The Clash of Spanish Armies: Contrasting Ways of War in Spain, 19361939

Michael Alpert
I

xplanations for the victory of General Francos Nationalist forces against the Spanish Republics Peoples Army and its naval and air forces in the Spanish Civil War of 19369 have tended to be informed by ideological or materialistic approaches. For most historians the Republic was defeated principally because it was deprived of a regular and ample supply of arms by the European agreement not to supply war material to the Spanish combatants. The purpose of non intervention, as the policy was called, was to prevent a European war arising from competing support by Germany and Italy for Franco on the one hand and by the USSR and France for the Republic on the other. Non-intervention, however, had little effect on Francos war effort because he was supported by Germany and Italy despite these powers agreement to the non-intervention scheme. The Republic was kept going mainly by Russian support and what it could buy illegally on the international arms market. General military historiography sometimes considers the Spanish war mainly in the course of discussing German or Russian progress in the pre-Second World War period, but does not analyse the war itself. Spanish historiography up to the late 1960s, to a considerable extent a branch of propaganda for the Franco regime, saw the Civil War as a cosmic struggle between Good traditional Christian Spain and Evil the marxist hordes of Moscow.1 According to this picture, the Republican mob, heavily armed by the plotters of world revolution, were led by rabble-rousers, left-wing politicians and criminals in the service of International Communism. Consequently, the Nationalists (which the insurgents insisted on calling themselves) triumphed
This tendency is represented, among others, by J. Arrara s, ed., Historia de la Cruzada Espan , La guerra en el aire (vista, suerte y al toro) ola (8 vols, Madrid, 193943); J. Goma (Barcelona, 1958). 0968-3445(99)WH192OA 1999 Arnold

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because they were right and, in a circular argument, they were right because they triumphed. In such accounts as these, German and Italian aid to Francos forces was hardly mentioned, while the Nationalists were described not only as more dedicated, skilled and disciplined than their opponents but also as ultimately backed by divine help. Spanish Civil War historiography evolved in a more scholarly direction in the 1970s, when the crumbling Franco regime had to respond to scholarly writing about the Civil War by, among others, Hugh Thomas and Raymond Carr,2 whose work showed rather different pictures from those of the approved historians of the regime. In Spain, Colonel Jose nez Bande produced a series of individual Manuel Mart volumes covering the campaigns,3 abstaining most of the time from political comments. Colonel Ramo n Salas Larraza bal wrote prolically on the Civil War,4 underlining the relatively better position of the Republic in so far as the supply of war material was concerned. His monumental work, the Historia del Eje rcito Popular de la Repu blica, provides details of the organization of the Republican army as well as almost day-to-day accounts of every action of the war. At the same time it discusses the armys nature, abilities and, in particular, armaments. It aims to prove that the Republican or Popular Army was neither short of war material nor lacking in competent ofcers. Works of a similar nature were produced for the war at sea and in the air.5 Only recently has reliable work on the volume, rate of replacement and suitability of the arms received by both sides been produced,6 dealing with such practicalities as the reliability of a ships gunnery equipment and the calibre of the projectiles red by a particular ghter aircrafts guns. Was it more important, for instance, in the conditions of the Spanish Civil War, given the abilities of the pilots, for a plane to be highly manoeuvrable at low levels rather than capable of high speed at great heights? Can the relative efciency of ofcer training on either side be measured, and against what criteria? What was the best way to handle armies which, though they were probably the largest ever assembled in Spain, were small in relation to the lengths of the fronts?

H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London, 1961); R. Carr, Spain 18081939 (Oxford, 1966). J.M. Martinez Bande, Monograf as de la guerra de Espan a 118 (Madrid, 196479, and subsequently issued in revised edns). R. Salas Larraza bal, Historia del Eje rcito Popular de la Repu blica (4 vols, Madrid, 1973); Las cifras exactas de la guerra civil (Madrid, 1980). J. S. Larraza bal, La guerra en el aire (Barcelona, 1966); R. Cerezo, Armada Espan ola, siglo veinte (4 vols, Madrid, 1983). See esp. G. Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War (London, 1990). This author describes the capabilities of the aircraft in real situations in Spain as well as their history, and includes closely researched estimates of their quantity.

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II
As an example of the importance of this sort of consideration, one might examine the following extract from Ramo n Salas Larraza bal: It has already been seen that during the months of July and August [1936] the means imported by the Government were greater than those acquired by the Insurgents and that they were sufcient to have destroyed the airlift of troops and prevented the convoy that Franco called of victory.7 Salas is here referring to imports of aircraft by the Republic in the early weeks of the war. Unfortunately, the statistics usually given are not based on reliable primary sources, which upsets any argument based on them. Aircraft, however, can be precisely identied, and recent research has demonstrated that the number of Dewoitine ghters and Potez bombers sent to Spain from France was extremely small. The ghters, though fast and with a superior rate of climb, arrived without armaments and sometimes without the mountings for them, so that Spanish armourers had to rig up unreliable contraptions for ring machineguns, with the result that many of the aircraft were hardly usable for much of the time, whatever their technical superiority. Furthermore, the fact that four of the rst 14 Dewoitine 371 ghters sent on 8 August 1936 suffered accidents even before going into action illustrates the difculty of ying them.8 The Potez 54 bomber, however, was contradictorily evaluated. The French air authorities judged from the Spanish experiences that the machine was dangerous in a dive, the machinegun turrets were hard to handle and had blind angles, and the aircraft required a ghter escort. In any case, in Spain the Potez was own by crews of several nationalities ying with Andre Malrauxs squadron.9 Why the Spanish government authorities could not have ensured that all the crew and not merely some of it were Spanish is a question which relates to the organization of the Spanish Republics war effort and will be considered later. Any study of the failure of Republican aircraft to prevent the airlift of Francos troops from Spanish Morocco in the early weeks of the war needs to consider whether the late 1920s model Nieuport ghters of the Republic could indeed have tackled the Junkers-52 that Germany supplied to carry Francos troops, or whether the Republican govern7

