Franco

The fall of Málaga provoked a major internecine crisis within the Republic. The Communists began to reveal their impatience with Largo Caballero and obliged him to accept the resignation of General Asensio, his under-secretary of war.100 Ironically, the one negative consequence for Franco of such an easy victory was the totally erroneous notion that both he and Mussolini derived of the efficacy of the Italian contingent.101 Mussolini was so delighted that he promoted Roatta to Major-General. The Duce and his Chief of Staff at the Ministry of the Army, Alberto Pariani, immediately produced ambitious plans for the Italian troops to sweep on to Almería and then through Murcia and Alicante to Valencia.102 However, Roatta’s reports to Rome on the eve of the attack on Málaga had presented a bleak picture of Italian disorganization, indiscipline and lack of technical preparation. Now he had to restrain Mussolini’s enthusiasm and persuade him that a long haul along the south coast exposed to constant flank attack would be less decisive than operations envisaged by Franco in the centre.103

Franco was happy to get Italian help on the Madrid front and quick to deflate the euphoric Queipo who was anxious to use the triumph at Málaga as the basis for a triumphal march through Eastern Andalusia towards Almería. Franco remained obsessed with Madrid and had no reason to want to give away triumphs to Queipo de Llano. Accordingly, he prohibited further advance in Andalusia, to the bitter chagrin of Queipo.104 It was, however, with some trepidation that Franco viewed the prospect of what seemed at the time like a fearsome Italian army, directed from Rome, allowing Mussolini graciously to hand him victories on a plate. It was a perception which would have disastrous consequences during the battle of Guadalajara.

At this time the nationalist press began to circulate a story which linked Franco’s destiny with the intercession of the saints. Allegedly, in the chaos of defeat, the military commander of Málaga, Colonel José Villalba Rubio, left various items of luggage behind him when he fled. In a suitcase left in his hotel was found the holy relic of the hand of St Teresa of Avila which had been stolen from the Carmelite Convent at Ronda.105 In fact, the relic was found in police custody. It was sent to Franco who kept it with him for the rest of his life. The recovery of the relic was the excuse for the exaltation of St Teresa as ‘the Saint of the Race’, the champion of Spain and her religion in the Reconquista, during the conquest of America and in the battles of the Counter-Reformation. Catholic and political propagandists alike stressed the Saint’s association with the Caudillo in similar exaltation of his providential role.106 Franco himself seems to have believed in his special relationship with St Teresa. Cardinal Gomá reported Franco’s reluctance to part with the arm as proof of his intense Catholic faith and his belief that he was leading a religious crusade. The Bishop of Málaga granted permission for the relic to remain in Franco’s possession and never left his side on any trip which obliged him to sleep away from home.*107

Encouraged by the easy success which he anticipated in the south and by the availability of the Condor Legion, Franco had simultaneously renewed his efforts to take Madrid. On 6 February 1937, an army of nearly sixty thousand well-equipped men, under the direction of General Orgaz, had launched a huge attack through the Jarama valley towards the Madrid-Valencia highway to the east of the capital. Still convinced that he could capture the capital, Franco took a special interest in the campaign.108 Two days later, his determination to win would be intensified by a desire for a victory to overshadow the Italian triumph at Málaga.

Almost simultaneously, Mussolini had sent a new Ambassador to Nationalist Spain, the emollient Roberto Cantalupo, who arrived shortly after the battle for Málaga.109 It was a reflection of Franco’s seething resentment at the behaviour of Roatta and Mussolini over the conquest of Málaga that he kept Cantalupo waiting for days before receiving him. Cantalupo got a sense that, although everyone knew that Málaga had been captured by the Italians, no one said so. ‘Here’, he reported to Ciano on 17 February, ‘the coin of gratitude circulates hardly at all.’ When he finally met the Caudillo for an informal meeting, Cantalupo got the impression that Franco believed in ultimate victory but was no longer certain that it was anything other than a long way off. If anything, the Caudillo seemed to prefer the prospect of a long war although he put off explaining why for a future meeting. He did make it clear that he would not contemplate a negotiated peace.110

