Franco: History to the Defeated

By Jonathan Whitehead

The death of General Franco in 1975 was followed by an exemplary transition from dictatorship to democracy. Today, Spanish people enjoy rights and liberties that were ruthlessly denied for forty years, and Spain is a respected and enthusiastic member of the international community. Unfortunately, the price of national reconciliation was the impunity of those responsible for acts of extreme brutality, not only during the Civil War (1936-39), but also in the years that followed the conflict. Franco – History to the Defeated describes a chain of events and circumstances which define the dictatorship, and explores both the role of Spain in the Second World War and the role of the many Britons involved on both sides of the political divide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Aug 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463638859

Jonathan Whitehead

Jonathan Whitehead was born in Wimbledon in 1953. He studied Politics at the University of Reading and later completed an MA in Contemporary European Studies. He first visited Madrid in 1977 and eventually settled in Spain in 1982. He has worked as a teacher since that date. He lives in Alicante.

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Dragons in the Sky

By the early summer of 1936, the days of the Spanish Second Republic were numbered. While escalating political unrest and violence undermined the authority of the new Popular Front government and the viability of the Republic, a cocktail of Monarchists, Fascists, and disaffected military leaders, supported by the Catholic Church, plotted the overthrow of the Republican order.

The Second Republic had been proclaimed on 14 April 1931 when King Alfonso XIII acknowledged the monarchy’s unpopularity and abandoned the country. The electoral coalition of left-wing and Republican parties, known as the Frente Popular won a narrow victory in the general election of February 1936 and formed a moderate centre-left government (supported by the Socialist Party although no members of the party held a ministerial post). In light of the potential threat to the privileges of landowners, industrialists, the Church, and the armed forces, various members of the military hierarchy engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the government and the Republic. The movement was led by General Mola, the Military Governor of Pamplona in Navarra, and General Sanjurjo, in exile in Portugal (having been released from prison after an unsuccessful coup in 1932). The success of the coup d’état nevertheless depended largely on the intervention of General Francisco Franco, kicking his heels in internal exile in the Canary Islands. Franco was by nature both cautious and ambitious and he was unwilling to play his hand until he was sure of his own success. Rather than take an active role in the conspiracy, he devoted his spare time to playing golf and apparently studying English.

Plans for military insurgency continued without his explicit support in the expectation or at least hope that he would eventually commit. However, those behind the conspiracy were aware that even if the General were to cease prevaricating, they needed to address the logistical question of how to transport him to Tetuan and thus allow him to take command of Spain’s African Army in Spanish Morocco. The plotters were aware that the Defence Ministry would be monitoring air travel in and out of the Canary Islands, and the arrival of a military aircraft would immediately set off alarm bells. Judged to be politically unreliable by the Left, Franco’s posting to the Islands had indeed been designed not only to keep him away from temptation at the centre of power on the mainland, but also to facilitate surveillance of his movements.

At the beginning of July, Luis Bolín, London correspondent of the monarchist daily newspaper ABC, was asked by the newspaper’s owner, Juan Ignacio de Tena, to find and hire an aircraft in Britain that might be used in the undertaking. The money was to be provided by the financier Juan March, through the Fenchurch Street branch of Kleinwort’s Bank. Over lunch at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, Bolín consulted Douglas Jerrold,an extreme right-wing journalist. They subsequently approached the Olley Air Service, operating from its base at Croydon Airport, and rented a seven-seater de Havilland Dragon Rapide. They also contacted Jerrold’s friend Hugh.

Pollard and asked him to put together a small group of passengers who would travel to the Canaries and provide cover for the mission. The Major was ‘sporting editor of Country Life, a fervent, Fascist-sympathising Catholic with a colourful past, including time as a police adviser in Dublin Castle during the Anglo-Irish War of 1919– 21’.1 He agreed and recruited the support of his daughter Diana: I remember that summer’s day fairly distinctly. My father came out and he was rather excited […] He said would we be willing to act as cover, pretend to be rich tourists, just about a week […] as company with whoever was there and dump a plane in North Africa […] and then come back by boat. So, you know, you are eighteen and you don’t have any particular wish for adventure, but it would seem a stupid thing to say No.2

The plotters needed a second girl and Diana suggested inviting her close friend, Dorothy Watson, who looked after the family’s chickens. In the words of Jerrold:

Then began the most arduous search of all. Pollard’s daughter was to be one of the party, but the other girl was out – no telephone inquiries could locate her. All that was known was that she was delivering chickens somewhere and that she hadn’t got a passport.

And so the last crusade began on a hot July afternoon with four men searching frantically up and down Sussex lanes for a girl delivering chickens and who had not got a passport.

In despair we turned into the pub, and there, the heavens being kind and the bar being open, we found her.

