The Clash of Spanish Armies:Contrasting Ways of War in

Spain, 1936–1939Michael Alpert

I

Explanations for the victory of General Franco’s Nationalist forcesagainst the Spanish Republic’s People’s Army and its naval and air

forces in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–9 have tended to be informedby ideological or materialistic approaches. For most historians theRepublic was defeated principally because it was deprived of a regularand ample supply of arms by the European agreement not to supplywar material to the Spanish combatants. The purpose of non–intervention, as the policy was called, was to prevent a European wararising from competing support by Germany and Italy for Franco onthe one hand and by the USSR and France for the Republic on theother. Non-intervention, however, had little effect on Franco’s wareffort because he was supported by Germany and Italy despite thesepowers’ agreement to the non-intervention scheme. The Republic waskept going mainly by Russian support and what it could buy illegallyon the international arms market.

General military historiography sometimes considers the Spanishwar mainly in the course of discussing German or Russian progress inthe pre-Second World War period, but does not analyse the war itself.Spanish historiography up to the late 1960s, to a considerable extenta branch of propaganda for the Franco regime, saw the Civil War asa cosmic struggle between Good – traditional Christian Spain – andEvil – the ‘marxist hordes’ of Moscow.1 According to this picture, theRepublican mob, heavily armed by the plotters of world revolution,were led by rabble-rousers, left-wing politicians and criminals in theservice of International Communism. Consequently, the Nationalists(which the insurgents insisted on calling themselves) triumphed

1 This tendency is represented, among others, by J. Arraras, ed., Historia de la CruzadaEspanola (8 vols, Madrid, 1939–43); J. Goma, La guerra en el aire (vista, suerte y al toro)(Barcelona, 1958).

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because they were right and, in a circular argument, they were rightbecause they triumphed. In such accounts as these, German and Italianaid to Franco’s forces was hardly mentioned, while the Nationalistswere described not only as more dedicated, skilled and disciplinedthan their opponents but also as ultimately backed by divine help.

Spanish Civil War historiography evolved in a more scholarly direc-tion in the 1970s, when the crumbling Franco regime had to respondto scholarly writing about the Civil War by, among others, HughThomas and Raymond Carr,2 whose work showed rather different pic-tures from those of the approved historians of the regime. In Spain,Colonel Jose Manuel Martιnez Bande produced a series of individualvolumes covering the campaigns,3 abstaining most of the time frompolitical comments. Colonel Ramon Salas Larrazabal wrote prolificallyon the Civil War,4 underlining the relatively better position of theRepublic in so far as the supply of war material was concerned. Hismonumental work, the Historia del Ejercito Popular de la Republica, pro-vides details of the organization of the Republican army as well asalmost day-to-day accounts of every action of the war. At the same timeit discusses the army’s nature, abilities and, in particular, armaments.It aims to prove that the Republican or Popular Army was neither shortof war material nor lacking in competent officers. Works of a similarnature were produced for the war at sea and in the air.5

Only recently has reliable work on the volume, rate of replacementand suitability of the arms received by both sides been produced,6 deal-ing with such practicalities as the reliability of a ship’s gunnery equip-ment and the calibre of the projectiles fired by a particular fighteraircraft’s guns. Was it more important, for instance, in the conditionsof the Spanish Civil War, given the abilities of the pilots, for a planeto be highly manoeuvrable at low levels rather than capable of highspeed at great heights? Can the relative efficiency of officer trainingon either side be measured, and against what criteria? What was thebest way to handle armies which, though they were probably the largestever assembled in Spain, were small in relation to the lengths of thefronts?

2 H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London, 1961); R. Carr, Spain 1808–1939(Oxford, 1966).

3 J.M. Martinez Bande, Monografıas de la guerra de Espana 1–18 (Madrid, 1964–79, andsubsequently issued in revised edns).

4 R. Salas Larrazabal, Historia del Ejercito Popular de la Republica (4 vols, Madrid, 1973);Las cifras exactas de la guerra civil (Madrid, 1980).

5 J. S. Larrazabal, La guerra en el aire (Barcelona, 1966); R. Cerezo, Armada Espanola,siglo veinte (4 vols, Madrid, 1983).

6 See esp. G. Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War (London, 1990). This authordescribes the capabilities of the aircraft in real situations in Spain as well as theirhistory, and includes closely researched estimates of their quantity.

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IIAs an example of the importance of this sort of consideration, onemight examine the following extract from Ramon Salas Larrazabal:

It has already been seen that during the months of July and August[1936] the means imported by the Government were greater thanthose acquired by the Insurgents and that they were sufficient tohave destroyed the airlift of troops and prevented the convoy thatFranco called ‘of victory’.7

Salas is here referring to imports of aircraft by the Republic in theearly weeks of the war. Unfortunately, the statistics usually given arenot based on reliable primary sources, which upsets any argumentbased on them.

Aircraft, however, can be precisely identified, and recent researchhas demonstrated that the number of Dewoitine fighters and Potezbombers sent to Spain from France was extremely small. The fighters,though fast and with a superior rate of climb, arrived without arma-ments and sometimes without the mountings for them, so that Spanisharmourers had to rig up unreliable contraptions for firing machine-guns, with the result that many of the aircraft were hardly usable formuch of the time, whatever their technical superiority. Furthermore,the fact that four of the first 14 Dewoitine 371 fighters sent on 8 August1936 suffered accidents even before going into action illustrates thedifficulty of flying them.8 The Potez 54 bomber, however, was contra-dictorily evaluated. The French air authorities judged from the Spanishexperiences that the machine was dangerous in a dive, the machine-gun turrets were hard to handle and had blind angles, and the aircraftrequired a fighter escort. In any case, in Spain the Potez was flown bycrews of several nationalities flying with Andre Malraux’s squadron.9

Why the Spanish government authorities could not have ensured thatall the crew and not merely some of it were Spanish is a question whichrelates to the organization of the Spanish Republic’s war effort andwill be considered later.

Any study of the failure of Republican aircraft to prevent the airliftof Franco’s troops from Spanish Morocco in the early weeks of the warneeds to consider whether the late 1920s model Nieuport fighters ofthe Republic could indeed have tackled the Junkers-52 that Germanysupplied to carry Franco’s troops, or whether the Republican govern-

7 ‘Ya hemos visto que durante los meses de julio y agosto fueron mayores los mediosimportados por el Gobierno que los adquiridos por los sublevados, y que eransuficientes para haber dado al traste con el puente aereo y haber hecho imposible elconvoy que Franco llamo “de la victoria” ’. Salas Larrazabal, Ejercito Popular II, p. 2349.

8 See Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, under ‘Dewoitine’; R. Quatrefages, ‘Lapolitique francaise de non-intervention et le soutien materiel a la Republiquependant la guerre civile’, in Les Armees francaises et espagnoles: modernisation et reformeentre les deux guerres mondiales (Madrid, 1989), p. 31.

