The Spanish Civil War

[nightandthecity]

Salv, that’s an excellent overview, though I think you let the Republican government off too lightly.

There were several kinds of killings in the Republican zone. There was the spontaneous outburst of popular fury concentrated in the first few weeks, where the victims were largely supporters of the rebellion, or those individuals that workers and peasants regarded as their immediate oppressors. These killings were not as indiscriminate as Nationalist propaganda claimed: you could be a major landowner or industrialist and be absolutely safe if your workforce regarded you as a decent guy. And as you say, the leadership of the various parties and the two major Unions (CNT and UGT) generally opposed the bloodletting and quickly bought it under control. There were occasional similar outbursts later, usually as a response to Nationalist atrocities, or in moments of panic (like the Madrid shootings you mention), but in general this kind of violence was well controlled in the Republican zone after the first few weeks.

However, some of the worst atrocities in the Republican zone occurred after this period and were committed by the forces of the Republican state under Communist influence. The most notorious was the massacre of 2,000 Nationalist Officers at Paracuelos de Jarama and Torrejon de Ardoz during the siege of Madrid. It was seen as a military necessity, to prevent them stiffening the Nationalist war effort when Madrid fell. Such incidents weren’t common, but its interesting that they haven’t attracted the same degree of opprobrium as the Jaquerie of the first weeks. As the Anarchists say, it seems crimes by states are always seen differently to crimes by individuals and mobs. I doubt the victims see any difference.

There is also the issue of killings committed by different Republican factions against each other. It’s not often realized that figures for killings in the Republican zone include a large number of Republicans killed by other Republicans. I’ve never been able to find a serious breakdown of the figures on this (does Beevor do it?), but there is a general agreement among historians that (to quote Paul Preston) “after the autumn of 1936 terror in the republican zone was to be directed not against rightists but against revolutionaries”. In practice this was largely terror by the growing Communist Party against Anarchists, dissident Marxists, and ordinary people involved in the social revolution that accompanied the working class counter-insurgency of July 1936.

But yes, killings in the Republican zone were never on the scale of the killings in the Nationalist zone. There was a major qualitative difference too. Killings in the Republican zone were in general just that – killings, usually by shooting. But in the Nationalist zone torture, mutilation and rape were virtually acts of policy.

Incidentally, as regards the Church, I see that tomorrow (26 July) is the anniversary of the last auto-da-fe by the Spanish Inquisition. The victim was a schoolteacher who had said that you only needed to obey the Ten Commandments. This was in 1826, so almost within living memory in 1936.

 

[Salv]

I was going to include the executions of the 2,000 Nationalist officers at the end of my overview, but forgot to include them. Thanks for pointing that out - I'm quite embarrassed that I didn't mention the single biggest Republican atrocity. It certainly wasn't deliberate. I was going backwards and forwards between a few different books trying to get a full picture, and lost my way a little. I should have proof read that post properly before submitting it.

My next post would have been about the White Terror, but I haven't got time now and I'm off to Spain first thing tomorrow morning. If anyone else wants to post an overview of the White Terror please feel free.

I'm currently reading a book called A Time Of Silence which deals with the psychology and culture behind the Francoist repression during, and for some years after, the Civil War. It's a very disturbing book - the repression wasn't carried out in a spirit of revenge, but more as a way of cleansing Spain of foreign influence. The excerpt of Astray's speech that I quoted earlier became Francoist policy:

The Basque Country and Catalonia are two cancers in the body of the nation. Fascism, which is Spain's health bringer will know how to exterminate them both, cutting into the live healthy flesh like a resolute surgeon free from false sentimentality. And since the healthy flesh is the soil, the diseased flesh the people who dwell on it, fascism and the army will eradicate the people and restore the soil to the sacred national realm.

I probably won't take the book to Spain with me.

 

[Lena_Horne]

Another aspect often overlooked is the immediate effect such a war had on the children. As they were evacuated to various parts of the countryside the relief camps they landed in asked them to draw and color as a way of documenting what they had seen. It was the first such instance of art being used as a therapy tool for children caught in modern warfare (and perhaps, all of history). Another amazing site I (somehow) forgot to mention can be found here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/children/

There can be found a great deal of these drawings, as well as some information on the children that drew them. Decades later some of them were tracked down and could scarcely remember their own artwork. I don't know if that was from the trauma or simple memory.

