The Spanish left was irreparably divided against itself. Beyond the usual tableau of anarchist leaders and many anarchist rank and file splintering over issues, or the factions within the Communist movement treating one another as enemies, the Communists and the POUM wanted to eliminate each other, as did the Communists and the anarchists. No less an unbridgeable gulf existed between the Communists and the Socialists, who stood ready to kill each other (and not just in Spain). That and the other divisions help explain why Spain’s Republic would not win, despite holding the strategic interior, coasts, and many ports. Stalin did not initiate these profound mutual enmities. He contributed to them, but he also struggled to overcome them, refusing to indulge the calls for a Communist coup and insisting on upholding the Popular Front under the Socialist party prime minister.138 But Communism was ultimately an either-or proposition. Put another way, Socialists could give up anticapitalism and become “meliorists” (or redistributionists) within a parliamentary market system; Communists could never do so and remain Communists. Thus, despite the soaring passion of the antifascist crusade, the leftist Popular Front was doomed.
As for Franco’s techniques of war (insurgency-cum-counterinsurgency) and his vicious yet relatively adroit authoritarian rule, Stalin paid no special mind. The despot understood himself not as just another caudillo, but as an ideas-based leader. In practical terms, Spain’s strong interest groups, and the need for Franco to not just manipulate but accommodate them, provided a stark contrast with the political terrain under the Soviet despot, who had crushed even the quasi-independence of his inner circle.139 Franco, therefore, had nothing to teach him, except that a military-led putsch, assisted externally by fascists, could try to seize a whole country, a scenario that Stalin was manipulating to justify his own savage domestic counterinsurgency against an imaginary insurgency.
ELUSIVE GERMANY
In Moscow, the German Communist Wilhelm Pieck, at a meeting of the German commission of the Comintern secretariat on February 11, 1937, had contradicted Stalin’s adviser Jenő Varga, a Hungarian Communist. Pieck argued that “the German bourgeoisie will not decide to go to war, and has grave doubts about Hitler’s provocations, which he needs to raise his prestige.” Varga interjected: “You think the German bourgeoisie does not want war?” Pieck: “No, not now. . . . We have information that the German army generals are against the provocational policy conducted by Hitler.” Varga: “That means that the current fascist regime in Germany is not a regime of the haute bourgeoisie, the finance oligarchy, but Hitler’s regime?” Pieck answered that “finance capital had understood that it could not dominate the masses with the help of Weimar democracy, but that did not mean fascism was merely an instrument. It is a force unto itself; we need to evaluate it as an independent force.” Pieck claimed that he was not denying “finance capital’s” power, but arguing that it had everything to lose from war, and thus that the Hitler regime was not reducible to finance capital. Varga was incredulous.140
In Berlin, Kandelaki’s efforts to jump-start talks for bilateral political rapprochement had gone nowhere, and Stalin, through Litvinov, had tried to shift channels to the German foreign ministry. The Germans had raised questions about the Soviet request for absolute confidentiality; Litvinov, who loathed the idea of talks with Nazi Germany, smelled a rat, suspecting that, because of its economic straits, Germany was trying to simulate talks with Moscow to interest London and Paris in economic negotiations. But German foreign minister Neurath informed Schacht of similar suspicions: “Yesterday, during a personal report to the Führer, I spoke to him about your discussions with Mr. Kandelaki and especially about the declaration he made to you in the name of Stalin and Molotov. . . . I am in agreement with the Führer that at present these [talks] could lead to no result at all, and rather would be used by them to reach their desired goal of a military alliance with France and, if possible, a further rapprochement with England.” He added that any Soviet declaration about reining in Comintern propaganda would be worth nothing, as had been shown by earlier Soviet promises to Britain. The only thing that would move the Führer would be a regime change away from Bolshevism toward military dictatorship in Moscow. “Heil Hitler! Your Neurath.”141