9 Op. cit.

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ment felt it unwise to attack the Germans, given that they were escortedby Heinkel-51 fighters from 6 August 1936 onwards. It is also unlikelythat gunners on the Republican destroyers in the Straits of Gibraltarpossessed any substantial skill or experience in anti-aircraft fire. Afterone or two episodes where ships of the Republican navy, attemptingto enforce a blockade which Britain and other countries refused torecognize, obliged German ships carrying war material to Franco todischarge their cargo in Lisbon rather than at a Spanish port, theRepublican government, threatened by Germany, instructed its war-ships not to enforce the blockade. The absence of a conclusive studyof the air war in Spain means that we do not know what instructionswere given to Republican air force commanders as to their role in theStraits in those early weeks. It would seem at least possible that, likethe warships, they were instructed not to attack the Germans. What iscertain is that Franco’s ability to ship his troops over to the SpanishPeninsula meant that he could begin his march to Madrid, which hemight have captured and ended the war had he not diverted his effortto relieve Toledo in late September 1936. For the rest of the war,Franco had complete command of the Straits, which was of great sig-nificance for his communications.

As for the success of the experimental convoy which crossed fromMorocco to Spain on 5 August 1936, to which the Salas extract refers,the failure of the Republican fleet to prevent it is not explicable solelyin terms of the inefficiency or cowardice of crews which had mutiniedagainst their officers who were supporting the insurgents. The Republi-can warships, disorganized, with no base closer to their blockade patrolthan Cartagena, short of fuel and fresh water, did indeed fail to stopa small convoy. However, had it not been for the Italian SavoiaMarchetti-81 bombers which also covered the Straits, Franco could nothave brought his elite troops across to the Peninsula. Even so, theeventual departure of the Republican fleet was dictated by the irrup-tion into southern waters of the new insurgent cruiser, the Canarias,whose armament and range were far greater than that of the olderRepublican cruisers and which could nearly match the speed of adestroyer.

It is true that the observer of the insurgents’ movements is struckby their determination, flexibility and efficiency, as opposed to theconfusion apparent to the reader of Republican memoirs and docu-ments. It would seem evident that the Republican authorities wereindecisive in the handling of the air force and the navy. The aircraftwere used piecemeal and lost, sometimes by enemy action, sometimesby accident, while carrying out missions which had no great conse-quence. This is a justified criticism, but one which fails to consider thechaos of the Republican part of Spain, bereft of authority because ofthe military uprising itself, and where new commanders could notimpose the solutions which they would later see, in hindsight, to havebeen necessary.

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IIIHere is another comment by Ramon Salas Larrazabal: ‘the Govern-ment side benefited from greater tolerance in the freedom of trafficto its ports and past its frontiers’.10 How far the Republic importedarms freely, despite non-intervention, is still a subject for investigation.However, at no time, save for the isolated incidents in the first monthof the war, were Franco’s imports of war material ever interfered with,either by the Spanish government navy or by ships of the internationalnaval patrol begun at midnight on 19–20 April 1937. It is true that thenon-intervention patrol rarely stopped cargo ships making for Republi-can ports either, though the Royal Navy did sometimes investigate Bri-tish-registered merchantmen. On the other hand, once Franco hadbuilt up his small navy by arming merchant cruisers and by puttingboth his newly constructed cruisers into action, he stopped, sometimessank and regularly bombed merchant ships making for and anchoredin Republican ports. All this happened even though Franco was not arecognized belligerent and despite the regular protests of, in parti-cular, the British government.

A further point which the Francoist military historian does not clarifyis that, while Franco received his supplies from Germany and Italy oncredit, the Republic paid cash for its arms out of its exported bullionreserves. The non-intervention legislation meant that no manufactureror arms dealer in Europe – or in the USA, where there was an embargoon selling arms to Spain – could legally sell arms to the Republic. Theresult was that Republican purchasing commissions had to pay largesums in advance, not infrequently lost, to the murkier parts of thearms dealing trade. Inevitably, then, the Republic could not order warmaterial in accordance with its particular shortages or the demands ofthe campaigns, unlike the streams of specific requests that went toGermany and Italy from Franco and which Rome and Berlin usuallymet promptly, though Germany tried to tie its supplies to Franco’sagreement to direct most of Spanish mineral exports to German factor-ies as they geared up for war.11 The importance of the organization ofthis regular traffic was supreme.

IVApart from these questions of contrasting advantage and disadvantagearising from the international situation and the difference between

10 ‘el bando gubernamental se vio beneficiado por una mayor tolerancia en laautorizacion del comercio dirigido a sus puertos o puestos fronterizos’, SalasLarrazabal, Ejercito Popular II, p. 2367.

11 The most recent work on this subject is C. Leitz, Economic Relations between NaziGermany and Franco’s Spain 1936–1945 (Oxford, 1996). For details of materialrequested from Germany and Italy, see Salas Larrazabal, La intervencion extranjera enla guerra de Espana (Madrid, 1974).

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the centralized and authoritarian insurgents and the centrifugal andrevolutionary Republic, a consideration of contrasting ability to wagewar needs to examine the doctrines on which both sides based theirstrategy and tactics.

The military leaders of both sides had been educated in the sameideas. Indeed, many were military academy companions though theyfought on opposite sides. Yet Franco’s style of war appears fundamen-tally different from that of the Republic. While in the insurgent zonestrategic and political authority was highly centralized, considerablelatitude seems to have been given to individual commanders. This isclearly the case with the naval war. The numerically superior Republi-can fleet seems to have been limited, perhaps by the pressure of theSoviet naval attache, Captain Kuznetsov, to keeping itself in being toprovide escorts for Soviet supplies.12 In contrast, Admiral Moreno, theNationalist fleet commander, seems not to have been restricted by anytheories. He improvised furiously. His ships – even the aged battleshipEspana – were at sea continuously for long periods, with apparently amuch more realistic view of the essential task at hand: the interdictionof supplies to the enemy.

On land, when it came to responding to the initially successfulRepublican offensives such as Brunete (July 1937), Belchite (August1937), Teruel (December 1937–February 1938) and the Ebro (July–November 1938), Franco’s logistics were much more competent thanthose of the Republic. He was also much more prepared to denudeentire sections of his fronts in order to concentrate his forces, and inparticular his air and artillery strength, than the Republic, which toyedwith ideas of diversionary attacks in the enemy’s rear but was lessinclined to adhere to the principle of concentration of effort. In theEbro battle, for example, in late July 1938, Franco was able to bringup division after division and to assemble large amounts of artillerybefore the Republicans could regroup their brigades and divisions fora push to profit from their original success. Most of the great battlesof the Spanish Civil War began with a Republican advance designedby the intricate staff work of the highly professional general staffheaded by Major, later General, Vicente Rojo, but it is evident that atlower levels units of the Popular Army were unable to exploit the suc-cess of their attacks. Here again, reports by Republican staff officersfrequently comment that commanders at battalion and company levelwere unable to take advantage of initial breakthroughs.13 This contrastswith the Nationalist army and arises from a situation, to be discussedbelow, where low-level Nationalist commanders were professionalswhile their opponents were usually not.