L_H

 

[nightandthecity]

My next post would have been about the White Terror, but I haven't got time now and I'm off to Spain first thing tomorrow morning. If anyone else wants to post an overview of the White Terror please feel free.

Well I’ll have a go, though I think you would do it better! You seem to have a better and more up to date book collection than me and I certainly hope you will add your comments when you get back.
BTW, enjoy your holiday: I’m away for a few days myself from this weekend.

 

[nightandthecity]

THE WHITE TERROR

The “white terror” behind Nationalist lines was on a totally different scale to the “red terror” and of a very different character. I would put it like this: with the red terror we are in the familiar territory of brutal civil war. With the white terror we enter the same territory as the Holocaust.

It is not known exactly how many perished. Howson quotes recent Spanish research which estimates Republican executions at around 25,000 and Nationalist executions at around 200,000. But Preston’s figures are much higher: around 55,000 Republican killings and 400,000 by the Nationalists (200,000 during the civil war and another 200,000 between 1939-43). Both sets of figures seem to agree that the Nationalists executed roughly eight times the number executed by the Republicans. However, it was far more than this if we exclude from the Republican figures the many Republicans killed by internal leftist feuding.

The real figures could be even higher. Some estimates have the number of Franco’s victims as high as 2 million. This seems incredible, yet the CNT alone claims that around 500,000 of its pre-war membership were either killed or remain unaccounted for. Its worth remembering too that executions continued right up to Franco’s death in 1975. He apparently signed several death warrants in his last days.

Ultimately it may be that conventional methods of computation are simply inadequate. After all, the victors had 36 years of a police state to doctor the records. It is only in recent years that the families of Franco’s victims have felt emboldened to come forward, and as the generation concerned is now very old or dead we can take it that many victims will never be acknowledged in this way. And where whole families or villages were wiped out there was not necessarily anyone left to bear witness.

But even if we accept the lowest estimates we are talking apocalyptic levels of slaughter. Certainly some German and Italian representatives in Spain like Count Ciano were privately horrified, whatever their official propaganda said. Even Himmler was shaken by the scale of the white terror, as indeed were some Spaniards on the Nationalist side, such as Antonio Bahomonde, propaganda chief to the warped General Queipo de Lana (whose nightly radio “chats” verged on sadistic pornography, gloating over the rape of Republican women). Bahamonde eventually fled to the Republican zone - his estimates of the slaughter if accurate suggest that the 200,000 cited above is very conservative: he claimed that almost that number (150,000) were executed in Andalusia alone in the first two years (1936-38).

Indeed some of the most harrowing accounts of the slaughter comes from those on the Nationalist side. These make it clear that there was considerable – and it seems officially encouraged – sadism. Republicans were tortured to death, bodies mutilated, women gang raped. This aspect of the story really needs the observations of a psychologist rather than a historian.

Some of the worst incidents can be blamed on the Army of Africa, the Moors and the Foreign Legionnaires, who simply brought their brutal colonial practices to the mainland. This was a force that once paraded before the Dictator Primo de Rivera with severed heads on their bayonets. But it can’t all be blamed on the “Africans” as some Franco apologists have suggested. The Carlist “Requetes” had an equally fearsome reputation, and every branch of the Nationalist forces committed frequent atrocities.

Some killings were committed by upper class irregulars organized into volunteer units. In Andalusia some landlords who had fled returned in their own cavalry unit and proceeded to exact a brutal revenge on their uppity labourers. In one case 300 villagers were executed in reprisal for the death of one local caquice (“boss”). In another village 200 were executed as punishment for killing and eating the landlord’s prize bulls.

The “crimes” that could lead to execution boiled down to any kind of sympathy for the European enlightenment. Membership of a trades union or leftist party (“leftist” including many who would be considered “centrist” in other countries) was the main reason for a death sentence, but people were also killed for such heinous offences as possessing the works of Kant and Rousseau, failure to attend mass, admiring Roosevelt, or the all encompassing “showing disrespect to authority”.

There was a grim logic to all this. With much of the population imbued with the ideas of democracy, liberalism, socialism and anarchism it stood to reason that eradication of these ideas necessitated eradication of large numbers of people. In the same spirit Republican children were taken away in large numbers to be raised by Nuns or by Conservative Catholic families. And on both sides the number of killings was magnified by the logistical problem of dealing with large numbers of prisoners. As Col. Yague put it after massacring 4,000 people in Badajoz at the start of the war: “was I supposed to take 4,000 reds with me as my column advanced, racing against time?” The same ruthless logic underlay the worst Republican massacre of the war, of 2,000 Officers at Paracuelos de Jarama (see posts above).