The implicit conflict between Mussolini’s urge for the rapid and spectacular defeat of the Republic and Franco’s gradual approach quickly came into the open. Four days after the fall of Málaga, Roatta being wounded, he sent his Chief of Staff, Colonel Emilio Faldella, to visit the Generalísimo in Salamanca and discuss the next operation in which the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie (CTV), as the Italian forces now came to be known, might be used. On the afternoon of 12 February, Faldella found Franco’s staff jubilant about their forces’ early thrust over the Jarama river and what they assumed to be an imminent and decisive victory. Faldella was told by Franco’s chief of operations, Colonel Antonio Barroso, that Alcalá de Henares would be occupied within five days and Madrid cut off from Valencia. Faldella told Barroso that he was going to propose that the next operation for the CTV should be an offensive against both Sagunto, to the north of Valencia, and Valencia itself, one of the options favoured by Mussolini since mid-January and communicated to the Generalísimo by Anfuso on 22 January. Barroso advised him against even mentioning it on the grounds that Franco would never allow the Italians to carry out an autonomous assault on a politically sensitive target like the Republican capital, given his central concern with his own prestige. Accordingly, after consulting Roatta by telephone, Faldella altered the note which he had brought for Franco to suggest instead the remaining option of those contemplated by Mussolini after the meeting with Göring, a major push from Sigüenza to Guadalajara to close the circle around Madrid.111

When Faldella was received by Franco at 8 p.m. on 13 February, the usually polite Generalísimo ostentatiously failed to thank him for the Italian action at Málaga and said ‘the note has surprised me, because it is a real imposition’. The expected success in the Jarama gave the Caudillo the confidence to speak in stronger terms than previously to Faldella, who was after all the acting military representative of Mussolini. ‘When all is said and done’, Franco told Faldella, ‘Italian troops have been sent here without requesting my authorization. First I was told that companies of volunteers were coming to be incorporated into Spanish battalions. Then I was asked for them to be formed into independent battalions on their own and I agreed. Next senior officers and generals arrived to command them, and finally already-formed units began to arrive. Now you want to oblige me to allow these troops to fight together under General Roatta’s orders, when my plans were altogether different.’ Faldella replied that the reasoning behind all this was simply that Mussolini was trying to make good the failure of the Germans to supply troops to which Franco responded: ‘This is a war of a special kind, that has to be fought with exceptional methods so that such a numerous mass cannot be used all at once, but spread out over several fronts it would be more useful.’112 These remarks revealed not just Franco’s resentments about Italian aid, but also the limitations of his strategic vision. His preference for piecemeal actions over a wide area reflected both his own practical military experiences in a small-scale colonial war and his desire to conquer Spain slowly and so consolidate his political supremacy.113

Faldella tried to make him see the opportunity for a decisive victory offered by the determined use of the Italian CTV. Franco would not be shaken from his preference for the gradual and systematic occupation of Republican territory: ‘In a civil war, a systematic occupation of territory accompanied by the necessary purge (limpieza) is preferable to a rapid rout of the enemy armies which leaves the country still infested with enemies.’ Faldella pointed out that a rapid defeat of the Republic at Valencia would make it easier for him to root out the Left in Spain. At this point, Barroso interrupted and, as his master’s voice, said ‘you must take into account that the Generalísimo’s prestige is the most important thing in this war, and that it is absolutely unacceptable that Valencia, the seat of the Republican government, should be occupied by foreign troops.’114

On the following day, Franco sent a written reply to Faldella, in which he grudgingly accepted his offer of an attack from Sigüenza to Guadalajara. He claimed that he had never wanted Italian troops used en masse for fear of international complications and because it was damaging for ‘decisive actions against objectives of the highest political importance to be carried out other than by the joint action of Spanish and Italian units’.115 Cantalupo believed that the Caudillo had been had brought around by an Italian promise to ensure that Spanish troops entered Madrid as the victors.116 In fact, he was responding to sticks as well as carrots. The potential conflict between Franco and the commanders of the CTV was such that Roatta flew to Rome to discuss the problem with Mussolini. The Duce reacted firmly in support of Roatta, threatening to withdraw his forces if Franco continued to respond as he had to Faldella. To show that he meant business, twenty fighter aircraft promised to Franco were redirected to the Italian command in Spain which was given control over the Air Force units which had previously flown under the Generalísimo’s orders.117

