The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ erstwhile comrades of the other side. However, infiltration of one-time militia units could also be found. Cazorla investigated Fifth Columnist infiltration of the ineffective secret services (Servicios Secretos de Guerra) run in the Ministry of Defence by the CNT’s Manuel Salgado Moreira. Shortly before the dissolution of the Junta de Defensa by Largo Caballero, on 14 April 1937, José Cazorla announced that an important spy-ring in the Republican Army had been dismantled. Among those arrested was Alfonso López de Letona, a Fifth Columnist who had reached a high rank in the general staff of the 14th Division of the People’s Army, commanded by the anarchist Cipriano Mera. López de Letona had become a senior member of Manuel Salgado’s staff on the basis of a recommendation by Mera’s chief of staff, Antonio Verardini Díez de Ferreti.8

      The belief that the anarchist movement was infested with Fifth Columnists was not confined to the Communists. Largo Caballero told PSOE executive committee member Juan-Simeón Vidarte that ‘the FAI has been infiltrated by so many agents provocateurs and police informers that it is impossible to have dealings with them’. That view was shared by the Socialist Director General de Seguridad, Largo Caballero’s friend Wenceslao Carrillo. One of José García Pradas’s collaborators in the CNT–FAI newspaper Frente Libertario was the prominent Fifth Columnist Antonio Bouthelier España, who also held the position of secretary to Manuel Salgado.9 The easy acquisition of CNT membership cards provided the Fifth Column with access to information, an instrument for acts of provocation and relative ease of movement. Once equipped with CNT accreditation, Fifth Columnists could also get identity cards for the Republican security services.10

      While Negrín was still in Catalonia, the anarchist movement initiated contacts with the generals who were also being sounded out by Casado. On 1 February 1939 the secretaries of the three principal anarchist organizations, the CNT, the FAI and the anarchist youth movement, the Federación de Juventudes Libertarias, jointly sent an obsequious letter to General Miaja. They suggested that they create for him an organization uniting all anti-fascist forces in the centre-south zone, insinuating that it exclude the Communists. Over the next three days, the anarchists held meetings with Miaja, Matallana and Menéndez. Since all three generals were already conspiring with Casado, it is reasonable to suppose that areas of mutual interest were sketched out. According to the anarchist chronicler José Peirats, in the meeting with the anarchists Miaja declared that the Communists intended to impose a one-party government led by Vicente Uribe. There was no truth in the claim – it merely reflected what Casado had told Miaja earlier on the same day.11

      In the wake of these anarchist initiatives, three senior figures of the libertarian movement of the centre-south zone were sent on a mission to try to secure a coordinated response of the CNT and FAI to the deteriorating military situation. Juan López Sánchez, who had been Minister of Commerce in the government of Largo Caballero, Manuel Amil, secretary of the CNT’s Federación Nacional del Transporte, and Eduardo Val Bescós, seen as the most powerful figure in the anarchist movement in Madrid, had left for Catalonia in the early morning of Sunday 5 February, ten days after the Francoist capture of Barcelona. Their purpose was to make contact with the CNT’s National Committee to discuss the situation after the expected loss of Catalonia. Their aircraft, unable to land in Catalonia, where Figueras was about to fall, took them to Toulouse. In contrast to the silent Val, the tall and brawny Manuel Amil was a loquacious raconteur. They were trapped in France for several days, visiting the consulates in Toulouse and Perpignan in search of the CNT’s National Committee before finding the CNT headquarters set up in Paris. What they learned and their subsequent reports would play a significant part in the anarchists’ participation in the Casado coup. Throughout the delegation’s sojourn in France, Val’s main contribution had been to mutter imprecations against Negrín.12

      On 8 February, they took part in a meeting in Paris with senior members of the CNT, including Juan García Oliver, the head of the National Committee Mariano Vázquez and the minister Segundo Blanco. García Oliver said that it was necessary to remove Negrín and form a government to bring the war to an end. Val then shocked the group by declaring that he had proof that Negrín was not planning resistance but meant to end the war. He then persuaded them that it was not the moment to think in terms of surrendering. His optimistic view of the possibilities of lengthy resistance did not prevail. However, since the main objection to Negrín was, bizarrely, that he was defeatist, the group finally agreed that it was necessary to remove him and form a government capable of resisting long enough to achieve an acceptable peace settlement. The general consensus was that ‘the more resistance we are capable of mounting, the better the peace conditions we can secure’. Ignoring the military reality, Mariano Vázquez declared simplistically, ‘Whoever can strike hard is in a position to make themselves feared.’ They then had immense problems getting back to the centre-south zone, which they finally managed to do in the early hours of the morning of Monday 20 February.13

      Underlying the anarchist initiatives was both a visceral anti-communism and a belief that Negrín was incapable of continuing the war effort. In fact, Negrín harboured vain hopes that, after the collapse of the Catalan front, it would be possible to secure the return to Spain both of the evacuated army and of the equipment that they had taken over the border. He had also believed that the supplies from friendly nations, especially the Soviet Union, that had accumulated in France could be delivered to the central-southern zone. Given his commitment to holding out until a peace settlement could be made that would secure the evacuation of those at risk, these hopes sustained his rhetorical commitment to the possibility of continuing the war. While the anarchists simply did not want to believe him, his rhetoric also exposed him to the criticism of many, most notably Azaña and Rojo.14

      Just before the fall of Catalonia, the internationally famous journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt,

      I find myself thinking about Negrín all the time. I suppose he will fly to Madrid when it is ended in Catalonia and carry on there. Negrín is a really great man, I believe (and he can’t stop being now), and it’s so strange and moving to think of that man who surely never wanted to be prime minister of anything being pushed by events and history into a position which he has heroically filled, doing better all the time, all the time being finer against greater odds. He used to be a brilliant gay lazy man with strong beliefs and perhaps too much sense of humour. He was it seems never afraid and loved his friends and his ideas about Spain and drinking and eating and just being alive. Now he has grown all the time until you get an impression he’s made of some special indestructible kind of stone: he has a twenty hour working day and in Spain you get the idea that he manages alone, that with his two hands every mornng he puts every single thing into place and brings order. Of course, he cannot hold a front. I hope he gets to Madrid. If they are going to be defeated, I still hope they don’t surrender.15

      In contrast, some months after the end of the war, Rojo produced a devastating criticism of Negrín:

      It would appear that the view that we should continue a policy of resistance was imposed in the hope that it might provoke a change in the international situation. The same hope that had sustained our sacrifices but now without any basis. What do sacrifices matter! Resistance! A sublime formula for heroism when it is nurtured by hope and sustained by an ideal; but when the will that flies the banner of that ideal collapses and hope becomes a denial of reality, then resistance is no longer an heroic military battle-cry but an absurdity. What were we to resist with? Why were we going to resist? Two questions for which no one had a positive answer.

      Rojo’s diatribe reflected the distress caused him by the plight of the exiles, but, safe in France, he failed to take into consideration the appalling consequences of a swift unconditional surrender. He followed up his comments on the СКАЧАТЬ