Finally - one thing that always strikes me is the extent to which the SCW appears more like foreign invasion followed by genocidal ethnic conflict, than civil war as we normally understand it. The core of the Nationalist forces was the Army of Africa, consisting of Moors and Foreign Legionnaires. It could not have arrived in Spain without German and Italian troop transports and the whole Nationalist campaign was heavily dependent on foreign troops and materiel. And in its propaganda (see the quotes from Astray and Alba earlier) it talked in language eerily similar to that of racism, and in terms that can only be called genocidal. I think all this reflects the enormity of the gap that separated the Spanish elite and the Spanish people: they were alien to each other, with different cultures and different value systems, almost like different races.

 

[nightandthecity]

Another aspect often overlooked is the immediate effect such a war had on the children. As they were evacuated to various parts of the countryside the relief camps they landed in asked them to draw and color as a way of documenting what they had seen. It was the first such instance of art being used as a therapy tool for children caught in modern warfare (and perhaps, all of history). Another amazing site I (somehow) forgot to mention can be found here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/children/

There can be found a great deal of these drawings, as well as some information on the children that drew them. Decades later some of them were tracked down and could scarcely remember their own artwork. I don't know if that was from the trauma or simple memory.

L_H

Lena, I love that site! Having just written a summary of the Nationalist terror campaign I found it very therapeutic myself.

 

[nightandthecity]

THE REVOLUTION

The working-class counter insurgency that suppressed the military rising in much of eastern and southern Spain was accompanied by a dramatic social revolution.

This is usually described as an Anarchist revolution because the backbone of the movement was the Anarcho-Syndicalist Trades Union (the CNT), and even in the areas where the socialist union (the UGT) was in the majority the influence of Anarchist ideas was strong.

There is more (and less) to the revolutionary movement than this though. It didn’t just affect the areas of Anarchist dominance, it didn’t always follow the precepts of classical Anarchism, and its intensity varied considerably with local conditions. Indeed, it’s doubtful if most people at first thought they were making a revolution. They were simply responding as best they could to a military coup and a power vacuum caused by the near collapse of the Republican state and of the old economic and social order. Remember that the bulk of the army and police, much of the bureaucracy, most of the landowners and industrialists, were in the Nationalist camp. Until the Republican state was able to regroup there was a power vacuum which in other times and places might have been filled by warlordism - instead the strong Anarchist tradition in Spain meant the vacuum was filled by a remarkable democratic experiment.

Classical Anarchism starts with the sovereignty of the individual. But it recognizes that the individual exists within society and proposes various forms of direct democracy as the political expression for co-operating individuals – neighbourhood assemblies in the towns, village assemblies in the countryside, workers councils in the factories, voluntary collective farms or equal distribution of land in agriculture. Where decisions can’t realistically be taken by face-to-face assemblies, elected committees subject to instant recall are to administer things. Territorial co-operation is to be achieved by federation, with elected committees drawing their power from the various local assemblies. The CNT itself was organized along these lines. This million strong trades union only ever had one full time paid official, the national secretary, who received an ordinary workers' wage.

This is a terribly over-simplified summary of Anarchist theory, but hopefully it gives some sense of the ideas that inspired large sections of the Spanish working class and peasantry in the first half of the 20th century, and which moulded their response to the military rebellion in July 1936.

The intensity of this revolution varied. It was most developed in areas of Anarchist predominance like Andalusia, Aragon ,and the industrial areas of Catalonia. But a lot depended on the local strength of the Republican state. In Andalusia and Aragon, where the police, military, bureaucracy, business and landlord classes were almost wholly Franco-ist, something close to a pure Anarchist society came into being. The peasants took over the big estates, workers took over their factories, power lay with local community assemblies or directly elected local committees. But in Catalonia, where sections of the army, police, business etc remained loyal to the Republic, Anarchist ideas tended to dominate only industry (much of which passed under direct workers management) whilst the political arena saw a compromise. Here a sort of dual power was shared between the state and various local committees, and both the state and the committees quickly came to take on the character of a coalition of the various leftist and centrist parties and of the two big unions. Thus it was that the Catalan regional government (and later the Spanish national government) saw the spectacle of the worlds first Anarchist ministers, whilst policemen and regular army officers were to serve with distinction in revolutionary working-class militias.