Mussolini’s threat drew additional effect because it came as the Nationalist attack in the Jarama ground to a halt. The Jarama valley was defended fiercely by Republican troops reinforced by the International Brigades and the battle saw the most vicious fighting of the entire Civil War. As in the battle for the La Coruña road, the Nationalist front advanced a few miles, but no major strategic gain was made. Once again Madrid was saved, albeit at a high cost in blood. The Republicans lost more than ten thousand including some of the best British and American members of the Brigades, and the Nationalists about seven thousand.118

Franco’s earlier defiance turned to desperation. Now, only six days after his churlish treatment of Faldella on 13 February, he sent Barroso to beg him to begin the offensive as soon as possible. Faldella refused, on the grounds that his planned initiative could not be rushed and so, on the following day, Millán Astray asked Faldella to see him. They dined together at CTV headquarters on 21 February and Millán spoke in ‘pathetic terms’ about the Nationalists’ difficulties around Madrid and begged for a rapid Italian intervention. Faldella was convinced that Millán Astray had come at Franco’s behest. In the event, Franco had to wait until Faldella and Roatta were ready. After all, moving the Italian Army from Málaga to central Spain was no easy task.

The Generalísimo’s desire to use the Italians as reinforcements within his Jarama campaign was coldly brushed aside. A seething Franco was having to bend to what the Italians wanted. The general plan of operations which he sent to Mola on 23 February exactly followed the strategy outlined in Faldella’s note of 13 February. One week later, the Italians were still not ready and, on 1 March, Barroso again pleaded with Faldella to persuade Roatta to begin an immediate action.119 Although Orgaz and Varela had managed to hold the line at the Jarama, the Generalísimo was desperate for a diversion to relieve his exhausted forces. For Franco, an Italian attack on Guadalajara, forty miles north-east of Madrid, would be an ideal distraction. That was not what the Italians had in mind at all. A major disaster was in the making.

* Yagüe wanted to penetrate along a line through the poorly defended north-eastern suburbs of Puerta de Hierro, Dehesa de la Villa and Cuatro Caminos while Varela favoured a similar thrust through the south-eastern suburbs of Vallecas and Vicálvaro.

* Formally directed by Conte Luca Pietromarchi, the Ufficio Spagna was under the authority of Ciano, and enjoyed virtual autonomy in military decisions.

* The only explicit evidence of a request by Franco is Faupel’s telegram to the Baron von Neurath, which was reported in the French press at the time and not denied. Moreover, the alleged request closely coincides with the decision by Mussolini on 6 December to send substantial reinforcements. Mussolini’s appreciation of Franco’s needs was made on the basis of reports from various agents in Spain including Anfuso and General Roatta. Given the close contact between Franco and Roatta since September, it is improbable that Roatta would have made recommendations likely to be disowned by the Generalísimo.

* Göring’s visit to Rome was a symbolic affirmation of the growing warmth between the Nazi and Fascist regimes. During a packed programme, he visited the Fencing Academy at the Forum where he challenged Mussolini to a sabre duel. To the delight of the senior Nazis and Fascists present, they slugged it out for twenty minutes, showing remarkable agility given their respective sizes – with Mussolini the eventual victor (Ramón Garriga, Guadalajara y sus consecuencias (Madrid, 1974) pp. 42–3).

* The Anglo-French policy of Non-Intervention, adopted in August 1936, was a farce which favoured the Nationalists at the expense of the Republic and appeased the fascist dictators. It was described by a Foreign Office official as ‘an extremely useful piece of humbug’. It is clear that a more resolute attitude by London would have inhibited the Germans and Italians in their assistance to Franco. (Enrique Moradiellos, Neutralidad benévola: el Gobierno británico y la insurrección militar española de 1936 (Oviedo, 1990) pp. 117–88; Douglas Little, Malevolent Neutrality: The United States, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War (Ithaca, 1985) pp. 221–65.)

* An aide was appointed specifically to to carry it and to guard it against loss or theft. Occasionally, over the years, the nuns wrote to Franco requesting that he return the hand if only for a period of loan of a month, three weeks or a fortnight. Franco, fearful that he would not get it back, never complied, arranging instead for his faithful cousin Pacón to send a charitable donation to pacify them.

