Chapter 11: Defending the Republic from the Enemy Within

"By the end of 1936, the spontaneous mass violence of the early months was no more, although in early February 1937 President Azaña could still note the disgust felt by the Minister of Finance, Juan Negrín, about the atrocities. He suggested that they made Negrín ashamed to be Spanish.1 Negrín’s commitment to ending the uncontrolled violence is corroborated by his friend Mariano Ansó, who recounted that, in Valencia on one occasion, he accosted armed militiamen who had detained a man and were clearly planning to shoot him as a fascist. At enormous risk, and by sheer force of personality, he obliged them to release the man.2"

Leftist infighting - Between PCE and CNT

"From January 1937, repressive violence behind the Republican lines was not uncontrolled and hate-fuelled as it had been in the first weeks of the war. Henceforth, it was largely a question of the Republican state rebuilding itself and, of course, defending itself. Accordingly, it took two principal forms which occasionally overlapped. On the one hand, the security services focused their efforts on the enemy within, the saboteurs, snipers and spies of the fifth column. On the other, there were bitter rivalries over the nature of the war effort. The Communists, many of the Socialists and the Republicans perceived as subversives those on the libertarian and anti-Stalinist left who resisted the creation of a strong state capable of pursuing a centralized war effort. A substantial segment of the anarchist left was concerned with revolutionary goals and was actively hostile to the Republican state. A significant minority was simply involved in criminal activities. Clashes with the security forces were inevitable. This already fraught scenario was further complicated by the fact that, in the case of the Spanish and foreign anti-Stalinists, the Russian security advisers regarded them as Trotskyists who had to be eliminated."

"Ever since the Republican government in Valencia, the Madrid Junta and the Catalan Generalitat had all made a determined effort to centralize the police and security services and disarm the various rearguard militia groups, they had been on a collision course with the anarchists. Anarchist militiamen had violently resisted efforts to collect their weapons or to shut down their control posts on the roads in and out of the capital and on the Catalan–French border. There had been numerous incidents, including one in November 1936 when Antonio Mije, the War Councillor in the Junta, had been prevented from leaving the city on an official mission.3 There was a long-standing and fierce hostility between the PCE and the CNT. This was fuelled by the assassination by anarchists of prominent Communist union leaders such as Andrés Rodríguez González in Málaga in June and Desiderio Trillas Mainé in Barcelona on 31 July. Similarly, the foiled assassination attempts in Madrid by anarchists from the Checa del Cine Europa on both Vittorio Vidali and Enrique Líster in September had merely intensified the Communist determination to exact revenge.4"

"At the beginning of December 1936, when Serrano Poncela left the Dirección General de Seguridad, his executive responsibilities were taken over by José Cazorla, Carrillo’s deputy. Cazorla appointed David Vázquez Baldominos as his police chief. One of his tasks was to expand the Brigada Especial created by Carrillo and Grigulevich. Two more of these special squads were set up, led by two JSU militants, Santiago Álvarez Santiago and José Conesa Arteaga. From the beginning of 1937, all three brigades, under the operational command of Fernando Valentí Fernández, would concentrate on the detention, interrogation and, sometimes, elimination of suspicious elements. This meant not only Francoists but also members of the Madrid CNT, which Cazorla believed to be out of control and infiltrated by the fifth column.5"

"Cazorla was not the only one to believe that the anarchist movement was infested with fifth columnists. Largo Caballero told PSOE executive committee member Juan-Simeón Vidarte that ‘the FAI has been infiltrated by so many agents provocateurs and police informers that it is impossible to have dealings with them’.6 Neither was entirely wrong. The ease with which membership cards of the CNT could be acquired gave the fifth column access to information, an instrument for acts of provocation and relative ease of movement. With CNT accreditation, fifth columnists could also get identity cards for the Republican security services.7"

"At 3 p.m. in the afternoon of 23 December, the Councillor for Supply in the Junta, Pablo Yagüe Esteverá, had been stopped at an anarchist control point when he was leaving the city on official business. Since Carrillo’s decree of 9 November, control of roads in and out of the capital had been supervised by the police, the Assault Guards and the rearguard militias (MVR) under the overall co-ordination of the Public Order Council. The anarchists who stopped Yagüe thus had no authority to do so. After they had refused to recognize his credentials as a Councillor of the Junta, Yagüe continued past the roadblock and they shot and seriously wounded him. They then took refuge in the Ateneo Libertario of the Ventas district. Carrillo ordered their arrest, but the police who went to the Ateneo were told that they were under the protection of the CNT’s regional committee. Carrillo then sent in a company of Assault Guards to seize them. When this was discussed at the meeting of the Junta later that night, he called for them to be shot.11

The report in the Communist press denounced the perpetrators as incontrolables in the service of fascism, ‘real enemies of the people and of the revolution who, like cruel and heartless highwaymen, murder in cold blood the best defenders of the people’. The PCE called for exemplary punishment and, to avoid a repetition of the crime, for the militia groups outside Madrid to be disarmed. It was claimed that ‘certain organizations’ were heavily infiltrated by the fifth column, a clear reference to the CNT. The accusation was in fact entirely justified.12

The initial response of the anarcho-syndicalist leadership was emollient. It was stated that left-wing unity would be endangered by the accusation that those who shot Yagüe were fifth columnists. Then, on 25 December, three CNTistas were found dead with their union cards stuffed into their mouths. Those murders were avenged by Eduardo Val’s Defence Committee, which left three Communists dead with their party cards in their mouths. In reply, two more CNTistas were killed and the PCE press stepped up its campaign for a purge of the CNT. Outraged, the CNT published a list of militants killed by Communists in Málaga, Cabeza de Buey in La Serena (eastern Badajoz), Las Herencias (Ciudad Real), Miguel Estaban and La Guardia (Toledo) and Perales de Tajuña and other towns in Madrid.13

Carrillo failed in his demand for the Junta to condemn to death the militiamen responsible for the attack on Yagüe, something which was outside its jurisdiction. He was furious when the case was put in the hands of a state tribunal at which the prosecutor refused to ask for the death penalty when it was claimed that Yagüe had not shown his credentials at the CNT control point. With the Communist press baying for the militiamen’s blood, José García Pradas, the editor of the newspaper CNT, published a demand that they be released and threatened that, if this did not happen, CNT forces would be withdrawn from the front to release them by force. It was the sort of incendiary comment that convinced many others that the anarchists were irresponsible, if not downright subversive. CNT was the mouthpiece of the Defence Committee, run by Eduardo Val, Manuel Salgado Moreira and García Pradas, all three violently anti-Communist. Miaja ordered the suspension of CNT, but García Pradas refused to obey. He printed, and was about to distribute, the next issue when Miaja had the paper’s offices surrounded by Assault Guards and declared that it was absurd, after the sacrifices made to defend Madrid, for a squabble between anarchists and Communists to provoke its fall. Only Miaja’s intervention prevented serious bloodshed. In the event, to the chagrin of the PCE, the tribunal decided that the men who had shot Yagüe had acted in good faith. The immediate reaction of both organizations was an agreement not to let this hostility undermine anti-fascist unity. It was short lived.14 This war of organizations was symptomatic both of the continuing weakness of the state and of the CNT’s exiguous loyalty to the Republic.

Carrillo’s successor, José Cazorla, was determined to put an end to parallel police forces. He found it intolerable that many files on right-wingers seized by militia groups in July 1936 had not been handed over to the Dirección General de Seguridad. In consequence, the Tribunales Populares had released many fifth columnists because there was no record of their political affiliations. Cazorla started the job of centralizing files and organizations when he took over the DGS in the capital from Serrano Poncela in December. He saw this as the first step towards his principal goal which was the investigation and punishment of pro-rebel sabotage and subversion. His zeal in this led to a bitter conflict with the anarchists and anti-Stalinist dissident Communists. The Communists believed that opposition to a tightly centralized war effort constituted sabotage and subversion. Moreover, they had little doubt that some of the rearguard violence was the work of agents provocateurs embedded within the CNT working to discredit the Republic internationally and to spread demoralization.

Another factor poisoning relations between the CNT and the Communists was suspicion of Melchor Rodríguez, who was arranging for more than one hundred prisoners to be released each day. Suspicions that he might have links with the fifth column were intensified when several of those whose release he arranged went over to the rebels, including Colonel Agustín Muñoz Grandes and the Falangist radio personality Bobby Deglané. In a meeting of the Madrid Junta on 8 January 1937, Cazorla complained that Melchor Rodríguez gave prisoners permission to hold pro-rebel demonstrations and have private meetings with members of the diplomatic corps. He called him ‘protector of the prisoners’ because he treated right-wing detainees as if they were exactly the same as the CNT prisoners of old. On 19 February, Cazorla accused Melchor of opposing his public order policy. He further infuriated the CNT leadership when, in his campaign against sabotage and espionage, he began to investigate the infiltration by fifth columnists of the ineffective secret services run in the Ministry of War by the CNT’s Manuel Salgado.15"

"Complaints emanated both from diplomats on behalf of rightists and from the CNT on behalf of its militants that those arrested were being sent to punishment battalions in dangerous front-line positions to work on fortifications.18 Ironically, forced-labour camps were the brainchild of the Minister of Justice, the CNT’s Juan García Oliver."