Ya hemos visto que durante los meses de julio y agosto fueron mayores los medios importados por el Gobierno que los adquiridos por los sublevados, y que eran sucientes para haber dado al traste con el puente ae reo y haber hecho imposible el convoy que Franco llamo de la victoria . Salas Larraza bal, Eje rcito Popular II, p. 2349. See Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, under Dewoitine; R. Quatrefages, La politique franc aise de non-intervention et le soutien mate riel a ` la Re publique pendant la guerre civile, in Les Arme aises et espagnoles: modernisation et re es franc forme entre les deux guerres mondiales (Madrid, 1989), p. 31. Op. cit. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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ment felt it unwise to attack the Germans, given that they were escorted by Heinkel-51 ghters from 6 August 1936 onwards. It is also unlikely that gunners on the Republican destroyers in the Straits of Gibraltar possessed any substantial skill or experience in anti-aircraft re. After one or two episodes where ships of the Republican navy, attempting to enforce a blockade which Britain and other countries refused to recognize, obliged German ships carrying war material to Franco to discharge their cargo in Lisbon rather than at a Spanish port, the Republican government, threatened by Germany, instructed its warships not to enforce the blockade. The absence of a conclusive study of the air war in Spain means that we do not know what instructions were given to Republican air force commanders as to their role in the Straits in those early weeks. It would seem at least possible that, like the warships, they were instructed not to attack the Germans. What is certain is that Francos ability to ship his troops over to the Spanish Peninsula meant that he could begin his march to Madrid, which he might have captured and ended the war had he not diverted his effort to relieve Toledo in late September 1936. For the rest of the war, Franco had complete command of the Straits, which was of great signicance for his communications. As for the success of the experimental convoy which crossed from Morocco to Spain on 5 August 1936, to which the Salas extract refers, the failure of the Republican eet to prevent it is not explicable solely in terms of the inefciency or cowardice of crews which had mutinied against their ofcers who were supporting the insurgents. The Republican warships, disorganized, with no base closer to their blockade patrol than Cartagena, short of fuel and fresh water, did indeed fail to stop a small convoy. However, had it not been for the Italian Savoia Marchetti-81 bombers which also covered the Straits, Franco could not have brought his elite troops across to the Peninsula. Even so, the eventual departure of the Republican eet was dictated by the irruption into southern waters of the new insurgent cruiser, the Canarias, whose armament and range were far greater than that of the older Republican cruisers and which could nearly match the speed of a destroyer. It is true that the observer of the insurgents movements is struck by their determination, exibility and efciency, as opposed to the confusion apparent to the reader of Republican memoirs and documents. It would seem evident that the Republican authorities were indecisive in the handling of the air force and the navy. The aircraft were used piecemeal and lost, sometimes by enemy action, sometimes by accident, while carrying out missions which had no great consequence. This is a justied criticism, but one which fails to consider the chaos of the Republican part of Spain, bereft of authority because of the military uprising itself, and where new commanders could not impose the solutions which they would later see, in hindsight, to have been necessary.
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III
Here is another comment by Ramo n Salas Larraza bal: the Government side beneted from greater tolerance in the freedom of trafc to its ports and past its frontiers.10 How far the Republic imported arms freely, despite non-intervention, is still a subject for investigation. However, at no time, save for the isolated incidents in the rst month of the war, were Francos imports of war material ever interfered with, either by the Spanish government navy or by ships of the international naval patrol begun at midnight on 1920 April 1937. It is true that the non-intervention patrol rarely stopped cargo ships making for Republican ports either, though the Royal Navy did sometimes investigate British-registered merchantmen. On the other hand, once Franco had built up his small navy by arming merchant cruisers and by putting both his newly constructed cruisers into action, he stopped, sometimes sank and regularly bombed merchant ships making for and anchored in Republican ports. All this happened even though Franco was not a recognized belligerent and despite the regular protests of, in particular, the British government. A further point which the Francoist military historian does not clarify is that, while Franco received his supplies from Germany and Italy on credit, the Republic paid cash for its arms out of its exported bullion reserves. The non-intervention legislation meant that no manufacturer or arms dealer in Europe or in the USA, where there was an embargo on selling arms to Spain could legally sell arms to the Republic. The result was that Republican purchasing commissions had to pay large sums in advance, not infrequently lost, to the murkier parts of the arms dealing trade. Inevitably, then, the Republic could not order war material in accordance with its particular shortages or the demands of the campaigns, unlike the streams of specic requests that went to Germany and Italy from Franco and which Rome and Berlin usually met promptly, though Germany tried to tie its supplies to Francos agreement to direct most of Spanish mineral exports to German factories as they geared up for war.11 The importance of the organization of this regular trafc was supreme.

IV
Apart from these questions of contrasting advantage and disadvantage arising from the international situation and the difference between
10

11

el bando gubernamental se vio beneciado por una mayor tolerancia en la autorizacio n del comercio dirigido a sus puertos o puestos fronterizos, Salas Larraza bal, Eje rcito Popular II, p. 2367. The most recent work on this subject is C. Leitz, Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Francos Spain 19361945 (Oxford, 1996). For details of material requested from Germany and Italy, see Salas Larraza bal, La intervencio n extranjera en la guerra de Espan a (Madrid, 1974). War in History 1999 6 (3)

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the centralized and authoritarian insurgents and the centrifugal and revolutionary Republic, a consideration of contrasting ability to wage war needs to examine the doctrines on which both sides based their strategy and tactics. The military leaders of both sides had been educated in the same ideas. Indeed, many were military academy companions though they fought on opposite sides. Yet Francos style of war appears fundamentally different from that of the Republic. While in the insurgent zone strategic and political authority was highly centralized, considerable latitude seems to have been given to individual commanders. This is clearly the case with the naval war. The numerically superior Republican eet seems to have been limited, perhaps by the pressure of the Soviet naval attache , Captain Kuznetsov, to keeping itself in being to provide escorts for Soviet supplies.12 In contrast, Admiral Moreno, the Nationalist eet commander, seems not to have been restricted by any theories. He improvised furiously. His ships even the aged battleship Espan a were at sea continuously for long periods, with apparently a much more realistic view of the essential task at hand: the interdiction of supplies to the enemy. On land, when it came to responding to the initially successful Republican offensives such as Brunete (July 1937), Belchite (August 1937), Teruel (December 1937February 1938) and the Ebro (July November 1938), Francos logistics were much more competent than those of the Republic. He was also much more prepared to denude entire sections of his fronts in order to concentrate his forces, and in particular his air and artillery strength, than the Republic, which toyed with ideas of diversionary attacks in the enemys rear but was less inclined to adhere to the principle of concentration of effort. In the Ebro battle, for example, in late July 1938, Franco was able to bring up division after division and to assemble large amounts of artillery before the Republicans could regroup their brigades and divisions for a push to prot from their original success. Most of the great battles of the Spanish Civil War began with a Republican advance designed by the intricate staff work of the highly professional general staff headed by Major, later General, Vicente Rojo, but it is evident that at lower levels units of the Popular Army were unable to exploit the success of their attacks. Here again, reports by Republican staff ofcers frequently comment that commanders at battalion and company level were unable to take advantage of initial breakthroughs.13 This contrasts with the Nationalist army and arises from a situation, to be discussed below, where low-level Nationalist commanders were professionals while their opponents were usually not.
12 13

See esp. N. Kuznetsov, Na Dalyokom Meridiane (In Distant Waters) (Moscow, 1966). R. Casas de la Vega, Brunete (Madrid, 1968), App. 1, pp. 31323, quoting reports by the chief of staff, senior staff ofcers and corps commanders. Most of the reports are reproduced also in J. M. Mart nez Bande, La ofensiva sobre Segovia y la batalla de Brunete (Madrid, 1972), documentary appendix.