IX

THE AXIS CONNECTION

Guadalajara & Guernica, March – April 1937

ALTHOUGH THINGS were taking a turn for the worse militarily, Franco dismissed out of hand any suggestions of a compromise peace with the Republicans or even with the profoundly Catholic Basques. Proposals to this end made by the Vatican were discussed by the Generalísimo and Cardinal Gomá in mid-February. Although respectful with the Primate, Franco had rejected anything less than outright surrender, refusing to negotiate with, and therefore recognize the authority of, those whom he held responsible for the present situation in the Basque Country. Gomá reported to Rome that Franco saw any mediation as merely putting off the necessary solution of a political and historical problem, by which he meant the eradication of Basque nationalism. Negotiations meant concessions and concessions meant ‘rewarding rebellion’ and would raise the expectations of other regions.1 Franco’s negative attitude to mediation of any kind reflected his perception of the war as an all-or-nothing, life-or-death struggle which had to end with the total annihilation of the Republic and its supporters.

This was certainly the impression given to the Italians. When Cantalupo’s credentials arrived from Rome, he was received officially on 1 March with a scale of splendour which not only underlined the value that Franco placed on Italian assistance but also reflected his own taste for pomp. Any hopes harboured by his fellow generals that Franco considered his headship of the State to be at all provisional must by now have started to wither. The imposing ostentation and grandeur with which the Caudillo surrounded his public appearances resounded with permanence. Cantalupo was treated to eight military bands. The colourful ranks of Falangist, Carlist and other militias, Spanish, Italian and Moorish troops formed up in a solemn procession through Salamanca’s enormous but elegantly proportioned Plaza Mayor to the Palacio del Ayuntamiento. The Generalísimo arrived in the square escorted by his Moorish Guard, resplendent in their blue cloaks and shining breastplates. It recalled the entry of Alfonso XIII into Melilla in 1927, an occasion on which he was accompanied by Franco, who was increasingly indulging his own taste for royal ceremony. His arrival was greeted with the chant of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. He received Cantalupo in a salon magnificently adorned for the occasion with sixteenth-century Spanish tapestries and seventeenth-century porcelain. During the ceremony, Franco was accompanied by Mola, Kindelán, Cabanellas, Dávila and Queipo de Llano as well as a veritable court of other army officers and functionaries in full dress uniform. Yet, Franco himself did not match the regal show and an unimpressed Cantalupo wrote to Rome ‘He stepped out with me on the balcony that offered an incredible spectacle of the immense square but was incapable of saying anything to the people that applauded and waited to be harangued; he had become cold, glassy and feminine again’.2

Away from the pomp of Salamanca, Roatta, Faldella and other senior Italian officers were shocked by the relentless repression behind the lines.3 Cantalupo requested instructions from Rome and on 2 March Ciano told him to inform Franco of the Italian Government’s view that some moderation in the reprisals would be prudent because unrestrained brutality could only increase the duration of the war. When Cantalupo saw Franco on 3 March, the Caudillo was fully prepared for the meeting. Cantalupo appealled to him to slow down the mass executions in Málaga in order to limit the international outcry. Denying all personal responsibility and lamenting the difficulties of controlling the situation at a distance, Franco claimed that the massacres were over ‘except for those carried out by uncontrollable elements’. In fact, the slaughter hardly diminished but its judicial basis was changed. Random killings were now replaced by summary executions under the responsibility of the local military authorities. Franco claimed to have sent instructions for greater clemency to be shown to the rabble (masse incolte) and continued severity against ‘leaders and criminals’ as a result of which only one in every five of those tried was now being shot.