12 See esp. N. Kuznetsov, Na Dalyokom Meridiane (In Distant Waters) (Moscow, 1966).13 R. Casas de la Vega, Brunete (Madrid, 1968), App. 1, pp. 313–23, quoting reports by

the chief of staff, senior staff officers and corps commanders. Most of the reports arereproduced also in J. M. Martınez Bande, La ofensiva sobre Segovia y la batalla deBrunete (Madrid, 1972), documentary appendix.

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It was in the colonial war in Morocco from 1908 to 1926 that Francoand a group of several hundred other officers learned their trade. Inthe Civil War Franco and his africanistas created a dynamism in theirsubordinates which appeared markedly absent on the other side.There were few Republican officers who could be matched for warexperience and youth against fast-promoted lieutenant-colonels andcolonels such as Agustın Munoz Grandes, Pablo Martın Alonso, Franci-sco Garcıa Escamez, Juan Sanchez Gonzalez, Juan Yague and RafaelGarcıa Valino, who became Franco’s senior corps and army com-manders.

The question which needs to be asked is: were the Republican com-manders, many of whom came from branches of the service other thanthe infantry, imbued less with aggressive concepts of colonial cam-paigning and more with the characteristic 1930s French concepts ofdefensive war, despite the proactive movements planned by Rojo? Rojohimself wondered whether the Soviet advisers inhibited the moreactive campaigns that he himself would have preferred.14 Certainly inSpain French doctrine was considered as near-perfect, though there isno evidence of clandestine contacts between Republican commandersand their French equivalents.15 Defensive ideas fitted in well withreliance on ‘impregnable’ fortifications, which were sometimes justi-fied, such as Colonel Menendez’s successful blocking of Franco’sadvance to Valencia in June 1938, but were catastrophic at other times,such as with the notorious cinturon de hierro, the ‘iron belt’, which wasintended to defend Bilbao in June 1937 and failed.

Another question to be asked is: was the noted inability of Republi-can units to show initiative at lower levels a reflection of their officers’lack of training, or did it echo the conservative attitudes of the highercommanders, who insisted on keeping tight control over lower levelunits? Such rigid control was, in its turn, supported by the Communistauthoritarians, increasingly influential in the Republic and its armedforces, who insisted on the need for a regular-style and highly disci-plined army, with no anarchistic, Spanish guerrilla-type, independentaction, a view which fitted in well with that of the professional militarymen. Neither side, except perhaps the colonial troops of Franco’sarmy, and his apparently militarily gifted Navarrese brigades, wereskilled infantrymen, who could attack strongly defended lines by infil-trating them and bypassing strong points. But had Franco’s officerslearned lessons from the Moroccan wars? No study of the armies inthe Spanish Civil War has investigated the question in sufficient proso-pographical depth to be able to establish the comparative level of

14 Information from Dr George Hills, who interviewed Rojo when the latter returned toSpain in the 1960s.

15 M. Alpert, La reforma militar de Azana 1931–1933 (Madrid, 1982), pp. 61–5. For viewsof French military thought in the period, see R. Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: TheDevelopment of French Army Doctrine 1919–1939 (Hamden, CT, 1985); J. MartınezParrilla, Las fuerzas francesas ante la guerra civil espanola (Madrid, 1987).

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active military experience, but the briefest survey of the higher com-manders would point to a far greater extent of successful experiencein Morocco among Franco’s commanders. Were company and platoonmovements better taught in the Nationalist army? If this was not so,can the better infantry performance of Franco’s army be explained interms of better officer and NCO training, an absence of revolutionaryrhetoric or better morale?

In the Republican army, almost all prewar professional servicemenand paramilitaries were made up to officer rank. All career officersgained at least one and often two promotions. The question of juniorofficers therefore arises. Can the efficiency of the Republic’s militiaofficers and its emergency war-trained lieutenants, its tenientes en cam-pana, be compared with that of the far larger number of the equivalentalfereces provisionales in the Nationalist army?16 The same question mustbe asked regarding non-commissioned officers. Spanish-speaking Ger-man instructors taught aspiring Nationalist sergeants efficiently.17 Canit be fairly assumed that the instruction was more practical than thatreceived by their opposite numbers, sometimes delivered by Russianofficers who had to communicate through interpreters?18

VFrancoist military historians hardly consider broader issues of warfare.The 1930s saw rapid innovation, particularly in two fields: military avi-ation and armoured warfare. Though wise observers realized that theyhad to consider the inexperience of both sides in Spain, the warallowed Germany, Italy and the USSR to evaluate new weapons, parti-cularly aircraft, and, in the German case, to experiment with new waysof war.

Probably altogether several hundred heavy Russian tanks took partin the Spanish Civil War, as did lighter German and very light Italianmachines. However, neither side had enough tanks at a given momentto use them as independent weapons en masse, well supported by aircover and artillery in the way advocated by the Blitzkrieg theorists. Inany case, even though commanders on both sides were readers of Lid-dell Hart and Fuller, the only information about practical experiencesthey had came from the reports of military attaches, who tended to bescornful in general of the new theories.19 Soviet tanks in Spain wereoften victims of German anti-tank fire. Despite their impressive speci-fications, Russian tanks were vulnerable to the most effective weapon

16 See J. Garate Cordoba, Tenientes en Campana (Madrid, 1976) and his AlferecesProvisionales (Madrid, 1976).

17 See J. Llordes, Al dejar el fusil (Barcelona, 1968).18 M. Alpert, El ejercito republicano en la guerra civil (Madrid, 1989), p. 171.19 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 Azana, pp. 69–70).