"There was a genuine ideological struggle between anarchists committed to collectivization and the Communist policy of supporting the smallholders in order to improve agricultural production. Some of the clashes derived from local resistance against anarchists from Madrid who requisitioned food without payment.23"

"The enmity reached such heights in mid-April that it provoked the dissolution of the Junta de Defensa. On 14 April, Cazorla announced in Mundo Obrero that an important spy-ring in the Republican Army had been dismantled.](<There was a genuine ideological struggle between anarchists committed to collectivization and the Communist policy of supporting the smallholders in order to improve agricultural production. Some of the clashes derived from local resistance against anarchists from Madrid who requisitioned food without payment.23"

"There was no doubt of a connection between López de Letona and Verardini since they had collaborated in an operation mounted by the CNT to flush out fifth columnists. The December 1936 raid on the buildings under the protection of the Finnish Embassy had exposed how the right of asylum was being abused in favour of the fifth column. Accordingly, Eduardo Val and the CNT’s Defence Committee had established a fictitious Embassy of Siam, a country that had no diplomatic relations with Spain. With López de Letona as a ‘guarantee’ to his fifth-columnist contacts, the Embassy made offers of asylum that were eagerly accepted by several enemies of the Republic. Hidden listening devices picked up their conversations and thus gathered intelligence about their networks. When General Miaja learned that some of these rebel supporters had been murdered by Val’s men, in early January 1937, he ordered the operation closed down on the grounds that it was illegal and that the struggle against the fifth column should be conducted according to the law.26 In November 1939, López de Letona would be sentenced to death by the Francoists for his part in the Siam Embassy operation.27"

"On 25 April, Cazorla, on handing power over to the new national Director General of Security, Wenceslao Carrillo, said he welcomed any investigation that might be carried out. Wenceslao, father of Santiago, praised Cazorla’s work in making the streets of Madrid safe. In an article published the following day, Cazorla himself wrote that he had remained silent only while awaiting the conclusions of the investigation and now felt free to comment. He attacked what he called ‘the verbal terrorism of those who beg in private and attack in public’ – a clear reference to Melchor Rodríguez and the Pintado-Fe case. He went on to defend his record against ‘those who having recently infiltrated the CNT–FAI use a union card to hide their murky past and to enable them to work against the interests of the anti-fascist masses’.34 Two days later, the Communist press published news that a fifth-column network had been discovered using CNT membership cards.35"

"The clashes between Cazorla and the CNT in Madrid were merely a reflection of a much wider problem at the heart of Republican Spain. For the Communists, substantial sectors of the PSOE and the bourgeois Republican parties, the war effort was the central priority and that required the full reconstruction of the state. In contrast, the revolutionary elements of the left, the CNT–FAI and the POUM, were determined to collectivize industry and agriculture and opposed state control in economic and military issues even after the Republican debacle at Málaga in February 1937 had starkly revealed the shortcomings of the militia system. The anarchists, despite their occasional rhetoric, also opposed the reorganization of public order. In the eyes of the Republicans, Socialists and Communists, the activities of the CNT and the POUM were on the same spectrum of subversion as those of the fifth column."

"Already in the autumn of 1936, Louis Fischer had told Andrade’s wife, María Teresa García Banús, that the Kremlin was determined to exterminate the POUM and urged her to warn her comrades to take precautions.47 By late 1936 the Comintern delegate to the PSUC, the taciturn and enigmatic Ernö Gerö, codenamed ‘Pedro’, had already been directing a campaign to remove Andreu Nin from his post as Justice Councillor in the Generalitat.48 On 11 December, the executive committee of the Comintern sent the following telegram to ‘Luis’ (Victorio Codovilla, delegate to the PCE), ‘Pedro’ (Ernö Gerö) and ‘Pepe’ (José Díaz, the secretary general of the PCE): ‘It is necessary to focus on the political liquidation of the Trotskyists, as counter-revolutionaries, as agents of the Gestapo. After the political campaign, get them out of national and local government bodies, ban their press, expel all foreign elements. Try to do so in agreement with the anarchists.’49"

Leftist infighting - Barcelona

"The POUM’s outspoken criticisms of the trial and execution of the old Bolsheviks Kamenev and Zinoviev had drawn the fire of the Soviet advisers. Encouraged by Antonov-Ovseenko, the PSUC denounced the POUM leadership as ‘fascist spies’ and ‘Trotskyist agents’ and called for the Party’s extermination.53 However, hostility to the anti-Stalinist leftists was not just about Russian paranoia. There was a growing conviction among Republicans, Socialists, Communists and numerous foreign observers that the Catalan anarchists were not fully committed to the war effort. The CNT was importing and hoarding weapons in Barcelona against the day when they could make their revolution.54 In mid-March 1937, several hundred of the more extreme members of the libertarian movement who had opposed the militarization of the militias abandoned the front at Gelsa (Zaragoza) and took their weapons to the Catalan capital. Inspired by the extremist Catalan separatist Jaume Balius Mir, they aimed to create a revolutionary vanguard and oppose the CNT leadership’s collaboration with the central government. Even García Oliver considered Balius to be a deranged bohemian. On 17 March, they formed the group known as ‘the Friends of Durruti’ and, within a matter of weeks, had recruited five thousand CNT members. The new organization was warmly welcomed by Andreu Nin.55"

"Part of the CNT leadership, having accepted participation in the Republican government, was more inclined to agree to the need for the prioritization of the war effort. However, at rank-and-file level, especially in Barcelona, there was intense resistance to the loss of revolutionary power. Many anarchists and POUM militants felt that the sacrifices demanded by the Communists, Socialists and Republicans in favour of bourgeois democracy were pointless since the Western powers saw Franco as a better bet for capitalism than the Republic could ever be. The belief of many in the CNT and POUM that the revolution should have priority was seen as treacherous and subversive by all those who were committed to the war effort."

"The tension generated by the Generalitat’s efforts to claw back its powers from the revolutionary unions was exacerbated by the economic and social dislocation imposed by the war. By December 1936, the population of Catalonia had been swelled by the arrival of 300,000 refugees. This constituted 10 per cent of the population of the entire region and probably nearer 40 per cent of the population of Barcelona itself. After the fall of Málaga, the numbers soared even more. The strain of housing and feeding the new arrivals had embittered existing conflicts. Until December 1936, during which time the CNT controlled the Supply Ministry, the anarchist solution had been to requisition food at artificially low prices. This provoked shortages and inflation as farmers resisted by hoarding stocks. After the mid-December cabinet crisis, the PSUC leader Joan Comorera had taken over the supply portfolio and introduced a more market-based approach. This infuriated the anarchists but did not solve the problem. Catalonia also needed to import food but lacked the foreign exchange to buy it. There were bread riots in Barcelona, as well as armed clashes for control of food stores between the CNT–FAI and the PSUC.56"

"In parallel with the conflict over food shortages and collectivization, other outbreaks of violence were generated as the forces of order tried to restrain the anarchist Patrulles de Control. In February 1937, more than thirty members of the National Republican Guard (ex-Civil Guard) were killed. At the beginning of March, the Generalitat dissolved the CNT-controlled Defence Committee and assumed the power to dissolve all local police and militia committees. The Assault Guards and National Republican Guards were merged into a single Catalan police corps whose officers were not permitted membership of any political party or trade union. These measures effectively placed the workers’ patrols beyond the law. Ten days later, the central Republican government ordered all worker organizations, committees, patrols and individual workers to hand over their weapons."

"The disputes over food supplies and the events in La Cerdanya showed how deep rooted was the conflict between the advocates of revolution and those who believed that priority should be given to the war effort. The notion that its culmination in the so-called ‘May events’ was a carefully laid Stalinist plot has no basis. The immediate spark that ignited the long-smouldering clashes in May was a twofold initiative of the Generalitat. A decree prohibiting the traditional 1 May rallies to prevent clashes between the CNT and the UGT was seen as a provocation by the CNT rank and file. Then, on 3 May, a raid on the CNT-controlled central telephone exchange in the Plaça de Catalunya was ordered by Artemi Aiguader and carried out by the belligerent police commissioner Rodríguez Salas. Aiguader was following the instructions of Companys, who had been humiliated to learn that a CNT operator had interrupted a telephone call by President Azaña. Clearly the state needed control of the main communication system, but Companys was warned by a CNT Councillor that the anarchist rank and file would resist.60"

"Although the origins of the crisis lay deep in the wartime circumstances of Catalonia, the Generalitat and the PSUC realized that they had to seize the chance to break the power of the CNT. The central government also saw the opportunity to limit the power of the Generalitat. García Oliver and Carlos Hernández Zancajo of the UGT were sent to Barcelona to discuss the situation with the CNT leadership. They were humiliated, kept waiting while the anarchists finished a lengthy dinner. When they requested food, two thin sandwiches were sent out to them. They returned to Valencia without achieving anything.63

Such cheap victories aside, the situation exposed the fundamental dilemma of the CNT. The anarchists could win in Catalonia only at the cost of all-out war against other Republican forces. The CNT’s Madrid newspaper Frente Libertario denounced the revolutionaries as the allies of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. García Oliver broadcast from the Generalitat on behalf of the CNT ministers in the central government and called on the incredulous militants to lay down their arms. The bulk of the Catalan anarchist leadership was unwilling to recall CNT militias from Aragon to fight the Generalitat and the central Republican government. On 7 May, the government in Valencia sent the police reinforcements which finally decided the outcome. It did so only in return for the Generalitat surrendering control of the Army of Catalonia and responsibility for public order in Catalonia. Several hundred members of the CNT and the POUM were arrested, although the need to get the war industries working as soon as possible limited the scale of the repression. The backdrop to these events was the Francoist advance into the Basque Country. As Manuel Domínguez Benavides, a prominent journalist, wrote, while Euskadi was being bombed, ‘the POUM and the FAI organized a bloody revolutionary carnival’.64"