In Andalucia and the south this revolution was exterminated in blood early on by the Nationalist forces. Elsewhere it was exterminated more slowly by the Republican state. The main mover in this was the Communist Party.

The Communists were totally opposed to the revolution on both ideological and practical grounds. Ideologically Anarchism and Marxism have always been at loggerheads. The libertarian socialist revolution in Spain was total anathma to the Communists, whose version of “socialism” involved a centralized state, nationalization, and their own leadership. In any case Marxist theory taught that Spain had to undergo a “bourgeois revolution” (capitalism, parliamentary democracy etc) before anyone could even think of “socialism”, however defined. To the Communist leadership the revolutionary institutions like local assemblies, workers councils and democratic militias were simply inefficient and a major hindrance to the war effort.

As well as this, the Communist line was dictated by Russian foreign policy, and Russia was seeking alliances with the western democracies against Germany. To that end revolution in Spain had to be suppressed and the respectable democratic Republic restored in full.

Within months the Communist Party became known as the pre-eminent “party of order” in the Republican zone, and anti-revolutionary elements flocked to join – policemen, bureaucrats, businessmen, commercial farmers. This influx, plus the power and prestige that came from being the only conduit for Russian arms supplies, meant that the Spanish CP moved quickly from being a minority party on the fringe of the workers movement to becoming a major party of the republican middle-class, and a major player in the Republican state. There followed a series of disastrous internal “wars within the war” in the Republican camp, initially pitting the Communists and the Republican state against the workers movement and the Anarchists, and ultimately leading to conflict within the state between the Communists and the various democratic elements. But I’m getting ahead of events here…..

 

[nightandthecity]

THE MILITIAS

The military aspect of the revolution of July 1936 was the Militia system. Where the Nationalist rebels were defeated the workers began to organize themselves into voluntary militias to take the fight to the enemy. These units were initially based around the various political parties and the two big unions, the CNT and UGT.

Their character varied with their political orientation. In the Anarchist militias officers were elected, major decisions arrived at by vote, and no one was expected to obey an order he disagreed with. There were no badges of rank, no salutes, and everyone took pride in deliberately marching out of step. At the other extreme the Communists called their militias “regiments”, introduced the military salute, took pride in the neatness and precision of their drill, and in theory officers were appointed by the party leadership. But in practice even their militias were not immune to the democratic mood of the time and place, and it seems even Communist officers were largely elected at first.

In Catalonia the regional government and the various parties/unions set up an “Anti-fascist Militias Committee” which attempted to move beyond this factional spirit. The first of its columns was the famous Durrutti column commanded by the FAI militant Bueneventura Durrutti. It was predominantly Anarchist simply because so was working class Barcelona, but it contained Socialists, Liberals and Catalan Nationalists too, and even included a leavening of regular soldiers and policemen. Its real military brains were a regular Army officer, Major Perez Farras, and an NCO, Sgt Manzana.

But until the formation of the Communist dominated Popular Army in 1937 the party/union militias predominated. Many took fearsome sounding names like the Steel Column, the Iron Column, the Ghost Column. Others were named after Party leaders or political heroes like the Catalan Nationalist Companys Column, the POUM Maurin column, the UGT Caballero. Some of the anarchist units, in the true spirit of libertarian iconaclasm, took self-mocking names like the Scrap Iron column.

They had little but enthusiasm to fight with. With the suppression of the revolt and the opening up of the armouries small arms were freely available. In the Anarchist strongholds in particular, contemporary accounts describe an armed population: housewives shopping with pistols on their waist, babies sleeping in prams tucked up with rifles, bus drivers with rifles strapped to their backs. Photos bear out this picture. Ammunition and heavier weaponry, however, was scarce. Even the loyalist police had access to nothing heavier than machine guns. And with most regular officers on the Nationalist side, what Military training and stiffening the militias received was heavily dependent on a small number of loyal regular army NCOs.

Here are some photos of (mostly CNT) Militia. In the early period people seem to have usually worn either ordinary street clothes or boiler suits (coveralls), which were much favoured as the closest thing to military clothing generally available. In practice coveralls were soon found to be highly impractial. A definite miliciano look rapidly evolved, based on a mixture of ordinary work clothes, sportswear and military gear. Leather jackets and coats were popular. Headgear was either the traditional workers beret, or the military forage cap with party/union insignia attached. Corduroy and moleskin work trousers or Military style riding britches were worn with espadrilles in summer and heavy boots in winter.