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It was in the colonial war in Morocco from 1908 to 1926 that Franco and a group of several hundred other ofcers learned their trade. In the Civil War Franco and his africanistas created a dynamism in their subordinates which appeared markedly absent on the other side. There were few Republican ofcers who could be matched for war experience and youth against fast-promoted lieutenant-colonels and colonels such as Agust n Mun n Alonso, Franci oz Grandes, Pablo Mart sco Garc a Esca mez, Juan Sa nchez Gonza lez, Juan Yagu e and Rafael Garc a Valin o, who became Francos senior corps and army commanders. The question which needs to be asked is: were the Republican commanders, many of whom came from branches of the service other than the infantry, imbued less with aggressive concepts of colonial campaigning and more with the characteristic 1930s French concepts of defensive war, despite the proactive movements planned by Rojo? Rojo himself wondered whether the Soviet advisers inhibited the more active campaigns that he himself would have preferred.14 Certainly in Spain French doctrine was considered as near-perfect, though there is no evidence of clandestine contacts between Republican commanders and their French equivalents.15 Defensive ideas tted in well with reliance on impregnable fortications, which were sometimes justied, such as Colonel Mene ndezs successful blocking of Francos advance to Valencia in June 1938, but were catastrophic at other times, such as with the notorious cinturo n de hierro, the iron belt, which was intended to defend Bilbao in June 1937 and failed. Another question to be asked is: was the noted inability of Republican units to show initiative at lower levels a reection of their ofcers lack of training, or did it echo the conservative attitudes of the higher commanders, who insisted on keeping tight control over lower level units? Such rigid control was, in its turn, supported by the Communist authoritarians, increasingly inuential in the Republic and its armed forces, who insisted on the need for a regular-style and highly disciplined army, with no anarchistic, Spanish guerrilla-type, independent action, a view which tted in well with that of the professional military men. Neither side, except perhaps the colonial troops of Francos army, and his apparently militarily gifted Navarrese brigades, were skilled infantrymen, who could attack strongly defended lines by inltrating them and bypassing strong points. But had Francos ofcers learned lessons from the Moroccan wars? No study of the armies in the Spanish Civil War has investigated the question in sufcient prosopographical depth to be able to establish the comparative level of
14

15

Information from Dr George Hills, who interviewed Rojo when the latter returned to Spain in the 1960s. M. Alpert, La reforma militar de Azan a 19311933 (Madrid, 1982), pp. 615. For views of French military thought in the period, see R. Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine 19191939 (Hamden, CT, 1985); J. Mart nez Parrilla, Las fuerzas francesas ante la guerra civil espan ola (Madrid, 1987). War in History 1999 6 (3)

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active military experience, but the briefest survey of the higher commanders would point to a far greater extent of successful experience in Morocco among Francos commanders. Were company and platoon movements better taught in the Nationalist army? If this was not so, can the better infantry performance of Francos army be explained in terms of better ofcer and NCO training, an absence of revolutionary rhetoric or better morale? In the Republican army, almost all prewar professional servicemen and paramilitaries were made up to ofcer rank. All career ofcers gained at least one and often two promotions. The question of junior ofcers therefore arises. Can the efciency of the Republics militia ofcers and its emergency war-trained lieutenants, its tenientes en campan a, be compared with that of the far larger number of the equivalent alfe reces provisionales in the Nationalist army?16 The same question must be asked regarding non-commissioned ofcers. Spanish-speaking German instructors taught aspiring Nationalist sergeants efciently.17 Can it be fairly assumed that the instruction was more practical than that received by their opposite numbers, sometimes delivered by Russian ofcers who had to communicate through interpreters?18

V
Francoist military historians hardly consider broader issues of warfare. The 1930s saw rapid innovation, particularly in two elds: military aviation and armoured warfare. Though wise observers realized that they had to consider the inexperience of both sides in Spain, the war allowed Germany, Italy and the USSR to evaluate new weapons, particularly aircraft, and, in the German case, to experiment with new ways of war. Probably altogether several hundred heavy Russian tanks took part in the Spanish Civil War, as did lighter German and very light Italian machines. However, neither side had enough tanks at a given moment to use them as independent weapons en masse, well supported by air cover and artillery in the way advocated by the Blitzkrieg theorists. In any case, even though commanders on both sides were readers of Liddell Hart and Fuller, the only information about practical experiences they had came from the reports of military attache s, who tended to be scornful in general of the new theories.19 Soviet tanks in Spain were often victims of German anti-tank re. Despite their impressive specications, Russian tanks were vulnerable to the most effective weapon
16

17 18 19

See J. Ga rate Co rdoba, Tenientes en Campan reces a (Madrid, 1976) and his Alfe Provisionales (Madrid, 1976). See J. Llorde s, Al dejar el fusil (Barcelona, 1968). M. Alpert, El eje rcito republicano en la guerra civil (Madrid, 1989), p. 171. Rojo had collaborated in a book on German infantry training published in 1928. Franco had been impressed by German infantry training in the same year (Alpert, La reforma militar de Azan a, pp. 6970).