"The events of 3 May took the Russians by surprise. Some of their senior guerrilla advisers were unexpectedly trapped in Barcelona by the fighting. The senior military adviser, General Grigory Shtern, wrote later that, far from being resented as having inspired the events, Russians ‘could pass serenely among the barricades of both sides and be greeted by the anarchists with a clenched-fist salute’.65 If the Russians and the PCE had not planned the entire affair, they certainly leaped at the opportunities presented by it. Having boasted of leading an insurrection which was really the work of elements of the CNT, the POUM would now be the sacrificial goat.66 Andreu Nin and the rest of the POUM leadership had far exceeded the CNT in the militancy of their revolutionary pronouncements during the crisis. Moreover, since the principal beneficiaries of the events were the military rebels and their Axis allies, there was a strong suspicion among Communists, Socialists and Republicans that there had been an element of fascist provocation behind the activities of the POUM and the CNT. It was a frequent complaint of Cazorla and others that the CNT was porous and easily infiltrated. The internationalist POUM was extremely welcoming to the recruitment of foreign volunteers. Specifically, in January 1937, an operative of the NKVD in Berlin had reported to Moscow that German agents had infiltrated the POUM.67 Franco boasted to the German Chargé d’Affaires, General Wilhelm Faupel, that ‘the street fighting had been started by his agents’, which was a reference to attacks on CNT members carried out by elements of the right-wing Catalan nationalist party Estat Català on the night of 2 May on instructions from Salamanca. Similarly, the Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano boasted to the Francoist Ambassador in Rome that Italian agents had contributed to the disorder. Indeed, there was no shortage of Italians in the CNT, some of whom may well have been infiltrated agents of the Italian secret police, the OVRA.68"

Juan Negrin becomes Prime Minister - Efforts to end repression

"Shortly after the fighting in Barcelona had ended, Largo Caballero was removed as Prime Minister and not simply because of his mistakes during the crisis. Certainly, President Azaña, who had been besieged in the Palau de les Corts Catalanes during the May events, would never forgive Largo for the delay in arranging his evacuation. The Minister without Portfolio, José Giral of Izquierda Republicana, informed Azaña that the Republicans, the Communists and the Socialists were united in wanting major change. They were frustrated not only by Largo Caballero’s ludicrous pretensions of being a great strategist but also by his practice of taking decisions without cabinet discussion. When ministers complained that they were not told what was happening, he would tell them to read the newspapers. All three groups were united in dissatisfaction with Largo Caballero’s sympathy with the CNT and his failure to confront the issue of public order. They were equally keen to see the removal of his incompetent Minister of the Interior, Ángel Galarza.

A stormy cabinet meeting on 14 May was provoked by the Communist ministers, with the prior agreement of the Socialists and Republicans. They demanded a change in military strategy and for the POUM to be declared illegal. When the Prime Minister refused, reluctant to punish the POUM when the FAI and the Friends of Durruti were being left unpunished, they left the meeting. Largo Caballero tried to carry on without them only to be astonished when the other ministers supported them.69 He was forced to resign, and the government was offered to Dr Juan Negrín, a victory for the political forces that had opposed the revolutionary factions. From this point on, the revolutionary achievements of the initial stages of the war would be steadily dismantled, leaving policy to follow the direction dictated by the Republicans and moderate Socialists who took over the key ministries.

The humanitarian concerns which underlay the new Prime Minister’s determination to put an end to the terror were closely linked to his perception that atrocities were being used to justify the refusal of the democratic powers to help the Republic. Between September 1936 and May 1937, as Treasury Minister, Negrín had done everything he could to keep the Republic afloat. He had worked hard to ensure that national resources were put at the service of the war effort, whether by sending the Republic’s gold reserves abroad to protect their availability for arms purchases or by strengthening the frontier guards (Carabineros) to re-establish state control over foreign exchange and to curb the activities of the many illegal CNT frontier posts on the French–Catalan border. His efforts to stop the illegal repression were put on a different plane by his elevation to the premiership

In his new cabinet, Negrín appointed as his Minister of the Interior the Basque Socialist Julián Zugazagoitia, who was equally committed to the re-establishment of law and order. Together with the choice of another Basque, Manuel Irujo, as Minister of Justice, this ensured that, despite the Soviet determination to destroy the POUM, there would be no Moscow trials in Spain. A series of other important appointments were made to bring public order under greater control. Another Socialist, Juan-Simeón Vidarte, was named as Zugazagoitia’s under-secretary, and his first actions were to disband a squad which had carried out extra-judicial executions on the orders of Ángel Galarza and to close down the notorious prison of Santa Úrsula in Valencia. Another Socialist, Paulino Gómez Saiz, was named Delegate for Public Order for Catalonia, in order to impose greater control over the region. The highly efficient Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Burillo was made police chief in Barcelona and a professional policeman, Teodoro Illera Martín, was sent to the city as Delegate of the Dirección General de Seguridad. Burillo had been commander of the Assault Guard barracks in Calle Pontejos on 13 July 1936 when Calvo Sotelo was murdered – a crime in which he played no part but for which he would be executed in 1939. He was a Communist but also loyal to Negrín.70 The one disastrous appointment was that of Colonel Antonio Ortega Gutiérrez as Director General of Security on 27 May 1937. Negrín appointed Ortega believing him simply to be a professional soldier and a Socialist follower of the Minister of Defence, Indalecio Prieto. As he noted later in his draft memoirs, he would never have accepted the recommendation had he known that Ortega’s loyalty would be to the PCE rather than to the government.71"

"According to Diego Abad de Santillán, 60,000 weapons were in the hands of leftists in Barcelona, mainly members of the CNT–FAI. On arriving in Barcelona, Vidarte and Burillo began to close down the Patrulles de Control and to confiscate their arms. This process was resisted with considerable violence by the CNT–FAI in the course of which, on 4 June, a sergeant of Carabineros and four Assault Guards were killed. According to Vidarte, a significant role in this resistance was played by Manuel Escorza del Val, who had run the Investigation Committee of the Central Anti-Fascist Militia Committee. Those responsible for the deaths were arrested, but Negrín insisted that there be no executions.72"

"Negrín was fully aware of Irujo’s efforts to stop violence in the Republican rearguard when he had been Minister without Portfolio.74 Now, on taking up the post of Minister of Justice, Irujo reflected Negrín’s attitude to the repression when he declared: ‘the paseos have finished … There were days when the government did not control the levers of power. It was unable to prevent social crimes. Those times have passed … We must not let the monstrous brutality of the enemy be used to excuse the repugnant crimes committed on our side.’75 Revolutionary justice was being replaced by conventional bourgeois justice. Trained judges were placed at the head of the Tribunales Populares. One of the first things that Irujo did was to professionalize the prison service to ensure no repetition of the atrocities of November 1936. The prison regime was relaxed in a way unimaginable in the rebel zone. Catholic clergy and religious were released. The Red Cross was allowed full access to prisons.76 Many civilian prisoners were allowed out on parole for the births, marriages, illnesses or deaths of family members. As a result of these measures, Irujo was for a time denounced by the anarchist press as a Vaticanist caveman and a bourgeois reactionary, but eventually he was congratulated for his work by an anarchist delegation. Similarly, in the Ministry of the Interior, Zugazagoitia would use his position to save the lives of prominent Falangists in Republican custody."

"Irujo had accepted the post of Minister of Justice on the condition that freedom of conscience would be respected and religious practice legalized. Safe-conducts and identity cards were provided for priests and religious and efforts were made to establish the right to practise the liturgy. He created the Office of Religious Orders and worked tirelessly until he succeeded in arranging for the first public Mass to be said in the Basque Delegation in Valencia, on 15 August 1937, and for the first chapel to be reopened in Barcelona. These achievements provoked strident CNT criticism. Jesús de Galíndez, who worked in the Office of Religious Orders, served as an altar boy at that first Mass. The fifth column tried to undermine the initiative by spreading the rumour that the chapel was deconsecrated and that anyone who attended Mass there would be excommunicated. They realized that, with the churches open, they had lost one of their principal propaganda weapons against the government.79"

NKVD operations - Scheme to eliminate Andreu Nin

"The one thing that Irujo and Zugazagoitia could not do was to control the activities of Lev Lazarevich Nikolsky, the NKVD station chief known as Aleksandr Orlov. Theoretically, Orlov had various tasks – counter-espionage, especially within the International Brigades, the organization of guerrilla and sabotage activities and the creation of a small, elite Republican secret police force to counter internal opposition to the government. This latter was his principal activity and the fruit of this was the Brigadas Especiales. Their initial purpose was to combat the fifth column, but they had soon been turned against those elements of the Spanish left perceived as subversive traitors. On 3 May 1937, Grigulevich led one of the Brigadas Especiales to Barcelona to eliminate, under the cover of the disorder, a number of prominent foreign Trotskyists linked to the POUM.80 It has been suggested that Grigulevich’s group may have been responsible for the murder, on the night of 5–6 May, of the Italian anarchists Camilo Berneri and Francesco Barbieri. Since Berneri constituted a far greater danger to Mussolini than to Stalin, it is possible that this was the work of the Italian OVRA. The CNT’s own investigation concluded that Berneri had been killed by members of Estat Català working for the OVRA.81

As far as a paranoid Stalin was concerned, Orlov’s principal task was the eradication of foreign dissident Communists in Spain. Indeed, Russian security personnel in Republican Spain were much more concerned with this task than with any action against the POUM, which was considered to be the job of the Spanish police. Many eastern Europeans were arrested and imprisoned by agents of a Catalan unit, similar to the Madrid-based Brigadas Especiales, known as the Grup d’Informació. It was part of the secret service of the Generalitat’s Defence Council with which Orlov had established links. The arrested Trotskyists were taken to the convent of Santa Úrsula in Valencia, where they were interrogated and tortured by Russians, Germans and east Europeans, all members of their respective Communist parties.82"