‘Dorothy, come here. You’re going to Africa to- morrow,’ Hugh shouted cheerfully.3

The three passengers, officially planning a hunting trip, subsequently joined Bolín when the aircraft took off from Croydon on 11 July. The pilot was Captain Cecil Bebb, ex- RAF, who was accompanied by a flight engineer and a mysterious radio operator who proved to be either incompetent or a drunk, or both.

According to his logbook,4 Bebb made a first stop at Bordeaux before setting off on the crucial stage to Portugal. He was under the strictest instructions not to land in Spain. Bad weather caused him to turn back and later the same day he tried again, this time from Biarritz, and finally managed to reach Espinho near Oporto. Running short on fuel, he was forced to make an unauthorized landing at a military aerodrome. According to Bolin’s version of the flight, for a while it seemed he might be refused permission to take off again. The passengers were allowed to take part in a fiesta at a nearby village until the local authorities agreed to turn a blind eye to the fact that the aircraft had landed without due clearance.5

On 12 July, unknown right-wing thugs, either Carlists or falangistas, murdered Lieutenant Jose Castillo as he walked to work in the centre of Madrid. Castillo belonged to a group of anti-Fascist military officers and had been warned by colleagues that his life was in danger. His death was a prelude to the final spiral of violence. Meanwhile, the party aboard the Dragon Rapide flew on to Alverca, near Lisbon. Again, according to Luis Bolín’s account,6 he and the Marquess of Mérito (who had joined the adventure in Bordeaux) were able to track down General Sanjurjo, who gave their mission his blessing, while apparently denying any personal ambitions of his own. The Dragon Rapide then set off again for the African mainland, and landed in Casablanca.

At three o’clock the following morning, a left-wing hit squad, including members of the Assault Guards, abducted José Calvo Sotelo from his home and executed him in the back of a police van before dumping his body outside a cemetery. Calvo Sotelo was a right-wing member of Parliament, and his murder was direct retaliation for the death of Castillo. The high political profile of the victim meant that optimum conditions now existed for a military uprising. However, Mola waited in vain for a signal from Franco in response to his pleas for support. Although military insurgency would undoubtedly enjoy widespread support among Army officers and extreme right-wing sectors of society, ultimate victory was certainly not assured. To a great extent it depended on the intervention of the Army of Africa. Franco’s role was therefore pivotal and he was determined to use this leverage in pursuit of his own ambitions. His English teacher, Dora Lennard, claims that when Franco appeared for his first class after the murder of Calvo Sotelo he looked as if he had aged ten years overnight.7

Captain Bebb was now confident enough to send the erratic radio operator home, and on the 15th the party flew to Cabo Juby and then on to Las Palmas where they landed at the military Gando Aerodrome. Franco meanwhile was still isolated and under supervision at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, agonising over his own role in events; he decided not to order the Dragon Rapide to Tenerife, but rather to keep Bebb on standby in Las Palmas. On 16 July, General Balmes, the Military Commander of the Canary Islands, was killed in a fortuitous accident during target practice at an Army shooting range. Not only did this providential incident provide Franco with the perfect excuse to travel to Las Palmas, it also seems to have removed any lingering doubts in his mind. Bebb was placed on alert.

The next day, while Bebb enjoyed a breakfast of bacon and eggs provided by the British Consul,8 Franco arrived in Gran Canaria on an overnight ferry to attend the funeral and was informed of a military uprising in Mellila. In Madrid, the Presidente del Consejo de Ministros (President of the Council of Ministers – Prime Minister) Casares Quiroga, acknowledged his own inability to cope with the unravelling crisis and resigned. On the 18th, having ensured to his own satisfaction that the Canary Islands themselves were in the hands of the rebels, Franco boarded a tug and was transferred to the aerodrome where Bebb and the Dragon Rapide awaited him. The Civil Governor of the island, Antonio Boix, who was loyal to the Republic, had meanwhile received orders from Madrid to capture the General dead or alive. Franco’s vessel passed in front of the Governor’s offices and well within firing range. However, Boix refused to give the order to open fire, and Franco passed by unharmed. At Gando Aerodrome he was carried ashore on the shoulders of one of his troops. He boarded the aircraft and changed into civilian clothes. Bebb set off for Agadir, where they refuelled, and eventually landed in Casablanca where an anxious Luís Bolín awaited. The next morning, they undertook the final lap of the journey to Tetuan, and Franco was able at last to take command of the Spanish troops in North Africa.

The coup had meanwhile failed. After the resignation of Casares Quiroga, the President of the Republic, Manuel Azaña, entrusted Martínez Barrio with the task of forming a government of reconciliation. The experiment lasted little more than a few hours before Azaña turned to José Giral, whose first order was to arm the people. Mola and Franco’s fear that if the coup did not succeed in overthrowing the Republic immediately, Civil War would ensue, proved correct.