Nevertheless, Rome continued to receive horrifying accounts from the Italian Consul in Málaga, Bianchi.* On 7 March, Cantalupo was instructed to go to Málaga but Franco persuaded him that the situation was too dangerous for a visit. Nevertheless, the Generalísimo did undertake to have two military judges removed.4 Franco’s proclaimed difficulties about curtailing the killings in Málaga contrasted starkly with his response to a complaint by Cardinal Gomá about the shooting of Basque Nationalist priests in late October 1936. Valuing the good opinion of the Church more than that of the Italians, he replied instantaneously: ‘Your Eminence can rest assured that this stops immediately’. Shortly thereafter, Sangróniz confirmed to Gomá that ‘energetic measures had been taken’.5

At this time, Franco himself was sufficiently concerned by the unfavourable publicity provoked by the blanket repression to give a brilliantly ambiguous interview on the subject to Randolph Churchill. It was clear that in describing his policy as one of ‘humane and equitable clemency’, Franco’s meaning differed considerably from the way in which his words were understood by Churchill and his readers. Franco declared that ‘ringleaders and those guilty of murder’ would receive the death penalty, ‘just retribution’, but claimed mendaciously that all would be given fair trials, with defence counsel and ‘the fullest opportunity to state his case and call witnesses’. He omitted to mention that the defence counsel would be named by the court and would often outdo the prosecutors in demanding fierce sentences. Similarly, when Franco said that ‘when we have won, we shall have to consolidate our victory, pacify the discontented elements and unite the country’, Churchill could have no idea of the scale of the blood that would be shed or of the terror which would be deployed to realize those ends.6

For most of the Civil War, those Republican prisoners not summarily executed as they were captured or murdered behind the lines by Falangist terror squads were subjected to cursory courts martial. Often large numbers of defendants would be tried together, accused of generalised crimes and given little opportunity to defend themselves. The death sentences passed merely needed the signature (enterado) of the general commanding the province. As a result of the Italian protests, from March 1937 death sentences had to be sent to the Generalísimo’s headquarters for confirmation or pardon. The last word on death sentences lay with Franco, not as Head of State, but as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In this area, his close confidant was Lieutenant-Colonel Lorenzo Martínez Fuset of the military juridical corps, who was auditor del Cuartel General del Generalísimo (legal adviser to headquarters). Franco insisted on seeing the death sentences personally, although he spent little time on reaching a decision. Martínez Fuset would bring folders of death sentences to Franco. Despite the regime myth of a tireless and merciful Caudillo agonizing late into the night over death sentences, the reality was much starker. In fact, in Salamanca or in Burgos, after lunch or over coffee, or even in a car speeding to the battle front, the Caudillo would flick through and then sign sheafs of them, often without reading the details but nonetheless specifying the most savage form of execution, strangulation by garrote. Occasionally, he would make a point of decreeing garrote y prensa (garrote reported in the press).7

Specifying press coverage was not just a way of intensifying the pain of the families of the condemned men but also had the wider objective of demoralizing the enemy with evidence of inexorable might and implacable terror. That was one of the lessons of war learnt by Franco in Morocco. At one lunch in the winter of 1936–37, the case of four captured Republican militiawomen was discussed. Johannes Bernhardt who was present was taken aback by the casual way Franco, in the same tone that he would use to discuss the weather, passed judgement, ‘There is nothing else to be done. Shoot them.’8 He could be gratuitously vindictive. On one occasion, having discovered that General Miaja’s son had been tried and absolved by a Nationalist tribunal in Seville, Franco intervened personally to have him rearrested and retried in Burgos. There was some doubt as to whether Captain Miaja had voluntarily come over to the Nationalists or been captured. Accordingly, the Burgos court issued a light sentence so Franco had the unfortunate young Miaja tried again in Valladolid. In Valladolid, the military tribunal found him not guilty and set him free. At this point, Franco intervened again and quite arbitrarily had him sent to a concentration camp at Miranda del Ebro where he remained until he was freed in a prisoner exchange for Miguel Primo de Rivera.9

Throughout 1937 and 1938, his brother-in-law and close political adviser, Ramón Serrano Suñer often tried to persuade him to adopt more juridically sound procedures and Franco consistently refused, saying ‘keep out of this. Soldiers don’t like civilians intervening in affairs connected with the application of their code of justice.’10 At one point, Serrano Suñer tried to arrange a reprieve for a Republican army officer. After first telling him that it was none of his business, Franco finally yielded to his brother-in-law’s pressure and undertook to do something. If Franco had wanted to help, he could have done so. As it was, four days later, he told Serrano Suñer that ‘the Army won’t put up with it, because this man was head of Azaña’s guard.’11 Serrano Suñer and Dionisio Ridruejo both alleged that the Caudillo arranged for reprieves for death sentences to arrive only after the execution had already been carried out.12