"One of Orlov’s victims was Mark Rein, the son of the Russian Menshevik leader Rafail Abramovich. Rein had come to Spain as correspondent for several anti-Stalinist publications including the New York Jewish daily, Forward. On 9 April 1937, he left the Hotel Continental in Barcelona and was never seen again. He had been abducted and murdered by agents of the Grup d’Informació.83 Another of Orlov’s targets was Andreu Nin, more as a one-time close collaborator of Trotsky than as leader of the POUM. Already, in a report to Moscow in late February 1937, Orlov had noted that the war effort was being undermined by ‘inter-party conflicts in which the energy of most people is devoted to winning authority and power for their own party and discrediting others rather than to the struggle against fascism’. After dismissive comments about both Gorev and Berzin, he went on to say:

the time has come when it is necessary to analyze the threatening situation … and forcefully present to the Spanish Government (and Party leaders) the full gravity of the situation and to propose the necessary measures – if the Spanish Government really wants help from us: (1) bringing the army and its command into a healthier state of discipline (shooting deserters, maintaining discipline, etc.) and (2) putting an end to the inter-party squabbles. If, in the face of immediate danger, we do not bring the Spanish Government to its senses, events will take a catastrophic turn.84

Now, after the May events, Orlov made the elimination of Nin his prime objective and the task was made easier because of the POUM’s role during those events. Nin became the object of what was known as a liter operation. A liter (letter) file was a letter-coded file opened on a person scheduled for assassination who was given a codename. In the case of Nin, this was ‘Assistant’, a reference perhaps to his one-time work with Trotsky. The file was designated with the letter ‘A’ for such operations where ‘A’ stood for an ‘active measure’ (aktivka or direct action, that is assassination). It was presumably no coincidence, if the Communist Minister Jesús Hernández is to be believed, that, on the day following the murder of Nin, a cable sent to Moscow read ‘A.N. business resolved by procedure A.’85

Orlov’s plan was based on two carefully choreographed ‘discoveries’. The first involved a bookshop in Girona belonging to a Falangist called José Roca Falgueras. Roca was part of a fifth-column network run out of a small hotel in the town by its owner, Cosme Dalmau Mora. The network had been discovered by the police but kept under observation rather than shut down. One day in May, an elegantly dressed man went into Roca’s shop, leaving some money and a message for Dalmau. He asked if he could leave a suitcase that he would pick up some days later. The next day, there was a police raid and the suitcase was found to contain an incriminating collection of technical documents about bomb-making together with plans to assassinate key Republican figures. All were apparently sealed with the stamp of the POUM Military Committee.86

The second discovery was initially genuine but was doctored by Orlov to ‘demonstrate’ the collaboration of the POUM with the Falange. The principal element was a detailed map of Madrid seized when the Brigadas Especiales, led by David Vázquez Baldominos and Fernando Valentí Fernández, broke up a large fifth-columnist network, with the help of Alberto Castilla Olavarría, a paid double agent. Castilla was a Basque of right-wing ideas. The fact that he had taken refuge in the Peruvian Embassy gave him the plausibility to infiltrate the fifth column. He became the liaison between the four Falangist groups that made up the substantial network known as the ‘Organización Golfin-Corujo’ run by the architect Francisco Javier Fernández Golfin. When the organization was dismantled thanks to Castilla’s information, Fernández Golfin had in his possession a street plan of Madrid on which his brother Manuel had drawn details and positions of military installations. This map was part of the group’s plans to facilitate the rebel entry into the capital.87

Well over one hundred Falangists were arrested by Vázquez Baldominos’s squad, although only twenty-seven were tried. Their confessions would play a key part in the complex plot being hatched by Orlov, although it is unlikely that Vázquez Baldominos was party to what Orlov did with the street map. Orlov’s elaborate scheme was outlined in a report sent to Moscow on 23 May 1937:

Taking into consideration that this case, in connection with which the overwhelming majority have pleaded guilty, has produced a great impression on military and government circles, and that it is firmly documented and based on the incontrovertible confessions of defendants, I have decided to use the significance and the indisputable facts of the case to implicate the POUM leadership (whose [possible] connections we are looking into while conducting investigations). We have, therefore, composed the enclosed document, which indicates the co-operation of the POUM leadership with the Spanish Falange organization – and, through it, with Franco and Germany. We will encipher the contents of the document using Franco’s cipher, which we have at our disposal, and will write it on the reverse side of the plan of the location of our weapons emplacements in Casa del Campo, which was taken from the Falangist organization. This document has passed through five people: all the five Fascists who have admitted passing the document to each other for dispatch to Franco. On another seized document we will write in invisible ink a few lines of some insignificant content. It will be from this document that, in cooperation with the Spaniards, we shall begin to scrutinize the document for cryptographic writing. We shall experiment with several processes for treating these papers. A special chemical will develop these few words or lines, then we will begin to test all the other documents with this developer and thus expose the letter we have composed compromising the POUM leadership. The Spanish chief of counter-intelligence department [Vázquez Baldominos] will leave immediately for Valencia where the cipher department of the War Ministry will decipher the letter. The cipher department, according to our information, has the necessary code at its disposal. But if the department cannot decipher the letter for some reason, then we will ‘spend a couple of days’ and decipher it ourselves. We expect this affair to be very effective in exposing the role POUM has played in the Barcelona uprising. The exposure of direct contact between one of its leaders and Franco must contribute to the government adopting a number of administrative measures against the Spanish Trotskyites to discredit POUM as a German–Francoist spy organization.88"

According to a police report of late October 1937, the captured document was first examined by the then Director General of Security, Wenceslao Carrillo, by General Miaja and by the recently promoted General Vicente Rojo. At this stage, the damning reverse side of the document had not been ‘discovered’ since it had not yet been added. Its later ‘discovery’ was attributed to its being in invisible ink.89 The police report spoke appreciatively of the invaluable technical help received from foreign (Russian) experts who were given free access to the captured documentation in the office of the Brigada Especial and then allowed to take it back to their own Embassy. Orlov reported to Moscow that the faking of the actual document was carried out by Grigulevich. Valentí told his post-war Francoist interrogators that Grigulevich had had the map for some time. On returning it to the Brigada Especial, he suggested to Vázquez Baldominos that it be chemically tested for messages in invisible ink.

The police report explained how the Russian technicians also supplied the necessary chemical reagents and the electrical plate to heat the document. When the map was heated, there appeared on the reverse a message in code. At this point, Vázquez Baldominos was sent for. Unable to decipher the message, he and Valentí, accompanied by two of the foreign technicians (Orlov and Grigulevich?), took the document to Valencia to the newly appointed Director General of Security, Colonel Ortega. They struggled for nearly eighteen hours in Ortega’s office in a vain attempt to decipher the message. Finally, military codebreakers, using a Francoist codebook, were able to interpret the message. All concerned then went to the Russian Embassy in Valencia to draw up a report.90

The definitive ‘text’ of the coded message stated that one of the members of the Fernández Golfín organization had met ‘N., the leader of the POUM, who had offered his forces which would constitute crucial support for the victory of the Nationalists’. There was also a letter to Franco outlining the services of the POUM in terms of espionage, sabotage and the provocation of anti-Republican disorder. The message in itself was as implausible as the idea that Nin would use ‘N’ as his codename. Six months later, in January 1938, an analysis of the message by two calligraphic experts reported that it could not have been written by any member of the network and was a forgery.91 Now, the report drawn up in the Russian Embassy presented the story of the Fernández Golfín network and the document at face value. It concluded with a recommendation that the POUM be ‘extirpated’. Dated 1 June 1937, copies were sent by the counter-espionage service of Vázquez Baldominos’s office of the Madrid police to Zugazagoitia and Ortega.92

Vázquez Baldominos, Valentí and the Brigada Especial returned to Madrid. Six days later, Ortega sent an order for Valentí and seven members of his Brigada Especial, including Jacinto Rosell Coloma and Andrés Urresola Ochoa, to report to him in Valencia. According to another of the JSU members in the Brigada Especial, Javier Jiménez Martín, the squad was led by ‘a Brazilian named José’: ‘José was someone who we thought was Russian. He spoke Russian and you could really see that he was the almighty power in the organization.’ There can be no doubt that the ‘Brazilian named José’ was Grigulevich.93 In Valencia, they were ordered by Ortega to go to Barcelona and arrest Andreu Nin. Ortega later admitted that, throughout, he had been following instructions from Orlov.94 Since Zugazagoitia had never trusted Ortega because he was a Communist and incompetent, he had appointed the Civil Governor of Almería, the Socialist Gabriel Morón Díaz, as Inspector and deputy Director General of Security to watch over Ortega. However, on the day of Nin’s arrest, Ortega had got Morón out of the way by sending him to Ciudad Real on a pretext. On 15 June, Valentí and his men, accompanied by Grigulevich, went to Barcelona. On 16 June, Nin, and later that day the other members of the POUM executive, were arrested by local police commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Burillo.95

The POUM newspaper, La Batalla, had been banned on 28 May. Now the POUM itself was declared illegal and the POUM militia disbanded. The procedure was justified by a communiqué stating that the DGS had seized from POUM HQ ‘cyphers, telegrams, codes, documents concerning money and arms purchases and smuggling, and with incriminating documents showing that the POUM leadership, namely Andrés Nin, was mixed up in espionage’. Orlov himself reported to Moscow that the Madrid police considered the falsified document ‘absolutely genuine in its double aspects’ – that is to say, both regarding the original Falangist plans for rebel occupation of Madrid and the additions in invisible ink.96 The Catalan President Lluís Companys and his head of propaganda, Jaume Miravitlles, in contrast, thought that the idea of Nin as a fascist spy was absurd and deeply damaging to the Republic. They wrote a letter to the Valencia government to this effect. When Ortega tried to convince Miravitlles by showing him the doctored street map, he burst out laughing saying that it was the first time in history that a spy had signed an incriminating document with his own name.97