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of the Spanish war, the German 88-mm anti-aircraft gun, which couldbe used in an anti-tank role also. Since Republican tanks were used assupport for ill-trained infantry advances, the more self-reliant National-ist troops soon learned to avoid their machine-guns, which were diffi-cult in any case to bring to bear, and to immobilize their tracks.20

The classic example of the wrong use of motorized troops in Spainwas the battle of Guadalajara in March 1937. The commanders of theCorpo di Truppe Volontarie – the forces, totalling 72 827, that Mussolinicommitted to helping Franco in Spain21 – were attracted to theoriesof motorized warfare, and criticized Franco for his slow and meticulousprogress, which they ascribed to his lack of military vision rather than,as he would have claimed, the need to assure the security of occupiedterritory before moving on. In early March 1937 four Italian divisionsmoved off towards Madrid without air cover or sufficient anti-aircraftprotection. The vehicles themselves did not possess cross-country capa-bilities and were limited to the one inadequate highway. Bad weatherprevented Italian aircraft taking off from grass fields. When, however,Republican aircraft managed to take advantage of temporary breaksin the cloud and to take off from firm surfaces, one of which was thepresent Barajas international airport, they saw a 20-km Italian convoyon a straight road with no natural shelter. The Republic’s Soviet air-craft routed the Italians, who retreated in disorder, abandoning largeamounts of equipment.22 The generally better performance of Italianground forces in Spain from a few months after the Guadalajaradebacle was due partly to the withdrawal of unsuitable men and to thebringing of Italian units under higher Spanish command, but also tothe proper support of Italian mechanization by artillery and air strikes,as in the campaigns in Santander (August 1937), Aragon (March–April1938) and Catalonia (December 1938–January 1939). Franco did usea modified Blitzkrieg style where appropriate, such as in the rapidadvance through Aragon to the sea in the spring of 1938, whose con-verging lines of attack, covered from the air, employed tactics whichthe Italian historians later considered to be a velocizzazione imposedby them.23

20 For a summary of opinions about Russian tanks and their use by Republican forcesin the Spanish Civil War, see Alpert, El ejercito republicano, pp. 248–9.

21 J. Coverdale, La intervencion fascista en la guerra civil espanola (Madrid, 1979), app. C.22 See the report of the French aviator Jean Dary, who flew Republican aircraft in

Spain, ‘La guerre aerienne en Espagne’, Revue de l’Armee de l’Air (July 1938), pp. 808–24; A. Garcıa Lacalle (later commander of the Republican fighter arm), Mitos yverdades: la aviacion de caza en la guerra espanola (Mexico City, 1973), p. 244. For moregeneral 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 andW. Murray, Military Effectiveness (3 vols, London, 1988) II: The Interwar Period; for anaccount of Guadalajara, see O. Conforti, Guadalajara, la prima sconfitta del fascismo(Milan, 1967).

23 L. Ceva, ‘Conseguenze dell’intervento italo-fascista’, in Sacerdoti Mariani, Colomboand Pasinato, eds, La guerra civile spagnola tra politica e letteratura (Florence, 1995),p. 217.

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The Guadalajara catastrophe tended to overshadow the successesattributable to embryonic theories concerning the point of impact, theexpansion of the breach and rolling up the enemy from the rear. Thisat least was the comment made by the Czech observer Miksche whenconsidering the Nationalist attack on Bilbao in June 1937.24 The IronRing was attacked on a narrow front at a weak point, betrayed to theenemy by the engineer who had designed it. The barbed wire, trenchesand machine-gun posts were heavily bombarded by the Nationalistartillery. The attacking troops poured through a narrow breach, rollingup the defence from the rear and causing a general retreat. What ismore, the point of impact frequently changed, causing even morechaos in the defence. Miksche claims that these tactics were directedby the German ambassador, General Faupel. Considering, however,the irritation that Faupel had caused by his tactlessly expressed viewson the Spanish way of waging war, his role may be doubted. It is justas likely that the techniques used by the Nationalist troops in theiradvance against Bilbao reflected the lessons learned in the Moroccanwars of the 1920s. In any case, the defence was insufficient; the BasqueArmy Corps had been recently reorganized and new commanders hadonly just been appointed. This reflected the political conflict betweenthe government and the Basque authorities who had received theirStatute of Autonomy in October 1936, which they unconstitutionallyextended to ceding them authority over matters of war. However, giventhe distance of the Northern front from the rest of Republican Spain,the assumption of military independence by the Basque authoritieswould have been hard to prevent. Order and morale were at a lowebb, reported the newly appointed Republican general.25 The Basqueswere subject to air raids and desperately short of food.

Miksche was looking back on the Spanish war after observing theGerman successes in Poland and France in 1939–40. However, in Spainthe German tank used, the Panzer Mark 1, was light and not used inmass. As late as 1938, there were only 180 German tanks in Spainunder the orders of the future senior armoured forces commander,von Thoma.26 More important perhaps were the 30 anti-tank gun com-panies, each with six cannon, and the matchless German 88-mm anti-aircraft guns, a major challenge to the Republican air force. Theseremarkable weapons were also used in direct support of advancinginfantry.27 Republican anti-aircraft guns, either because their crewswere not skilled enough in their use or because of lack of spares orshortage of ammunition, were little threat unless they were concen-

24 F.O. Miksche, Blitzkrieg (London, 1942), p. 39.25 J.M. Martınez Bande, Vizcaya (Madrid, 1971), pp. 156–7.26 B.H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, rev. edn (London, 1951), p. 123.27 C. Martınez Campos (Franco’s artillery commander), Ayer, 1931–1953 (2 vols,

Madrid, 1970) II, p. 86, describes negotiations with the Germans to use their flakweapons to support advancing infantry.

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trated.28 The absence of Republican anti-aircraft fire allowed theNationalists to bomb from low altitudes, a factor which appears to beof prime importance.29

VIThe tactic of concentrated strafing and bombing of fortified positionswas used effectively by the Nationalists but remarkably little by theRepublicans. Coordinated ‘carpet-bombing’ forced even well –entrenched infantry to abandon their positions.30 In the Spanish warNationalist infantry repeatedly occupied fortified Republican positionsin mountainous or easily defended country. These positions wereshelled or bombed just in front of attacking forces.31 The Aragonfronts were destroyed by an accumulation of several hundred aircraftin the Republican routs of the spring of 1938. Later that year on theRiver Ebro the strafing was very effective. The technique of constantattack by a chain of aircraft was developed by the Nationalist air aceJoaquın Garcıa Morato,32 while the Germans used the Henschel-123,which made a terrifying noise, for ground support.33 The chain attackhad a disastrous effect on the defence of the bridges over the Ebro,so much so that Franco’s infantry attacks were successful. An Americanobserver, thinking back to the immense losses of infantry launched‘over the top’ in the 1914–18 War, wrote: ‘Franco’s infantry has seldomexperienced the terrible depression resulting from heavy loss in anattack bravely carried forward . . .’.34

Jesus Salas Larrazabal, quoting the ace Garcıa Morato, writes thatthe squadrons attacked again and again until their ammunition wasexhausted, firing just in front of the advancing Nationalist infantry.35

As for the Republicans, Garcıa Lacalle writes that there was less air–ground collaboration in their forces, which sometimes led to seriousmissing of opportunities.36

Air–ground cooperation became a speciality of the rotating force of

28 See the memoirs of a leading German pilot who flew in Spain: A. Galland, The Firstand the Last (translation of Die Ersten und die Letzten) (London, 1955), p. 29.

