SPAIN IN ARMS Spain in Arms.indd 1 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM Spain in Arms.indd 2 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM SPAIN IN ARMS A Military History of the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 E. R. HOOTON Philadelphia & Oxford Spain in Arms.indd 3 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2019 by CASEMATE PUBLISHERS 1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA and The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK Copyright © E. R. Hooton, 2019 Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-637-6 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-638-3 (ePub) A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing. Printed and bound in the United States of America Typeset in India by Versatile PreMedia Services. www.versatilepremedia.com For a complete list of Casemate titles, please contact: CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (US) Telephone (610) 853-9131 Fax (610) 853-9146 Email: [email protected] www.casematepublishers.com CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (UK) Telephone (01865) 241249 Fax (01865) 794449 Email: [email protected] www.casematepublishers.co.uk Front cover: Bottom image: Building of the Diputación Provincial of Madrid in ruins after the Battle of Madrid, with Republican soldiers in the streets of Teruel above. (Wikimedia) Top image: A Condor Legion Heinkel He III drops bombs. (Robert Forsyth) Spain in Arms.indd 4 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM Contents List of Maps vi Preface vii 1. Testing the Blades: The Madrid Front 1 2. The New Armies 41 3. Decision on the Northern Front 81 4. High Tide for the Republic: Brunete and the Aragon Offensive 119 5. The Pendulum Swings: Teruel and the Aragon Offensive 157 6. The Last Acts: Ebro and Catalonia 205 Bibliography 247 Index 255 Spain in Arms.indd 5 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM List of Maps Map 1. Situation on August 1, 1936 Map 2. Madrid Front, November 29, 1936 Map 3. Battle of the Corunna Highway Map 4. Battle of Jarama Map 5. Battle of Guadalajara Map 6. Situation on March 31, 1937 Map 7. Bilbao Campaign Map 8. Santander Campaign Map 9. Asturias Campaign Map 10. Battle of Brunete Map 11. Republican Aragon Offensive Map 12. Battle of Teruel Map 13. Battle of Alfambra Map 14. Nationalist Aragon Offensive. Phase One Map 15. Nationalist Aragon Offensive. Phase Two Map 16. Nationalist Advance North of the Ebro Map 17. Levante Campaign Map 18. Situation on July 25, 1938 Map 19. Battle of the Ebro Map 20. Catalonia Campaign Spain in Arms.indd 6 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM Preface The Spanish Civil War ended 80 years ago yet retains an extraordinary fascination for the Spanish and for foreigners alike while continuing to influence contemporary events, most recently the struggle for Catalonian independence. It also arouses great passions: as this manuscript was being completed the Spanish government decided to exhume former Nationalist leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s body from his mausoleum and convert the Valley of the Fallen into a memorial for victims of the conflict. Whole libraries are devoted to almost every aspect of the war, with the notable exception of its military history, which has produced more garbage than a landfill site. Legend has the gallant Republican troops, denied weaponry by the western democracies, overwhelmed on the battlefield by an army of largely Italian, Moorish, and German troops with numerical superiority in armor, aviation, and artillery to achieve a Nationalist victory. There is an element of truth in this claim, but Nationalist success relied upon Spanish troops and was due more to their application of muscle to produce a succession of victories which made them stronger by providing new men and material. But their greatest and most profoundly underestimated success was in mobilizing resources. The reason why the legend has remained unchallenged may be found in human psychology, in which the defeated console themselves with tales of gallantry against overwhelming odds, tales which, if unchallenged, become accepted as history. This is true of the South in the American Civil War, of Germany in two world wars, of the western European campaign of 1940, and of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. In the last, the legend was partly accepted by the victors who could argue that they snatched victory against overwhelming odds. The paean to Republican heroism was sung loudly by the Communist Party’s propaganda chorus during the war to drown out questions about the military effort on both sides. Consequently too many foreign historians have unquestioningly followed this line, less as an ideological choice and more Spain in Arms.indd 7 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM viii • spain in arms a professional one. Most historians focus upon diplomatic, economic, and social events, for they have little interest in, or knowledge of, military history which many seem to disdain. This lack of battlefield knowledge means that descriptions of military events are high on rhetoric and short on detail, while parroting the term “Blitzkrieg” to describe combined armored