Nin was taken first to Valencia and then transferred to Madrid.98 There then arose the problem of how to obey Ortega’s order that Nin be kept isolated during his interrogation and in a place suitable for a prisoner of his category. All possible places of confinement in the capital were already occupied by the fifth columnists arrested in the Golfín case. He was kept in the offices of the Brigada Especial until ‘one of the senior foreign technicians’, no doubt Orlov, offered to hold him in a house at Alcalá de Henares. Vázquez Baldominos accepted Orlov’s offer and proposed that several of his agents guard him. Orlov brushed aside the idea as likely to attract unwanted attention and offered to take responsibility for Nin’s safety. On 17 June, Vázquez Baldominos signed the order for Nin’s transfer to the house and for just two agents to be posted. Orlov undertook to supply their rations.99

Before being transferred to Alcalá de Henares, Nin was questioned in Madrid four times by Jacinto Rosell as secretary of the Brigada Especial on 18, 19 (twice) and 21 June. Nothing about Rosell’s questions or Nin’s answers in the transcript signed by Nin and published by the POUM itself suggests anything other than a legally conducted interrogation without torture. The often unreliable Jesús Hernández claimed that Nin was tortured and interrogated by Orlov and others for several days, in an effort to make him sign a ‘confession’ of his links with the fifth column. This is highly unlikely; a confession was needed as the basis for a trial and, for that, Nin would have to be seen to be in good physical shape and testify that he had not been tortured. On 21 June, on the orders of Ortega, Vázquez Baldominos sent Rosell and other members of the Brigada Especial to Valencia to collect other POUM prisoners, including Andrade, and escort them to Madrid. At that point, Nin was transferred to Alcalá de Henares.100 Because Nin had not confessed, there was little prospect of the desired show trial. Thus Orlov took the decision to eliminate him. A charade was choreographed at the house. On 22 June, between 9.30 and 10.00 p.m., in a heavy rainstorm, some men in military uniform arrived headed by a ‘captain’ and a ‘lieutenant’ who spoke Spanish with a heavy foreign accent. They presented orders for Nin’s hand-over with the forged signatures of Vázquez Baldominos and Miaja. Allegedly, Vázquez Baldominos’s agents resisted but were overpowered, tied up and gagged and, in the struggle, the intruders dropped incriminating ‘evidence’, including banknotes from rebel Spain and German documents. The agents later stated that the ‘captain’ spoke in a friendly way to Nin and called him ‘comrade’. When Vázquez Baldominos began to investigate these events, Orlov could not be contacted.101

It is impossible to say whether the struggle took place or was merely reported as having done so, since it may be that there were members of the Brigada Especial whose loyalty was to Orlov rather than to Vázquez Baldominos. What is certain is that a car containing Orlov, Grigulevich, an NKVD driver, a German NKVD agent and two Spaniards had arrived. Between them, they could have knocked out the two guards, seized Nin and left the incriminating documents. What is not in doubt is that Nin was taken away and shot near the main road halfway between Alcalá de Henares and Perales de Tajuña.102

The impulse for the elimination of Nin came from the Russians and not from the Republican authorities. On the basis simply of Orlov’s mendacious statements to the FBI after his defection, the American historian Stanley Payne has claimed that ‘Stalin issued a handwritten order, which remains in the KGB archives, that Nin be killed.’103 This is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, as has been seen, Nin had been made the target of a liter operation. Moreover, once Nin had refused to sign a false confession, Orlov was not about to have him simply released, even if he had not been tortured. Orlov made oblique reference to what happened in his report about ‘operation NIKOLAI’ sent to Moscow on 24 July 1937. This report describes, ‘in the characteristically cryptic terms he used for liter operations’, the seizing of Nin from the house and his murder. As well as revealing that Grigulevich forged the documents used to incriminate Nin, it underlines the participation in the operation of Orlov himself. Grigulevich’s police credentials, as a member of the Brigada Especial, facilitated the passage through controls on the roads.104

There is a relevant note in Orlov’s files allegedly written by Grigulevich. Transliterated into English, it refers to ‘N. from Alcala de Enares in the direction of Perane de Tahunia, half way, 100 metres from the road, in the field. [Present were] BOM, SCHWED, JUZIK, two Spaniards. Pierre’s driver VICTOR.’ This means that the scene of the crime and where Nin was buried was between Alcalá de Henares and Perales de Tajuña. The executioners were thus Orlov (Schwed), Grigulevich (Juzik), the German NKVD agent Erich Tacke (BOM), the two unidentified Spaniards and Victor Nezhinsky, an NKVD agent. ‘Pierre’ was Naum Eitingon, head of the NKVD sub-station in Barcelona, and not, as has been suggested, Ernö Gerö.105

Shortly after the disappearance of Nin, Negrín was visited by Orlov, who had been introduced to him many months before as ‘Blackstone’. Orlov claimed to have come to report on the success of his men in establishing what had happened to Nin. He based his version of Nin being kidnapped by Falangists disguised as International Brigaders on incriminating documents allegedly dropped by them and by Nin himself. Orlov asked Negrín if this was enough proof for him to drop the formal investigation. When Negrín said that it was up to the judicial authorities, Orlov asked him if he was convinced personally. Orlov was mortified to be told by the Premier that the story was so neat as to resemble a cheap detective story. Furiously, he shouted that Negrín had insulted the Soviet Union, at which point he was invited to leave. Some hours later, Negrín was visited by the Soviet Chargé d’Affaires, Sergei Marchenko, who said that he had heard of the disagreeable incident of that morning and had come to express his apologies. He offered to have Orlov punished and, when Negrín replied that the incident was closed, said that Orlov was no longer on the Embassy staff.106

When first questioned by Zugazagoitia about what had happened to Nin, Ortega rather gave the game away, saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find him dead or alive.’ Zugazagoitia responded that he was not interested in the corpse of Nin and wanted him found alive. Later the same day, questioned further by the Minister, Ortega claimed that Nin was an agent of the Gestapo whose agents had taken him so that he could not be interrogated by the Republic’s security services. When Zugazagoitia asked how he knew this, Ortega said it was simply something that had crossed his mind. The Minister immediately told Negrín of his suspicions that Ortega was involved in foul play concerning Nin. Negrín told him to get reports about what exactly had happened. According to Fernando Valentí, Vidarte and Zugazagoitia himself, the latter demanded a report from Vázquez Baldominos, who produced two drafts. In the first ‘official’ document, he examined three possibilities – that Nin had been kidnapped by Falangists, by Gestapo agents or by the POUM. In the second, secret, report for Zugazagoitia only, he expressed his opinion that the disappearance of Nin was nothing to do with the Gestapo or the Falange but was rather the result of the conflict between the POUM and the PCE encouraged by the various Russians who were operating in the DGS. It is likely that Vázquez Baldominos reached this conclusion after he was unable to locate Grigulevich or Orlov to discuss the case with them. Grigulevich had already returned to Russia. At this point, Vázquez Baldominos thought that Nin was still alive.107

The forged documents were published in a book by the non-existent ‘Max Rieger’, with a preface by José Bergamín demanding the immediate execution without trial of the arrested men. ‘Max Rieger’ was the collective pseudonym of the French Communist journalist Georges Soria, the recently arrived Comintern delegate, the Bulgarian Stoyan Minev, alias Boris Stepanov, and the Spanish Communist intellectual Wenceslao Roces.108 This Comintern version was recited parrot-fashion by Ortega when he was questioned by Zugazagoitia’s under-secretary, Juan-Simeón Vidarte. The incredulous Vidarte responded: ‘Listen, Colonel, are you an idiot or do you think I am?’ Jesús Hernández also claimed to have laughed when Orlov had explained his scheme for framing Nin. When Negrín informed Azaña of Orlov’s version, the President responded that it was all too neat. In fact, on 29 June, Prieto had already told Azaña about the kidnapping of Nin and shared his conviction that Ortega was both an idiot and a Communist.109

At first, Negrín had interpreted Ortega’s behaviour as the incompetence of a non-commissioned Carabinero officer promoted beyond his ability. As soon as he was informed that Ortega was a Communist, Negrín and Zugazagoitia agreed that he must be replaced. To minimize friction with the Communist ministers over his removal, they concocted the fiction that he was urgently needed at the front. Morón, the Inspector and deputy Director General of Security, became acting Director General.110 In response to the international outcry provoked by Nin’s disappearance, Negrín authorized Irujo to set up a judicial investigation to investigate the case. Morón is alleged to have said to Zugazagoitia: ‘Given that the Prime Minister wants to know the truth, you can tell him that the truth is that the kidnapping of Andrés Nin was planned by the Italian Codovila, Comandante Carlos, [Palmiro] Togliatti and the leaders of the Communist Party, Pepe Díaz among them. The order to torture him was given by Orlov and they have all done their best to satisfy Stalin’s desire for the disappearance of the secretary and confidant of the creator of the Red Army. Tell Negrín and if he wants them arrested, I’ll have them all in prison tomorrow.’ Vidarte’s account suggests that Morón’s information came from David Vázquez Baldominos.111 There was an attempt on Vidarte’s life. The front axle on his car had been cut and he crashed into an elm tree.112

For his inquiry into the case, Irujo gave plenary powers to a state prosecutor, Gregorio Peces Barba del Brío, who had Vázquez Baldominos, Fernando Valentí, Jacinto Rosell Coloma and Andrés Urresola Ochoa arrested. Convinced that Vázquez Baldominos was not the guilty party, a furious Gabriel Morón denounced Irujo as a ‘poor lunatic’ and immediately had them released, and they were not rearrested. Although Negrín approved of Morón’s directness, he felt he had to be replaced.113 In mid-November he was succeeded by Paulino Gómez Sáiz, who had been highly successful as the government delegate in Catalonia since early June.114 Negrín, though he supported the sacking of Ortega and had far-reaching suspicions of Orlov, was not prepared to see further revelations undermine the unity of the cabinet. He took the difficult decision to suspend Irujo’s investigation because, just as he opposed the unofficial repression, he also believed that the reckless and indeed treasonous rebellion of the POUM could not be tolerated in wartime.