29 See the report of the French reserve pilot Victor Veniel of 19 Dec. 1936 to theinformation section of the French Air Staff: ‘Enseignements a tirer des operationsaeriennes d’Espagne’ (Service Historique de l’Armee de l’Air, Carton B178), cited inQuatrefages, ‘La politique francaise’, p. 31. See also R.P. Hallion, Strike from the Sky:The History of Battlefield Air Attack 1911–1945 (Shrewsbury, 1989), and J.S. Corum,‘The Luftwaffe and the Coalition Air War in Spain 1936–1939’, in J. Gooch, ed.,Airpower: Theory and Practice (London, 1995), pp. 68–90.

30 See Galland, The First and the Last, p. 30.31 German fighters 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).32 J. Garcıa Morato, Guerra en el aire (Madrid, 1940), p. 40.33 Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, p. 187. The Junkers-87, or Stuka, was used

only experimentally in Spain.34 Brig.-Gen. H.J. Reilly, in The Aeroplane, 26 Apr. 1939, pp. 515–18.35 Salas Larrazabal, La guerra en el aire, pp. 190–1.36 Garcıa Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, p. 431.

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100 aircraft, known as the Condor Legion, which Germany kept inSpain from November 1936 onwards. German interest in air–groundsupport began in the 1921 manual on the use of combined arms.37

The first German fighter sent to Spain, the Heinkel-51, had to be with-drawn from bomber escort in late 1936, because of the superiority ofthe Russian I-15 and I-16 fighters, but it could be used efficiently formachine-gunning and dropping splinter-bombs on enemy trenches.The Condor Legion developed systems of hand-signalling from aircraftto aircraft – for very few machines possessed radio communication –together with systems of panels, light signals, flares and smoke forground–air communication, and flying techniques to avoid aircraftbeing harmed by the explosions of their own bombs. Even so, the Ger-mans complained that the Nationalist troops did not press the attackhome after the air strikes had put the defenders to flight or had leftthem completely stunned. This operational problem took manymonths to solve. Indeed, individual Republican pilots at the beginningof the war also complained that ground troops called for air supportbut did not follow it up.38

In the Spanish situation, whatever the valour and determination dis-played by the Republican troops, particularly during their resistanceon the Ebro in autumn 1938, mountainous and rocky territory did notlend itself to deep dugouts, so that heavy bombardment could not bewithstood in the way that the Germans had endured a British bombard-ment on the Somme in 1916. Furthermore, since the Republicanslacked training, often arms and not infrequently leadership and mor-ale, Franco’s counter-attacks against their initial surprise advancesfound them badly prepared and forced them into retreat. The Republi-can air force could not engage in attacking techniques like theirenemy’s, for one thing because the Nationalists tended to garrisontheir fronts rather sparsely and to rely on efficient logistics whenattacked, bringing up relatively large quantities of artillery which, bythe opening of the final and victorious counter-offensive on the Ebroin November 1938, amounted to some 500 cannon.39

Furthermore, qualitatively and quantitatively, German anti-aircraftfire in the Nationalist armoury was superior.40 Thus, by the end ofthe war, German aircraft could attack Republican airfields unopposed,while so great was the shortage of Republican operational aircraft at

37 Hallion, Strike from the Sky, pp. 91–92; for a more detailed discussion, with references,see Corum, ‘The Luftwaffe’, n. 92. See also R.R. Muller, ‘Close Air Support: TheGerman, British and American Experiences 1918–1941’, in W. Murray and A.R.Millett, eds, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 161–2.

38 R. Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War (Westport, CT, 1983), pp. 84 –90.

39 J.M. Martınez Bande, La batalla del Ebro (Madrid, 1978), p. 250. Such densities ofartillery were, of course, minor in comparison with those of the world wars.

40 Posen, Sources, pp. 81–2.

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any given moment that Nationalist columns and artillery behind thefront were rarely camouflaged.41

Nationalist aircraft, therefore, were used tactically against enemy air-craft and to facilitate advance and occupation by infantry of enemypositions. Only Italy, influenced by the ideas of Giulio Douhet, envis-aged air power as strategically decisive.42 While the destruction ofGuernica on 26 April 1937 has gone down in history as an earlyexample of the terror-bombing of European civilians, the CondorLegion may have combined its terror tactic (in, for example, the useof incendiary bombs on a town built largely of wood) with the justifi-able battle tactic of interdicting passage through Guernica of Basqueforces retreating on Bilbao.43 The German Junkers-52 did bomb Mad-rid in autumn 1936 but had to desist with the arrival of efficient andfast Russian fighters in early November. The Republican air forcerarely used its fast Katiuska Russian bombers because they were highlyvulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and indeed in some circumstances tothe Fiat CR-32 fighter with its perforating, explosive and incendiarybullets. When the Italian air force bombed Barcelona heavily in April1938, flying directly from Italy, the event created an international scan-dal which was counter-productive for Franco. Thus, strategic bombingwas not a significant aspect of the Spanish Civil War. The internationalobloquy provoked by the bombing of cities was not rewarded by itsstrategic success.

The war began with biplanes of the late 1920s. It ended with state-of-the-art, low-wing monoplanes, which reached speeds of several hun-dred km per hour, at heights of up to 8000 m. The only aircraft to beused throughout almost all the war was the Fiat CR-32 fighter biplane,of which 377 were delivered to Franco’s air force.44 Its robustness andarmament made it a permanent challenge to the Russian I-15 and I-16 fighters, which ruled the skies so long as there were enough of themand sufficient skilled pilots to fly them for the Republic. The challengeof Soviet superiority in the air was met by further development of theMesserschmitt Bf-109 fighter. By 1939 this aircraft had two hours’ flyingtime, a top speed of 323 miles per hour and efficient radio. If fittedwith drop fuel tanks, it could escort bombers, a role which no Republi-can fighter could perform adequately enough to bring out the qualities

41 Galland, The First and the Last, p. 34.42 Corum, ‘The Luftwaffe’, p. 72. Altogether, 1435 Italian pilots flew in Spain and 764

Italian aircraft were dispatched there: B. Sullivan, ‘Fascist Italy’s Military Involvementin the Spanish Civil War’, Journal of Military History LIX (1995), pp. 697–728.

43 Evaluation of the destruction of Guernica often depends on how one interpretsavailable material. Probably the fullest and certainly the most convincing (it waspresented in Paris as a doctoral thesis) and elegant study is that of HerbertSouthworth, Guernica, Guernica! A Study of Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda andHistory (Berkeley, CA, 1977).