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of the Spanish war, the German 88-mm anti-aircraft gun, which could be used in an anti-tank role also. Since Republican tanks were used as support for ill-trained infantry advances, the more self-reliant Nationalist troops soon learned to avoid their machine-guns, which were difcult in any case to bring to bear, and to immobilize their tracks.20 The classic example of the wrong use of motorized troops in Spain was the battle of Guadalajara in March 1937. The commanders of the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie the forces, totalling 72 827, that Mussolini committed to helping Franco in Spain21 were attracted to theories of motorized warfare, and criticized Franco for his slow and meticulous progress, which they ascribed to his lack of military vision rather than, as he would have claimed, the need to assure the security of occupied territory before moving on. In early March 1937 four Italian divisions moved off towards Madrid without air cover or sufcient anti-aircraft protection. The vehicles themselves did not possess cross-country capabilities and were limited to the one inadequate highway. Bad weather prevented Italian aircraft taking off from grass elds. When, however, Republican aircraft managed to take advantage of temporary breaks in the cloud and to take off from rm surfaces, one of which was the present Barajas international airport, they saw a 20-km Italian convoy on a straight road with no natural shelter. The Republics Soviet aircraft routed the Italians, who retreated in disorder, abandoning large amounts of equipment.22 The generally better performance of Italian ground forces in Spain from a few months after the Guadalajara de ba cle was due partly to the withdrawal of unsuitable men and to the bringing of Italian units under higher Spanish command, but also to the proper support of Italian mechanization by artillery and air strikes, as in the campaigns in Santander (August 1937), Aragon (MarchApril 1938) and Catalonia (December 1938January 1939). Franco did use a modied Blitzkrieg style where appropriate, such as in the rapid advance through Aragon to the sea in the spring of 1938, whose converging lines of attack, covered from the air, employed tactics which the Italian historians later considered to be a velocizzazione imposed by them.23
20

21 22

23

For a summary of opinions about Russian tanks and their use by Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, see Alpert, El eje rcito republicano, pp. 2489. J. Coverdale, La intervencio n fascista en la guerra civil espan ola (Madrid, 1979), app. C. See the report of the French aviator Jean Dary, who ew Republican aircraft in Spain, La guerre ae rienne en Espagne, Revue de lArme e de lAir (July 1938), pp. 808 24; A. Garc a Lacalle (later commander of the Republican ghter arm), Mitos y verdades: la aviacio n de caza en la guerra espan ola (Mexico City, 1973), p. 244. For more general comments on this issue, see B.R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY, 1984), and A.R. Millett and W. Murray, Military Effectiveness (3 vols, London, 1988) II: The Interwar Period; for an account of Guadalajara, see O. Conforti, Guadalajara, la prima scontta del fascismo (Milan, 1967). L. Ceva, Conseguenze dellintervento italo-fascista, in Sacerdoti Mariani, Colombo and Pasinato, eds, La guerra civile spagnola tra politica e letteratura (Florence, 1995), p. 217. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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The Guadalajara catastrophe tended to overshadow the successes attributable to embryonic theories concerning the point of impact, the expansion of the breach and rolling up the enemy from the rear. This at least was the comment made by the Czech observer Miksche when considering the Nationalist attack on Bilbao in June 1937.24 The Iron Ring was attacked on a narrow front at a weak point, betrayed to the enemy by the engineer who had designed it. The barbed wire, trenches and machine-gun posts were heavily bombarded by the Nationalist artillery. The attacking troops poured through a narrow breach, rolling up the defence from the rear and causing a general retreat. What is more, the point of impact frequently changed, causing even more chaos in the defence. Miksche claims that these tactics were directed by the German ambassador, General Faupel. Considering, however, the irritation that Faupel had caused by his tactlessly expressed views on the Spanish way of waging war, his role may be doubted. It is just as likely that the techniques used by the Nationalist troops in their advance against Bilbao reected the lessons learned in the Moroccan wars of the 1920s. In any case, the defence was insufcient; the Basque Army Corps had been recently reorganized and new commanders had only just been appointed. This reected the political conict between the government and the Basque authorities who had received their Statute of Autonomy in October 1936, which they unconstitutionally extended to ceding them authority over matters of war. However, given the distance of the Northern front from the rest of Republican Spain, the assumption of military independence by the Basque authorities would have been hard to prevent. Order and morale were at a low ebb, reported the newly appointed Republican general.25 The Basques were subject to air raids and desperately short of food. Miksche was looking back on the Spanish war after observing the German successes in Poland and France in 193940. However, in Spain the German tank used, the Panzer Mark 1, was light and not used in mass. As late as 1938, there were only 180 German tanks in Spain under the orders of the future senior armoured forces commander, von Thoma.26 More important perhaps were the 30 anti-tank gun companies, each with six cannon, and the matchless German 88-mm antiaircraft guns, a major challenge to the Republican air force. These remarkable weapons were also used in direct support of advancing infantry.27 Republican anti-aircraft guns, either because their crews were not skilled enough in their use or because of lack of spares or shortage of ammunition, were little threat unless they were concen-

24 25 26 27

F.O. Miksche, Blitzkrieg (London, 1942), p. 39. J.M. Mart nez Bande, Vizcaya (Madrid, 1971), pp. 1567. B.H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, rev. edn (London, 1951), p. 123. C. Mart nez Campos (Francos artillery commander), Ayer, 19311953 (2 vols, Madrid, 1970) II, p. 86, describes negotiations with the Germans to use their ak weapons to support advancing infantry.

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trated.28 The absence of Republican anti-aircraft re allowed the Nationalists to bomb from low altitudes, a factor which appears to be of prime importance.29

VI
The tactic of concentrated strang and bombing of fortied positions was used effectively by the Nationalists but remarkably little by the Republicans. Coordinated carpet-bombing forced even well entrenched infantry to abandon their positions.30 In the Spanish war Nationalist infantry repeatedly occupied fortied Republican positions in mountainous or easily defended country. These positions were shelled or bombed just in front of attacking forces.31 The Aragon fronts were destroyed by an accumulation of several hundred aircraft in the Republican routs of the spring of 1938. Later that year on the River Ebro the strang was very effective. The technique of constant attack by a chain of aircraft was developed by the Nationalist air ace Joaqu n Garc a Morato,32 while the Germans used the Henschel-123, which made a terrifying noise, for ground support.33 The chain attack had a disastrous effect on the defence of the bridges over the Ebro, so much so that Francos infantry attacks were successful. An American observer, thinking back to the immense losses of infantry launched over the top in the 191418 War, wrote: Francos infantry has seldom experienced the terrible depression resulting from heavy loss in an attack bravely carried forward . . ..34 Jesu bal, quoting the ace Garc a Morato, writes that s Salas Larraza the squadrons attacked again and again until their ammunition was exhausted, ring just in front of the advancing Nationalist infantry.35 As for the Republicans, Garc a Lacalle writes that there was less air ground collaboration in their forces, which sometimes led to serious missing of opportunities.36 Airground cooperation became a speciality of the rotating force of
28