To consolidate the security of the Republican state, a major reorganization of counter-espionage services was made in the summer of 1937. On 12 June, the Special Services Bureau of the General Staff of the Army of the Centre, which had been commanded by the anarchist Manuel Salgado, was dissolved. In addition to concerns that prisoners had disappeared in suspicious circumstances, there were suspicions that Salgado’s staff had been infiltrated by Falangists. In fact, his secretary was the Falangist Antonio Bouthelier España. The functions of the Special Services Bureau were fused with those of the Brigadas Especiales and other groups that worked on internal security to create the Special State Intelligence Department (Departamento Especial de Información del Estado – DEDIDE). Initially led by David Vázquez Baldominos, the new body was entrusted with the eradication of espionage and sabotage in loyalist territory, under the direct orders of the Minister of the Interior, Julián Zugazagoitia.115 The DEDIDE targeted not only the supporters of Franco but also those on the left, like the POUM, who were considered to be treacherously subversive. There was considerable suspicion of foreigners – both the POUM and the International Brigades were regarded as potential havens for spies, whether of the Axis or, in the more paranoid vision of the NKVD, of Trotsky’s Fourth International. The Republic was, in fact, extremely vulnerable to enemy espionage, whether directed by the Gestapo, the OVRA or the ever more sophisticated fifth column.116 Bilbao fell on 19 June and constant defeat intensified anxiety and paranoia."

Commitment to democratic norms

"An obvious conclusion to be drawn from the clashes between the Communists and the CNT is the extraordinary level of press freedom prevailing in a tense wartime situation. The denunciations in the CNT press of alleged abuses by the police and the prisons are remarkable indications of the maintenance of democratic norms. Even more so were some of the decisions of the popular tribunals. Noteworthy in this regard were the acquittals of the anarchist militiamen who shot Pablo Yagüe and of rebel supporters like Agustín Muñoz Grandes or Bobby Deglané. Even more striking were the condemnations by the tribunals of both anarchists and Communists found guilty of theft or murder. There was no equivalent in the rebel zone and even less was there anything like General Miaja’s closure of the Siam Embassy operation as illegal, the Madrid Junta’s creation of a committee to investigate anarchist allegations of police irregularities or the Republican government’s insistence that the struggle against the fifth column be conducted according to the law. For Cazorla, it was deeply frustrating, as he saw it, that so many were getting away with so much because security was so lax."

Fifth columnists example

"The trial of Captain Ramón Robles Pazos, on 26 January 1937 at an emergency court, and the parallel fate of his elder brother José, accused of espionage on behalf of the fifth column, are illustrative of the workings of both the Republican judiciary and the security services and their Russian advisers.

The thirty-seven-year-old Captain Robles Pazos was a reactionary Africanista officer. At the beginning of the war, he was an instructor at the Infantry Academy housed in the Alcázar of Toledo.37 He had been in Madrid when his insurrectionary comrades fortified themselves in the Alcázar. On 21 July 1936, on his way to join them, he was arrested in Getafe in the south of the capital and taken to a checa in the Paseo de las Delicias. He swore that he was loyal to the Republic, and, after a few hours, was released and ordered to present himself at the Ministry of War. Despite not reporting for military service, he remained free until 16 October when he was arrested by agents from Madrid’s principal police station, the Comisaría de Buenavista. Charged with breaking his oath of loyalty to the Republic, he was imprisoned in the Cárcel Modelo. Astonishingly, he escaped the evacuation and subsequent massacre of prisoners on 7, 8 and 9 November. This suggests that someone of considerable influence was looking out for him. And it was scarcely coincidental that, from the end of August, his elder brother José was working in some capacity in the Soviet Embassy.

On 17 November, Ramón was transferred to the prison near the Ventas bullring, where he remained until, on 26 January 1937, he was tried for disloyalty. Again swearing that he was entirely loyal to the Republic, he was released provisionally on condition of appearing before the court on the 15th and 30th of each month. When he failed to do so, he was summoned to stand trial again on 27 February. He then sent an obsequious letter to the president of the court (‘that you preside over with such dignity’). In it, he asked the judge to inform ‘the comrades of the court’ that he would be unable to appear as ordered on the entirely mendacious grounds that he had received orders to join the Republican forces on the Teruel front on 24 February. The court decided on his absolution because of this fictitious service at the front.38

In fact, on 28 January, two days after his first trial, Ramón had taken refuge in the Chilean Embassy. Three weeks later, he moved to the French Embassy, from where he wrote his letter of 22 February claiming to be about to fight for the Republic at Teruel. It seems that he was provoked into going into hiding at the Chilean and French embassies because his pretence of loyalty to the Republic was in danger of being exposed. In late December the previous year, his brother José had been arrested and it is likely that Ramón feared what he might, under interrogation, reveal about their contacts. José claimed that he had tried to persuade Ramón to fulfil his military duties, but the security services suspected that he was handing him information from the Soviet Embassy for the fifth column. In January 1938, Ramón managed to get evacuated to France and, after some difficulties, reached the rebel zone in mid-May. He was not subjected to the rigorous investigation applied to most officers who crossed the lines. Indeed, within five weeks, he was incorporated into the rebel forces with the rank of major, a promotion backdated to 10 December 1936, and given command of a unit of Regulares. This was on the basis of favourable reports from fifth columnists of his complete commitment to the rebel cause. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and decorated several times. In 1942, he fought in Russia as a volunteer with the Blue Division, the force sent by Franco in support of Hitler. Thereafter, he enjoyed a highly distinguished military career, being promoted to brigadier general in 1952, to major general in 1957 and to the highest rank in the Spanish army, lieutenant general, in 1961, and the highest possible postings as Captain-General of the VII (Valladolid) and IX (Granada) Military Regions.39 These subsequent career achievements suggest that Ramón’s links with José were damaging to the Republic."

SIM and Anarchist clampdown

"Barely six weeks later, on 9 August, a military counter-espionage unit, the Servicio de Investigación Militar (SIM), was created by Prieto in the Ministry of Defence. As it assumed ever more responsibility for collecting political intelligence in – and therefore policing – the rearguard, in late March 1938 the SIM absorbed the DEDIDE.117 Initially, the SIM was directly responsible to Prieto, who suggested that it had been created on the advice of the Soviet ‘technicians’. However, he also claimed that, in the light of the Nin affair, he had hesitated to take the advice for fear of the police acting independently of the government, as had happened with the Communist Antonio Ortega. Keen to place all the Republican special services under his own command, to head the SIM Prieto appointed his friend Ángel Díaz Baza, who, according to Orlov, was a speculator with an interest in night clubs.118

The key role of chief of the SIM of the Army of the Centre (Madrid) was initially given to a brilliant young officer, Major Gustavo Durán, at the suggestion of Orlov, via Miaja. Prieto accepted, and later claimed that he knew that Durán was a Communist, but kept him under surveillance by naming Ángel Pedrero García as his deputy. After the dissolution of the García Atadell Brigade, Pedrero, its second-in-command, had served briefly as a police inspector at Chamberí in central Madrid before being transferred, in December, to Salgado’s Special Services Bureau in the Ministry of War. His growing importance in military counter-intelligence saw him become SIM chief for the Army of Central Spain in October 1937.119

In the decree creating the SIM, Prieto had stipulated that all agents be approved by the Minister himself and that their credentials carry his signature. However, Gustavo Durán proceeded independently and named about four hundred SIM agents. Claiming that they were all Communists, which Durán and Orlov denied, Prieto used the excuse that Durán was needed at the front to suspend him from the SIM after barely two weeks in the job. Orlov intervened on Durán’s behalf. Pedrero claimed that Durán also received support from Eitingon and Ivan Maximov, the adviser to the General Staff of the Army of the Centre, other Soviet military advisers and Miaja.120

The overall chief of the SIM, Ángel Díaz Baza, hated the role and had soon been replaced on an interim basis by his deputy, Prudencio Sayagués. Seeking a more appropriate long-term appointment, Prieto named Major, later Colonel, Manuel Uribarri Barrutell. On Prieto’s own admission, this was a disastrous choice. While at the Toledo front, Uribarri had allegedly been guilty of large-scale looting. Now, at first he followed Prieto’s instructions but became increasingly aligned with the Communists.121 Uribarri eventually defected in April 1938, with a substantial amount of money and jewellery. Negrín seized the opportunity to purge the SIM. On the advice of Zugazagoitia and Paulino Gómez, he appointed a Socialist, Santiago Garcés Arroyo, as head of the SIM to limit the influence of the Communists.122 By February 1938, only Socialists could get jobs in the SIM.123