44 See Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, under ‘Fiat’.

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of the Russian SB Katiuska bomber.45 Had the Russians developed laterversions of their fighters and sent them to Spain in the quantities thatthe Germans did, and with Soviet pilots who knew them better thanthe newly trained Spaniards, the war might have taken a differentcourse. Once some of the Russian fighters were fitted with specialengines, they were able to fight efficiently at the heights where thelater Messerschmitts functioned well, but by then it was too late.46

The Republican air force seems to have made almost no use of theseaplanes that it possessed in the naval air bases at Barcelona and SanJavier (Murcia). This contrasts with the value of German seaplanes fly-ing from Pollensa Bay on Majorca, which destroyed 52 ships.47 It isdifficult to understand why use was not made of these machines tobomb Franco’s ports in Morocco. Certainly Republican aircraftbombed Palma, the major harbour on Majorca, but this caused seriousinternational problems because of the presence of foreign warshipsand merchant vessels. Indeed, on 29 May 1937, when two Russian bom-bers scored hits on the German pocket battleship Deutschland, anch-ored at Ibiza, mistaking it for a Nationalist cruiser and killing a largenumber of sailors, Germany retaliated by bombarding the almost unde-fended port of Almerıa, and was pacified only by assurances by theother powers.48

To sum up the importance of the Spanish Civil War for the develop-ment of armoured and aerial warfare, German ideas were experimentalin Spain, but the theories were backed up by equipment and training,though there was no major use of armour. The principal lessonslearned were in the use of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and,perhaps most importantly, in close air–ground cooperation from evermore advanced aircraft. Italy, on the other hand, though its materialaid for Franco in aircraft and artillery and the participation of its sub-marines was generous,49 did not support its doctrines of mechanizedwarfare with staffs, commanders or troops who knew how to fight it.In the Fiat CR-32 it had one of the best all-round fighters in 1936, butby 1939 this aircraft was falling well behind.

45 On the fitting of drop tanks to the Bf-109, see W. Murray, ‘Strategic Bombing: TheBritish, American and German Experiences’, in Murray and Millett, MilitaryInnovation, pp. 96–143.

46 See Howson, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War, under ‘I-15’, ‘I-16’ and ‘Messerschmitt’.47 R. Proctor, ‘They Flew from Pollensa Bay’, Aerospace Historian XXIV, (Dec. 1977), pp.

196–202.48 For full details of the Deutschland episode, see M. Alpert, La guerra civil espanola en el

mar (Madrid, 1987), pp. 275–82.49 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 weredamaged, as was the British destroyer HMS Havoc, which the Iride attacked in error(Sullivan, ‘Fascist Italy’, pp. 715–16).

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VIIInevitably, the difference in the availability of professional and experi-enced personnel between the two sides in the Spanish war has to beconsidered. In the navy only 10 per cent of the Cuerpo General, that isthe non-specialized officers, remained in the service of the Republic.In the army, only about 14 per cent of the career officers were stillserving the Republic two years after the war started.50 In the Republi-can Zone calculations made on the basis of lists in the official Gacetade la Republica show that 333 air force officers were dismissed the ser-vice officially in February 1937. Many of these were in Franco’s service,or murdered, executed or in prison. Whatever the number of pro-fessional flyers available to serve and trustworthy,51 the account of thefighter commander Garcıa Lacalle mentions very few names which canbe found on the prewar list of officers. He himself, though holding apilot’s licence since 1929, had no command experience and had onlyjust been appointed to the most junior commissioned rank. Officerswith significant numbers of flying hours were few and far between. Onthe other hand, the prewar records of Nationalist squadron and wingcommanders, leave alone individual pilots, if experience counts at all,demonstrate the built-in advantages enjoyed by Franco’s insurgents.52

Garcıa Morato, for example, had been an instructor for six years.53 IfAdolf Galland, the later ace in the battle of Britain, was typical of theGerman pilots, they were the result of extraordinarily rigorous selec-tion and meticulous training.

This, of course, is not to minimize the incompetence of the Republi-can bureaucracy, divided by politics and impeded by indiscipline anddistrust, factors which were reflected in the armed forces. This is verynoticeable in the contrast between the efficient logistics of Franco andhis German allies and the chaos of the Republican rearguard. How-ever, the Republic’s disadvantages were also imposed from outside. Ifthe condition of Spanish roads and railways made it difficult to main-tain the Condor Legion, whose spares could be transported to Spainwithout hindrance, how much greater were the difficulties of theRepublic, whose transport and war material could be immobilized for a

50 See Alpert, La guerra civil en el mar, pp. 371–72, and El ejercito republicano, pp. 99–100.The calculation requires comparison between the Army Yearbook (Anuario Militar) of1936 and the incomplete officer lists published by the personnel section of theRepublican undersecretariat of defence in 1938. In the artillery, however, where theregiments had been evenly spread over the country and did not have an initialnumerical bias to one side or the other, the figure is 14% still remaining in theRepublican Army.

51 Names found in Republican sources include 8 lieutenant-colonels, 10 majors, 26captains, 11 lieutenants and 10 second lieutenants. Even if this total of 65 isdoubled, it is still far fewer than the Nationalists had at their disposal.

52 A check of Jesus Salas Larrazabal, La guerra en el aire, app. 13, shows that 21 out of27 Nationalist fighter squadron leaders had been air force officers before the war,while this is true of only 15 out of 43 Republican squadron commanders.

53 Garcıa Morato, Guerra en el aire, p. 25.

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long time merely because international agreement prevented it buyingessential spares. Germany organized regular sailings of supply ships.There were four weekly flights from Germany to Spain carrying keypersonnel and dispatches.54 Italian communications with Spain passedthrough Majorca, from where Spanish ships convoyed supplies on toMorocco, or to Cadiz or Algeciras. This was not possible for the SovietUnion, whose long sea route was subject to interference from Italiannaval forces and observation by the Royal Navy. The alternative routefrom the USSR was through the Baltic and the English Channel to aFrench port, but French attitudes towards facilitating the passage ofwar material on to Spain depended on the international situation atthe moment, and on whether the French government could overcomeits internal divisions and brave the opposition of the Chamber of Depu-ties or the rightist press.55

To a considerable extent the Republican predicament was indeedcaused by strategic and political error, particularly by the loss of con-trol over the Straits of Gibraltar by the second month of the war(August 1936), which contravened the fundamental principle of main-taining the object. That object should have been to prevent Francobringing his troops over to Spain from Morocco. On the other hand,the international community, in the form of the Non-InterventionCommittee, tolerated the presence of German and Italian aircraftwhich made it impossible for the leaderless Republican navy and airforce, albeit lacking strategic and political purpose, to dominate theStraits. Political decisions impeded Republican forces from blockadingFranco’s German and Italian supplies. It was Italian support thatstrengthened the insurgent garrison on Majorca, though it was a gravestrategic error of the Republic not to have given all-out support to theSeptember 1936 attempt by ill-trained militia from Valencia to win theisland back. An assembly of aircraft and concentrated shelling by war-ships lying off the island might have saved Majorca for the Republicand prevented Palma from becoming Franco’s major naval base, fromwhere the Nationalists, aided by Italian bombers and fighters and Ger-man seaplanes, would interdict traffic making for the Republican portsof Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, Alicante and Cartagena, sinking202 merchant ships between September 1937 and the end of the warin March 1939.56

VIIIHow far can the contribution of the USSR to the Spanish Civil Warbe evaluated?