29

30 31

32 33

34 35 36

See the memoirs of a leading German pilot who ew in Spain: A. Galland, The First and the Last (translation of Die Ersten und die Letzten) (London, 1955), p. 29. See the report of the French reserve pilot Victor Veniel of 19 Dec. 1936 to the information section of the French Air Staff: Enseignements a ` tirer des ope rations ae riennes dEspagne (Service Historique de lArme e de lAir, Carton B178), cited in Quatrefages, La politique franc aise, p. 31. See also R.P. Hallion, Strike from the Sky: The History of Battleeld Air Attack 19111945 (Shrewsbury, 1989), and J.S. Corum, The Luftwaffe and the Coalition Air War in Spain 19361939, in J. Gooch, ed., Airpower: Theory and Practice (London, 1995), pp. 6890. See Galland, The First and the Last, p. 30. German ghters strafed the Iron Ring from 150 ft in front of the advancing infantry, dropping their bombs from 500 ft (Hallion, Strike from the Sky, p. 103). J. Garc a Morato, Guerra en el aire (Madrid, 1940), p. 40. Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, p. 187. The Junkers-87, or Stuka, was used only experimentally in Spain. Brig.-Gen. H.J. Reilly, in The Aeroplane, 26 Apr. 1939, pp. 51518. Salas Larraza bal, La guerra en el aire, pp. 1901. Garc a Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, p. 431. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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100 aircraft, known as the Condor Legion, which Germany kept in Spain from November 1936 onwards. German interest in airground support began in the 1921 manual on the use of combined arms.37 The rst German ghter sent to Spain, the Heinkel-51, had to be withdrawn from bomber escort in late 1936, because of the superiority of the Russian I-15 and I-16 ghters, but it could be used efciently for machine-gunning and dropping splinter-bombs on enemy trenches. The Condor Legion developed systems of hand-signalling from aircraft to aircraft for very few machines possessed radio communication together with systems of panels, light signals, ares and smoke for groundair communication, and ying techniques to avoid aircraft being harmed by the explosions of their own bombs. Even so, the Germans complained that the Nationalist troops did not press the attack home after the air strikes had put the defenders to ight or had left them completely stunned. This operational problem took many months to solve. Indeed, individual Republican pilots at the beginning of the war also complained that ground troops called for air support but did not follow it up.38 In the Spanish situation, whatever the valour and determination displayed by the Republican troops, particularly during their resistance on the Ebro in autumn 1938, mountainous and rocky territory did not lend itself to deep dugouts, so that heavy bombardment could not be withstood in the way that the Germans had endured a British bombardment on the Somme in 1916. Furthermore, since the Republicans lacked training, often arms and not infrequently leadership and morale, Francos counter-attacks against their initial surprise advances found them badly prepared and forced them into retreat. The Republican air force could not engage in attacking techniques like their enemys, for one thing because the Nationalists tended to garrison their fronts rather sparsely and to rely on efcient logistics when attacked, bringing up relatively large quantities of artillery which, by the opening of the nal and victorious counter-offensive on the Ebro in November 1938, amounted to some 500 cannon.39 Furthermore, qualitatively and quantitatively, German anti-aircraft re in the Nationalist armoury was superior.40 Thus, by the end of the war, German aircraft could attack Republican airelds unopposed, while so great was the shortage of Republican operational aircraft at

37

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39

40

Hallion, Strike from the Sky, pp. 9192; for a more detailed discussion, with references, see Corum, The Luftwaffe, n. 92. See also R.R. Muller, Close Air Support: The German, British and American Experiences 19181941, in W. Murray and A.R. Millett, eds, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1612. R. Proctor, Hitlers Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War (Westport, CT, 1983), pp. 84 90. J.M. Mart nez Bande, La batalla del Ebro (Madrid, 1978), p. 250. Such densities of artillery were, of course, minor in comparison with those of the world wars. Posen, Sources, pp. 812.

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any given moment that Nationalist columns and artillery behind the front were rarely camouaged.41 Nationalist aircraft, therefore, were used tactically against enemy aircraft and to facilitate advance and occupation by infantry of enemy positions. Only Italy, inuenced by the ideas of Giulio Douhet, envisaged air power as strategically decisive.42 While the destruction of Guernica on 26 April 1937 has gone down in history as an early example of the terror-bombing of European civilians, the Condor Legion may have combined its terror tactic (in, for example, the use of incendiary bombs on a town built largely of wood) with the justiable battle tactic of interdicting passage through Guernica of Basque forces retreating on Bilbao.43 The German Junkers-52 did bomb Madrid in autumn 1936 but had to desist with the arrival of efcient and fast Russian ghters in early November. The Republican air force rarely used its fast Katiuska Russian bombers because they were highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft re and indeed in some circumstances to the Fiat CR-32 ghter with its perforating, explosive and incendiary bullets. When the Italian air force bombed Barcelona heavily in April 1938, ying directly from Italy, the event created an international scandal which was counter-productive for Franco. Thus, strategic bombing was not a signicant aspect of the Spanish Civil War. The international obloquy provoked by the bombing of cities was not rewarded by its strategic success. The war began with biplanes of the late 1920s. It ended with stateof-the-art, low-wing monoplanes, which reached speeds of several hundred km per hour, at heights of up to 8000 m. The only aircraft to be used throughout almost all the war was the Fiat CR-32 ghter biplane, of which 377 were delivered to Francos air force.44 Its robustness and armament made it a permanent challenge to the Russian I-15 and I16 ghters, which ruled the skies so long as there were enough of them and sufcient skilled pilots to y them for the Republic. The challenge of Soviet superiority in the air was met by further development of the Messerschmitt Bf-109 ghter. By 1939 this aircraft had two hours ying time, a top speed of 323 miles per hour and efcient radio. If tted with drop fuel tanks, it could escort bombers, a role which no Republican ghter could perform adequately enough to bring out the qualities