 

[nightandthecity]

 

[Lincsong]

Their character varied with their political orientation. In the Anarchist militias officers were elected, major decisions arrived at by vote, and no one was expected to obey an order he disagreed with. There were no badges of rank, no salutes, and everyone took pride in deliberately marching out of step. At the other extreme the Communists called their militias “regiments”, introduced the military salute, took pride in the neatness and precision of their drill, and in theory officers were appointed by the party leadership. But in practice even their militias were not immune to the democratic mood of the time and place, and it seems even Communist officers were largely elected at first.

They had little but enthusiasm to fight with. With the suppression of the revolt and the opening up of the armouries small arms were freely available. In the Anarchist strongholds in particular, contemporary accounts describe an armed population: housewives shopping with pistols on their waist, babies sleeping in prams tucked up with rifles, bus drivers with rifles strapped to their backs. Photos bear out this picture. Ammunition and heavier weaponry, however, was scarce. Even the loyalist police had access to nothing heavier than machine guns. And with most regular officers on the Nationalist side, what Military training and stiffening the militias received was heavily dependent on a small number of loyal regular army NCOs.

[/QUOTE]
This explains why they lost. Extremely fascinating photos. They capture the mood quite well.

 

[Salv]

I´ve found an inernet cafe near my holiday villa, so while my daughter is chatting to friends via MS Instant Messaging, I´m catching up on my emails and looking in on the Lounge...

Excellent posts nightandthecity - thanks for keeping the thread going, and thanks for the excellent militia photos.

The book I mentioned earlier - A Time Of Silence has much detail on the psychology of the White Terror and I´ll add some more info when I get home and finish the book. The main point is that the executions of Republicans became Francoist policy, and it greatly expands on this paragraph:

...
There was a grim logic to all this. With much of the population imbued with the ideas of democracy, liberalism, socialism and anarchism it stood to reason that eradication of these ideas necessitated eradication of large numbers of people.

There are many quotes from Francoists who talk about ¨cleansing¨ Spain of foreign influence, that cleansing only being possible by ensuring that those who hold foreign views are killed.

In the meantime, I´ve visited Alicante and Murcia, two of the last cities to fall to the Nationalists - Alicante two days before the end of the war, Murcia (along with Cartagena) the day before Franco declared the war was won. Alicante harbour was the last refuge for thousands of Republicans who were hoping that friendly ships would arrive to aid their escape from Spain. A couple of fishing boats pulled in but were swamped by desperate refugees and sank. Eventually Nationalist ships appeared in the harbour and Italian troops entered the city. Several suicides were reported: among others one man slit his own throat then fell into the harbour; two men faced each other, shook hands then held pistols to their heads and shot themselves. The harbour is now a marina filled with expensive yachts and there is a craft market and several restaurants and bars spread across the area into which the Republicans had desperately crammed themselves. Knowing what had happened there it was hard to be a happy holiday-maker...

Anyway, my time is running out so I´d better go before I get logged off.

Salud y Rep??blica!

 

[Lena_Horne]

I apologize if I'm stepping on any toes here by reviving this, but I saw this article and immediately thought of this thread:


Lorca play in Madrid canceled after death threats Sat Sep 9, 7:21 PM ET



MADRID (Reuters) - A play about Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca has been canceled after its proposed performance ignited political passions still simmering over Spain's 1936-1939 civil war.

Spanish writer and actor Pepe Rubianes called off a planned performance of his play "Lorca eran todos" ("They were all Lorca") after he received death threats amid bitter recriminations from rival political groups.

The play deals with the execution of Lorca and thousands of other Spaniards by the forces of right-wing General Francisco Franco during the civil war.


CONT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060909/stage_nm/life_spain_play_dc

---

L_H

 

[Story]

From the Capa link -

http://www.magnumphotos.com/c/htm/C...2L7S&Pass=&Total=207&Pic=98&SubE=2S5RYDYU4W7R

I wonder if she made it out?