54 For German sailings, see S. Tanner, German Naval Intervention in the Spanish Civil Waras Reflected in the German Records (doctoral thesis, The American University,Washington, DC, 1976). For the flights, see Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe, p. 97.

55 See D.W. Pike, Les Francais et la guerre d’Espagne (Paris, 1975).56 Sullivan, ‘Fascist Italy’s Military Involvement’.

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In the air, Russian designers had developed the highly manoeuvr-able I-15 fighter biplane, which could out-turn and out-climb the FiatCR-32 but flew more slowly on the level. The low-wing I-16 monoplane,with its retractable undercarriage and enclosed cockpit, preceded theMesserschmitt Bf-109 and was as good if not better at heights up to5000 m.57 It could dive at speeds of up to 600 km per hour, but neededextremely skilled handling. Russian bombers were at the same timemore advanced than those of other countries, but obsolete in that theywere too vulnerable to be used against fast fighters or German 88-mmanti-aircraft fire.

The Russian fighters prevented daytime raids on Madrid in the aut-umn, winter and spring of 1936–7 because the German Junkers-52bombers could not be safely escorted. Russian bombers destroyed theItalian advance on Guadalajara in March 1937 because they had com-plete air control. Russian fighters, however, had no radio; and theironly advance over the rapidly evolving Messerschmitt Bf-109 was thespecial engine received late in the war which enabled a few of themto match the German fighter’s height advantage.

Six or seven hundred Spanish pilots were trained in the USSR, com-pared with a very small number of Nationalists trained outside Spain.The shortage of training personnel in the Republican zone is itself anindication of the lack of manpower brought about by the loss of somany regular officers.

The major question, still unanswered after 60 years, is to what extentSoviet policies, through the senior Soviet air commanders Smushkiev-ich (alias ‘Douglas’) and Pumpur (alias ‘Julio’), enforced proceduresthat were perhaps not in the best military interests of the Republic.Garcıa Lacalle, for example, who held the most senior positions in theRepublican fighter arm and is a reliable witness, writes that there wasno liaison officer between the air ministry and the fronts. As a squad-ron commander, Garcıa Lacalle reported to Colonel ‘Julio’, ‘Julio’ to‘Douglas’, and the latter to the ministry of national defence in Valen-cia.58 To give another example of the absence of the necessary liaison,on 20 February 1938 the Republican chief of staff, Colonel Rojo, askedby the minister of national defence if there was a senior air force offi-cer in his command post, answered that he did not know; there wasno official liaison.59 The is a striking example of the organizationalinferiority of the Republican forces, for Franco’s air commander, Gen-eral Alfredo Kindelan, who had headed the air force during its oper-

57 Garcιa Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, p. 361.58 Op. cit., p. 249. When the Negrın government took over in May 1937, the war

ministries were merged into the ministry of national defence, first under IndalecioPrieto and in Apr. 1938 under Negrın himself.

59 Alpert, El ejercito republicano, p. 244.

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ations in Morocco, was at Franco’s side throughout the war.60 Anothermilitary principle, that of cooperation between all units involved, wascontravened here.

By 1938, the shortage of Republican fighter aircraft had becomecatastrophic. It is difficult to reach conclusions about why the USSRallowed such scarcity to develop while knowing about Franco’s con-stant supply of new material. Perhaps, unwilling as the Soviet leaderswere to get involved in Spain, especially because they despaired of theinternal conflicts between the various left-wing parties and the hostilityof the minister of defence, Prieto, they hoped that the western democ-racies would come to the aid of the Republic. After the Munich agree-ments, in September 1938, it became obvious that this would not hap-pen. According to Garcıa Lacalle, once the Russian leaders receivedthe desperate message from Spain, brought by the overall air com-mander of the Republic, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, in December1938, Soviet material was dispatched with alacrity. The first shipmentof 31 I-15 fighters arrived just before the fall of Barcelona to Francoin January 1939. Others arrived when it was too late to assemble anddeploy them. The Republic’s last airfields in Catalonia were too vulner-able to attack.61 Probably only a closer examination of Russian sourceswill 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 flewin Spain until well into 1937 did not develop the techniques of closeinfantry support that were so characteristic of German and SpanishNationalist flying. The dynamism and indeed independent attitude ofthe Nationalist aces Joaquın Garcıa Morato, Angel Salas, Julio Salvadorand Carlos Haya, encouraged by a senior commander of the calibreof Kindelan, contrasting with the dead hand of whoever in realitydirected the Republican air force, is a factor to be considered.63 Never-theless, the danger created by German anti-aircraft fire was anotherfeature which inhibited the use of Russian low level bombers.

At sea there was no Russian presence, despite – or perhaps becauseof – the threatening stances of German ships and Italian submarines.Indeed, Franco’s exiguous navy captured a number of Russian cargoships, charging them, usually without justification, with carrying armsto the Republic.

The atmosphere in the USSR, riven with fear and suspicion because

60 See A. Kindelan, Mis cuadernos de guerra (Barcelona, 1982). This book containsvirtually no discussion of the issues of the air war, strangely enough for a man whohad spent his whole life in important positions in the air force. He does, however,confirm from his viewpoint, or perhaps from officer prisoner statements, thematerial inferiority and the incompetence of the Republican command, togetherwith a report on their lack of anti-aircraft defence, in a letter to Franco in Jan. 1938(pp. 152–3).

61 Garcıa Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, pp. 41–6.62 For a tentative analysis, see M. Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil

War (Basingstoke, 1984), pp. 148–9.63 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 Stalin’s purges, which saw the disappearance of a significant pro-portion of senior commanders of the armed forces, is a political andpsychological factor to be taken into account in explaining the appar-ently lackadaisical Soviet attitude to ensuring that Franco did not winthe Spanish Civil War.