41 42

43

44

Galland, The First and the Last, p. 34. Corum, The Luftwaffe, p. 72. Altogether, 1435 Italian pilots ew in Spain and 764 Italian aircraft were dispatched there: B. Sullivan, Fascist Italys Military Involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Journal of Military History LIX (1995), pp. 697728. Evaluation of the destruction of Guernica often depends on how one interprets available material. Probably the fullest and certainly the most convincing (it was presented in Paris as a doctoral thesis) and elegant study is that of Herbert Southworth, Guernica, Guernica! A Study of Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda and History (Berkeley, CA, 1977). See Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, under Fiat. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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of the Russian SB Katiuska bomber.45 Had the Russians developed later versions of their ghters and sent them to Spain in the quantities that the Germans did, and with Soviet pilots who knew them better than the newly trained Spaniards, the war might have taken a different course. Once some of the Russian ghters were tted with special engines, they were able to ght efciently at the heights where the later Messerschmitts functioned well, but by then it was too late.46 The Republican air force seems to have made almost no use of the seaplanes that it possessed in the naval air bases at Barcelona and San Javier (Murcia). This contrasts with the value of German seaplanes ying from Pollensa Bay on Majorca, which destroyed 52 ships.47 It is difcult to understand why use was not made of these machines to bomb Francos ports in Morocco. Certainly Republican aircraft bombed Palma, the major harbour on Majorca, but this caused serious international problems because of the presence of foreign warships and merchant vessels. Indeed, on 29 May 1937, when two Russian bombers scored hits on the German pocket battleship Deutschland, anchored at Ibiza, mistaking it for a Nationalist cruiser and killing a large number of sailors, Germany retaliated by bombarding the almost undefended port of Almer a, and was pacied only by assurances by the other powers.48 To sum up the importance of the Spanish Civil War for the development of armoured and aerial warfare, German ideas were experimental in Spain, but the theories were backed up by equipment and training, though there was no major use of armour. The principal lessons learned were in the use of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and, perhaps most importantly, in close airground cooperation from ever more advanced aircraft. Italy, on the other hand, though its material aid for Franco in aircraft and artillery and the participation of its submarines was generous,49 did not support its doctrines of mechanized warfare with staffs, commanders or troops who knew how to ght it. In the Fiat CR-32 it had one of the best all-round ghters in 1936, but by 1939 this aircraft was falling well behind.

45

46 47

48

49

On the tting of drop tanks to the Bf-109, see W. Murray, Strategic Bombing: The British, American and German Experiences, in Murray and Millett, Military Innovation, pp. 96143. See Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, under I-15, I-16 and Messerschmitt. R. Proctor, They Flew from Pollensa Bay, Aerospace Historian XXIV, (Dec. 1977), pp. 196202. For full details of the Deutschland episode, see M. Alpert, La guerra civil espan ola en el mar (Madrid, 1987), pp. 27582. The actual damage done by submarines in the Spanish Civil War was minimal, largely because they could rarely manoeuvre closely enough to identify a legal target. Altogether, 6 merchant ships were sunk and 2 Republican warships were damaged, as was the British destroyer HMS Havoc, which the Iride attacked in error (Sullivan, Fascist Italy, pp. 71516).

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VII
Inevitably, the difference in the availability of professional and experienced personnel between the two sides in the Spanish war has to be considered. In the navy only 10 per cent of the Cuerpo General, that is the non-specialized ofcers, remained in the service of the Republic. In the army, only about 14 per cent of the career ofcers were still serving the Republic two years after the war started.50 In the Republican Zone calculations made on the basis of lists in the ofcial Gaceta de la Repu blica show that 333 air force ofcers were dismissed the service ofcially in February 1937. Many of these were in Francos service, or murdered, executed or in prison. Whatever the number of professional yers available to serve and trustworthy,51 the account of the ghter commander Garc a Lacalle mentions very few names which can be found on the prewar list of ofcers. He himself, though holding a pilots licence since 1929, had no command experience and had only just been appointed to the most junior commissioned rank. Ofcers with signicant numbers of ying hours were few and far between. On the other hand, the prewar records of Nationalist squadron and wing commanders, leave alone individual pilots, if experience counts at all, demonstrate the built-in advantages enjoyed by Francos insurgents.52 Garc a Morato, for example, had been an instructor for six years.53 If Adolf Galland, the later ace in the battle of Britain, was typical of the German pilots, they were the result of extraordinarily rigorous selection and meticulous training. This, of course, is not to minimize the incompetence of the Republican bureaucracy, divided by politics and impeded by indiscipline and distrust, factors which were reected in the armed forces. This is very noticeable in the contrast between the efcient logistics of Franco and his German allies and the chaos of the Republican rearguard. However, the Republics disadvantages were also imposed from outside. If the condition of Spanish roads and railways made it difcult to maintain the Condor Legion, whose spares could be transported to Spain without hindrance, how much greater were the difculties of the Republic, whose transport and war material could be immobilized for a
50

51

52

53

See Alpert, La guerra civil en el mar, pp. 37172, and El eje rcito republicano, pp. 99100. The calculation requires comparison between the Army Yearbook (Anuario Militar) of 1936 and the incomplete ofcer lists published by the personnel section of the Republican undersecretariat of defence in 1938. In the artillery, however, where the regiments had been evenly spread over the country and did not have an initial numerical bias to one side or the other, the gure is 14% still remaining in the Republican Army. Names found in Republican sources include 8 lieutenant-colonels, 10 majors, 26 captains, 11 lieutenants and 10 second lieutenants. Even if this total of 65 is doubled, it is still far fewer than the Nationalists had at their disposal. A check of Jesu bal, La guerra en el aire, app. 13, shows that 21 out of s Salas Larraza 27 Nationalist ghter squadron leaders had been air force ofcers before the war, while this is true of only 15 out of 43 Republican squadron commanders. Garc a Morato, Guerra en el aire, p. 25. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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long time merely because international agreement prevented it buying essential spares. Germany organized regular sailings of supply ships. There were four weekly ights from Germany to Spain carrying key personnel and dispatches.54 Italian communications with Spain passed through Majorca, from where Spanish ships convoyed supplies on to Morocco, or to Ca diz or Algeciras. This was not possible for the Soviet Union, whose long sea route was subject to interference from Italian naval forces and observation by the Royal Navy. The alternative route from the USSR was through the Baltic and the English Channel to a French port, but French attitudes towards facilitating the passage of war material on to Spain depended on the international situation at the moment, and on whether the French government could overcome its internal divisions and brave the opposition of the Chamber of Deputies or the rightist press.55 To a considerable extent the Republican predicament was indeed caused by strategic and political error, particularly by the loss of control over the Straits of Gibraltar by the second month of the war (August 1936), which contravened the fundamental principle of maintaining the object. That object should have been to prevent Franco bringing his troops over to Spain from Morocco. On the other hand, the international community, in the form of the Non-Intervention Committee, tolerated the presence of German and Italian aircraft which made it impossible for the leaderless Republican navy and air force, albeit lacking strategic and political purpose, to dominate the Straits. Political decisions impeded Republican forces from blockading Francos German and Italian supplies. It was Italian support that strengthened the insurgent garrison on Majorca, though it was a grave strategic error of the Republic not to have given all-out support to the September 1936 attempt by ill-trained militia from Valencia to win the island back. An assembly of aircraft and concentrated shelling by warships lying off the island might have saved Majorca for the Republic and prevented Palma from becoming Francos major naval base, from where the Nationalists, aided by Italian bombers and ghters and German seaplanes, would interdict trafc making for the Republican ports of Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, Alicante and Cartagena, sinking 202 merchant ships between September 1937 and the end of the war in March 1939.56