 

[Salv]

I apologize if I'm stepping on any toes here by reviving this, but I saw this article and immediately thought of this thread:


Lorca play in Madrid canceled after death threats Sat Sep 9, 7:21 PM ET
...
L_H

No need to apologise Lena. I keep meaning to come back to the thread to continue the history of the war, but I've been busy at home (and at work) and haven't had the time. I've got three night shifts ahead of me starting tonight, so if they're quiet I should be able to write a bit more. I think we're up to the seige of Madrid.

 

[nightandthecity]

yeah, it would be nice to keep it going. Like you I've been pretty busy of late...and it's going to stay that way for a while now ebay selling season has started again.

Sierra, are you still out there?

 

[Salv]

The news report that Lena linked to reminded me of the book I mentioned earlier, Guerra by Jason Webster. Webster is a Brit living in Spain who was shown a previously unknown Republican mass grave near his house, by an elderly neighbour who had seen the Nationalists throwing the bodies in and covering them over. The neighbour was the only person left who knew the bodies were there. Webster used this as a starting point from which to look at modern Spain, and at the political tensions still bubbling under the surface. Among other things he was surprised to find that the Falange still existed; reading the book at least ensured that I wasn't surprised when I saw contemporary Falangist graffiti in Alicante last month.

 

[Story]

Most folks have seen Guenica

These are the planes that brought the bombs.
http://www.finn.it/regia/html/guerra_civile_spagnola.htm

 

[Salv]

The battle for Madrid

Thanks to their rapid advances between August and October 1936 the Nationalists were in a position to launch an attack on Madrid from 3 seperate directions by late October. In the same month Largo Caballero, by now head of the Republican government, had started to organise the defense of the city, issuing various decrees including one that would establish various 'mixed brigades' of 4,000 mean each. This would signal the start of the move away from militia columns towards a proper army. Before long the brigades included 80,000 men.

Also by this time Soviet military advisors were arriving in Madrid, and the first two International Brigades had been formed and were being trained at Albacete.

On 27th October the Nationalists took various towns directly to the south of Madrid, including Sese?±a. The following day Largo Caballero announced on the radio that the Republic would counter-attack the following day and sure enough at dawn 15 Russian T-26 tanks led an attack on Sese?±a. Taken by surprise the Nationalist forces in the town fell back, but not before destroying three tanks with petrol bombs. The tanks were supported by an infantry brigade under Lister's command, but the men couldn't keep up with the tanks so the attack ultimately failed. According to Lister his men had moved well at first but after 1,500 metres they had felt tired so sat down to rest. Eventually the brigade reached Sese?±a where they were met by weak Nationalist fire, at which point they turned back.

With the Nationalists so close the government decided to abandon the capital and move to Valencia. This was not popular with the CNT-FAI who had finally been persuaded by Largo Caballero to join the government and had taken four government posts. Most of the ministers wee convinced that Madrid would fall quickly and argued that if the government were captured the Republic would have no legal leadership and the Nationalists would immediately gain international recognition. The CNT-FAI were the only group to oppose this planned move, and were furious at what they saw as desertion. Their objections were overrulled and it was decided that a junta would contol the city, led by Genera Miaja. On the night of 6th November the government headed off for Valencia in a huge convoy of lorries, fearing that the Valencia road would be cut off by the Nationalist advance. Instead they were stopped by CNT militia members who arrested several ministers for desertion, including their own Juan Lopez. Also stopped was the Soviet ambassador, to whom the anarchists explained their thoughts on communism. Eventually the milita members were persuaded by Horatio Prieto of the CNT National Committe to release the prisoners.

With the government gone from the capital the mood turned to one of determination to hold out against the 'fascists and the Moors.' Women and children built barricades, trenches were dug to the west of the city and houses in the south-west suburb of Carabanchel were prepared for street-by-street defence.

Mass mobilization tookplace and various trades formed their own militia batallions - schoolmasters, graphic artists, railwaymen, barbers, tailors etc.

Meanwhile the Nationalists were moving closer - on 2nd November Brunete had fallen, on 4th november Getafe and its airfield fell. Defeated militia units were arriving in Madrid, many of them simply fleeing before the Nationalists, although there were still many units that fought back and offered strong resistance. So convinced were the Nationalists that they would take the city soon that they were already organising food convoys to feed the population.

Also by this time Russian aid was starting to arrive in the shape of T-26 tanks, Chato biplane fighters, Mosca monoplane fighters, and Katiuska bombers.