While, for instance, the Soviet I-16 fighter had been perhaps themost advanced military aircraft in the world in 1936, it was obsolescentby 1938.64 If the Russians could not keep up with Germany here, andhad no navy which could function outside Soviet waters, their theoreti-cal effectiveness at war may have been overestimated by the historianswho are struck by the volume of what they sent to Spain, even thoughthis was not, according to the most trustworthy calculations, as muchas Germany and Italy sent to Franco.65

There was a marked difference of purpose between German andRussian aid policies. While the Germans had willingly responded toFranco’s request for help and profited by the war to train their pilotsand anti-tank gunners in a real situation, the Russians, given their dif-ficult diplomatic position, became involved in Spain unwillingly andonly in response to German and Italian intervention.66

Little was known about Spain in Russia. Everything depended onthe information sent back to Moscow by the Soviet embassy and themilitary advisers who had to walk a tightrope of political correctness.Some of them, indeed, fell off it, were recalled to the USSR and per-ished in the purges. Possibly the lessons of the air war in Spain, dis-cussed in several specialized articles in the Soviet Union in 1938, cametoo late.67

As for Soviet armour, there were not enough drivers at first. Spani-ards had to be trained and go into action in under a month, with theconsequent problems of language and liaison. In his memoir of Spain,the first Russian tank commander, Colonel Krivoshein, describes thepantomiming of the instructions and the failure of the ill-trained Span-ish militia and the tanks to coordinate their actions.68 This may notbe surprising. As Colonel Martel, the British tank specialist, com-mented after watching Russian manoeuvres for 1936, these were highlyconfused. The commanders could not control or coordinate their

64 Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, p. 10. See also A. Seaton and J. Seaton, TheSoviet Army, 1918 to the Present (London, 1986), p. 77.

65 For the latest figures for Soviet aid to Republican Spain, see Y. Ribalkin, ‘Ayudamilitar sovietica a la Espana republicana: cifras y hechos’, Ejercito (Madrid, Jan.1992), pp. 44–50. The figures include: 648 aircraft, 467 tanks and armoured vehicles,1186 cannon, 20 486 machine-guns and nearly half a million rifles.

66 Alpert, New International History, pp. 48–52. For a later analysis, see D. Smyth, ‘“WeAre With You”: Solidarity and Self-Interest in Soviet Policy towards Republican Spain1936–1939’, in P. Preston and A.L. Mackenzie, eds, The Republic Besieged: Civil War inSpain 1936–1939 (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 87–107.

67 Cited by Hallion, Strike from the Sky, p. 283, n. 56.68 S. Krivoshein, ‘Los tanquistas voluntarios en los combates por Madrid’, in Bajo la

bandera de la Espana republicana (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 319–43.

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troops and tactical training was inadequate.69 While the USSR had asmany as 7000 tanks in 1935, very few were sent to Spain, though theseincluded the latest models. Close air support was seen as a primaryrole of aircraft in Russian doctrine, while the 1936 field regulationsstressed inter-arm cooperation,70, but there was little evidence that anyof this was put into effect in Spain. It seems likely that political inhi-bition prevented the Russians experimenting in Spain to the extentthat the Germans did. Voroshilov, People’s Commissar for Military andNaval Affairs, was subservient to Stalin, in contrast to the more out-spoken Marshal Tukhachevsky, but the latter was arrested andexecuted in June 1937.71 Voroshilov would be unlikely to press theRussian leader to be more proactive in Spain, where the terrain andthe power of anti-tank weapons led the USSR mistakenly to reject theindependent use of tanks.72 This political explanation also goes someway towards clarifying the insufficient rate of replacement of Sovietaircraft, evident by the first day of the Nationalist advance in Aragon(9 March 1938), when no German aircraft was shot down.73 If thispolitical explanation is correct, the Soviet leader’s generous responseto Hidalgo de Cisneros’s appeal in December 1938 may be seen as areflection of Stalin’s ignorance of the real state of affairs. Garcıa Lacal-le’s apposite view is that fear of Stalin prevented the Russian militaryadvisers from insisting that the training of Spanish pilots in the USSRwas deficient.74 Colonel Goma, a Nationalist air historian, concludesthat the Republicans trained too many pilots and were insufficientlyselective. Garcıa Lacalle, from the other side of the Spanish divide,agrees. He underlines that the training in Russia was too intensive andthat new pilots could not compete against the long-serving Luftwaffeflyers.75

It may well be that Stalin wanted to go gently in Spain because hehoped that Britain and France might wake up to the danger of Nazi–Fascist aggression. By 1937 he had perhaps also decided that inter-vention in Spain was not worth, in political terms, the hostility it wascausing in London and Paris. By late 1938, however, possibly Stalinjudged that Spain was worthy of a desperate last throw.

IXMany of the errors, avoidable in other circumstances, made by theRepublican authorities have been examined. Explanations of Franco’svictory and the Republic’s defeat in terms of ideology fail to consider

69 Seaton and Seaton, The Soviet Army, pp. 92ff.70 H. Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London, 1983), p. 159.71 Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, p. 5.72 Strachan, European Armies, p. 159.73 Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe, p. 193.74 Garcıa Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, p. 50.75 Goma, La guerra en el aire, p. 139; Garcıa Lacalle, Mitos y verdades, pp. 31ff., 40.

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the concrete advantages that the former enjoyed in a regular andample arms supply. Franco’s ally was Nazi Germany at its particularmoment of rearming and re-creating its military efficiency in anapotheosis of national unity. The Republic’s only and not too reliablesupplier was the USSR, weak, politically riven and internationally unde-cided. Franco’s Nationalists were authoritarian; all aspects of life weremilitarily controlled. Command was completely centralized, thoughsenior commanders might be given more freedom than on the otherside, where rigidity was a reaction to indiscipline and where politicaldecisions, often dictated by internal social pressures, might impedemilitary requirements.

In techniques, it seems clear that air power and the harassment ofinfantry from the air and by concentrated heavy artillery shellingplayed the most decisive role, while at sea political considerations pre-vented the Republican navy from doing what Franco’s forces did sowell: interdict traffic.

In the long run, an efficient dictatorship will be more effective atwar, all other things considered, than an inefficient civilian govern-ment, especially one which is using harsh measures, like the Negrınadministration of 1937, to suppress a social revolution itself provokedby the Franco insurrection. The Spanish Republican governments of1936–9 were internally divided over how to fight the war; their sup-porters distrusted many of their military leaders. They depended com-pletely on foreign aid, whose supply was politically mediated. TheFranco administration had the skilled leaders it needed, was not div-ided by ideological dispute and enjoyed regular and generous supportfrom its allies.

AcknowledgementsI wish to thank the participants in the Seminar on Contemporary Span-ish History at the Institute of Historical Research of London University,and in particular Professors Paul Preston and Sir Raymond Carr, fortheir valuable comments. In addition, I have benefited from the help-ful written commentary of Dr. George Hills, whose particular knowl-edge of Spanish history and whose military experience have helpedme to frame several interpretations. I also wish to thank Mr. GeraldHowson, who has generously shared with me his encyclopaedic knowl-edge of the military hardware of the Spanish war and its capacities.

University of Westminster

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