VIII
How far can the contribution of the USSR to the Spanish Civil War be evaluated?
54

55 56

For German sailings, see S. Tanner, German Naval Intervention in the Spanish Civil War as Reected in the German Records (doctoral thesis, The American University, Washington, DC, 1976). For the ights, see Proctor, Hitlers Luftwaffe, p. 97. See D.W. Pike, Les Franc ais et la guerre dEspagne (Paris, 1975). Sullivan, Fascist Italys Military Involvement.

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In the air, Russian designers had developed the highly manoeuvrable I-15 ghter biplane, which could out-turn and out-climb the Fiat CR-32 but ew more slowly on the level. The low-wing I-16 monoplane, with its retractable undercarriage and enclosed cockpit, preceded the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and was as good if not better at heights up to 5000 m.57 It could dive at speeds of up to 600 km per hour, but needed extremely skilled handling. Russian bombers were at the same time more advanced than those of other countries, but obsolete in that they were too vulnerable to be used against fast ghters or German 88-mm anti-aircraft re. The Russian ghters prevented daytime raids on Madrid in the autumn, winter and spring of 19367 because the German Junkers-52 bombers could not be safely escorted. Russian bombers destroyed the Italian advance on Guadalajara in March 1937 because they had complete air control. Russian ghters, however, had no radio; and their only advance over the rapidly evolving Messerschmitt Bf-109 was the special engine received late in the war which enabled a few of them to match the German ghters height advantage. Six or seven hundred Spanish pilots were trained in the USSR, compared with a very small number of Nationalists trained outside Spain. The shortage of training personnel in the Republican zone is itself an indication of the lack of manpower brought about by the loss of so many regular ofcers. The major question, still unanswered after 60 years, is to what extent Soviet policies, through the senior Soviet air commanders Smushkievich (alias Douglas) and Pumpur (alias Julio), enforced procedures that were perhaps not in the best military interests of the Republic. Garc a Lacalle, for example, who held the most senior positions in the Republican ghter arm and is a reliable witness, writes that there was no liaison ofcer between the air ministry and the fronts. As a squadron commander, Garc a Lacalle reported to Colonel Julio, Julio to Douglas, and the latter to the ministry of national defence in Valencia.58 To give another example of the absence of the necessary liaison, on 20 February 1938 the Republican chief of staff, Colonel Rojo, asked by the minister of national defence if there was a senior air force ofcer in his command post, answered that he did not know; there was no ofcial liaison.59 The is a striking example of the organizational inferiority of the Republican forces, for Francos air commander, General Alfredo Kindela n, who had headed the air force during its oper-

57 58

59

Garc a Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, p. 361. Op. cit., p. 249. When the Negr n government took over in May 1937, the war ministries were merged into the ministry of national defence, rst under Indalecio Prieto and in Apr. 1938 under Negr n himself. Alpert, El eje rcito republicano, p. 244. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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ations in Morocco, was at Francos side throughout the war.60 Another military principle, that of cooperation between all units involved, was contravened here. By 1938, the shortage of Republican ghter aircraft had become catastrophic. It is difcult to reach conclusions about why the USSR allowed such scarcity to develop while knowing about Francos constant supply of new material. Perhaps, unwilling as the Soviet leaders were to get involved in Spain, especially because they despaired of the internal conicts between the various left-wing parties and the hostility of the minister of defence, Prieto, they hoped that the western democracies would come to the aid of the Republic. After the Munich agreements, in September 1938, it became obvious that this would not happen. According to Garc a Lacalle, once the Russian leaders received the desperate message from Spain, brought by the overall air commander of the Republic, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, in December 1938, Soviet material was dispatched with alacrity. The rst shipment of 31 I-15 ghters arrived just before the fall of Barcelona to Franco in January 1939. Others arrived when it was too late to assemble and deploy them. The Republics last airelds in Catalonia were too vulnerable to attack.61 Probably only a closer examination of Russian sources will reveal why Stalin apparently changed his mind at the last minute.62 It may fairly be asked why the Soviet advisers and the pilots who ew in Spain until well into 1937 did not develop the techniques of close infantry support that were so characteristic of German and Spanish Nationalist ying. The dynamism and indeed independent attitude of the Nationalist aces Joaqu n Garc a Morato, Angel Salas, Julio Salvador and Carlos Haya, encouraged by a senior commander of the calibre of Kindela n, contrasting with the dead hand of whoever in reality directed the Republican air force, is a factor to be considered.63 Nevertheless, the danger created by German anti-aircraft re was another feature which inhibited the use of Russian low level bombers. At sea there was no Russian presence, despite or perhaps because of the threatening stances of German ships and Italian submarines. Indeed, Francos exiguous navy captured a number of Russian cargo ships, charging them, usually without justication, with carrying arms to the Republic. The atmosphere in the USSR, riven with fear and suspicion because
60

61 62

63

See A. Kindela n, Mis cuadernos de guerra (Barcelona, 1982). This book contains virtually no discussion of the issues of the air war, strangely enough for a man who had spent his whole life in important positions in the air force. He does, however, conrm from his viewpoint, or perhaps from ofcer prisoner statements, the material inferiority and the incompetence of the Republican command, together with a report on their lack of anti-aircraft defence, in a letter to Franco in Jan. 1938 (pp. 1523). Garc a Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, pp. 416. For a tentative analysis, see M. Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (Basingstoke, 1984), pp. 1489. The memoirs of the senior Republican air commander, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, are singularly uninformative: Cambio de rumbo 2a parte (Bucharest, 1964).