and air operations makes, by extrapolation, Henri Pétain and Sir Douglas Haig pioneers of mechanized warfare! This is the first attempt in English to redress the balance and to produce a purely military history of the conflict from December 1936, when the two armies emerged, until the Republic’s surrender in 1939. It is based upon numerous published Spanish works, themselves the result of thousands of hours in the scattered Spanish archives, augmented by Italian and Russian books as well as German and British records, the latter including intercepted Italian communications. Some will question this reliance upon published sources, but since these are based upon well-mined archives in Spain, Italy, and Russia, the author sees no reason to reinvent the wheel, especially as many foreign writers on the subject have followed this precedent. The book is an attempt to counteract simplistic views reminiscent of contemporary Wild West movies in which the hero and villain wore white and black hats respectively. The weakness of such views was brought home to the author during a tour of Castile with a Catalonian guide. The young lady mentioned that her parents had always spoken Catalan within their home even when it was officially banned during the Franco era and their children had followed suit. She also said that her father had served as an officer during the Civil War, not with the Catalonian or Republican governments but with Franco! The simplistic approach to Spain’s military struggle extends to issues such as the bombing of Guernica (see Chapter 3), to “prove” this was a German terror attack, and the “failure” of the western democracies to arm the Republic, which is always ascribed to distaste for the Republic’s left-wing stance when it was actually due to a scarcity of resources. Indeed the much despised non-intervention was less of a political statement than an admission of military weakness. This demonstrates that the military struggle in Spain should not be seen in isolation. There are echoes of World War I and omens of World War II, while the conflict must be examined against these influences as well as against both contemporary European military doctrine and the issue of rearmament. Doctrine is a very narrow field of interest and for this reason it is ignored by historians studying the Iberian conflict. What is less understandable is Spain in Arms.indd 8 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM preface • ix the failure to exploit Spanish sources which are a deep mine of information; indeed the author was astonished to find that even when foreign writers referred to works available for 40 years there was little attempt to determine the background to military events such as the Teruel campaign or Nationalist military decision-making. A major frustration for any attempt to write about the military events of this conflict is the question of statistics, especially relating to logistics and casualties. The Spanish sometimes took a casual attitude to record keeping, and indeed the author has yet to see any source providing detailed figures on air sorties, apart from a total for the Ebro campaign. Spanish historians have done their best, especially with casualties, but it is evidently a difficult task and sometimes met only by a best estimate. Generally the author has accepted the scholarship of the distinguished historian José Manuel Martinez Bande, but it is interesting to note that he provides no indication of Nationalist casualties in his account of the 1938 Levante campaign. However, the British politician George Canning once observed, “Statistics can tell you everything you wish to know, except the truth,” and one area of the conflict where this applies is in artillery. The enumeration of ordnance is usually divided into four areas; light (30–74mm), field (75–89mm), medium (90–159mm), and heavy (160mm and above). Neither side possessed the huge artillery trains of the Western Front; indeed in contrast to the conventional European table of organization and equipment, which called for at least four guns per battery (six in the British Army), Spanish batteries usually had three or, in the heaviest batteries, only two. Most “barrel-counting” in the conflict includes light ordnance, such as the 65mm “Tiger” Italian mountain guns which were a significant part of the Nationalist artillery train, but antitank and heavy antiaircraft guns (75–88mm) are often included. I have included light artillery, but not antitank ordnance, in statistics of artillery support. Statistics on air strength are more complete and it is worth comparing the figures for both sides. While this account is primarily for those interested in military history, the author hopes it will also prove valuable for these whose knowledge of that subject is limited. Some explanation of terminology would, therefore, not go amiss. The terms Tactical, Operational, and Strategic may well cause some bewil- derment. In the past the terms Tactical and Strategic were the norm but during the 19th century the German and Russian armies felt they lacked precision. They introduced the concept of the Operational Level which entered general military usage during the 1880s. At its most simplistic the Tactical Level are Spain in Arms.indd 9 2/25/2019 5:25:24 PM