In the early skirmishes, the military insurgents took Seville, Pamplona, Zaragoza and substantial areas of the north, including Galicia, while the key cities of Madrid, Barcelona,

Valencia and Bilbao remained in the hands of the Republic. Ultimate victory for the rebels now depended on the swift intervention of the troops under Franco’s command. Crucially, the Navy (after the summary execution of mutinous officers) remained loyal to the legitimate government, and the logistics crisis facing the insurrection could only be resolved by foreign intervention. Franco dispatched agents to Italy and Germany to beg for transport aircraft to deliver the Army across the Straits of Gibraltar to mainland Spain. Both Mussolini and Hitler were forthcoming in their support. The Führer was at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth and was, it would appear, inspired by the example of Siegfried.9

On 20 July, ships of the Spanish Navy were refused permission to buy oil and supplies in Gibraltar and were forced to abandon the Straits in order to seek provisions in Malaga.10 A week later The Guardian published a letter signed among others by H.G. Wells, Stafford Cripps and David Low, condemning ‘this indefensible breach of international law’ as ‘an act of hostility towards a friendly Power’. The letter concluded: ‘it would be disastrous for Great Britain, which professes to uphold democratic principles, even to appear to be on the side of a reactionary and Fascist uprising against the Parliamentary Constitution and Government of the Spanish Republic’.11

Nevertheless, the Conservatives in power were emotionally sympathetic to the insurgents and almost certainly looked forward to a swift military victory to halt Communist influence on the peninsula. By denying the Republican Navy the right to refuel, they ensured the Straits were left largely undefended.

The Junkers 52 and the Savoia-Marchetti S81 meanwhile successfully executed the first major airlift of troops in history, and Franco was soon able to embark on a triumphant march on Madrid. The key role he played in these first contacts with the two dictators and the military successes he achieved on the road to the capital were crucial in consolidating his position as leader of the insurrection. He was also helped by the death of his rival, General Sanjurjo, who was killed when the aircraft carrying him back to Spain from exile in Portugal crashed on take-off on 20 July. Six years later, disillusioned by Franco’s refusal to enter the Second World War, Hitler reportedly said: ‘If I had not decided in 1936 to send him the first of our Junker aircraft, Franco would never have survived.’12 And later: ‘Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junker

52. It is this aircraft that the Spanish revolution has to thank for its victory.’13

Hitler’s thesis that his early participation was crucial to the eventual victory of the Nationalists is beyond any doubt. In his work, The Spanish Tragedy, Raymond Carr insisted that although the conflict was defined as an army rebellion or revolt of generals, the military balance of power at the outset of war was fairly even. The insurgency: included only one general in command of an organic division […] and four divisional generals out of twenty- one; 70% of the brigadier-generals were loyal, as were a majority of the colonels. […] The strength of the Nationalist army was to lie in the fact that it captured the allegiance of the majority of younger officers. […] The army as a unit did not desert the government. […] Since the military balance was equal in the peninsula itself, the decisive factor must be the élite corps, the Army of Africa, whose 24,000 men followed their officers and went over completely to the insurgents. […] (After the first week of the war the balance of forces was approximately as follows: army, loyal to the Republic 55,000; siding with the Insurgents, 62,000; air force 3,200 to 2,200; Civil Guards and Assault Guards 40,500 to 27,000.) The African Army tipped the balance numerically as well as qualitatively.14

Given the nationality of the supporting actors in the drama of the Dragon Rapide, much has been written of the involvement of the British secret services; indeed Pollard was an experienced agent and at the very least it seems likely that he would have informed military intelligence of his mission. If there was no active connivance, neither did the British authorities make any attempt to abort the adventure. Captain Bebb made his way safely back to Britain and was later awarded the Order of Merit by Franco for his services.

The British historian Sir Arthur Bryant was later invited to provide a foreword to Luis Bolin’s history of the events surrounding the flight of the Dragon Rapide. In a single sentence designed to describe what the Civil War was not, he succinctly summarised precisely what it was: ‘a heroic struggle for liberty by an oppressed people against a treasonable clique of military adventurers, reactionary aristocrats and corrupt priests sustained only by Moorish mercenaries and Italian and German fascists’.

