The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 полностью

The POUM leaders were handed over to NKVD operatives and taken to a secret prison in Madrid, a church in the Calle Atocha. Nin was separated from his comrades and driven to Alcalá de Henares, where he was interrogated from 18 to 21 June. Despite the tortures he was subjected to by Orlov and his men, Nin refused to confess to the falsified accusations of passing artillery targets to the enemy. He was then moved to a summer house outside the city which belonged to Constancia de la Mora, the wife of Hidalgo de Cisneros and tortured to death. A grotesque example of Stalinist play-acting then took place. A group of German volunteers from the International Brigades in uniforms without insignia, pretending to be members of the Gestapo, charged into the house to make it look as if they had come to Nin’s rescue. ‘Evidence’ of their presence was then planted, including German documents, Falangist badges and nationalist banknotes. Nin, after being killed by Orlov’s men, was buried in the vicinity. When graffiti appeared on walls demanding ‘Where is Nin?’ communists would scribble underneath ‘In Salamanca or in Berlin’. The official Party line, published in Mundo Obrero, claimed that Nin had been liberated by Falangists and was in Burgos.²⁵

Despite the protests in republican Spain and the petitions from abroad, Negrín, who cannot have believed such a version of events, did nothing when the communists claimed that they were ignorant of Nin’s fate. This shameful behaviour opened up a deep split in the new government. When Negrín repeated the communist version to Azaña the president did not believe a word. ‘Isn’t it too novelettish?’ he asked.²⁶

With the passage of time since the Moscow show trials and the mood in Spain in 1937, it is very hard to understand how anybody could have believed the accusations of fascism thrown at the POUM, nor why the government did nothing to stop the Stalinists’ dirty war against Nin and his followers, who were tortured and ‘disappeared’. The ‘disciplined machine’ had taken over, but it now lacked the energy of popular support. For many, there seemed to be few ideals left to defend. The anarchist theorist Abad de Santillán remarked, ‘Whether Negrín won with his communist cohorts, or Franco won with his Italians and Germans, the results would be the same for us.’²⁷

Early in 1937 Nikonov, the deputy chief of Red Army intelligence in Spain, had written enthusiastically to Voroshilov, ‘The war in Spain has revealed a number of extremely important aspects in the use of modern military equipment and has brought some valuable experience for studying operational, tactical and technical problems.’¹ But both Soviet advisers and communist commanders had learned very little, as the Republic’s first major offensive of the war would demonstrate. The ‘active war policy’ of set-piece attacks adopted for propaganda reasons by the Comintern would rapidly destroy the Republic’s ability to resist.

During April 1937, when nationalist troops were advancing on the northern coast towards Bilbao, Largo Caballero’s general staff had begun to prepare an ambitious offensive in Estremadura, with 23 brigades and Pavlov’s tanks.² The plan had been drawn up by General Asensio Torrado before he was removed. The idea was a major attack in the south-west to split nationalist territory in two and to finish with the cycle of battles around Madrid, which always ended in a useless bloodbath. Another reason for choosing Estremadura and not New Castille was that the nationalist troops in the area were inexperienced, badly armed and spread out. For Franco, it would have been much more difficult to bring in reinforcements by rail when republican guerrillas operated behind his lines. On the other hand it would have been extremely hard for the republicans to have deployed their troops and tanks in secret so far from Madrid; it would have left the capital vulnerable; and resupplying an army in Estremadura would have been very difficult.

The Soviet advisers and communist leaders opposed the plan mainly for political reasons. They had invested a huge international propaganda effort in the defence of Madrid, to say nothing of sacrificing many of their best troops in four battles. They were, in fact, as obsessed with the capital as Franco had been over the previous six months. They therefore had informed Largo Caballero that neither their tanks nor their aircraft would support the Estremadura offensive and that General Miaja would not transfer any men from the capital for the operation. Instead, they wanted an offensive to the west of Madrid, attacking very close to where the battle of the Corunna road had been fought.