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of Stalins purges, which saw the disappearance of a signicant proportion of senior commanders of the armed forces, is a political and psychological factor to be taken into account in explaining the apparently lackadaisical Soviet attitude to ensuring that Franco did not win the Spanish Civil War. While, for instance, the Soviet I-16 ghter had been perhaps the most advanced military aircraft in the world in 1936, it was obsolescent by 1938.64 If the Russians could not keep up with Germany here, and had no navy which could function outside Soviet waters, their theoretical effectiveness at war may have been overestimated by the historians who are struck by the volume of what they sent to Spain, even though this was not, according to the most trustworthy calculations, as much as Germany and Italy sent to Franco.65 There was a marked difference of purpose between German and Russian aid policies. While the Germans had willingly responded to Francos request for help and proted by the war to train their pilots and anti-tank gunners in a real situation, the Russians, given their difcult diplomatic position, became involved in Spain unwillingly and only in response to German and Italian intervention.66 Little was known about Spain in Russia. Everything depended on the information sent back to Moscow by the Soviet embassy and the military advisers who had to walk a tightrope of political correctness. Some of them, indeed, fell off it, were recalled to the USSR and perished in the purges. Possibly the lessons of the air war in Spain, discussed in several specialized articles in the Soviet Union in 1938, came too late.67 As for Soviet armour, there were not enough drivers at rst. Spaniards had to be trained and go into action in under a month, with the consequent problems of language and liaison. In his memoir of Spain, the rst Russian tank commander, Colonel Krivoshein, describes the pantomiming of the instructions and the failure of the ill-trained Spanish militia and the tanks to coordinate their actions.68 This may not be surprising. As Colonel Martel, the British tank specialist, commented after watching Russian manoeuvres for 1936, these were highly confused. The commanders could not control or coordinate their

64

65

66

67 68

Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, p. 10. See also A. Seaton and J. Seaton, The Soviet Army, 1918 to the Present (London, 1986), p. 77. For the latest gures for Soviet aid to Republican Spain, see Y. Ribalkin, Ayuda militar sovie tica a la Espan rcito (Madrid, Jan. a republicana: cifras y hechos, Eje 1992), pp. 4450. The gures include: 648 aircraft, 467 tanks and armoured vehicles, 1186 cannon, 20 486 machine-guns and nearly half a million ries. Alpert, New International History, pp. 4852. For a later analysis, see D. Smyth, We Are With You: Solidarity and Self-Interest in Soviet Policy towards Republican Spain 19361939, in P. Preston and A.L. Mackenzie, eds, The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain 19361939 (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 87107. Cited by Hallion, Strike from the Sky, p. 283, n. 56. S. Krivoshein, Los tanquistas voluntarios en los combates por Madrid, in Bajo la bandera de la Espan a republicana (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 31943. War in History 1999 6 (3)

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troops and tactical training was inadequate.69 While the USSR had as many as 7000 tanks in 1935, very few were sent to Spain, though these included the latest models. Close air support was seen as a primary role of aircraft in Russian doctrine, while the 1936 eld regulations stressed inter-arm cooperation,70, but there was little evidence that any of this was put into effect in Spain. It seems likely that political inhibition prevented the Russians experimenting in Spain to the extent that the Germans did. Voroshilov, Peoples Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, was subservient to Stalin, in contrast to the more outspoken Marshal Tukhachevsky, but the latter was arrested and executed in June 1937.71 Voroshilov would be unlikely to press the Russian leader to be more proactive in Spain, where the terrain and the power of anti-tank weapons led the USSR mistakenly to reject the independent use of tanks.72 This political explanation also goes some way towards clarifying the insufcient rate of replacement of Soviet aircraft, evident by the rst day of the Nationalist advance in Aragon (9 March 1938), when no German aircraft was shot down.73 If this political explanation is correct, the Soviet leaders generous response to Hidalgo de Cisneross appeal in December 1938 may be seen as a reection of Stalins ignorance of the real state of affairs. Garc a Lacalles apposite view is that fear of Stalin prevented the Russian military advisers from insisting that the training of Spanish pilots in the USSR was decient.74 Colonel Goma , a Nationalist air historian, concludes that the Republicans trained too many pilots and were insufciently selective. Garc a Lacalle, from the other side of the Spanish divide, agrees. He underlines that the training in Russia was too intensive and that new pilots could not compete against the long-serving Luftwaffe yers.75 It may well be that Stalin wanted to go gently in Spain because he hoped that Britain and France might wake up to the danger of Nazi Fascist aggression. By 1937 he had perhaps also decided that intervention in Spain was not worth, in political terms, the hostility it was causing in London and Paris. By late 1938, however, possibly Stalin judged that Spain was worthy of a desperate last throw.

IX
Many of the errors, avoidable in other circumstances, made by the Republican authorities have been examined. Explanations of Francos victory and the Republics defeat in terms of ideology fail to consider
69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Seaton and Seaton, The Soviet Army, pp. 92ff. H. Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London, 1983), p. 159. Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, p. 5. Strachan, European Armies, p. 159. Proctor, Hitlers Luftwaffe, p. 193. Garc a Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, p. 50. Goma , La guerra en el aire, p. 139; Garc a Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, pp. 31ff., 40.

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the concrete advantages that the former enjoyed in a regular and ample arms supply. Francos ally was Nazi Germany at its particular moment of rearming and re-creating its military efciency in an apotheosis of national unity. The Republics only and not too reliable supplier was the USSR, weak, politically riven and internationally undecided. Francos Nationalists were authoritarian; all aspects of life were militarily controlled. Command was completely centralized, though senior commanders might be given more freedom than on the other side, where rigidity was a reaction to indiscipline and where political decisions, often dictated by internal social pressures, might impede military requirements. In techniques, it seems clear that air power and the harassment of infantry from the air and by concentrated heavy artillery shelling played the most decisive role, while at sea political considerations prevented the Republican navy from doing what Francos forces did so well: interdict trafc. In the long run, an efcient dictatorship will be more effective at war, all other things considered, than an inefcient civilian government, especially one which is using harsh measures, like the Negr n administration of 1937, to suppress a social revolution itself provoked by the Franco insurrection. The Spanish Republican governments of 19369 were internally divided over how to ght the war; their supporters distrusted many of their military leaders. They depended completely on foreign aid, whose supply was politically mediated. The Franco administration had the skilled leaders it needed, was not divided by ideological dispute and enjoyed regular and generous support from its allies.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the participants in the Seminar on Contemporary Spanish History at the Institute of Historical Research of London University, and in particular Professors Paul Preston and Sir Raymond Carr, for their valuable comments. In addition, I have beneted from the helpful written commentary of Dr. George Hills, whose particular knowledge of Spanish history and whose military experience have helped me to frame several interpretations. I also wish to thank Mr. Gerald Howson, who has generously shared with me his encyclopaedic knowledge of the military hardware of the Spanish war and its capacities. University of Westminster

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