The Republic, like other democratic societies faced with an existential threat, adopted undemocratic norms such as censorship, internment without trial, suspension of civil liberties, strike bans in essential industries and conscription. To root out fifth-column networks and to get confessions, from May 1938 the SIM carried out illegal arrests and its operatives sometimes used refined tortures, disorientating prisoners with bright lights, constant loud noises and freezing water. Beds and benches were placed at a sharp angle, making sleep or sitting difficult. Floors were scattered with bricks and other geometric blocks to prevent prisoners from pacing up and down and leaving them to stare at the walls, which were curved and covered with dizzying patterns of cubes and spirals which, with special lighting, gave the impression that the walls were moving. These cells were created in Barcelona in the so-called Checa de Vallmajor or ‘Preventorio D’, a converted convent, and in the ‘Preventorio G’ in Carrer Saragossa, both run by the SIM. The psycho-technic designs were the work of a bizarre international adventurer called Alfonso Laurencic, who was part of the Grup d’Informació of the Generalitat’s secret intelligence service when it was absorbed by the SIM. A self-proclaimed music-hall pianist and architect, Laurencic was a Frenchman of Austrian parents and Yugoslav nationality, who had served in the Spanish Foreign Legion. He had belonged variously to the CNT, the UGT and the POUM, had made money selling false passports and eventually defrauded the SIM.124"

"Another element of the Republican clamp-down on the anarchist movement was the abolition of their autonomous Council of Aragon, which had been created in early October 1936 in Bujaraloz, under the presidency of Joaquín Ascaso, leader of the Zaragoza construction workers and representative of the Ortiz Column. It had had some success in limiting the excesses committed by the militias in Republican Aragon but its principal objective of co-ordinating ‘the needs of the war and the rearguard’ was never achieved because the leaders of the anarchist columns had been determined to maintain their autonomy. Republicans, Socialists and Communists regarded the Council as an anarchist dictatorship imposed by the militias. Its closure by the central government in August 1937 was achieved only at the cost of some violence. Land that had been collectivized was returned to its owners and a definitive end was made to the anarchist repression in the region.125

The clandestine war of the Russian security services against foreign Trotskyists, however, remained beyond the control of the Republican authorities."

"It has been alleged that Stanislav Vaupshasov, a guerrilla-warfare expert, had constructed a crematorium in the basement of a building in Barcelona. He ran it with a Spanish NKVD agent, José Castelo Pacheco. Those targeted for liquidation were lured into the building, killed and their bodies eradicated in a single operation.129 Whether this is what happened to Rein, Wolf, Landau and some of the other foreigners who disappeared is not known. Manuel Irujo ensured that Nin would be the last Spanish Trotskyist to be murdered, but he was unable to stop the persecution of foreign leftists by the Soviet security services."

"With the fifth column getting more confidently aggressive, the SIM became more ruthless and several notably brutal individuals came to the fore. Ramón Torrecilla was one. Another individual who brought immense disrepute to SIM was Loreto Apellaniz Oden, a former post office official, who became a police inspector in Valencia after running the notorious Checa de Sorní. The Brigada Apellaniz spread terror with its activities in the area around Játiva. He later became a much feared chief of the SIM in Valencia from August 1937 to the end of the war. Accused of robbery, torture and murder, he was alleged to have taken instructions directly from Orlov. He was captured by the Francoists in March 1939 and shot.137

From April 1938, the SIM ran six work camps in Catalonia where the conditions were reputed to be harsh and the discipline fierce. There were cases of prisoners shot for trying to escape. Nonetheless, in stark contrast with the rebel zone, literacy and other educational classes were provided and prisoners were freed at the end of their sentences.138 The largest prison camp in the Republican zone was at Albatera in the province of Alicante. With the mission of draining 40,000 hectares of saltmarshes and converting them to arable production, it had been opened in October 1937.139 As food shortages became ever more prevalent in the Republican zone, conditions in all the camps also became progressively worse, although they never reached the levels of overcrowding, malnutrition and abuse that characterized the rebel camps.140"

Special Court for Espionage and High Treason

"While these clandestine abuses were still being perpetrated by the Russians, Negrín and his ministers pressed on with their efforts to regularize the policing and justice functions of the state. In late June 1937, the Special Court for Espionage and High Treason had been created. It reflected Negrín’s view that the authority of the state should not be flouted. However, he was totally opposed to any arbitrary form of repression such as that practised in the Francoist zone.130 With Negrín’s approval, Irujo ensured that the Special Court was staffed by judges of impartiality and probity. Many rank-and-file POUM militants were in prison, infuriated at being held alongside fascists and saboteurs. Still not formally charged, they were awaiting trial by the new Special Court. Among them were several foreign anti-Stalinists. One of them, Kurt Landau’s wife, Katia, had been arrested by a Brigada Especial operating on Russian orders. Their intention was to flush her husband out of hiding.

When Kurt disappeared, Katia demanded a judicial inquiry. By then, Ortega had been dismissed and Negrín’s new Director General of Security, the Basque Socialist Paulino Gómez, tried unsuccessfully to ascertain Kurt’s whereabouts. When the authorities were unable to clarify the fate of her husband, Katia led a hunger strike of five hundred inmates in the women’s prison in Barcelona. In addition to the investigation by Gómez, an international commission of inquiry went to Catalonia in November 1937 to study conditions in Republican prisons and to look into the disappearance of Andreu Nin, Erwin Wolf, Mark Rein and Kurt Landau. Led by John McGovern (general secretary of the British Independent Labour Party – George Orwell’s radical left group which had separated from the Labour Party) and the French pacifist Professor Felicien Challaye, it was permitted to interview Katia in the General Hospital where she was a patient as a result of her hunger strike.131

Irujo visited her in hospital and convinced her that the trials would be fair. She was sufficiently impressed to call off the strike. When Irujo sent prosecutors and judges into each prison with the appropriate paperwork, they were applauded by the prisoners who saw them as guarantors against Stalinist illegalities.132 Everything about the role of the Spanish authorities in the Landau case, particularly the success of Katia’s demand for an inquiry and of the hunger strike, contrasted with procedures in the rebel zone. Women in a rebel prison in 1938 could not have gone on hunger strike as there would have been hardly any food for them to reject and, even if they did, no one would have cared, certainly not a minister.

Shortly after taking possession of his ministry, Irujo had commissioned Mariano Gómez, the president of the Supreme Court, to draw up a draft decree to be applied to crimes perpetrated in the Republican zone since the beginning of the war, including all cases of extra-judicial deaths. It also included a revision of the release of common criminals amnestied by García Oliver.133 On 30 July 1937, Boris Stepanov reported to Dimitrov that the ‘fascist Irujo’ had tried to arrest Carrillo because of Paracuellos and ‘is organizing a system of searches of Communists, Socialists and anarchists, who brutally treated imprisoned fascists. In the name of the law, this minister of justice freed hundreds upon hundreds of arrested fascist agents or disguised fascists. Together with Zugazagoitia, Irujo does everything possible and impossible to save the Trotskyists and to sabotage trials against them. And he will do everything possible to acquit them.’134 In fact, in the light of opposition from Communists and anarchists alike, Irujo’s decree was never fully applied.

Irujo’s approach was illustrated by the case of General José Asensio Torrado, who was arrested and charged with sabotage after the precipitate fall of Málaga in February 1937. He was brought to trial in October that year, just as the north was falling, and given a prison sentence. While in prison, Asensio was permitted to write and publish a book defending his position and to send autographed copies to members of the government. The book was openly sold in Barcelona bookshops. Largo Caballero claimed that the arrest and trial of Asensio was provoked by Communist pressure on Prieto. If so, it is testimony to Negrín’s independence not only that Asensio was able to publish his book but also that, after appeal, the case was dismissed in July 1938.135

As the trend of the war worsened, however, the work of the Special Court expanded beyond Irujo’s original intentions. Those found guilty of espionage or sabotage ran the risk of execution, yet far fewer death sentences were passed than were demanded by prosecutors and even fewer were implemented than actually passed. In Catalonia, whose courts were by far the most active, 166 such sentences were carried out between December 1937 and 11 August 1938, although only seven were shot thereafter. Unlike the military courts in the rebel zone, the Special Court often found the accused not guilty. Moreover, many who were found guilty had their sentences reduced or quashed on appeal. Those suspected of more minor fifth-column offences, of defeatist propaganda and black-market activities were interned either in prisons or in the work camps created by García Oliver. As the military situation got worse throughout 1938, deserters and draft-dodgers were imprisoned.136"

Prieto sacked

"By March 1938, the Republic was in dire straits, demoralized and suffering badly from a drastic lack of food and armaments. Indeed, so bleak did the prospects seem that Negrín’s friend and ally Prieto had come to believe, as did Azaña, that all was lost. Prieto advocated a negotiated peace to avoid the senseless loss of more lives. At tense cabinet meetings on 16 and 29 March, Prieto supported Azaña in proposing a request to the French government to mediate an end to the war. Negrín had reasserted his conviction that the war should go on precisely because he was aware of what would befall the defeated Republic at the hands of the vengeful Francoists. Appalled by the demoralizing impact of Prieto’s words and determined that the Republic would continue to resist, Negrín removed Prieto from the Ministry of Defence on 5 April. Ten days later, the rebels reached the Mediterranean."

