a successful defence seem the remotest possibility. Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming superiority of the attacking forces in terms of air cover, artillery and sheer numbers, the Republican retreat never turned into a rout. Franco could rotate his troops every forty-eight hours while the Republicans had had no leave for seven weeks.

      The forces of Enrique Líster managed to hold up the Nationalist advance for nearly two weeks at Borjas Blancas on the road from Lérida to Tarragona. Nevertheless, the advance was inexorable. On New Year’s Eve, a ferocious Italian bombing raid on Barcelona brought to the city what Negrín, in a broadcast to the United States, called ‘sorrow and mourning’. His Minister of Foreign Affairs, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, commented: ‘Perhaps this is “Happy New Year” in the Italian language.’ Herbert Matthews, who had helped Negrín polish his English for the broadcast, wrote later: ‘I had never seen him so moved.’ On 4 January 1939, the Francoists broke through at Borjas Blancas and the end was nigh for Catalonia. Without adequate armaments and with the troops drained after their superhuman efforts, the road was open to Tarragona and then on to Barcelona. The bespectacled Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Tagüeña, a tall, thin mathematician who had risen through the ranks of the militias to command an army corps, mounted a determined defence but had only a fraction of the necessary weaponry.42

      In the wake of the Munich Agreement and the consequent conviction in Moscow that Russia had been betrayed by the democracies, a concern for security saw Stalin start to make tentative overtures to Nazi Germany. Engaged in a war with Japan in China, with serious preocupations in Eastern Europe, and with obstacles in the way of transport to Spain, Russia had to cut back on aid in the last six months of the Civil War just as Germany and Italy significantly increased their assistance to Franco. The consequence was, in the words of Herbert Matthews, that:

      the last year of fighting was a miracle of dogged, hopeless courage, made possible solely by the tenacity and indomitable spirit of Negrín. However, this astonishing display of leadership was the most bitterly criticized feature among Spaniards of Dr Negrín’s career. The fight was hopeless, his critics said, and all that ‘unnecessary’ destruction, all those extra lives lost, all the intensified hatred of Spaniard for Spaniard, could have been avoided. It is certain, on the other hand, that the Loyalists could have held out longer had it not been for treachery, and that World War II could have saved Republican Spain … Don Juan’s aims were consistent, patriotic and honorable. He stood for a fight to the finish, first to save the Second Republic and – when that became impossible – to get the best terms for those who had remained loyal. In the process, he had to rely heavily on Stalinist Russia and then almost exclusively on the Spanish Communists.43

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       Resist to Survive

      While Negrín continued desperately trying to maintain a war effort in the hope, not of victory, but of an honourable peace settlement, Casado worked to consolidate his links with both the Francoist espionage networks and the Fifth Column in Madrid. Without them, it would have been much more difficult for him to pull together the various elements of his coup. He was also seconded in what he did by the distinguished Socialist intellectual Julián Besteiro, Professor of Logic in the University of Madrid. On the night of 5 March, the two, together with disillusioned anarchist leaders such as Cipriano Mera and the Socialist trade union leader Wenceslao Carrillo, announced an anti-Negrín National Defence Junta (Consejo Nacional de Defensa) under the presidency of General José Miaja. The enterprise was driven by the hope that Casado’s contacts with the Francoist secret service and Besteiro’s links with the Fifth Column in Madrid would facilitate negotiation with Franco in Burgos. They may also have hoped that, by inspiring a military uprising ‘to save Spain from Communism’, they would somehow endear themselves to Franco.

      Casado justified his action on the grounds that he was preventing a Moscow-inspired Communist take-over. Although such intentions on the part of the Communists were demonstrably non-existent, the fiction was believed by those in the Republican zone desperate for an end to the war, many of whom had already acquired a deep hostility to the Communists.1 Casado’s later justification was founded on his outrage that Negrín and the Communists had talked of resistance to the bitter end when shortages of food and equipment made that impossible. In denouncing Juan Negrín’s commitment to continued resistance, he was ignoring the Prime Minister’s Herculean efforts to secure by diplomacy a negotiated peace with adequate guarantees against a justifiably feared Francoist repression. According to Prieto, Negrín’s efforts had even extended to the Third Reich. It should be noted that Negrín’s diplomacy remained secret lest it trigger defeatism.2 Similarly, Casado seemed unaware of the extent to which Negrín’s rhetoric of resistance was a necessary bargaining chip to be used to secure a reasonable peace settlement with Franco.

      Although Casado had never joined the Communist Party, as had many other career officers on the Republican side, his ferocious anti-communism was of recent vintage. He was a freemason with a pedigree as a Republican. When the military coup took place in July 1936, he was still commander of Manuel Azaña’s presidential guard. He took part in the defence of Madrid from the attacks through the sierra to the north of the capital. According to his own account, in October 1936 he was dismissed as head of operations of the general staff for his criticism of the way in which priority was being given to the Communist Fifth Regiment (Quinto Regimiento) in the distribution of Soviet weaponry. In fact, the decision had been made by Vicente Rojo, who thought him incompetent. Antonio Cordón, the under-secretary of the Ministry of Defence, had a higher opinion of Casado than Rojo had, regarding him as intelligent and professional. However, Cordón believed that Casado’s positive qualities were neutralized by his ‘overweening pride and uncontrolled ambition’. Believing himself to be the man who could win the war, Casado was eaten up with resentment that he had not been promoted to positions commensurate with his own estimates of his worth. His bitterness was focused on Rojo. Nevertheless, over the following months, he was given important postings. Indalecio Prieto made him commander of the Army of Andalusia and, in May 1938, Negrín appointed him commander of the Army of the Centre.3 This last appointment was interpreted by the ex-Communist Francisco-Félix Montiel in terms of a bizarre conspiracy theory that Casado had been chosen by the Russians for his incompetence as part of a long-term plan to bring the war to an end without blame for the Communist Party.4 It is more plausibly an indication that the Communists were not as committed, as Casado later claimed that they were, to total domination of the Republic’s armed forces.

      The reasons for Besteiro’s involvement went back much further. His experiences during the repression which followed the Socialist-led general strike of 1917 intensified his repugnance for violence. He became aware of the futility of Spain’s weak Socialist movement undertaking a frontal assault on the state. He opposed the PSOE’s affiliation to the Moscow-based Communist International (Comintern), and a period in England on a scholarship to do research on the Workers’ Educational Association in 1924 confirmed his reformism. He had argued from his position as president of both the PSOE and the UGT that, in order to build up working-class strength, the Socialist movement should accept the offer that it collaborate with the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera. Yet, in mid-1930, he argued against Socialist collaboration in the broad opposition front established by the Pact of San Sebastián and eventually in the future government of the Republic. Finding himself in a minority, in February 1931, he felt obliged to resign as president of both the party and the union.5 Thus began a process of marginalization from his erstwhile comrades. Moreover, his theoretical abstractions СКАЧАТЬ