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Chapter Two

The Road to Madrid

Having successfully crossed the Straits, the Army of Africa commenced its campaign in Seville, the bridgehead taken by General Queipo de Llano who had arrested loyalist military leaders, seized the radio station and main arsenal, and turned the artillery on the Republican civilian authorities. The newly arrived troops played a decisive role in suppressing the final pockets of popular resistance to the insurgency. Meanwhile, General Franco told a Press Association correspondent that he harboured no personal ambitions: ‘As long as the uprising benefits Spain by stamping out Communism I am content, but I have no wish to inflict unnecessary hardships. After all, they are not all Communists.’15

Despite their early successes in North Africa, north-west Spain, the Canary Islands, the Balearics and Seville, the insurgents had crucially failed to take the main cities of mainland Spain. Prime Minister José Giral eventually agreed to arm the people and weapons were distributed among left-wing and Republican sympathisers. Other arms were seized from insurgent military and police stores, and political groups and unions then recruited members into militia to provide some organisation and to take the battle to the zones held by the Nationalists.

In Madrid, Republican supporters stormed the Montaña Barracks in search of small arms and parts. During the skirmish, various troops sought to surrender, but when the civilians advanced to take them prisoner they came under heavy fire from other rebel soldiers. In retaliation, when the barracks finally fell, the triumphant crowd massacred many of the surviving troops inside. In Barcelona, the would-be insurgents were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of those who joined the popular resistance at the barricades and the 4,000 Guardias Civiles, who took to the streets and strangled the rebellion. General Goded had meanwhile seized control of Mallorca for the insurgents, but when he arrived from the Balearic Islands to take command in Barcelona, he was detained by forces loyal to the Republic. He admitted defeat by radio, was court- martialled, found guilty of treason and executed (12 August 1936).

What had set out as a coup d’état, or at worst a swift military campaign, had failed. The insurgents had struck a serious blow against the Republic but had not overthrown it.

The coup became civil war. On 7 August Franco flew to Seville, established his HQ in the city and ordered the main column of the African Army on a rapid march northwards that would link up with troops from the north-western zone and thus close the frontier with Portugal before sweeping north- eastwards to take Madrid.

Following artillery and air bombardment, Mérida fell to the advancing Army on 10 August. Some 60 kilometres to the west, on the Portuguese border, lay Badajoz, a last Republican outpost, now isolated from the rest of Republican Spain. Lieutenant-Colonel Yagüe arrived to take command of a 3,000- man force, and following instructions from Franco he issued orders to march on the town. Apart from men of the élite.

Foreign Legion, his troops included some 750 regulares; North African soldiers recruited by the colonial Army who were well trained, brave and ruthless. Throughout the Civil War the indigenous troops from the Spanish protectorate in Morocco earned a reputation as the most efficient exponent of systematic brutality. So highly did Franco rate their contribution that when his hold on power was institutionalised, he chose them to provide his personal guard of honour. Of all the ironies of the Civil War, none matches the emblematic role of North African Muslims in a crusade described by its leaders as a movement of National Catholicism. As members of the Spanish Empire, nor were the regulares computed in the figures of foreign troops fighting in Spain (Italians, Germans, International Brigades and

Russians).

After three days of artillery bombardment and air raids, the Nationalist forces launched their attack on Badajoz on the morning of 14 August. After fierce engagements on the city walls and hand-to-hand fighting on the streets, with heavy losses on both sides, the Nationalists were able to take control of the city soon after nightfall. No prisoners were taken. Republican militia that laid down their arms were immediately executed. Troops of the Foreign Legion killed the wounded they found in the military hospital. In the days that followed, the military authorities ordered the massacre of militia and civilians who represented any form of threat to the Nationalist cause.

The legionnaires ripped men’s shirts off to see if they carried any evidence of the recoil of a rifle. Those with bruising on their shoulder were immediately shot or bayoneted where they stood, or dispatched to the bullring where machine guns had been set up to facilitate swift executions. Any civilian suspected of involvement in left-wing activities or sympathy for the Republic followed. The Portuguese border police turned back many of those in danger who sought refuge and even expelled some refugees who had already crossed the frontier, including the Mayor and his deputy. No records of the killings were kept; bodies were left to rot in the streets, buried in mass graves or burnt on pyres in the municipal cemetery; it thus became impossible to give reliable figures for the number of victims of the white terror that occurred over the following days and weeks.

The most significant description of the aftermath of the Battle of Badajoz was by the Chicago Tribune journalist Jay Allen, who arrived in the city some nine days after its liberation by the Nationalists. In his article published on 30 August, he reported:

Files of men, arms in the air, being led to the bullring, they were young, mostly peasants, in blue blouses, mechanics in jumpers, The Reds. They are still being rounded up. At 4 o’clock in the morning they were turned out into the ring through the gate by which the initial parade of the bullfight enters. There machine guns awaited them.

Describing accounts from witnesses, he wrote that after the battle 1,800 men and women had been executed in a 12-hour period. The unreconstructed16 Francoist historian Pio Moa does not deny the massacre, but dismisses stories of mass executions in the bullring. He points out that Allen’s testimony was not first hand and insists