Execution scandal, negotiations for prisoner swaps, and collapse of the Republican government

"Resistance meant combat not only at the battle front but also in the rearguard. The determination to follow judicial procedure did not stop the war on spies and saboteurs. A significant success of the SIM took place that April in Barcelona with the discovery and arrest of several fifth-column networks. The British and French diplomatic staff appealed for mercy, but the cabinet voted seven to five for the execution, at the end of June, of ten fifth columnists. The British Chargé d’Affaires, John Leche, commented, ‘I fear repercussions on the other side may be serious, and gave the government serious warning to this effect, but the president of the council and his supporters in the Cabinet are pitiless, and now seem to have as little consideration for their people in the hands of Franco as the latter has for his supporters here.’ The ten prisoners were shot on the morning of 25 June.141

As the battle of the Ebro raged, the militarization of society was intensified. Control of the rearguard became ever more implacable against those suspected of sabotage or espionage. This provoked the severe discomfort of those who felt that the democratic values of the Republic were being compromised by wartime necessities. Thus, on 9 August 1938, there was a cabinet crisis when Negrín forced through approval for the execution of a further sixty-two fifth columnists the following day. Now Minister without Portfolio, Irujo complained of irregularities in the investigation carried out by the SIM. Negrín lost his temper and accused him of ‘legalistic drivel’. In contrast to the rebel practice of rarely reporting executions, the full coverage by the Republican press of this decision led to a considerable scandal. President Azaña was mortified. The Francoists replied immediately by executing sixty-six people.142 The next day, when Irujo said that the SIM had used torture, Negrín undertook to ensure that it ceased forthwith. Irujo resigned, albeit not over this issue. He did so, obliged by an agreement between the Generalitat and the Basque government in exile, in support of Jaume Aiguader’s resignation in protest at further limits on the powers of the Generalitat.143

In the spring of 1938, the British had set up an exchange commission under Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode. Denys Cowan, a former vice-consul to Havana and both a Conservative and a Catholic, was the Commission’s liaison officer with the Republican authorities. He arrived in Barcelona on 20 August and immediately met Álvarez del Vayo, Giral, Negrín and Azaña. Two days later, he reported that the Republican government was prepared to go to ‘almost any lengths’ to exchange all prisoners ‘provided they could receive proper reciprocity from the other side’.144 Indeed, so willing were the Republican ministers that Leche felt the need to protect them from themselves and suggested to the Chetwode Commission that, in view of the Francoists’ ‘previous intransigence and bad faith it would be better that first proposals should come from them’.145

Cowan approached Álvarez del Vayo to seek a suspension of executions, telling him that it would create a better atmosphere for the Republic. Del Vayo passed the proposal to Negrín and the cabinet agreed to suspend executions until 30 September, as the basis for negotiation of a general amnesty on both sides. There was to be no reciprocity from Burgos, merely a radio communiqué stating that Franco’s system of justice was so pure that there was no reason to make a similar concession. Nevertheless, to facilitate Chetwode’s work, Negrín undertook to maintain the suspension of executions until 11 October. Although the Burgos authorities still refused to reciprocate, Negrín told Cowan just before the 11 October deadline that he would extend the suspension to the end of the month and would authorize no further executions without lengthy prior notice to the Chetwode Commission.

One problem was that there were fewer than three hundred persons under sentence of death in the Republican zone but many thousands in rebel territory. Negrín suggested that all death sentences on both sides be commuted, but Burgos refused. Throughout the period after the Republican suspension of executions, the Francoists continued to implement death sentences. Cowan was inevitably worried that this would provoke Republican reprisals. He reminded Negrín that he had declared that his policy was one of ‘clemency ad infinitum’. Negrín responded by undertaking to recommend to the cabinet that there be no reprisals.146 The moratorium on executions was extended until the end of December. On Christmas Eve 1938, Negrín made a broadcast in which, referring to ‘the norms of tolerance and civility that are the essence of our fundamental law’, he appealed to Franco to ‘stop unnecessary ferocity!’ Pointing out that the Republic had suspended executions four months previously, he called on Franco to reciprocate.147

In Burgos, Chetwode met the Conde de Jordana, Franco’s Foreign Minister, who claimed falsely that ‘only those persons were executed by his side who had committed abominable felonies and had been convicted after fair trial in a court of law’. To support this fiction, Jordana produced the chief of Franco’s military juridical corps, Lieutenant Colonel Lorenzo Martínez Fuset, who declared that the Burgos regime had executed nobody for their political opinions, or even for taking up arms, but ‘only because they had committed crimes which in common law would have been worthy of death’. Accordingly, he said, Franco could not interfere and was prepared to risk Republican reprisals.148 Chetwode wrote to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, in mid-November:

I can hardly describe the horror that I have conceived of Spain since my interview with Franco three days ago. He is worse than the Reds and I could not stop him executing his unfortunate prisoners. And when I managed to get 140 out of the Cuban embassy in Madrid across the lines the other day, having got them across, Franco frankly refused to give anyone for them in spite of his promise. And when he did send people down nearly half of them were not the people he had promised to release but criminals who had been in jail, many of them, since before the war started.149

Yet again, Franco reneged on an exchange agreement after the Republican government had already made it possible for many of its prisoners to cross into insurgent territory.150 Meanwhile, as the war drew to a close, Franco refused to exchange forty or fifty senior officers in return for his supporters in the embassies. According to Chetwode, Franco was gambling, successfully as it turned out, on the Republicans being able to prevent any harm coming to them.151"

"After defeat on the Ebro, with Franco’s forces pouring into Catalonia, the bulk of prisoners held by the Republic were evacuated on 23 January 1939. Thousands crossed the border into France. At Pont de Molins, however, Negrín ordered the transfer of several of the more important ones to the central zone, where they could be used for prisoner exchanges. They included Bishop Anselmo Polanco, who had been captured when Republican forces took Teruel in January 1938. Polanco was first imprisoned in Valencia but was soon moved to Barcelona, where he remained for the rest of the war. He was kept in comfortable circumstances and permitted to carry out his spiritual exercises and to say Mass for his fellow prisoners. The government wanted to avoid the scandal of anything happening to Polanco, but Franco blocked Prieto’s efforts via the Red Cross to exchange him for General Rojo’s fourteen-year-old son."

"As the remnants of the defeated Republican Army headed for an uncertain exile, harassed by rebel supporters within the civilian population, Negrín’s orders for the safety of the prisoners were ignored. A truck containing thirty soldiers, under the command of Major Pedro Díaz, arrived at Pont de Molins and took charge of the prisoners, ostensibly in order to transfer them to the port of Roses. The convoy stopped near a ravine at a place called Can de Tretze and the prisoners were shot. Their corpses were soaked in petrol and ignited. The forty-two victims included most of the captured rebel top brass from Teruel: Bishop Polanco and his vicar general, the military commander Colonel Rey d’Harcourt, the head of the Civil Guard and the police chief. Twenty-one Italians and one German who had been taken prisoner at Guadalajara were among those killed. This senseless act of revenge became a symbol of red barbarism. Polanco was eventually beatified by the Vatican in 1995.156"

Negrin's offer of sacrifice, and evacuations of Republican civilians and troops

"After the fall of Catalonia in January 1939 and an exodus of hundreds of thousands of civilians, at the last meeting of the Cortes at Figueras Negrín presented a plan to bring the war to an end in return for Franco observing certain conditions, above all no reprisals.157 The plan was put to British and French representatives, who replied that the Burgos government was not interested in humanitarian sentiments, peace-making or magnanimity and anyway declared that it punished only common crimes. The hypocrisy thereof was underlined by Negrín’s comment that ‘in a savage and pitiless civil war like ours, either everything is a common crime or nothing is’. Accordingly, Negrín offered himself as an expiatory victim, letting it be known that he would hand himself over if Franco would accept his symbolic execution in exchange for the lives of the mass of innocent Republican civilians. He did not reveal this offer to the majority of his own cabinet apart from Zugazagoitia.158

Negrín’s offer was ignored by Franco. The government remained in Spain at the Castle at Figueras until the last units of the Republican army had crossed the French frontier on 9 February. The night before, one of the few colleagues who remained with Negrín, his friend Dr Rafael Méndez, Director General of Carabineros, said to Julio Álvarez del Vayo: ‘I don’t know what we’re doing here. I fear that we will be woken up tonight by Carlist rifle-butts.’ Negrín called Méndez aside and said: ‘We are not leaving here until the last soldier has crossed the frontier.’ Determined to see these Republicans safe from the reprisals of Franco, he watched for eighteen hours until General Rojo arrived to announce that all the Republican troops had crossed into France. Only then did Negrín move on to Toulouse to take a plane back to Alicante. Some ministers thought that he was mad, but as he himself explained: ‘If I had not done that then, today I would die of shame.’159 Back in Spain, he tried to reorganize the military forces of the centre to mount resistance either until a European war started or at least until a massive evacuation could ensure the lowest number of Republican deaths possible. On 16 February, he held a meeting of the military high command in Albacete. Having ascertained that the morale of the ordinary soldier seemed high, he was surprised when senior officers insisted that it was necessary to end the war as soon as possible. Asked why he did not sue for peace, he replied: ‘because to beg for peace is to provoke a catastrophe’.160

As his friend the American journalist Louis Fischer wrote later, ‘Negrín and del Vayo hoped, by holding out a little while longer, to extract a promise of mercy and clemency from Franco and to win time for the flight of those with a price on their heads.’161 The idea that Franco might guarantee that there would be no reprisals against the defeated was a vain one given his Law of Political Responsibilities, announced on 9 February, by which supporters of the Republic were effectively guilty of the crime of military rebellion, which in Franco’s topsy-turvy moral world meant all those who had not supported the military coup of 1936. Negrín was convinced that a fight to the finish was possible and, as a result, had been accused by Prieto of having provoked ‘the gigantic hecatomb’. Prieto claimed that a negotiated peace had been possible and blamed the policy of resistance for Francoist vengeance. This revealed either culpable ignorance of what the rebels had been doing in captured territory or else a cynical desire to make political capital for use against Negrín in the coming Republican power struggle in exile. With some bitterness, Negrín reflected on those who just wanted the war to be over, ‘without thinking about the millions of unfortunates who could not save themselves’.162 In the event, his hopes of resistance to save more Republicans would be dashed as much by the coup of Colonel Segismundo Casado in March 1939 as by Franco himself. More in sadness than in anger, he told the Standing Committee of the Cortes that ‘We could still have resisted and held on and that was our obligation. It was our obligation to remain to save those who are now going to end up murdered or in concentration camps.’ As things had turned out, thanks to Casado, he said, the Republic ended ‘in terms of catastrophe and shame’.163"

Chapter 12: Franco’s Slow War of Annihilation