On 5th november the Nationalists,led by Varela, made cautious advances through the suburbs while trying to decide the best place to launch their full assault. Franco inisted on a fast frontal assault in order to avoid street fighting. His troops were superior in open countryside, but most of the Nationalist casualties occurred during street fighting. The main attack was planned for 7th November and would come from the Case de Campo to the west of the city, through the University City to the north, with feints against two bridges to the south of the main line of attack.

The attack was delayed for a day and on 7th November the defenders, in an incredible stroke of luck, found the plan of attack on the body of a Nationalist officer in a knocked-out Italian tank. The general staff immediately switched the bulk of its forces to the Case de Campo. Also on that day two battalions of volunteers led by Major Palacios arrived with a battery of Vickers 105 mm field guns, but were stopped from entering the city by Communist troops led by an Italian commisar, Luigi Longo, who were determined that the defence of Madrid would be a Communist victory. They forced their way through and were welcomed by Miaja.

Milita members formed up as reserves immediately behind the frontlines, ready to rush forward if needed and pick up the guns of fallen comrades. There were approximately 28,000 troops - including a womens batallion, barely trained milita, regular soldiers and untrained volunteers - ready to meet the main attack of 15,000 Nationalist troops, with about 12,000 Republicans left in Carabanchel to meet the feint attacks. Only half of the defenders had seen any fighting, and many of them had only been taught how to use their rifles the night before, and they were short of ammunition, with less than 10 rounds per rifle. Despite these problems the Nationalist attack on the 8th was held at the western edge of the city. Later that evening the first International Brigaders arrived in the city, 1,900 men of the XI International Brigade.

On the 9th the two battalions under Palacios counter-attacked over the San Fernando bridge on the Nationalists left flank in the Case de Campo and retook the northeastern part of the city that had been lost the day before, but nearly half their men were killed or injured.

The same day the Nationalists switched their main attack to the working class suburb of Carabanchel to the south. They suffered heavy losses in the house-to-house fighting and were forced back again. Back in the Case de Campo the XI International Brigade forced the Nationalists to retreat a few hundred yards, but also suffered heavy losses. Fierce fighting continued for the next few days in Carabanchel.

3,000 more anarchist volunteers, led by Buenaventura Durruti, arrived in the city in mid November. On 17th they launched an attack from the University City, but this failed after the priomised air and artillery support failed to materialise.

On 19th, with heavy artillery support, the Nationalists attacked again through the University City and a column of Foreign Legion troops and Moroccans led by Asensio fought its way across the Manzanares river and established a bridgehead in the Faculty of Architecture. They held out against constant counter-attacks by the XI International Brigade with the front line passing through some of the buildings and room-to-room fighting taking place.

With the failure of the main assault on the 19th Franco decided that he didn't want to lose any more of his best troops so his tactics switched to aerial and artillery bombardments in a bid to break the spirits of the defenders. Rather than becoming demoralised by the bombing, the Madrilenos became even more defiant.

Refugees were still flooding into the city, and the pre-war population of one million had been increaed by 50%. Food was in short supply, and any animals killed in air raids or by artillery were soon prepared for the cooking pot.

By the end of November the battle for Madrid had turned into a seige, with air raids and artillery attacks. In Carabanchel where the opposing forces were sometimes only seperated by the width of a street the fighting continued, but for the most part the front lines settled down and waited.

With the front relatively calm the Communists started attemopts to oust the anarchists and the POUM militias. They refused to pay the POUM members at the front, who then had no choice but to disband their unit and join CNT or UGT units. Franco realised that the war would now drag on, so he appealed to Hitler for more aid. his request for two more divisions was turned down however, and he had to make do with the Condor Legion.

Madrid would hold out until the very end of the Civil War, finally falling to the Nationalists on 27th March 1939.

 

[Sam Cox]

Auestion for Sierra
Any information about horse cavalry during the civil war?
Republican or Rebel?
Thanks
Sam

 

[Sierra Charriba]

Little use in republican side. Greater in Francoist army, with a famous cavalry leader, the colonel Monasterio. Probably, in a "old-fashioned" almost colonial war, like the spanish civil war, (with the exception of "modern" use of german aviation bombing civilians) the cavalry must be largely used but in Spain it was used just to recon duties and some encirclement manoevres. Very few gallant charges "against all odds".
There are some photos of andalusian militiamen riding horses, classical guerrilla style as in napoleonic era, but it wasn't significative.